Do not read this article if you do not want to get angry. The health care industry in the United States has become one gigantic money making scam, and tens of millions of American families now live in great fear of illness and disease. Why are they so afraid? It is not because they fear the illnesses and diseases. Rather, the prospect of racking up tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in medical debt is enough to deeply frighten just about anyone. Today, virtually every single American is one really bad day from financial ruin. Did you know that medical bills are the number one reason for bankruptcy in the United States? Did you know that the vast majority of people that go bankrupt due to medical bills actually have health insurance? Meanwhile, there are a significant number of people that are becoming fabulously wealthy off of this system. Our “health care industry” has turned large numbers of doctors, lawyers, health insurance company executives and pharmaceutical company executives into multi-millionaires. The health care industry in the United States has been so corrupt and so greedy for so long that we don’t even remember what a legitimate medical system even looks like anymore.
Democrats hailed “Obamacare” as the solution to many of our health care problems, but the truth is that it does not solve any of them. In fact, it is almost certain to increase health care costs. Health insurance companies all over the United States have already announced plans to raise premiums substantially because of this new law.
Not that the Republicans are proposing anything better. They want to repeal Obamacare, which is a great idea, but beyond that they don’t have any real solutions for the health care nightmares that we are facing.
The system simply does not work and it is causing millions of Americans to go bankrupt. So yes, let us repeal Obamacare. It is one of the worst pieces of legislation that the Congress has ever passed in all of U.S. history.
However, just repealing Obamacare will not fix our health care problems. It will not do anything to address the nightmarish statistics that you are about to read.
The truth is that even if you do have health insurance, you are just one really bad accident or one really bad illness away from bankruptcy unless you are fabulously wealthy.
The health care system is designed to rapidly drain money out of us when we are at our most vulnerable. If you have to call for an ambulance to take you to the hospital are you thinking about how much your care will cost at that point?
Of course not. You are just hoping that you will survive.
Well, in today’s world it is really easy to rack up $10,000, $20,000 or even $30,000 in medical debt in the blink of an eye and many hospitals are becoming extremely aggressive about collecting on those medical debts.
I guarantee that many of you that are reading this article know exactly what I am talking about.
One trip to the hospital can wipe out years of financial savings. But why should it cost so much? Often a doctor only spends a few minutes with you.
Well, you find out the truth when you follow the money. There are a lot of people that this system really benefits, and unfortunately that does not include middle class Americans.
The following are 18 ridiculous statistics about medical bills, medical debt and the health care industry that will make you so mad you will want to tear your hair out….
#1 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills cause more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States.
#2 According to that same study, approximately three-fourths of those that do go bankrupt because of medical bills actually do have health insurance.
#3 If you have an illness that requires intensive care for an extended period of time, it is really easy to rack up medical bills that total over 1 million dollars.
#4 It is estimated that hospitals overcharge Americans by about 10 billion dollars every single year.
#5 One trained medical billing advocate says that over 90 percent of the medical bills that she has audited contain “gross overcharges“.
#6 It is not uncommon for insurance companies to get hospitals to knock their bills down by up to 95 percent, but if you are uninsured or you don’t know how the system works then you are out of luck.
#7 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#8 Health insurance premiums for small employers in the United States increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.
#9 Even as the rest of the country struggled with a deep recession, U.S. health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent during 2009 alone.
#10 Between 2000 and 2006, wages in the United States increased by 3.8%, but health care premiums increased by 87%.
#11 According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America’s five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.
#12 The top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States received nearly $200 million in total compensation in 2009.
#13 Health insurance premiums are once again soaring in 2011. Blue Shield of California recently announced plans to raise health insurance rates by an average of 30% to 35% this year, and some individual policy holders could actually see their health insurance premiums rise by a whopping 59 percent.
#14 There were more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a billion dollars in profits in 2008.
#15 According to one doctor interviewed by Fox News, “a gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen” will cost $13,000 at his hospital the moment the victim comes in the door, and then there will be significant additional charges depending on how bad the wound is.
#16 Lawyers are certainly doing their part to contribute to soaring health care costs. According to one recent study, the medical liability system in the United States added approximately $55.6 billion to the cost of health care in 2008.
#17 According to a recent report, Americans spend about twice as much as residents of other developed countries on health care, but they receive much lower quality and far less efficiency in return.
#18 Approximately 46 million Americans do not currently have any health insurance at all. That means that 46 million Americans are just one really bad day away from financial ruin without any protection whatsoever.
So do you have any stories of ridiculous medical bills or outrageous medical debt that you would like to share with all of us? Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….