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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> True. The central problem described in the article is that he has cancer and doesn't want to go bankrupt from the medical bills.

What bills? He’s 79 so he’d have been on Medicare for the past 14 years. Sure there’s the Medicare premiums, but that’s peanuts.

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You're deeply confused about the average American experience.

Tell us then, many of us are not Americans

No, I’m deeply confused why he would have massive medical bills when he’s covered by Medicare. Medicare covers 80% of bills and Medigap plans cover the other 20%. I think some recent changes obviate their need too by capping the annual out of pocket to (I think) $2,000.

I don’t think he has any such bills. From the article:

> He has said he intends to use the proceeds to help manage medical expenses for possible health crises, and to fund programs for people with disabilities.

He doesn’t need the money to pay for some treatments for himself. He wants the money to give it away to others.

My mom's insurance with medicare generally covers 80%, she gets to pay the leftover 20%. So uh bills with medicare is totally a thing.

My dad has medigap that covered all that

He pays like 140 a month extra for it though. But he had all his cancer treatments covered

guessing your father doesn't have cancer?

He had tonsil cancer but it's gone now.

What about maximum out of pocket maximums? All expenses are capped at like $15k per year right?

> capped at like $15k per year right?

That’s a lot of money for most retirees.

for a majority of ppl on earth even

It’s not that much money considering the crazy amount of hospital time and advanced treatments administered. That’s 25% of the average annual salary in the United States and you should be able to pay that for once in a lifetime treatments.

I’m surprised how high the average wage is, but despite that, many have little in savings.

Around a third of Americans have less than $1000.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/average-ameri...

Still, it’s good to keep in perspective during these discussions where it’s made to seem like people are being asked to pay millions for healthcare that were not really talking about bills that high.

I don’t think that matters - if you can’t afford $15k, the bill might as well be $10 million, as you still can’t pay.

Nonsense. You can go into debt for $15k. Plenty of places will give you that much even with terrible credit. No one is giving you $10 million.

Retirees in need of medical treatment without the resources to pay $15K out of pocket are probably not the subset of the population with the easiest access to significant credit.

> That’s 25% of the average annual salary in the United States

It's about 25% of the median annual full-time salary (but only ~70-75% of those employed in any given year are employed full-time for the whole year.)

More to the point, since salary doesn't tell you what people have lying around for emergencies, its more than double the median household total savings.

Even more to the point, population medians or avergaes for things like salary are not really applicable to subsets of the population like “retirees”.

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