I’m Canadian. And I’m already sorry for asking an ignorant question.
I know you have to pay for hospital visits in the states. I know lower economic status can come with lower access to birth control and sex education. But then, how do they afford to give birth? Do people ever avoid hospital visits because they don’t feel like they can’t afford it?
Do hospitals put people on a payment plan? Is it possible to give birth and not pay if you don’t have the means? How does it work in the states?
How does it all work?
Again. Canadian. And sorry.
My sister was on welfare and had a kid around the same time as me. Hers was covered completely by Medicaid.
Mine, because I had a job and health insurance, cost me $20,000. Didn’t finish paying for the kid until her 2nd birthday.
Medicaid is the correct answer. Surprised more people aren’t mentioning it. It’s specifically in place to cover people with low incomes who often don’t have insurance through an employer.
Medicaid will often cover the cost of child birth for low-income people 100%.
That being said, if you have slightly higher income than allowed to enroll in Medicaid, your only option may be a long-term payment plan and lots of debt that you may carry for the rest of your life. It’s an awful system that really only benefits the strong.
Canada, don’t go down that road.
I always wonder what would of happened to my son if I wasn’t Canadian. He was not growing properly in the womb which meant many doctors appointments and ultrasounds . And then he was born 3 months premature and spent 3 months in the NICU. I didn’t have to pay a cent for any of it .
Are you familiar enough with the details to share them? Because this sounds strange to me - every plan has an out of pocket maximum and the highest I’ve seen is $14k. Are you including premiums? Do the costs span multiple years?
I’m not American so maybe I’m getting something wrong… But aren’t you making a faulty assumption about people having a plan at all? Isn’t the amount of completely uninsured in the us in the double digits or something?
Have I personally avoided going to the hospital? Absofuckinglutely. Unless I’m in immediate danger of dying I’ll figure it out myself. I’ve superglued more than one nasty cut that probably needed stitches, entirely possible I’ve ignored more than one concussion. Is it smart? Unequivocally and resoundingly not. Do I do it anyway so I can pay my rent? Yep.
I wonder about the effects of having a low grade constant stressor like that. Combine that with at-will employment and gum prevalence and it’s surprising anyone is able to feel secure and get healthy.
Purely anecdotal, since I can only draw from my own personal pool, but I don’t have a single friend or colleague who feels even remotely secure in their life. We’re all one emergency away from bankruptcy.
The effects of having low grade stressor like that, combined with non-federal sick leave nor vacation and predatory corporate labor laws are what you witness in the US every day. Precipitously declining mental health for everyone, reduced social and coping skills. Commonplace violence and rage and incredible rates of anxiety and depression and resultant medication.
I wonder about the effects of having a low grade constant stressor like that.
Heart disease like irregular heartbeat and stroke. Gastrointestinal problems such as ulcers and IBS. Increased susceptibility to illness. Ability to learn/memorize/perceive are reduced. Not to mention the effects of maladaptive coping mechanisms such as drinking, smoking, drugs etc.
Many disorders originate from stress, especially if the stress is severe and prolonged. The medical community needs to have a greater appreciation for the significant role that stress may play in various diseases and then treat the patient accordingly using both pharmacological (medications and/or nutraceuticals) and non-pharmacological (change in lifestyle, daily exercise, healthy nutrition, and stress reduction programs) therapeutic interventions.
Definitely same.
For our northern cousins, an illustrative story. I was attacked by a dog and with my arm and leg bleeding everywhere my first call was to my wife to get her to come pick me up because I knew an ambulance would be insanely expensive, and my second call was to insurance to find out if I could go to the hospital instead of urgent care. They sent me to urgent care, where they told me it was the worst attack they’d ever seen that wasn’t on the face.
The kicker is that I even have GOOD insurance, but that’s the reality of not knowing if it’s gonna bankrupt you or be covered or not: hesitation. That’s the reality of having years of habit-forming second-guessing when you had bad insurance, or when with good insurance and a tight budget. Imagine what is like for people with bad or no insurance.
Yep. I make ok money and have insurance. Things being what they are, rent has skyrocketed over the past couple years. Food seems to be coming down in price but for a while there it was pretty alarming. I haven’t had a significant raise in about 3 years to keep up with cost of living increases. Choices must be made and if life and limb aren’t in immediate danger, I choose to not have a bill of several thousand dollars for something like a few stitches and/or fight with my insurance company over coverage.
I can answer this: my son was born in 1990. We were extremely poor.
We had midwives help us out as best they could, to the tune of about $3200 at the time. The birth got complicated due to a variety of health factors, and both my son and wife almost died (not because of the midwives). Luckily the midwives had a direct line to Georgetown Hospital, and the cesarean was done there. The total hospital bill was $58,000, or $138k in today’s money, although hospital costs have rose much higher vs inflation, so maybe it would be in the $200k range now. She was in the ICU for a week, hospital for another week, our son for about 3 weeks.
My wife job didn’t have health insurance, because it wasn’t required back then. Because she was gone a week, her job fired her for an unexcused absence. Oddly enough, this made her unemployed and Washington DC had some law (or rule or something) that immediately dropped the hospital bills because of her unemployment. In the end, we had to pay $15k to about two dozen practices who individually sued us, which took 7 years to pay off and a lot of court visits and wage garnishments. It financially ruined us, pretty much. Both suffered a lot afterwards because we just couldn’t afford minimal care. It was hellish. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be today. We got evicted from our apartment, and lived in government housing for six years.
So, yeah. Don’t have a baby in America unless you can guarantee it will be healthy and you have a lot of money. Most of my friends don’t have kids, they simply can’t afford it and look at it like the previous generation looked at concepts like summer homes and yachts. Nice luxuries, but way out of affordabilty.
Wow. That’s horrible. The US health system sounds like a dystopian nightmare.
And yet so many Canadians seem to want to dive head first in to a fully private healthcare system as if anyone could take that financial hit.
I’m sorry you and your family had to go through that.
I’m Canadian and I gladly pay more taxes than you so that I and my friends get free healthcare when we need it.
When we watched the fights over “Obamacare” we just shook our heads.
I’m Canadian and I gladly pay more taxes than you so that I and my friends get free healthcare when we need it.
Here’s the thing. I worked in America for the better part of a decade and I had to submit two tax forms, one to each country. You end up paying the greater of the two and using it to offset the other.
What I know is this: every year, every year, I paid an extra 1% to America. No matter how my (binational) tax guys worked it, my obligation to America was always higher.
The year after I came home I still had to submit taxes (January layoff scares so I moved back) and it was still higher for America despite sitting in a different country (it’s a factor) and using different services. It didn’t matter.
In Canada I pay 1% lower income tax and enjoy healthcare access. While they’ve done away with the regional premiums, I was even okay paying that; as my yearly outlay, proudly at the top bracket, was still less than copays while in America. I would gladly pay the same premium to ensure equal access to dental and optical care for me and especially people who can’t drop (now) c$1000 on some specs or way more on a dental crown.
It’s not that I’m a good guy, but I pay taxes for schools because I don’t want to live around dumb people. I do and will pay taxes so we can take people who aren’t healthy and skilled and contributing income tax and make them so they are. Poverty should be no excuse for not being employable.
1990 was around the time of Hillary-care and Romney-care, so the politicians knew that they were going to have to fix it sooner or later by that point.
Why didn’t you have taxpayer paid (State) insurance if you were extremely poor and expecting? Is it because of the lost job and timing? If you are poor and have a family then you can spend a day at the welfare office and get public insurance.
Because we made too much (over minimum wage, dual income household). I was making $13k as a sales manager, my wife was making $8k as an assistant manager, and minimum wage was $3.35/hr or just under $7k/year back then. After taxes, we made about $1200/mo, and our rent was $650 for a single bedroom apartment. No car, we took the bus, barely had enough for food and utilities.
But we were considered way too over the “poverty line,” which was I think less than $6k/year then. We had been using birth control but when they say some form of birth control is 99% effective, the DO mean 1% failed. I have no regrets our son was born, because it turned out we couldn’t have kids later when we tried. And then later my wife died when he was 22, so if we had kids later, I would have been a widow with younger kids.
I feel awful he grew up poor with us until he was about 10, though.
Oof, yeah that’s rough. The poverty line is really low. I can relate about wishing you weren’t poor when your kid was a kid, we had the same experience. We would have been able to give him a lot more had he been born a decade later, but he still had a loving home, which is more than a lot of kids get.
I’m really sorry to hear about your wife. I can’t even imagine.
… “So, yeah. Don’t have a baby in America…”
for more on this subject, and in the spirit of looking on the bright side of s bad situation, see /c/childfree and childfree.cc. Includes talk, and memes, about some of the benefits, of not having children, including but not limited to finances. (also advice and directories about related options for medical things, where thise are wanted or needed).
Ah… In short… Insurance covers a portion of it and whatever insurance doesn’t pay, I just… Simply don’t pay it. It goes to collections and they spam call me and I don’t answer my phone. Suddenly they give up and after 7 years, it’s gone. Is it right? I don’t know. I definitely haven’t devoted half of my paycheck to medical bills though.
Once I got some physical therapy bills sent to collections. It wasn’t because I failed to pay. The practice was really shitty about billing and record keeping and never billed me for a bunch of visits. They went under and sent their records over to collections.
The collectors called me and pretty much opened with “this place went out of business. We would settle for pretty much anything. How about 10% of what you owe?”
They get a percentage of everything they collect so you might think they’d go for the full amount. But I think the game is sometimes just “what can we get easily and quickly.”
Do people ever avoid hospital visits
At least in my experience, we’ll generally be able to go to the hospital
Do hospitals put people on a payment plan
Generally, I’ve just seen the debt transferred to a debt collection agency afterwards, since there’s no money for them to take. They’ll harass you, and it affects your credit score, but they can’t send you to jail
Yeah, just the American version
It affects where you can rent housing, what houses you can buy, whether you can get a car, etc
Love how everyone went insane with the social credit score while you got the same shit done to you and no one batted an eye
Not only American. We in Germany have shit like that and most other European nations have it as well afaik
I don’t have a credit score, and have never had a problem renting. It’s getting a mortgage that I can’t do without a partner who’s been consistently paying off a credit card for decades.
The US version is a system that calculates the risk of loaning money vs being paid back. In order to be approved for a loan the credit score is used to evaluate whether or not it is likely to be paid back within the terms of the loan. As a result those with bad credit have trouble getting favorable terms for cars, housing and basically anything that can’t be purchased outright. Does it negatively affect people for things outside of their control and perpetuate cycles of poverty? Absolutely, but it is based in actual fiscal risk to calculate sustainable loan practices.
China on the other hand took the US term of “credit” and abused the everloving shit out of it to punish people that the government dislikes. Did your cousin post a Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh meme? Well too bad that you were shopping for a house, because your “credit” is no longer high enough to not be homeless. You should have thought of that before you were related to someone who disagreed with the government!
Not being able to demonstrate to a bank that you are financially reliable enough to pay back a loan is unfortunate, but a rational reason for an unfavorable interest rate or denial of a loan. Making people ineligible for even renting an apartment that is within their financial means because the dictator in charge dislikes you is a completely different thing altogether.
As the name hints, a credit score is used to rate the risk of making you a loan. It’s not some essential personal ID. It only comes into play if you are applying for credit and is a set of shared records that financial institutions and private companies use to decide if loaning you money is a good risk or not.
Someone else said it’s used to decide if you can get a car and that’s not accurate. If you need to borrow money to buy a car, your credit history will be checked. It’s the loan, not the car.
Is it crazy that lenders would want to know if you’ve walked away from your bills in the past? Making it sound like dystopian China is a gross exaggeration.
Landlords want to know if you will be able to pay rent and they may ask to know what you earn, what’s in your bank account, and if you have insane debt. It’s not credit per se but they are entering into a financial agreement with you which you could default on, so it’s got many of the same characteristics. Don’t want to give all this information? Don’t. It’s not required by law. Not everyone demands it. Some may choose not to rent to you without it.
Not really. It just keeps track of how often you miss your credit card payments so creditors will know how high of a risk you are to lend money to. If affects if you can get loans and what interest rates you can get on loans. But if you just pay your loans/credit card bills, you’ll be fine.
yes, but in the classically American fashion we only care about money so much only the money stuff even goes into calculating it
Would a hospital ever refuse you care if you have outstanding bills or hospital bills with collections?
