[headShrinker]

> Many people "worse off" than me pay nothing and get to go to the hospital no problem...

This is terribly misconstruing the facts. They get to go to ER treatement only, no midterm care. The problem is if they don’t pay, their credit record is heavily penalized. This may seem like nothing but for someone with out money or means it spells a quick down hill slide to homelessness. No problem =/= homeless

FYI the #1 cause of home foreclosures in the US is medical bills

[PopeDotNinja]

> This is terribly misconstruing the facts

When you're broke, you're broke. Just because you have health insurance doesn't mean you can afford to use it. I had better healthcare as a homeless person than as a massively indebted recent college grad with a health plan through work.

[caseyscottmckay]

How did you have better healthcare as a homeless person than through your employer? Like what were the numbers (e.g., monthly cost, deductibles, prescription cost, co-pays, and coverage). This is hard to believe.

If you're referring to EMTALA requiring emergency rooms stabilize all patients, (1) EMTALA applies to everyone, and (2) EMTALA is not healthcare.

[PopeDotNinja]

Medi-Cal was free. Basically everything covered on Medi-Cal was free, or super cheap, and it covered a lot. While on my health insurance plan provided by work, the job where I wasn't making enough money to save or meet my deductible, I got into a bicycle accident & ended up with a $50,000 USD out-of-network hospital bill.

In case you don't know, one of the reasons that some chronically homeless people don't have healthcare is that many don't bother to get it. There's guy in my neighborhood that told me he hasn't gone (but probably should go) to our local government to get his $100-ish/month, food stamps, and healthcare. Also, he ends up in a local emergency room because someone calls an ambulance when he's drunk, passed, and shaking out on the sidewalk. I've called an ambulance a few times for people in that state myself. He also ends up in the emergency room because he routinely gets assaulted while sleeping on the street because there's are not enough shelters for him.

[watersb]

I totally believe this.

When we first met, my wife was still in school, and I had been working in computer stuff for about 10 years. I had good benefits, and thought that medical insurance was a solution to a big problem.

Then watched as my wife tried to get treated for some routine stuff. Not available via the campus clinic, and yet her student "insurance" was not accepted anywhere else within 150 miles without a "co-pay" that was larger than the cost for uninsured patients.

The situation only got worse when we were married later that year. My insurance would only apply after she had sought coverage through her school plan.

We called it "anti-insurance": a form of coverage that, when encountering actual insurance, annihilates it in a violent explosion of virtual particles and real paperwork.

Yeah. The system is fucked.

I believe you.