This has been a cause since pre-Trump, I think. I have the suspicion it wouldn't really scale; it doesn't mean the government could buy out all medical debt at a penny on the dollar, for example. But it does some good regardless, and on the side shows up how ridiculous the system has become.
I had an idle fantasy while reading it, about a law that would cap medical debt as a function of a person's yearly income, and then the government would pick up the tab. Which is ridiculously stupid compared to just plain socializing medicine, but there you have it.
I remember John Scalzi holding a couple of fundraisers for RIP medical debt. Searching for those posts I found this earlier post
Over on her site, author Kameron Hurley tells the story of how she almost died because she didn't have enough money to manage her adult-onset Type 1 diabetes. It wasn't that she wasn't working -- First she worked for a company through which she had (crappy) insurance, and later she was hustling as hard as she could as a freelance writer. It was because the way insurance has been handled in the US made it very difficult for her to get insured, stay insured and to afford to be insured -- and the alternative to being insured here in the US is so much worse that it simply beggars description.
Thing is: Kameron's story? Not unusual for writers in the US. I don't have enough fingers and toes on my body to count off the writers in my own personal sphere who are hardworking, who are hustling as much as they can with their work, who had the medical boom dropped on them by life and were screwed because they didn't have health insurance, or couldn't get health insurance was even remotely within their financial means. I can't tell you the number of writers I know personally who have gone begging online or to family and friends to cover a catastrophic medical issue. Not to mention musicians, artists, actors, and any other sort of creative people.
He believed that the ACA, while imperfect, would do a lot to help -- which is both encouraging and also depressing.
This outfit has been on our regular list for the end-of-year charity-donation frenzy for a few years. They seem pretty great, even if it is sort of a dystopian hack.
For a while, self-employed people who made too much money for ACA subsidies were really getting the short end of the stick, because premiums got very steep above 400% FPL and they didn't have access to employer programs. Under the American Rescue Plan Act in '21, the Dems ended the cliff, so that no one, regardless of income, would pay more than 8.5% on premiums. That was to expire at the end of this year, but the IRA just extended it until 2025, so it will likely become permanent. (The pandemic increase in subsidies so that Exchange plans are a lot cheaper for most people is also being extended.)
And people with public insurance will have affordable insulin. Unfortunately, they couldn't extend it to private plans.
3: I had a college classmate, who I didn't know who died about 5 years ago of HIV/AIDS. It was in September of 2017, so it was reported on the list of deaths since the 2017 reunion. The guy was a lyricist and composer in NY. I honestly didn't think that white people my age died of AIDS. The brother of a friend of mine who is in his late 50's us HIV positive and gets care - in Kansas - through the Ryan White program.
So, what gives? Didn't New York have programs for this kind of thing? But I'm guessing that irregular income streams would make it hard to stay connected to care.
It's always hard when a lyricist dies. Leaves everyone at a loss for words.
You know that meme where one person is grieving/sad and the other person says "Plethora" in a comforting way, and the first person says, "That means a lot"? (such as) I kind of get it stuck in my head in a weird way, where I literally want to just say "Plethora" now and then. On topic because of 7.
I've been trying Atomoxetine for ADHD. Price is $365/month from CVS discounted to $105/month with insurance, but got three months from Mark Cuban for $30 total! Really a huge discount.
With insurance it's $105 to you still?
I know, right? But yes, I actually paid that cost for the first two months before I found out about Mark Cuban. (It comes out of my magic HSA money and is still cheaper than even one hour of therapy, so it didn't seem totally crazy even if it's a lot of money.)
I think the issue here is that I have a high deductible plan (though the deductible isn't that high) and that someone with a normal plan would only owe a copay? It hasn't mattered for any of my previous medication, because they've been free or quite cheap (less than $10/month).
Yeah, my medication is cheap even without insurance.
And since my insurance company has to pay for heart attacks, it's a good deal for them.
Some pharmacies just randomly jack up the price of some drugs so they're weirdly expensive even with insurance. I was paying like $100 at Walgreens for one, then I switched to Fred Meyer and now it's like $10. Same drug, same insurance.
My parents had a pharmacist who would put their pills in a boxes for them. This was no small deal because of the number of pills involved. She was just at a grocery store.
Which is exactly why Mark Cuban is still making money selling it to me at a tenth the price of CVS.
Because of the nice pharmacist at Russ's IGA?
11: I don't have an HSA, but I think that if you don't use insurance, it doesn't count toward your deductible/out of pocket max. My old insurance through my job had a separate out of pocket max for pharmacy, but with Tim's it's combined.
11: I don't have an HSA, but I think that if you don't use insurance, it doesn't count toward your deductible/out of pocket max. My old insurance through my job had a separate out of pocket max for pharmacy, but with Tim's it's combined.
We pay insanely much for meds, and I never thought it would help to shop around, but maybe I will.
19: Through CVS I was using insurance and paying $105/month. The insurance got me the "discount rate" of $105 instead of $365. Through Mark Cuban I'm not using insurance and paying $10/month. I *think* but am not totally sure that if I hit my deductible I might only pay a copay on that $105? At any rate, the $105 was money I actually had to pay even though it was going through insurance.
The catch with Mark Cuban is they only do generics. They don't yet have all generics, though I think they're trying to get more lined up, but they don't have *any* non-generics.
16 to 14.
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Rascal got to pick something out of the prize box today in his 2nd grade class. He picked a 12-pack of golf balls. Wtf. What was his teacher thinking?!
Now we have golf balls whizzing around the house.
You need to get the kids clubs now.
The three most fucked up things in our health care system:
Surprise out of network billing, which is at least starting to be addressed;
Pharmacy benefit managers;
Hospital pricing
A good article about Pharmacy Benefits Managers: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/a-brief-history-of-pharmacy-benefit-managers-how-they-became-the-shady-middle-men-in-the-drug-market/
Healthcare pricing in general: calculating how the mix of copays, deductibles, out-of-pockets, coinsurance, etc affect the actual price seems like a question from competitive spreadsheeting.
"Competitive spreadsheeting" - am I the last one to find out this is an actual thing?