The whole time I was reading this, as someone from the U.S., I was wondering what country the writer was from, because it sure as #$@! wasn't written by someone in the U.S. When I got to that part, I was, "Oh. Okay. That makes sense."
I asked one of their counsellors once if they ever have any ultra wealthy people who don’t have insurance and also don’t qualify for any assistance. (This was at a children’s hospital with a Level IV NICU.) She said she was unaware of that ever happening, other than very wealthy foreigners who would prepare in advance, arrange payment in advance, fly in, and have a special procedure done.
Overall, in many states, it is logistically impossible to have an unaffordable bill and also not qualify for assistance. The worst situation actually is the person who has insurance but has high deductibles and copays.
If you do not have insurance, you tell them you don’t. They’ll give you a bill lower than what you’d pay as deductible if you had insurance. Or you just don’t pay…
This raises insurance premiums and reduces the quality of healthcare in a dystopian AF feedback loop.
Norway has only 50k births a year. The US has 3.6 Million, and >40% of those are 100% free to Medicaid recipients. So 1.4 million each year, meaning a story like this is about 28 times more likely to be told from someone in the US than Norway.
When those parents die, any potential generational wealth for their children will be taken by the state to pay back the benefits they received from Medicaid.
That would be up to their job if they had one of course, but Medicaid does have some cash benefits and if you have a baby on Medicaid you typically get auto-qualified for TANF so that covers a lot of bills.
>When those parents die, any potential generational wealth for their children will be taken by the state to pay back the benefits they received from Medicaid.
This would only be true if the parents received long-term care or something. And this happens to TONS of people who have otherwise been financially well off, they have to exhaust their assets before Medicaid starts paying for a nursing home. It's got nothing to do with pregnancy benefits.
All I know is a family member would get the Medicaid warnings about their estate each month in the mail.