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Is healthcare in the USA expensive? American’s borrowed 88 billion last year to pay their medical tab.
According to USA today, Americans paid 88 billion last year to pay their medical bills.
According to Gallop who is known in the USA for their polling Americans on different subjects, Americans borrowed 88 billion dollars to pay their medical bills.
The total cost for medical care in the USA was $3.7 trillion nationwide, which translates to $10,739 per person. These numbers are insane.
Most Americans are aware that a major health event can bankrupt them. Imagine working your whole life and having it wiped out by an illness.
The cost is a combination of physician visits, drug prices, the activities of health insurers, hospital and institution prices and the prices of medical devices.
Recently, there was talk about removing Obamacare, however, Republicans do not have another program in place to insure the public. Worse, the problem is that healthcare is now monopolized by large hospital systems who have purchased physicians offices.
Meanwhile, predatory insurance companies are driving small practices into larger group and paying the larger groups more, as they are harder to negotiate with.
The system is in serious need of reform, yet policymakers are looking for the next way to insure us with the same people who are gouging us. 88 billion owed by hard working Americans is a symptom. The system needs to be disrupted and this can be done through simplifying part of it through an expanded Medicare based system.
Check out the article in USA Today
Americans borrowed $88 billion to pay for medical bills last year
Douglas A. McIntyre April 2, 2019
Health care costs in the United States are generally measured as the highest in the world. Last year, many Americans could not afford their health care costs and so borrowed $88 billion to pay for that portion they could not afford.
According to a new West Health and Gallup poll, in a new report titled “The U.S. Healthcare Cost Crisis,” the $88 billion was borrowed in the year before the survey, which was done from January 14 to February 20. The poll was conducted via a random group of 3,537 adults over 18 living in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Gallup reported that among the 36 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation members, the United States had the highest health care costs in 2017. The total was $3.7 trillion nationwide, which translates to $10,739 per person.
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