Yesterday, I Received First-Rate, Affordable Healthcare w/o Insurance, and Obama Had Nothing To Do With It.

Stepdaddy could have purchased COBRA.

OP paid $215 ON TOP of his taxes which are not much lower than my own. And that was just for a simple fish hook!what do you pwy for knee replacement? Cancer treatment? Reconstructive surgery? Etc etc? And, you're STILL paying taxes too? Not just a little tax, you pay a LOT.

Should be one or the other. If healthcare is pay per use, taxes should not be collected.

Pretty sure it was a gift from Tropical Storm Debbie a couple weeks ago!

I've walked that stretch of beach for 40+ years and never seen fishing tackle abandoned. This looked like something washed in from offshore. It was a heavy hook and 80 or 100lb test line, buried in the sand at the high tide line.

I told a young guy about it today at work, and he says I should sue the City!

I said, "WTF!, you want to pay for 50 City employees to go sweep the beach with metal detectors every morning?"

All I got was a blank stare....

I have seen a lot of people limping in the US. It was shocking. For a nation that views itself the best in the world it treats uts own citizens like that.

Injured yourself and want to walk without a limp again? .... Ah but can you afford it?


F. That. S.

You can't push or pull out a barbed hook.
My son hooked my knee about 20 years ago.
I went to a walk in clinic back then it was around $50 to have it removed.

It is illegal to turn anyone away for healthcare. Hospitals can and do get sued for that type of thing.

Without laying out a penny? Just because they didn't require payment in full that day does not mean he does not have to pay it. Because he was ill...fatally ill, he is 1/2 million in debt today just to be alive! Even if he paid 700 a month on that bill it would take him 28 years to pay it off. Who even knows how much he will owe if he gets to have the 2nd surgery so he wont have to live the rest of his life with a colostomy bag. For someone who was laid off, lost their medical insurance and now CANNOT work due to his unexpected illness...where is he going to come up with the money to pay that? He has mortgage and other bills to pay too when the doctors are telling him if he is able to have the second surgery December is the very earliest he can return to looking for work. If he is unable to have this 2nd surgery it will be September when he can start looking.

That was my first thought, but was impossible, as I've already described in the OP.

The only way was to slice the toe open , which was the doctor's opinion as well.

Do you know how much cobra payments are? When you have no job you usually cannot afford that extra a month. His was almost 500 a month if he wanted to do the COBRA joke.

I just think it is flat out insane that after all he's been through, now he has this massive debt over his head. It's effing ridiculous. I bet between the stress of not knowing how you're going to pay your bill, and cutting back on needed services to try to save money here and there, your recovery rates for serious diseases must be way lower than ours. I couldn't imagine worrying about a giant hospital bill thats goung to ruin the whole family finances, while I'm busy fighting for my life...

He could have purchased Blue Cross/Blue Shield for under $50 per month.

Its been enough to bring him to his knees. The day the bills came in the mail my mom actually called me to come over due to the shape he was in after seeing the bills. He was only home from the hospital for 5 days when they got them in the mail. He actually questioned if he did the right thing with having the surgery. He constantly apologizes to the family for what he has "caused" for us when we have helped buy the medical supplies for his bag. It hurts me so bad to see the only father I have ever known apologizing for having a surgery that without he would have died. In fact, the surgeon told him he likely wouldn't have had a tomorrow if he hadn't come that night.

Insurance plans are not cheap. Yeah, there are cheap ones but they cover very, very little and the deductibles are so high on those low monthly premium plans...to me the plan becomes pointless. I've shopped for myself recently because I want to leave my job but still have insurance. You should look at those $50 plans and see what you get with them.
I can tell you one thing...a privately purchased $50 plan is not paying for a surgery like this. You'll have a deductible of tens of thousands before they will even cover a percentage. And on a $50 a month plan you probably aren't even getting 1/2 of that covered. Not to mention the waiting periods on privately purchased insurance and the fact they can deny coverage or payment.

You know, after something like this happens people will say he could have done this, he could have done that. Fact of the matter is he was a healthy man and this came out of NOWHERE! Are you prepared if something like this should happen to you?

It really can happen to anyone!

Perhaps that is why I had to pay 30,000 dollars for walk in surgery.
Thanks a lot...

You're not very bright, are you.

Great Option!
My Health insurance went from $367.00 a month before being being laid off to 1079.00 on Cobra. My unemployment insurance was $1425.00 a month. Rent $750.00. Food???????

I see...

In your mind, no coverage makes more sense than limited coverage which would have reduced his debt by 50% or so...

A $50 plan is not reducing his debt by 50%.

I actually looked it up and I am not even eligible for a $50 plan and he is older than I am by about 30 years, so his is going to be much more than mine just because of his age. The lowest plan I can get myself is $82.45 a month for an emergency only plan. That is a basic plan that does not cover doctor visits, specialist visits, diagnostic work, or prescriptions It covers 20% of an emergency medical visit after a $10,000 deductible. So with this plan he would have to pay well, well over half. And not even be covered for his second surgery, follow up visits, prescriptions or his visits to his surgeon. Would that be okay for you?

With that plan and a 242,000 hospital bill would go like this. 242,000 - 10,000 out of his pocket for deductible = 232,000. THEN they will pay 20% of that which is 46,000. So now we are at 232,000 - 46,0000 = 186,000 + don't forget he already had to meet a 10,000 deductible. So for the surgery only he would pay $196,000. PLUS he would have to pay all doctor visits, surgeon visits, diagnostic work and prescriptions. His prescriptions have not been cheap either! His second surgery would not be covered because it is not an emergency, so that would be full cost. So for my stepfather to live he is paying $196000 minimum and that is only if he never has to go to the doctor, have the second surgery OR take any prescription medications.

So no...limited coverage does not work in my mind. That might be okay for your family but it is not for mine.

I am sorry, but when your dad apologizes to you because of the debt he incurred for surgery when otherwise he would have died THEN you can talk to me about how "some coverage" is better than none, especially when it is still leaving him 200,000 in debt at very minimum.

From your OP it does not sound like you have insurance. Do you know how easily these things can happen? You had an emergency yourself. Luckily it was minor in a sense it did not require much to fix. What if something serious happened to you or a family member and you were uninsured or under-insured? How would you pay it? Most American's don't just have tens to hundreds of thousands sitting around waiting for things of this nature.

I am not a rude person and I don't mean to be rude. I think you need to research how privately purchased health plans really work because it does seem you are uninformed about the price of the plan and what they do/don't cover. There are waiting periods too, they make you start paying BUT you have to wait before you can even use the coverage on a lot of plans.

Here is a link that will quote you on medical insurance plans and what they cover. I think you will find that these plans are not good by any means until you get into the hundreds of dollars a month range.
[link to www.ehealthinsurance.com]

I got it.

You'd rather that I pay for his surgery than he does.

Sweet.

Free Market Capitolism for the WIN!

Evil - don't waste your time arguing with liberal Canuckistan. They're just not anchored in reality on most bread and butter issues.

Did I say or hint to anything like you paying for his debt?

Undeniably, you are misinformed about medical insurance. I come from a family of hard workers and we don't get handouts. In fact, all 4 of the children my mother had, including myself, followed in our mothers footsteps and earned college degrees in field of veterinary medicine. While some may not find that a respectable career, we all make a very decent living doing what we went to college for.

The American medical system is flawed and THAT is the point I trying to make. Did you know that the American government already pays for 46% of healthcare costs in America? Did you know that America's healthcare system is the most expensive in the world? But because my family "did it right" by going to college and having careers we love, we will never benefit from the system in America. We are considered "too rich" for any sort of assistance. I can tell you one thing, while veterinary medicine does pay well, we are nowhere near what would be considered "rich" where we can just shrug off more than 1/4 million when someone has something highly unexpected arise.

Faak that's a good deal...I'd keep the number for those guys around, never know.

I'd be willing to bet $215 you work for the fucking government or a company that does 75% of it's business with government. What I lose on you I'll just make back on the rest of the faux conservative suckers of the government cock that populate this site.

All you self made success stories that would be living in a van down by the river without Uncle Schmuel's 5 trillion dollar pool of pig slop.