Comment by _DeadFred_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _DeadFred_ | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

100,000,000 American owe $220 billion in medical debt. https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute/blog/healthc...

In the US medical bills are half of all debts sent to collections.

41% of US adults have health care debt, 14 million had medical debts over $1,000 and 3 million had debts over $10,000. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medi...

65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...

530,000 American families file for bankruptcy due to medical bills every year https://balancingeverything.com/medical-bankruptcies-statist...

Debt burden is strongly associated with increased likelihood of suicide attempt https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33989465/

I lost my medical insurance due to the big beautiful bill. It's an interesting change in patriotism when your country says 'you know what, just fucking die because you are rebuilding your life. We don't believe in second chances in the USA'. For millions and millions this country is a ghoulish nightmare.

100 million Americans owing $220 billion in medical debt is an average of $2,200 per person. That's too much, but that's not bankruptcy levels of debt. 100 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in auto loan debt.

530,000 medical bankruptcies per year, in a country of 350 million. That number is too high, but the average American does not go through this.

Please understand the difference between saying "everything is great" and "it's not great, but it's not as bad as you say it is." I'm saying the latter, in response to comments incorrectly stating that the average American experience is that major medical issues result in bankruptcy.

Now add in all the Americans that don't go to doctors to get treated because their insurance doesn't cover it or it's too expensive, and you're again arguing my original comment for me

Bankruptcies normally impact whole families. So 530,000 bankruptcies could easily be 4,000,000 people impacted, per year. Over the last 20 years that is over 20% of the population.

Or they could all be single people who went bankrupt because they gambled away all of their money, but they list medical bills as a contributing factor because their bankruptcy filing included a $20 copay for treating their gambler's elbow. See, I can make up stuff too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com