www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Medical Expenses, who pays if you can't?

I just started on a new treatment for my chronic anemia, which is secondary to a chronic kidney disease. The medication is an injection that I will get every two weeks. The cost per injection is $4000. I am very lucky in that my medical insurance will pay for everything after I meet my deductable of $250. But this has made me stop to think, what about those who don't have medical insurance or those whose insurance isn't as good as mine. I am lucky, I work for the federal goverment,so my insurance can't drop me. But I was recently talking to a friend who has had numerous bouts with cancer and later developed Crohn's disease from the chemotherapy she received. She is unable to purchase all the medications she needs because her insurance won't pay for everything and she can't work because of the Crohn's disease and her medications are very expensive. What about people like that? Or those who work minimum wage jobs without insurance? Is it moral to allow those people to go without medical care because they are poor? Can our country justify going to war to help a country like Iraq, when our own people don't have adequate health care? Think how much health care the billons we are pouring into Iraq would pay for? Can we as Christians justify not providing assistance for those who are unable to pay health care expenses? Should we have some sort of public health care available for people like that? I ask this because, but for the Grace of God, I would be there...and so could you. What do you think? Don

I, too, am fortunate because I am retired from a federal agency and my insurance continues. But it is truly a horrible situation for many who don't have coverage. I would like to see everyone have coverage, but am not sure the insurance companies could ever be trusted to run such a program and control costs. Why should they control costs, since they have no real incentive to do so? Would the government do it any better? I am for the coverage, I just am not sure how it could be done in any practical manner.

People apply for Medical Assistance through their local Welfare Office or if the condition is really bad apply for Social Security Disability. Usually the disabled and ill get coverage, at least in PA they do. It is the working single person or married couple without children that are the ones that usually get shafted out of coverage.

Fr. Deacon Lance, welfare caseworker

The insurance companies are out to make money. They have to charge in accordance to their expenses. The biggest problem is the lawsuits. I cannot imagine the government taking over, so that lawyers,( such as Edwards), would have the US tax payers paying their exorbidant suits and fee's.

Women today rarely have natural childbirth, thanks to Edwards and his lawsuit, (if one should wonder how he became a millionaire)...The doctors are petrified that something might happen to the baby, and they'd be sued. I know that doctors pay over $100,000 a year in order to be insured, so the first thing to do in order to lower medical bills, is to have tort reform.

Pres. Bush did pass Medicare coverage for drugs, and hopefully, he will also have other legislation so that small business' will be able to buy insurance for their workers at the same rate as larger firms.

The problem with socialized medicine, is that the service is very mediocre. I believe in England, anyone that can afford it goes to private doctors. We do have the best Medical system in the world, but of course that's little help to those that can't afford it.

It's a problem that will have to be solved some way. Until then, just pray!

Zenovia

http://www.factcheck.org/article133.html
Nope. Malpractice insurace may add a percent to overall costs. Defensive medical practices have been estimated in one study to add 5-9%. Others have made much smaller estimates. The GAO and CBO have argued against the overall applicability of the 5-9% estimate, derived from studies of heart patients, to general medical practice.

Even if one took the 9% estimate at face value and solved this problem, the US would still be paying a greater percentage of its GDP in health care costs than other industrialized nations.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-healthcare.htm
We have the best emergency and intensive care medicine. But we are weak, as compared to other industrialized nations in preventive medicine and routine health care. We lead in costs lag in vital statistics and satisfaction.

Agreed. But a sound diagnosis is crucial to developing a solution to the problem.

Djs,

I agree with Zenovia when she says that tort reform is needed, because the cost of malpractice insurance isn't the only thing driving medical costs up and driving doctors out of private practice--the other problem is record keeping, which is also related to tort reform.

I am personally aware of several doctors driven out of private practive due to the growing litigious atmosphere, and in at least two of the cases, it was in large part because they had had to hire several extra employees to handle the new, advanced record keeping required in our un-tort-reformed society. This factor was combined with the skyrocketing costs of malpractice and general liability insurance, and deep-sixed the doctors' practices (after they couldn't raise fees enough to cover the difference).

LatinTrad

Whatever the merit of your anecdotes, systematic studies show it is just wrong to claim that torts are the biggest problem. And is the paper work really tort-caused, or is it from insurance/medicare/medicaid to guard against fraud? I do not object in principle to tort reform - the devil being in the details - but the claim that was made is not supported by the facts. The studies by the GAO and CBO are not limited to direct costs of litigation but are aimed at including ancillary costs.

Dear LatinTrad,

What you say is certainly the experience of my American uncle who is a physician.

Alex

Dear DJS,

I can't believe it, I actually agree with you. We do need preventive medicine . My prayer is 'Lord please keep me from falling in the hands of doctors"...and I'm not joking!

It seems our doctors, are not like the one's of old. They appear bitter with the situation. But then again, it might be where I live. Mind you, anywhere in the New York area my Medicare suppliment insurance would be something like $35.00 a month, and here in Westchester I'm paying $165.00.

Actually though, there are many expenses that can't be measured, and are indirectly do to lawsuits. For instance; doctors will immediately send patients to all sorts of specialists, and have all sorts of tests taken, simply because they will be considered negligent should something occur.

Zenovia

Don't sound so surprised!

The studies that I mentioned all were aimed at discerning the added costs of litigation, and saw them as relatively minor if not negligible. The lack of susbtantial cost savings in states that have enacted liability caps in an important observation.

In our system the profit-incentive itself interferes with preventive medicine - How does one price that? What is billable? - and at the same time advances high-tech, specialist diagnostics and therapies.

A movement is now under way, similar to how the Amish handle medical coverage, that may undermine the current system of insurance control. We can only hope. Anywhere there is a 'pool' of money, there will be vultures ready to pick at it - or even not wait and just go in for the sack and pillege.

The Catholic Church is a centralized institution. Even though there are sexual molestation cases as many or more in other churches, because they are mostly independently owned and operated, lawyers don't bother. People's pools of money attract insurance companies, and centralized institutions attract flies ... and lawyers.

Joe

I'll chime in here.

My wife has a condition that required a daily injection. Our health insurance does not cover home injections and the specialist, one of two in Houston, which is amazing if you know how famous Houston is for its medicine, was across town.

So we had to go it alone. Well, it costs us more than double what our insurance would have paid. Actually, we got a reprieve because my employer is self-insured. When we saw the difference in what an uninsured person pays vs. an insurance company we were shocked. We brought it up with our doctor.

He explained how the game is played. The doctors inflate rates because insurance companies want to bargain down really low, they don't care if the doctors go out of business. The person paying for the insurance gets a statement showing how much they "saved" by being a part of that insurance.

At the same time, it's against federal law for a doctor to charge the uninsured anything other than the inflated rate they posted to the insurance company during negotiations.

So if you are uninsured you pay more.

I'd also like to take issue with any insinuation that the uninsured are poor. That's simply not the case. All the poor here in Texas are covered. But an entrepreneur who can't afford his business and health insurance for his family is going to have a huge problem if anyone in his family has a catastrophic illness.

There are catastrophic illness plans that are affordable that will keep someone like this from going bankrupt. The person just needs to do the homework and find it.

So, then the entrepreneur now has to save money to cover himself, being the good responsible person, to pay basic doctor bills. Here's where this person gets hammered. THEY'RE PAYING MORE FOR THE SAME SERVICE.

If your insurance doesn't cover it, you pay more. If you make too much money, the g-man won't help and won't care until you go belly-up.

One other thing,

Medical bills are unsecured debt. That makes a big difference. The Fair Debt Collections Act also provides a lot of ways to keep third-party bill collectors off your back. But you have to know those rights before you even start.

In the end, the cost of health care goes up for everybody and those who aren't insured, usually the lower working class and entrepreneurs, pay even more.