>The whole situation seems like a melt-down ready to happen.
How will it melt down, won't they just become infirm or die?
How will it melt down, won't they just become infirm or die?
It's not just their own problem. They won't simply die and get out of the way of the more fortunate.
Potentially causing the next recession.
Or, we modify the system, the whole health insurance industry and hospital industry causes a recession.
The people who can't afford insurance aren't the people that have substantial generational wealth to lose, generally.
1900s... so, the X-Ray machine had just been invented. Antibiotics, Radiation, Chemotherapy, laparoscopy, endoscopy, the mri, titanium, stainless steel. Medicine was in a relative infancy and outcomes were much, much worse.
To your point, the meltdown is more on the insurance side. The normal, every day providers will just charge patients directly.
The issue is the people who get "left behind"--ones who have large numbers of issues. All our insurance money right now goes to provide for them. If insurance collapses, what happens to them?
You must be joking. In the US, that $20k would barely cover a pregnancy. I’m about to blow $10k on a few dental bridges. It’s insanity.
I know, I know, other conditions apply. But even with young kids (and related pregnancies), my family has not consumed anywhere near what I've paid in premiums the last decade. I'd be shocked if we "got back" 10% of what I've paid in.
1: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/01/111071/how-much-does-it-co...
I've never heard of it being over $5000. I can imagine that an at-home birth in San Francisco might be that bad or worse, since the midwife needs to deal with the cost of living.
The problem here is "depending on which hospital they visited". There is no need to involve a hospital (full of exotic infections) for a normal bodily function. That is why your cost is so high.
It isn't even desirable that hospital births should be the norm. Besides the financial cost, directly to the consumer or spread out via higher taxes, there are reasons to prefer non-hospital births. Disease is one. Being able to calmly rest with the comforts of home is another.