| In the US it is extremely easy to rack-up hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills. A single operation can cost $200K. Be ill for an extended period of time and the idea of millions of dollars in medical care isn't out of the realm of the possible. And so, imagine selling the family home to try to pay medical bills or provide more favorable circumstances only to get a knock on the door by the Medicaid estate recovery folks who have first dibs on the proceeds of the sale. Not only that, the sale also means the patient is now kicked off Medicaid because they have money. I'll repeat it because the shift in perspective is important: If a private insurance company had exactly the same clauses in their policies people would be up in arms, they would be brought up on charges and some of their management would land in jail. Yet we are willing to accept this from our government? And enroll people by the tens of millions? This should not be. We should provide care to the needy without any such preconditions. Our government should not sink hooks into them at all. Readers seem to be confusing passion for fear mongering. This is real and, as far as I am concerned, it is seriously immoral. We should not be in the business of doing this to our own citizens. This isn't health insurance. Not sure what it is, but I know what it is not. This is the point that is being missed in my exposure of this issue: This is an abomination. The US should not have a program fraudulently presented as insurance that takes people's property at all. Even if the net effect was that this only affected ten people, it would be wrong. We should take care of those who need care and not set hooks into them or their estate. |