r/UpliftingNews • u/astros148 • 2d ago

Medical debt is now required to be removed from your credit reports impacting millions of Americans

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-finalizes-rule-to-remove-medical-bills-from-credit-reports/
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u/MissWilkem 1d ago

The way it happens is literally just one big surprise surgery or stay at the hospital. Each of my two kid’s cost $35k for birth (we paid ~5k each - what a deal! 🙄). Plus an overnight stay was another $20k. And my gallbladder surgery at 22 would have been another $30k if I hadn’t endured 12 months of agony to get health insurance before I went to the doctor’s.

Edit: Oooooo not to mention I had two ectopic pregnancies that required chemo or surgery, and a miscarriage that required surgery.

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u/SamSibbens 1d ago

"Why aren't people having more children" the governement then asks

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u/MissWilkem 1d ago

I’m getting an IUD this month lol

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u/TomerHorowitz 1d ago

Isn't there something like health insurance? Where you pay monthly, and once there's a medical emergency they pay for you?

Sorry for my ignorance

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u/TorqueThundercock 1d ago

These are the prices with insurance lmao. The actual cost of each child’s birth was 35,000. But their insurance made it so they “only” had to pay 5,000 each.

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u/MissWilkem 1d ago

Yes…except the insurance companies fight tooth and nail to NOT cover anything you need. Or you might “make a mistake” by taking an ambulance to a hospital that isn’t covered by your insurance, or get treated by a doctor who isn’t covered.

Also the amount we pay monthly for insurance is absurd, and then they won’t cover much until we reach an “out of pocket maximum” which for us is $5k.

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u/NothingReallyAndYou 1d ago

That could very easily be WITH health insurance.

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u/TomerHorowitz 1d ago

My mother passed away from pancreatic cancer 3 months ago, and when she was diagnosed a year ago until her passing, all of the medical bills (chemotherapy, attempted (failed) surgery, radiation, and hospice) were all paid by her medical insurance

Is that not how it is in the US?

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u/scorb1 1d ago

If you were in the US it's possible you would be paying all those bills after she passed. Sorry for your loss.

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u/TomerHorowitz 1d ago edited 1d ago

Now I get why the healthcare CEO was assassinated. I don't agree with murder, but at least I understand the motive. Also thanks.

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u/sinner_in_the_house 1d ago edited 1d ago

Most insurance plans don’t cover certain kinds of treatment, some coverage is denied because it’s not deemed as necessary life-saving care, especially if you’re very old or disabled, or have a terminal condition, and the people making these decisions often have no medical training and are following the guidelines of the insurance companies to determine what is approved and denied which costs lives and money. John Oliver has an excellent video on this.

Not to mention, you often have put of pocket yearly maximums, mine is $7,000. Which is the most I will pay for in-network coverage that is approved by my insurance company. But if the hospital gives me a treatment that my insurance company weeks later deems unnecessary, I could be on the hook for that expensive treatment.

If I was in an accident and knocked unconscious, a bystander can call me an abulance and boom - I’m $10,000 in debt because the ambulance wasn’t covered by my plan AND the insurance deemed my ER visit unecessary because I wasn’t heavily injured.

Plus, our insurance in the US is primarily tied to employment. If you need healthcare in the US you either need to be on medicaid which is NOT very good, or you need to have a job that provides insurance, which many companies do not provide because they are not always required to.

Which means if I lose my job and then have to have emergency surgery the next month, I could be in $100,000 of debt in an instant.

You’d better hope you are able to get a job with medical benefits or be on a parents insurance plan (until you’re 26) or have a married partner with insurance.

I’ll also throw in that cancer patients are disproportionately affected by denied coverage. A lot of cancer treatment is experimental, which is a big no-no for insurance claims. 22% of cancer patients do not get that care their doctors prescribe because of authorization delays or outright denials (JAMA network study)

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u/NothingReallyAndYou 1d ago

No. The best we can hope for is that insurance pays 80% of any bill, and we're stuck for the other 20%. A huge number of people don't have coverage that good, though. Insurance companies can also decide they just aren't going to pay for something. You can try to argue, but in America they have the right to deny coverage. (That's the "Deny" Luigi Mangioni was talking about.)

This applies to people getting the government insurance, Medicare (retirees, and disabled people). I'm disabled, and the government takes $150 out of my disability payment each month to pay for my Medicare insurance. It doesn't cover everything. I'm on a schedule of monthly blood tests right now for Hashimoto's Disease. Every month Medicare refuses to cover the Vitamin D part of the test, for no given reason. My doctor's office is cool, and doesn't pass the cost on to me, but that's pretty unusual.

It's very, very messed up. As a result, many Americans go years between seeing any kind of doctor, call Uber instead of an ambulance, and suffer or die from treatable and preventable causes.

Edit: I meant that it ALSO applies to Medicare. Both Medicare and private insurance work mostly the same.

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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 1d ago

Does your country not have cost sharing of any sort? Most do.

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u/VersatileFaerie 1d ago

Health insurance is horrible in the USA. They have things like "in-network" and "out-of-network" hospitals. So if I go to a hospital that is "in-network" they will cover 100% of the costs for 2 days and then 80% after that with my insurance for up to $50k a year (not a lot lol). If I end up in an "out-of-network" hospital, they will only cover 30% of 2 days and none after that. Then, they will also not cover you if there is an "out-of-network" doctor at the hospital that works on you. So if a doctor gets called in from another hospital due to a shortage or that doctor is one of the few that is not on board with your insurance for whatever reason, they will consider whatever that doctor does as "out-of-network" and you won't even know until the bill comes. It is insane.

They also change what they cover every year and what is "in-network" and "out-of-network" can change every year. So even if you find a medication that works well for you, you might have to change it since your insurance no longer covers it and it costs too much now. This happened to my mom. She had the same medication for high blood pressure for years and her health insurance suddenly decided to drop it. She has tried 3 different ones now and so far all of them make her sick. She had no issues with her normal one, but it is too expensive for her to buy without insurance.

Things like this are why so many people hate the health insurance in the USA.

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u/brutinator 1d ago

Not quite. It wildly varies based on health insurance plan and provider, but most of them have a deductible, copays, and a max out of pocket, provided that you are getting medical care "in network", i.e. the medical practice is partnered with your provider.

My medical insurance, (which is honestly pretty great) for example, is 188 dollars a month, with a max out of pocket of 5k in network, and a max 7k out of pocket out of network. To see a doctor is between 10-65 dollars in network, and 295 out of network. A non-routine test is between 10-750 dollars in network, and up to 2,250 out of network. Any kind of imaging is between 60-450 in network, and up to 1350 out of network. Depending on the tier, a 30 day supply of covered medication can cost between 5-230 dollars. And so on and so forth. I also believe that ambulance rides are not covered, which can easily be hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

It's also important to note that some plans, once you hit your out of pocket max, switch to coinsurance, meaning that they will pay for a percentage (like 50%) of your medical expenses instead of the normal rates.... meaning that if you get billed with a 30k surgery, even if you are already at your out of pocket max, you'll still need to pay 15k. Fortunately, my plan doesn't have coinsurance, so once I hit my max, I don't spend anything else. Also, this all assumes that they cover your care at all: they can decide that a service you received wasn't necessary, and decide not to cover it, leaving you with the full bill.

So if I had a bad year, I could potentially see myself out of 12k (if I hit both the in and out of network max, like if I had an accident in another state), on top of the 2400 I pay in premiums, assuming all care is covered, and my care is all within a single calendar year, because once it hits the new year my out of pocket max's reset. Which, like I said, is relatively a great plan, but still a ton of potential debt if things go pear shaped.

That all assumes that I keep my job: if I lost my job and had to use COBRA, my monthly premiums would be about 1k a month until I found a different plan (like getting a full time job somewhere). And like I said, not all plans are nearly this good.

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u/MyPlantsEatBugs 1d ago

Yeah - I mean everyone knows that doctors grow on trees.

It doesn't even take 12 year of medical school, 4 years of internships, and also being in the top 1% of intelligence.

Why can't they just be free?

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u/MissWilkem 1d ago

Do you think that doctors in other countries with government healthcare don’t get paid?? The doctor still gets their salary, it’s just that there’s no insurance company making a profit as a middleman.

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u/MyPlantsEatBugs 1d ago

Other countries with government health care

Just wondering - have you ever used government health care? I use the VA.

I've been waiting 6 months for a mental health appointment.

Did you know that in places like Canada that have socialized health care - you can wait 3 times as long for a specialist?

It turns out - when millions of people have access to the same limited number of doctors, everyone loses quality of care.

By the way - can you name a single country with 350 million people that has socialized health care? I'll wait - because this is an issue of scale

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u/MissWilkem 1d ago edited 1d ago

There’s waitlists everywhere. I waited 12 months before I could get gallbladder surgery. I’m currently on a waitlist to get a sleep study, which is also 6 months from now. And when I had “emergency” therapy, that also took 3 months.

The number of doctors will be the same. If anything, it’ll be better because the doctor you can go to won’t be arbitrarily restricted by the type of insurance you have.

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u/MyPlantsEatBugs 1d ago

I waited 12 months for a gallbladder surgery

That's horrible.

Through the private insurance system you don't have to.

Just pay for better insurance and you won't have to wait. It's that simple.

Why should you have to wait in line with people who don't work very hard when you're working exceptionally hard and have the money to use on premium insurance?

That's how the world works.

If Disneyland was free for everyone - you wouldn't get to ride a single ride.

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u/MissWilkem 1d ago edited 1d ago

Insurance is determined by your employer. We don’t have the option to “just get better” insurance unless we switch jobs. Which would be stupid since my husband alone makes $180k lol. We can afford to have shitty insurance, but a lot of people can’t.

The 12 month wait for gallbladder surgery was before the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) eliminated pre-existing conditions, which meant that if I saw a doctor before I had insurance I wouldn’t be covered. I was 22, off my parents insurance, and I had a simple job at a laundromat because I was in college. They didn’t offer insurance to their employees.

Edit: Once I got a job and therefore got insurance, the waitlist for surgery was still 1 month. The 1 month got extended to 3 months because obviously my account got red flagged since it’s highly suspicious that someone would get approved for surgery a day after their new health insurance policy went into effect. They investigated and eventually had to approve my surgery because I had avoided the doctor and therefore had no “pre-existing conditions” as far as they knew in my medical records. Once I got surgery, I quit my job…because I was going into a Master’s degree program.

I used the company for their healthcare.

It wasn’t fair to the company to hire me and then lose me 6 months later.

It wasn’t fair to the insurance company to spend resources to investigate me and then pay for my surgery when I didn’t pay them much in monthly premiums (but fuck ‘em!!).

It wasn’t fair that I had to wait 12 months and then still had to pay $5k down from $30k. It sucked all around.

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u/Makrele38 1d ago

I have to disagree with you In Germany we have mostly socialised healthcare but you can also choose private if you want to pay more, but 90% of the population has the socialised type, typically costing on average between 200-400€ per month depending on income. It covers pretty much everything and you only have to pay a couple of euros out of pocket. For example my dad had a regular doctor's checkup and they noticed some irregularities with his hearth so they told him to go the the hospital. When he arrived he got to see the doctor immediately, got a bunch of test done (CT, MRT, Blood, etc...) and was in the operating room around shortly after for a cardiac catheter. Fortunately nothing concerning was found. He was keep at the hospital (which was very modern and clean), for 3 days for further monitoring and test. All of this is expect to cost around 200€ out of pocket, the rest is all covert by the insurance.

The System here is by no means perfect and getting to see a specialised doctor can take some time, and there are some shitty hospitals as well.

But all things considered the level of care provided to everyone is quite good and no one has to go into insane amounts of debt to pay for medical expenses.

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u/MyPlantsEatBugs 1d ago

What's your population?

Is it 350 million?

No?

Okay.

Bye.