Regardless of any progress that has been made, I think anecdotal evidence is important here, and pretty much anybody who has actually used the system knows that it sucks. Nobody knows what to pay and what not to pay, for one thing. There isn't any trust - as many posters here describe, paying medical bills in the US is (feels like?) a constant struggle against being defrauded by both your insurance company and your doctor.
I always tell the same story in opposition to our current capitalist healthcare model:
1. When my oldest daughter was born 10 years ago with Spina Bifida we had private insurance through my employer. The premiums for this were something like $15,000/yr. At the time this was probably 1/3 of my total income.
2. Despite that, we continue to receive bills that we couldn't possibly pay for years after that.
3. Since my third child was born, the children have been covered by a state program (Georgia), and pretty much everything has been covered, no questions asked. As a consumer, this is pretty much all I care about.
I recognize that the current system is bad for the service providers as well, as evidenced by this article. The doctor in question gotten all he's gonna get from insurance companies. He has no hope of collecting this money, so he may as well turn it into good PR (cynical perspective, I guess, but that's me).
While the system may suck, it's leagues better than it was before ACA for most people. Even your example shows it, since before ACA, there was no out of pocket maximums, and hence you continued to receive bills. In fact, before ACA, there was a maximum benefit amount the insurers would pay up to, and then after that, the costs would fall on you.
And your GA state program is most certainly made possibly by the expanded Medicaid funding due to ACA.
>There isn't any trust - as many posters here describe, paying medical bills in the US is (feels like?) a constant struggle against being defrauded by both your insurance company and your doctor.
This is true, but it would help if healthcare providers would list the codes they will charge so that people can look up the cost with their insurer and aren't signing blank checks every time they enter a medical office.
I always tell the same story in opposition to our current capitalist healthcare model:
1. When my oldest daughter was born 10 years ago with Spina Bifida we had private insurance through my employer. The premiums for this were something like $15,000/yr. At the time this was probably 1/3 of my total income.
2. Despite that, we continue to receive bills that we couldn't possibly pay for years after that.
3. Since my third child was born, the children have been covered by a state program (Georgia), and pretty much everything has been covered, no questions asked. As a consumer, this is pretty much all I care about.
I recognize that the current system is bad for the service providers as well, as evidenced by this article. The doctor in question gotten all he's gonna get from insurance companies. He has no hope of collecting this money, so he may as well turn it into good PR (cynical perspective, I guess, but that's me).