Healthcare in the US

There is a news item here about an older man who went into a bank to rob it. He showed a note to the teller that said 'this is a hold up" and he emphasized that he only wanted a dollar. He then went outside the bank to wait for the cops. He told the cops  that he wanted to go to jail so as to get some much needed medical treatment. The sad ending is they only charged him with.......larceny so he may not get the treatment.

GASTON COUNTY, NC. -- A North Carolina man admits he robbed a bank of one-dollar and then sat down and waited for police to arrive.
James Verone allegedly walked into the RBC Bank on New Hope Road hoping to get arrested. Verone said it was not for monetary reasons but to get medical insurance. Verone has a growth on his chest, two ruptured disks and a problem with his left foot.
Verone is a 59-year-old man with no job and no money, he says he thought jail would be the best place to get medical care. He says he is getting good medical care now, but the jail doctor accused him of manipulating the system. Because he only demanded one dollar, the police charged him with larceny from a person, not bank robbery. Verone might not get as much time in jail as he hoped.


Read more: http://www.cbs12.com/articles/dollar-4733271-bank-carolina.html#ixzz1PxeZkbJ9

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2006090/Unemployed-Richard-Verone-tries-rob-bank-dollar-free-healthcare-prison.html

oh wow.  I used to live in that town.  I've gone to that bank.

just another example of how utterly and entirely screwed up the US healthcare system is.

It is sub-standard or less in the USA unless you have insurance....but then it is still expensive as some insurance companies want you to pay out the nose for what they call out of pocket charges for the year before they will pay 100%.  My son in law had insurance but they could not meet the $5,000.00 out of pocket charges for coverage for the year so hence my daughter passed away as they could not afford the cancer treatments......yeah the state kicked in and helped pay but by then it was to late.  It is only going to get worse...but no matter where you live the health care sucks!!!!!  Just my opinion...to many years of people I loved dying due to mistakes made in the healthcare industry.

I feel quite sorry for him that he felt he had no other recourse.

This is probably why we won't move to the US. When DW first moved here we both thought after a few years we might move over there and with my company now asking for people to register for voluntary redundancy now would seem to be the time for us to do it. But 3 years after moving here and DW says she doesn't envisage moving back and one of the big factors is the healthcare.

It's also not easy to get insurance in the first place.

My husband is very healthy, active, and fit. Yet, he's been denied twice for things that are completely unreasonable. 

That is my main reason for not wanting to move back to the US.

I have complaints about the NHS, but at least there is an NHS.

Health care in the US is some of the best in the world...if you have good insurance. Poor people who must rely on the Medicaid system are just screwed if anything major crops up. Forget about it if you need an organ transplant you will just have to die. That's how it is in Arizona where I live anyway. I have worked in a hospital for the entire time I have been in Tucson and have been very blessed that the insurance coverage had always been excellent but the caveat has always been that any surgeries or diagnostic testing or lab work be done at our facility. It is fortunate that this hospital offers outstanding care and I have never had any out of pocket expenses.  I had three surgeries last year and didn't pay one penny except for the meds. Now it's a minimum of 2000 dollars for any surgeries you have done here and more if you go to another facility as it is considered out of network. I am moving to the UK in December and I am quite concerned about the standard of care and having to wait for everything but I have recently found out that the morbitity rates are no worse than here. I am leaving two children and one grandchild behind and am so worried that they won't have healthcare that I'm sick about it. In Arizona babies and children are always covered by the AHCCCS system if the families are lower income and they have excellent physicians to care for them as all pediatricians accept the state insurance program but my kids will have nothing. People die here needlessly because they don't have access to health care. How disgusting is that?     

Health care in the US is some of the best in the world...if you have good insurance.

I don't deny that, the problem is access to that healthcare. It's no good having the best healthcare in the world if you can't access it.
DW was without healthcare in the US a couple of times before we got married because she was changing jobs and there was a 3 month period to qualify for health benefits. Her daughter is back in the States and does not have any health benefits, and I fear the same could happen if we moved there. I'm approaching 50, I've accessed the NHS more times over the last 3 years than I did in the previous 20. so I see that I will be more likely to need the NHS it seems rather stupid to now give it up.
We do have issues with waiting times here but that is basically for elective surgery or non-urgent cases, but if it's serious then I can't fault it. Back in Nov I felt really faint at work, I went to a doctors (I wouldn't let work call me an ambulance otherwise one would have been there) and when he asked if I'd had any chest pain in the last few days I recalled I had a couple of days earlier that I put down to indigestion....he called an ambulance, I had a fast responder paramedic (in a car) close ly followed by an ambulance, I was tested in the ambulance and taken to hospital for further tests....fortunately nothing showed up and I was allowed home that evening but they were quick on the case

That's one of the complaints hubby and I have about the US.  It's not fair...add to that the fact that in MA, if you don't have healthcare for any given month, you are penalized on your taxes by roughly $89/month without care.  This happened to me when I was laid off at the end of 2008...at the beginning of 2009, we were without health insurance for the first three months until it kicked in with my new job at the time.  NOT fair or fun!  I don't think you should be penalized for something you can't afford because it's not that we chose NOT to have insurance...we couldn't afford the rates...even under COBRA!

I only wish life were fair, but alas it is not.

Health care in the US is some of the best in the world...if you have good insurance.

True.  I've had to fight health insurance companies on several occasions.  Having insurance isn't always enough--it must cover the procedures and meds needed.   

Until some of the health care reform legislation kicked in, my daughter (age 21) had no health insurance.  We were sharing my asthma medication (we take the same).  She is single, childless and employed, so Medicaid was not an option. 

In Texas, a single adult must make less than $378 a month to qualify for Medicaid (or be disabled), so even many on unemployment pay are disqualified.  Getting into the county's free clinic can take weeks, and the one private charity clinic only takes so many people daily.  I got her back on my health insurance plan, so she can now have her own asthma medication, and not have to worry about how she could afford to visit a doctor. 

I don't doubt that my mother would be alive today if she had been in this country an being cared for by the NHS.  It sounds a bit emotive for me to say that, but I think she had just about given up on trying to get the care she needed (proper meds, oxygen machine, all the other things that she wasn't entitled to under whatever stop gap measures were in place for her).

Even the people with good insurance in the States are at risk of having something refused despite being appropriate for treatment.  I wouldn't live back there if you paid me, at least not until the healthcare system is properly fixed (and I don't mean requiring people to buy broken coverage).

What is sad is how much things vary from state to state. How can a progressive state like MA penalize you for not having health insurance if you are unemployed? Wouldn't you then qualify for their state plan?

I am grateful I live in Maryland. I'm currently unemployed with 2 kids - one with a chronic medical condition. I've not had a single serious problem with ANY of our care (Medicaid). My son gets care at no less than three of the top research and treatment centers in the US. All for free and with little hassle.

When I do get a job, depending upon how much I make, we may still qualify for that plan, or get a reduced fee plan, or I'll get a job that offers health insurance. And then I'll probably be on here b*tching about how crap that is.

What is sad is how much things vary from state to state. How can a progressive state like MA penalize you for not having health insurance if you are unemployed? Wouldn't you then qualify for their state plan?

You would technically qualify for state-run healthcare, but a lot of doctors require that you have a supplemental form of insurance.  MassHealth is far from even decent...that's what a friend of mine who works in a doctor's office tells me. She deals with them all the time.  But, yes, MA penalizes you for even being without insurance for one month.  I don't see how that's fair...just another way for them to get more money out of the people here.