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Almost 100 Million People a Year 'Forced To Choose Between Food and Healthcare' (theguardian.com)
Almost 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty each year because of debts accrued through healthcare expenses. From a report: A report, published by the World Health Organization and the World Bank this week, found the poorest and most vulnerable people are routinely forced to choose between healthcare and other necessities for their household, including food and education, subsisting on $1.90 a day. Researchers found that more than 122 million people around the world are forced to live on $3.10 a day, the benchmark for "moderate poverty," due to healthcare expenditure. Since 2000, this number has increased by 1.5% a year. A total of 800 million people spend more than 10% of their household budgets on "out-of-pocket" health expenses, defined as costs not covered by insurance. Almost 180 million people spend a quarter or more, a population increasing at a rate of almost 5% per year, with women among those worst affected.
The reason health care is so costly in the US can be found at the top of the insurance companies. Many of the top execs of these companies - including the ones that are listed as "non-profit" or "not-for-profit" take in guaranteed annual bonuses that exceed the lifetime earnings of most Americans. The "Affordable Care Act" just gave these greedy capitalists the keys to the kingdom as well, in guaranteeing them customers for the rest of time.
People dropping out of the insurance market and having no coverage won't solve this problem. The solution is to finally have our country behave like a modern industrialized nation and have a single-payer system. It's too bad nobody was willing to propose such a sensible thing.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm surprised it's not a greater percentage than that. It is for me.
It's health insurance.
Get it right.
Almost 100 Million People a Year 'Forced To Choose Between Food and Healthcare'
The USA accounts for about 0.5m of those? Maybe?
Just guessing...
And when they “choose” they buy cellphones, ultra large screen TVs and the latest video game system.
I’ve seen it personally.
Like food stamps in the US if you force them to eat healthy they MIGHT buy more likely they’ll trade their food stamps for the goods they want.
The solution is to let doctors actually PRACTICE medicine and not bind them up with endless bureaucracy forcing them into managed hospital systems with even more red tape and costs and regulations about how many people they need to see to be “productive”
And yet, people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos amass tens of billions of dollars that could be used to provide food and healthcare for these people. How can anyone justify people accumulating this wealth while so many suffer in extreme poverty? I'll be waiting...
The Democrats fixed healthcare a decade ago, remember?
At least people today have a choice. At any time prior to the late 20th century, these people would have just died.
At $3.00/day what are we to expect, these people are poor. 100 million people are criticaly poor in third world sence, their governments and societies have failed to provide a modicum of capitalism where even a pittance of service to society is worth ten times that.
Perhaps instead of talking about universal global health insurance we should talk about restrictive economic states who keep their poor permanently poor and living is squaller. Perhaps lets skip the 80 years of a socialism experiment and jump right into a free market economy where the worker is in high demand and healthcare is just another perk to attract useful labor. Dare to dream.
So?
Don't be a shitty doctor, and you won't get sued. It is literally that easy.
You don't need to stuff your face 3 times a day. Eating once or twice every 48 hours is more than enough.
Especially in the US you have evidence of people people choosing food over health and it is not due to lack of money. It is all the land whales that need mobility scooters to go around. And yes, they are being forced by bad government policies, and fat acceptance and sleazy advertisement/marketing. There are large swats of land (with cities in them) in US that do not have a place where you can buy grass fed/pastured meat/eggs or non-geo and non-soy veggies or vegetable products. Not to mention kids in schools are being fed refined sugar.
That's one way to cure obesity I guess.
Or unemployment and homelessness.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...$200K in cash so far. Would you consider me among the "immoral hoarders" like Gates?
That's barely 1% of the world population. I think that's damned impressive.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
These so called "poor" people often have:
refrigerators
cell phones
homes
cars
televisions
and other personal luxury possessions that can be sold.
People need to redefine their priorities. How many meals could they afford if they ditch the cellphone, sell the television, sell the car, sell the home and go back to renting.
Any social programs are just graft. People need to learn to fend for themselves.
Most actors in the "health care" industry do little to nothing to improve a patient's future health, instead acting as a clean-up crew. Certainly there will be edge cases where people suffer from tragic events but if we're looking at the mean, it would be smart for these "patients" to invest in better eating and supplements and other pro-active biohacking rather than in insurance. Which one of those methods sounds more like "eating"?
Give all the Stats you want. In America, one of the richest country's in the world, we simply don't give a shit about Poverty or Healthcare issues and have no interest in solving them.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
keep 'em unhealthy, keep 'em down. another form of control by the rich and powerful.
There is no reason to eat 3 or more times a day, except for profits for corporations. Eating once or twice in 48 hours is enough.
There are many people who choose food over health every day. Voluntarily. All those land whale fatties that stuff their mouths any waking minute, require a mobility scooter to go around and the fire department with construction crane to get in and out of their homes. They are being forced by fat activism, self acceptance of their loaded fat ass, commercials and marketing or just because of where they live. There are large swats in the flyover states that do not have a single place where natural non-gmo, non-soy/fed, non-pesticide, non-antibiotic, non-rbst food is available.
And all those kids eating refined sugar at school... Someone has already forced them to eat "food" and give up their health.
Plan B is jail/prison (cover more then er and free food)
First of all, I don't want to minimize the seriousness of this topic. It deserves discussion and action. I'm just not sure it belongs here, on this site.
I have come to /. for many years to stay up to speed on the latest tech news and other interesting news that interests me. I also follow many other sites for political content. Lately, every site has seemed to wade into politics more than usual. I understand we live in a hyper partisan environment. However, we must have some safe havens from it. This site serves as that, to some extent, for me. I would hate to see it devolve into yet another political dystopia.
This site was built for a particular niche. I don't know about the rest of you, but I would like to see it stay in the niche.
A refrigerator you buy once and use for years. Often it comes with the apartment you rent, so you don't really buy it at all. (nor are your permitted to sell it)
Selling a crappy beater car will cover medical expenses for about a month, at least in my case. Then what do you do, not work because you are too disabled to walk the 8 miles to work every morning? Does selling a $150 television really solve a families food problems for more than a few weeks?
You'd have a valid point if priorities of the poor were as Senator Chuck Grassley states, "... that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We went from spending 600/mo for the whole family to 2000/mo in the span of a couple years.
That comes out to 24000/year for a family of 4, or about 1/3 of my parents' salary.
They were up to 1500/mo for just the two of them by the time they hit retirement. That was before including medicine, annual, or unexpected doctors' visits too.
Makes you think.
In my country (Spain) and quite a few other ones, medical expenses rarely represent an issue as far as a part of all the salaries (and contributions of companies/self-employers) is being used to pay for the public health care system. I could even stop working/contributing for some years without losing these benefits (I did over-contribute in the past); but even people with no work or illegal immigrants can enjoy it under quite a few scenarios. You only use paid/private alternatives either voluntarily or for somehow-unnecessary treatments.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
to the job killing regulation that is the medical license. If it's good enough for Dr Nick Riviera it's good enough for me. And let's not let anyone sue Dr Nick, heavens no. Sure, he used an artichoke heart instead of a human on, but he passed the savings on to you!
/., so this story didn't belong here in the first place (news for nerds) but as a nerd I trust you can figure out that this is .3% of the annual cost of healthcare in America.
Oh, fyi, payouts for medical malpractice, according to this very pro tort reform (I hate calling it that) website are only $3.6 billion. This is
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Well, I just can't understand how most of Europe and Canada do it without actually going bankrupt.
By starting 50 or 75 years ago and keeping costs from rising year after year up until the present.
Vermont tried to go single-payer a couple years ago. They couldn’t make it work because there was no way for them to cut doctor and nurse salaries enough to make the financing work out.
If you want to understand, start by learning from Vermont's experience.
www.businessinsider.com/insulin-prices-increased-in-2017-2017-5
"It's led some people living with diabetes to turn to the black market, crowdfunding pages, and Facebook pages to get access to the life-saving drug."
In the USA you just show up at ER and don't pay if you don't have a med plan and they can't turn you away.
Is the party med school.
I wish I were able to afford going to a dentist. Thank god for Sensodyne... But the plus side, they just decided to add three years to my pension age (which I have paid for through the same taxes that makes a dentist affordable) three years... I guess I must be healthier than I though, so I have that going for me.
The ER has to try to stabilize you. They don't have to provide needed treatment beyond that, or drugs — and they won't. What they will do is determine what will stabilize you, do that, give you perhaps one dose of whatever prescription(s) is(are) needed which you can then go get from a pharmacy if you can pay for it, and refer you to a doctor, who you can also go to if you can pay for it, and that's the end of it.
You have cancer? Diabetes? A hernia? You're not going to get the treatment you need for that at the ER. Period. The ER does things that are specific to the moment, like set a broken arm. Still, you get to pay for the meds, and any follow-up care.
ER visits are not even remotely comparable to appropriate medical care for anything serious. People who claim it is have no idea what they are talking about.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You can't let ER rooms deny care until they verify your insurance. So you pass a reasonable law making them care for everybody... because that might be you the paying customer they let DIE while trying to find your insurance!
So that gets exploited by desperate people YOU refuse to care for; out of desperation if not involuntarily when disaster strikes. Also, YOU have laws preventing death from sick people who just want to die on their own terms. End of life costs are insane in a country full of cowardly people... home of the brave my ass! I've lived here 40 years and it's a culture of fear all over the place. If you were brave, it's likely they got you acting more cowardly after a decade... probably even buying a gun (most every gun owner I've met is a coward. Yes, I have one - inherited, it gives me no added security; it's so marginal that I'm at greater risk just owning it..fact.)
ER visits are often due to people not having proper preventative care. The expensive situations especially. That greatly increases costs even beyond the ER visit (or repeat ER visits if no follow up care.) This is also a cheap insurance and lazy American problem because proper preventative care is likely the leading cause of all healthcare use in the USA.
The political system is horribly corrupt and the voters are out of touch with reality. 1/3 of the medical cost problem is the insurance industry-- all things being equal, they could buy a lot of time by cutting them out completely-- but it would continue to decline as unchecked control over prices continue (thing is government insurance would have more incentive to NOT keep things on the same path so it wouldn't be as bad as it is now. not a great deal better... given all the other problems in the country. still 30% less overhead costs.)
People can't even handle the truth, let alone blunt harsh truths. The worst things get the more impossible it is to have people face the truth of their deteriorating situation. This is why the USA is going to collapse in the near future. Seen it coming for decades now; it's a bug in the system that only a reboot could solve (except it's not a computer, so it'll be an ugly reboot and the rise of trump politics proves it's likely to be quite ugly, not civil like the fall of the british empire.)
I'm gonna die, and as quickly as possible.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
To fix the health system it must be split into Health Care and Health Insurance.
People must be personally responsible (and pay) for their Health Care and can pay a small amount to be in the large Health Insurance pool.
Stupid Car Analogy: Do you make a claim for an oil change? What about wiper changes? Tires? Back into a tree and get a tiny dent? NO. Car Insurance is for those times when fate smacks you in the face and wrecks your car.
The same should be true in the Health Industry. You are responsible for the care and maintenance of your body. Until people take a direct role in their health and stop thinking things are "free" the system will continue to spiral into failure.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So-called 'health insurance' only really benefits you if you become seriously ill or injured. Otherwise all it does is suck money out of your pocket every month and give you nothing in return. In my opinion, if the average person spent money every month on physical activities and eating healthier instead of spending that money on so-called 'health insurance', they'd find that they don't need 'health insurance'. They'd be stronger, more resistant to injury and illness, lower chance of cancers or heart disease, and little chance (if any) of conditions like obesity or diabetes. Probably be less neurotic and overall happier more of the time than they'd be otherwise, too.
You can look at the LASIK clinics for an example of a medical industry which is mostly unaffected by insurance, since it is generally considered an elective procedure. The price is mostly quoted up front, and you can shop around for a better price, or go for a more reputable doctor. From what I can tell, price is also much lower than most procedures covered by insurance. Of course, if you can't afford LASIK, then you simply don't get it done, so there is a much smaller coercive price driver.
Actually, on second thought, there's no way to compare this with an urgent procedure. If you need a procedure right away, the clinic could charge an exorbitant price, akin to private firefighters watching your house burn down. The insurance company reduces the coercive force because they and the clinic agree to a price structure beforehand, when there is no urgency.
Agree wholeheartedly. Layer a high-deductible policy on top of that (true "health insurance" for big, unexpected problems rather than the make-my-office-visits-and-pills-a-bit-cheaper system we have today), and the vast majority of people would be set.
You are absolutely right that Obama and the Democrats gave a big wet french kiss to the insurance industry with Obamacare - hey, lets mandate by law that everyone has to buy the most absurdly insurance possible, which included things you will never need.
The real answer lies in history, as in every time you let competition happen prices improve. So what really needs to happen is to let people buy ANY insurance policy they like, including none. Let people buy an insurance policy from anywhere, don't let insurance companies have fiefdoms in each state. Allow people to come up with creative forms of insurance. There are tons of ways medical care can easily get lots cheaper...
But the single worst thing you can do, is ironically to go for single payer. That means the same government that is screwing you over now is the ONLY source of your medical care. It means the government paying for health care has no leverage over costs so costs would go up dramatically, and service quality and amount would taper off (as you can see with anywhere on earth that has single payer, over time waiting lists get much worse and the number of providers of care goes down if the government imposes price controls).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sigh. This is not news. There are nearly 8 BILLION people on earth, that is a teeny, tiny fraction. Relatively speaking, things are much, much better than they have ever been in that regard. I know millennials have no connection to reality due largely to the fact that you were born into prosperity and comfort, but there has always been disparity, and likely always will be, you did not invent it or discover disparity, and the earth has never been a utopia, never will be. Life is not fair. Desl with it. Put your energy into the differences you can make rather than those you wish you could, and watch your world improve. Another shocker for you: everyone dies, and not everyone is going to make it. Fight the laws of nature and the universe all you want, you will not change this fundamental truth of existence.
And I'm forced to live on less than $700 a day.
Get a "I Beat Anorexia" shirt.
They are defective, and the species doesn't need that kind of a thing to spread.
I say, Let them die!
The stories people hear in the U.S. about long waiting times, people dying before getting service etc. are hand-picked outliers designed to set an anti-public health care agenda.
I've had friends/loved ones who, when going to the doctor for something they thought was minor, being immediately wheeled to the MRI in order to save their lives. The system isn't perfect, and definitely there have been cases of people waiting in emergency room lines too long (deaths have occurred, no doubt about it -- but we're talking a few cases in the last decade, not people daily having to decide between bankruptcy for their entire family, and death, with a diagnosis). But it's lightyears better than what the US has and we'd never, ever give it up for the trainwreck you poor people have to endure.
And yet, in the US., with its supposedly low tax rate, people are via the health system down there paying hundreds of dollars for a pair of rubber gloves. Someone's getting very, very rich literally on the blood of Americans there.
My dentist said the paperwork burden for public healthcare was much higher than for private insurance and that the rates allowed for hygienists and doctors was below what they could turn a profit, so they stopped taking it. The doctors left that still take insurance seem to be universally horrible, so I doubt dropping wages and allowing for more doctors would make any difference in quality, so I say bring on the single payer. I'll pay out of pocket for anything diagnostic or surgical anyway just to get decent quality.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
There are restrictione that prevent competition. In India, generic insulins, porcine or human analog, are available for $1-3 per vial.
What is this crap? What the Fuck does anyone care about this shit on this website? Go back to one of the "C" ('C' for 'Cunt) networks, such as ABC, NBC, and CBS.
If you want to shock people use large scary numbers without context. The numbers used amount to 3% of the worldwide population, or put another way 97% of the world is "fine".
This is not to say the individual lives don't matter, but people get sick and die daily and the reasons are varied. The best response is to raise WW wealth...eg "a rising ocean lifts all boats".
....clearly show how similar Americans and North Koreans really are.
The social conditioning and brainwashing is really effective.
So sad. :(
What does this have to do with being a tech nerd?
Researchers found that more than 122 million people around the world are forced to live on $3.10 a day, the benchmark for "moderate poverty," due to healthcare expenditure.
How many Americans, Europeans, Australians, etc. are forced to live on $3.10/day because of medical bills?
Ken
A person's personal budget is "personal." The real issue is the rapid drop of American IQs. Tort reform would put many lawyers where they belong - digging ditches for a living thus lowering the cost of medical care. This would help get rid of insurance companies too...
Good food is the ounce of prevention to the pound(euro in some places) of cure ...
Writing such "shocking" news is like writing about hunger in Zimbabwe- it happened before, it's happening and it will be happening. There are 3rd world countries after all, so it's nothing unusual.