Health care giants aren’t just making care more expensive. They’re putting Americans in debt bondage.
We’ve had such infamous, high-profile scammers as Medicare fraudster (and now Florida Senator) Rick Scott, Big Pharma price gouger Martin Shkreli, and the Sackler family of opioid pushers.
Even worse, we now face an industry-wide epidemic of insurers,
hospitals, and others that are pushing higher costs onto patients and then
systematically pushing those who can’t pay the full inflated tab into debt
schemes.
With
bloated interest charges, payments go on for years. Now wonder medical bankruptcies are
soaring.
The
most significant statistic in today’s avaricious world of health care finance
is this: Half of U.S. adults don’t
have the money to cover a $500 medical bill.
Thus, as the system keeps jacking up its prices and profits, millions of families are forced by illness or injury into the dark valley of debt, inhabited by ruthless debt collectors employed by the medical establishment.
But
wait, you say, I have health insurance! Still, ever-rising prices and
out-of-pocket insurance requirements can put you into debt, too. A recent
Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 6 out of 10 working-age
adults with health coverage went into medical debt in the past
five years.
Most
perversely, health care debt prevents many people from getting health care.
One
in seven Americans say the corporate system has refused care to them because
they have unpaid medical bills, and two-thirds say they’ve put off care because
of the fear of crushing debt.
As
one expert puts it: “The No.1 reason — and the No. 2, 3, and 4 reasons — that
people go into medical debt is they don’t have the money. It’s not
complicated.”
To
help stop the health industry’s grifters and profiteers, go to
RIPMedicalDebt.org.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a
radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. This op-ed was distributed
by OtherWords.org.
