Medical bills drive many U.S. women into debt, report finds

[steve2470]

http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/12/12709312-medical-bills-drive-many-us-women-into-debt-report-finds?lite&google_editors_picks=true

Eight years after she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the unusually young age of 31, Catherine Lovazzano is down to her last $10,000 of debt. “I am really looking forward to paying this off, now that I have a job with great health insurance again,” says Lovazzano, now 39 and working for Chrysler in San Francisco.

Lovazzano is part of the 26 percent of U.S. women who had trouble paying medical bills in the United States in 2009-2010, according to a report released by the non-profit Commonwealth Fund on Friday. That’s double the rate of women anywhere else surveyed -- the rate's 13 percent in Australia and just 4 percent of German women report trouble paying medical bills. But Commonwealth, which advocates for health reform, says the 2010 health reform law will slash these numbers when it starts to take full effect in 2014.

Lovazzano, like many young adult Americans, took out a no-frills health insurance plan when she left a paid job to become a freelance film producer nine years ago. She called her former employer’s insurer to continue coverage after her insurance ran out under COBRA – the law that requires employers to offer coverage to employees for a few months after they leave work. The insurer, Lovazzano said, told her she was young and healthy and needed only coverage for catastrophic events. “They basically sold me junk coverage,” Lovazzano said in a telephone interview.

Catastrophe did strike, in the form of breast cancer. But Lovazzano found out she wasn’t even close to being fully covered. “When I went into surgery they said, ‘You need to write us a check for $1,000 right now’ and I said ‘I don’t have $1,000.' I knew I was in trouble.”

[RC]

1. How many other countries have "Your Money or Your Life" health insurance?

Another reason for Single Payer, Universal Health Care.

[OverseaVisitor]

2. Reality

Income equality in Us and around the world is very troubling.
The general public is left with a very small slice.

However the greedy minority which grab the larger portion do not want to pay their fair share for that huge slice.

Medicine and medical service are basic needs of the general public.
A for profit model generally means higher cost. How else can one generate profit if they do not take from all and keep it for them self.
In short it is really taxing everyone on an equal rate and giving to a few.
And the few wants more discount to keep a large portion of this tax.

Hence no tax cut after a Bush tax cut and austerity cut are really income transfer. It makes it worst for the general public.

This video show trend. It is an ugly picture of how the reality shift for the general public.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2010/08/government_and_private_debt_after_crisis

This little compilation allows you to see the shift in debt

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2010/08/government_and_private_debt_after_crisis

Click on US, here you can see trend from 1952 till 2009. Note the relation between government spending and household debt.

In short the privatization of basic services by the government to businesses are merely transfer of income to the few.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2010/08/government_and_private_debt_after_crisis

Elizabeth Warren frame this one very well.

Education is also under attack. It is sad to see how investment in everyone future can be commercialize to the extend that the young get cripple with a life time debt.

I for one any austerity cut that impact basic needs ( safety net is not by the people for the people ) are merely income transfer for the many to the few.

Why bailout the bank. Bailout the people. Cut on safety net for the many it actually a tax.

These are the real issue. The rest are merely divisive issues that was created to ensure that the general public get so divided that they forget about intelligent discourse on the real problems.