> Department of Justice did a similar survey of bankruptcy filers between 2000 and 2002, which included a much larger sample of 5,203 filers, and found that 90 percent of filers had medical debts less than $5,000, and 54 percent had no medical debt.
We’re talking about 10% of 1% of people that file for bankrupt y and have more than $5,000 in medical debt.
The other thing people don’t mention is the aggressive cost controls in other countries. In the U.K., the NHS will pay $30k on average for treatment that is expected to increase life by one quality-adjusted year: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/ministers.... For cancer, etc., it’s double that.
> NICE has on occasion approved treatments that cost more than £30,000 per QALY. In addition, since 2009, there has been a higher threshold of £50,000 per QALY for end-of-life care, which in practice has applied chiefly, although again not exclusively, to cancer drugs.
In the pre-Obamacare days when there were lifetime limits, you’d see stories of people blowing through a $1 million limit, and then dying a couple of years later $500,000 in debt. Tragic yes, but in the U.K. or Germany these people would have been counseled into hospice instead.
> Speedy access to cutting-edge treatments cuts deep into America’s national purse. One study, summarized in the New York Times, determined that the U.S. averted 265,000 more deaths of colorectal cancer compared to Western Europe between 1982 and 2010. Each year of healthy life gained cost $110,000. The costs for gains in prostate and breast cancers were even more dramatic.
The incremental lives we saved in the US for these cancers came at a cost double that of what would have been approved by the U.K. NHS.
Finally, the other thing most people don’t mention is that Americans have vastly more money in their pockets due to higher incomes and lower taxes: https://images.app.goo.gl/n8Qs8eBa84yuo3by7
There is a small chance that, in the US, you’ll get cancer or have a heart attack, and fall through the cracks of health insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare. But you pay a significant price for reducing that risk.
Would statistics on medical debt be skewed by a society that has potentially grown accustomed to turning away medical aid for fear of the financial fallout?
Maybe, but are there statistics to support that? People point to things like the U.S. lagging on indicators like maternal and infant mortality, and life expectancy. But if you dig into the data, non-white Hispanics (which have a 20% uninsured rate) have similar maternal and infant mortality to whites (which have only a 5% uninsured rate). And hispanics have significantly longer life expectancy. American hispanics, despite widespread lack of insurance, live as long as people in Denmark or Sweden, who have comprehensive universal health care. Moreover, Asian Americans, which have a slightly higher uninsured rate than whites, live the longest of any people anywhere in the world. They live 2-3 years longer than people in Hong Kong or Japan. (And trust me, there is no secret health system for us Asians. We have the same shitty UHC or Cigna insurance everyone else does.)
There is a lot of rhetoric in this area, but few firm conclusions to be drawn.
Even among people who file for bankruptcy, most have little medical debt: https://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnamathur/2018/04/09/exposin...
> Department of Justice did a similar survey of bankruptcy filers between 2000 and 2002, which included a much larger sample of 5,203 filers, and found that 90 percent of filers had medical debts less than $5,000, and 54 percent had no medical debt.
We’re talking about 10% of 1% of people that file for bankrupt y and have more than $5,000 in medical debt.
The other thing people don’t mention is the aggressive cost controls in other countries. In the U.K., the NHS will pay $30k on average for treatment that is expected to increase life by one quality-adjusted year: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/ministers.... For cancer, etc., it’s double that.
> NICE has on occasion approved treatments that cost more than £30,000 per QALY. In addition, since 2009, there has been a higher threshold of £50,000 per QALY for end-of-life care, which in practice has applied chiefly, although again not exclusively, to cancer drugs.
In the pre-Obamacare days when there were lifetime limits, you’d see stories of people blowing through a $1 million limit, and then dying a couple of years later $500,000 in debt. Tragic yes, but in the U.K. or Germany these people would have been counseled into hospice instead.
https://www.politico.eu/article/cancer-europe-america-compar...
> Speedy access to cutting-edge treatments cuts deep into America’s national purse. One study, summarized in the New York Times, determined that the U.S. averted 265,000 more deaths of colorectal cancer compared to Western Europe between 1982 and 2010. Each year of healthy life gained cost $110,000. The costs for gains in prostate and breast cancers were even more dramatic.
The incremental lives we saved in the US for these cancers came at a cost double that of what would have been approved by the U.K. NHS.
Finally, the other thing most people don’t mention is that Americans have vastly more money in their pockets due to higher incomes and lower taxes: https://images.app.goo.gl/n8Qs8eBa84yuo3by7
There is a small chance that, in the US, you’ll get cancer or have a heart attack, and fall through the cracks of health insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare. But you pay a significant price for reducing that risk.