Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

In the US, one serious medical crisis can simultaneously make you exhausted and unable to think straight while plunging you into poverty that is nigh impossible to escape. For many Americans, the only bad life choice they made was being born here, then routine attrition took care of the rest because if you live long enough, you are pretty much guaranteed to have a serious health issue. It's just a matter of time.

View on HN

In the US, one serious medical crisis can simultaneously make you exhausted and unable to think straight while plunging you into poverty that is nigh impossible to escape.

In Europe, we've don't have healthcare issues - it's free here.

Still, the people are unhappy and poor. Society as a whole is a lot more equal tho, I've friends who are very poor and ones who are very rich and I never sensed a discrimination.

I'm not sure someone from Europe can really grasp the kind of horrifying desperation of an American with a medical crisis. Americans have to wrestle with questions like "If I go and it's not serious, I'm screwed financially. If I don't go and it is serious, I'm screwed financially and in other ways." Especially if you are a parent. Not taking your kid for medical treatment can get you charged with neglect potentially.

It's just a really ugly situation that I have never actually faced and it puts me in a weird position. I've lived more like a European in some ways, because my father and ex were both career military.

Yes, bad things happen to people. I absolutely agree. I fail to see how that statement is related to the article or my comment on it though.

It means it isn't a chicken and egg problem. It isn't a question of which came first: bad decisions or poverty? You can be comfortably well off, do all the right things and find your life suddenly coming unraveled through no fault of your own.

You can also be uncomfortably poor, win the lottery and find your life suddenly becoming amazing through no fault of your own.

You shouldn't use edge cases to discuss a general rule.

I think the argument people are making is that it's a lot less of an edge case than people think.

Yes. It seems like never having a serious health problem in your life would be the "edge case," at least if you live to be elderly.

With life expectancy getting longer and longer I think this is increasingly the case.

The last statistics I saw indicated that more than half of all US bankruptcies were due to high medical bills and even having "good" insurance by American standards was no guarantee of protection. That hardly constitutes an edge case.

Maybe edge case wasn't the right wording. What I meant was that in a discussion about whether x leads to y, saying "z could happen to you though" isn't exactly on the point.

Last I checked, it's significantly more likely to become poor through no fault of one's own than to become rich through no fault of one's own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com