'Now I live on the street': how medical bills bust insured Americans

One in six Americans has an unpaid health bill in their credit report. The total amount is $ 81 billion. In 2018, approximately every 12-th American did not have health insurance. But even those who have it are not protected from huge debt due to medical bills, writes The Guardian.

Фото: Depositphotos

Susanne Leclair of WestPalm Beach, Florida, was first diagnosed with cancer. She is still struggling with this diagnosis. Now, like many other Americans facing life-threatening illnesses, a woman went bankrupt, despite having health insurance.

Prior to her first cancer operation, the hospital said they had taken her health insurance from her employer.

“I paid $300. After the operation I started receiving all invoices. It turned out that the only thing that insurance covered was my bed in the ward. All because the hospital was not in my insurance network. The bills were hundreds of thousands of dollars, so I had no choice but to file for bankruptcy,” LeClair said.

On the subject: How to be treated in the US and get paid for it

Now Leclair is on the verge of filing bankruptcy for the second time. All because of the growing medical debt that she accumulated after additional operations related to cancer, regular medical appointments, medicines and supplies. And all this despite the availability of medical insurance.

“My medical bills are $52. “I’ve done everything from credit cards to consolidation, I just keep paying off one credit card debt with another interest-free one until I can’t pay the next time,” LeClair added.

“This is the side of cancer that most people don't understand or know, and it never ends. It just keeps piling up and piling up and you end up back in debt that you can’t believe in anymore,” she added.

On the subject: Medicine in the USA: expensive and even more expensive

Bankruptcy can also make it difficult to find a job, given that many employers will disqualify a candidate for bankruptcy. This is easy to determine when checking data.

According to research published in February 2019, about 530 000 bankruptcies are filed annually due to debt due to illness. The study found that even the Obama administration’s affordable health care law (known as Obamacare) was unable to change the proportion of bankruptcies caused by medical debt, and poor health insurance was named one of the main culprits.

Republicans and Democrats currently disagree with the Trump administration's plans to further weaken Obamacare: it's about making it easier for states to waive certain requirements and offer cheaper insurance plans that could make things worse. Health insurance has become one of the characteristic problems ahead of the 2020 election of the year. Democrats, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, promise a complete revision of the system, while Joe Biden and others are talking about milder reforms. the parties acknowledge that the current system is not working.

Фото: Depositphotos

“Many people, over 60%, file bankruptcy at least in part because of medical bills. Most of them are insured. It is clear that despite having health insurance, many people are incurring costs not covered by their insurance,” said Himmelstein, lead author of the study “Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act.”

On the subject: What I learned about medicine in the United States when I got insurance

In 2018, about every 12 American had no health insurance.

“I have insurance at work, but it has a high premium and deductible. I have to pay $450 a month. When you think about living paycheck to paycheck, $450 is a lot of money. Some bills aren't paid every month,” said Mary Cross of Detroit, Michigan, who has filed for bankruptcy twice since early 2013 after being hospitalized for pneumonia. She required lung surgery.

“I'm struggling to stay afloat after having surgery in January this year. I kept getting calls from the billing department at the hospital where I had surgery,” Cross added.

In Savannah, Georgia, an 35-year-old man who asked to remain anonymous recently turned out to be homeless and unemployed due to his long hospital stay and hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt.

For many years he has type 1 diabetes. Due to problems with the regulation of blood sugar in April 2019, the toes of the man were amputated.

“I had to reduce my working hours and paying bills became more difficult. But in July 2019 I was admitted to the hospital again and I was fired from my job because I was in the hospital. I lost my insurance. My leg was amputated, which means I still can’t work,” he said.

He is currently working on an attempt to declare bankruptcy in order to close the medical debt that he received after amputations.

“I have accumulated over $400 in medical bills and my disability hearing is at least 000 months away. I owe all this money, I lost my house, now I’m living on the streets with no end in sight,” he said.

Previously ForumDaily писал about what happens to debts and loans after death in the United States.

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