Wow, that is tragic. The way healthcare works in this country is pretty pathetic. If you don't have insurance it's either deal with your medical problem or get it treated and go into debt.

This is so sad. I've been in the very position of having a medical problem and not having insurance. 2 Impacted wisom teeth that cause a major abscess and more pain than I ever want to feel again.

I worked my ass off as a temp with an abscess that felt like something was hammering on my nerves with ice picks to get a permanent position that offered Dental insurance.

This poor guy didn't have the option of doing that.

Wait, I'm confused. He took jobs with no health insurance... How is that related to his brother passing away?

He was cleaning his truck when it burst into flames? Kids, this is why you're not supposed to clean cars with Acetone. Also, ummm, yea, this really sucks for him.

It must be so nice for health insurance companies to bill everyone based on insuring a risk pool that includes everyone, and then simultaneously cherry-pick who exactly gets to be part of the risk pool. Talk about double-dipping.

Plus, you know, anybody who has to see a shrink after a terrible tragedy must be horribly flawed and cheating the system somehow. Obviously.

In anything like a fair market, every insurance company who turned him down could take an equal cut of paying his bills. THEN he could sue them for damages to his life, credit, etc. after that.

...Or we could just shoot them. It's not as morally high-ground, but hell, putting the executives up against a wall works for me.

Worst system ever.

The problem with today's health system is the enormous cost. Why does it cost so much to just get a band-aid?

I'm not a fan of socialized health care. I am a huge fan of reforming the healthcare system so that there are more checks and balances.

All medical decisions should be made by doctors and not accountants.

I didn't watch the video, but assume that he lives in Oklahoma. He is eligible for the state's high risk insurance pool. Here's the link:

[www.ok.gov]

Insurance companies consider having seen a psychiatrist a 'pre-existing condition.' Disgusting.

So glad he eventually got a job with benefits, though. Hope things improve for him.

So what 6 companies denied health insurance on the basis of psychiatric treatment? Since he was a minor and only went for three treatments, I am quite suprised by this.

And if he were to take a job with a company that offered health benefits (Starbucks, even for part time), he would likely not have been denied coverage since he would be part of a large group.

Here's a handy list of all state insurance pools:

[www.naschip.org]

Now stop whining and get back to work.

Link was bad. Retry
[www.naschip.org]

@linus: I concur. I think this is tragic, just like everyone else. But the question is, who SHOULD pay for it?

I don't feel I should. But, the amount that he owes is out of control. For 1.2 million, he should get a free vacation home in the virgin islands. We need all kinds of reform. We need to first eliminate the overhead that causes our health care stuff to be so expensive. First is tort reform. Once you remove a lot of the speculatory risks Dr's take everyday, thats a start.

So Ya, tons of reform is needed. Going Social, will create all new problems and we'll be back here again w/ more, different, horror stories.

I'm waiting to see how many comments we get before someone trots out the yarn about not wanting to pay for "insuring fat slobs". I'd much rather insure all slobs so as not to have to see a donation jar at the convenience store for helping with some impoverished 4-year old's medical costs.

@Bladefist: You and I have very similar conservative beliefs. I love it!

Here's my take: I'm for healthcare ASSISTANCE. There are legitimate people (like this guy) who have fallen through the cracks of the healthcare system. I don't mind the government helping people like this. BUT, I don't think we should just flat-out give health insurance away. My sister, is another example. Just graduated college and working end-to-end jobs but with no healthcare. Covering emergancy visits and things like that are good for everyone.

The line needs to be somewhere. I'll be honest that I don't know where that line should be. I think before we draw the line, we need to figure out why it costs so much.

Maybe there needs to be more doctors. More supply might decrease the price. ;-)

FWIW I think Janne is the same person whose son committed suicide after getting in over his head in credit card debt, she was in the documentary "Credit Card Nation." See [www.creditcardnation.com]

Psych treatments are confidential by law. Don't tell the insurance company! (If this is illegal, somebody let me know.)

Now, since the cost of healthcare will always be high due to things like demand, technology, overuse, understaffed, etc... my question to y'all is this, which of the following would you rather have?:
1) Socialized medicine where everybody's in the same risk pool and pays it out in taxes...
2) Pay taxes to drive down the cost of healthcare by making it cheaper to be a doctor, provide government-backed malpractice insurance, cheaper to open a hospital, etc...
3) Encourage people to start their own "medical" savings account similar to how people are encouraged to start their own "retirement" savings account...
or
4) Whine until somebody else promises something that sounds great, regardless of how much it'll really hurt. (This is supposed to be the "other" choice. Feel free to make your own #5.)

@Bladefist:
I agree that healthcare is greatly overpriced. I think that the majority of this inflation in cost is coming from malpractice insurance. If we were to cap or eliminate monetary damages from malpractice suits, I'd think that you'd see a real decline in the cost of medicine.

@timmus:
The 14th comment. Yours.

@linus and @Bladefist: I tend to agree with y'all. Here's a way to look at it... everybody pays at some point for medical care or drugs or something like that. Not everybody uses it the same amount (some spend $300 a year and some spend $1.2M a year, etc). Nobody saves up for this (and to be honest, nobody really can save up for an accidental $1.2M thing). What should be done?

That said, I love the medical assistance idea, but fear it'll go down the same path as the food stamps (food assistance). :(

For now, I think we should just stick with Medicare/Medicaid, and start drilling down those tort reform ideas y'all mentioned. :D

I've got to be missing something because I can't get passed the 'why' did his truck catch fire. Does anyone know?

Everyone should be entitled to health care regardless of their ability to pay. Insurance companies make tons of money and spend a good chunk of your premiums denying coverage, money that could be spent providing treatment instead. One's access to affordable health care should not be dependent on getting the 'right job.'

so why can't he get a job that provides health insurance now?

@TakingItSeriously: I have four impacted teeth about 4 years ago, I've never been turned into a whiny little bitch like that did. I mean, tears comming down my face.

@Bladefist: Lets not forget that Healthcar is something like 18% of our economy, that's a lot of money. Also, lets not forget that even in those countries with social health care, the technology they use comes from the US...because...capitalisim drives inovation.

No company is going to find the cure to aids/cancer/ED just so someone can smile and say well done.

So, for those of us (me) who can't view this video due to their work frowning on that (what do you mean "you shouldn't really be on that site to begin with"?), what's the story?

Or does "His brother committed suicide, he saw a shrink a few times, now he can't get coverage and something awful happened" about cover it?

timmus : I'm waiting to see how many comments we get before someone trots out the yarn about not wanting to pay for "insuring fat slobs".

I'm more curious about how his truck "burst into flames".

/no audio here

@Ein2015: Yeah, well, If his dad's insurance was writing out checks to "Oklahoma City Psychiatric Hospital," I think they could take a wild guess that he was being treated.

There may be laws saying we don't have to disclose stuff ourselves, but there's no law saying insurance companies can reject us on the basis of what they find out privately; whether that be from consumer info consolidation services, or what we post on our MySpace pages.

Folks are always shocked when I tell them it's perfectly legal for insurance, employers, and others to find out all sorts of stuff about them and categorize them as "risks." Heck, the government its self does this all the time in trying to make sure they employ only "moral, upstanding citizens." I subscribe to a service that reports who is "Googling" me and my husband, and he always got lots of hits when he was applying for a permanent position with the local public school.

Just accept it people, you're going to have to make you MySpace "private," and for-the-love-of-God, don't use your real name as your screen name on forums and other sites!

EIN, here's some easy starting points:

1. Require by law digital records and prescriptions. The fact that a large majority of hospitals and doctors office still hand write chart notes and prescriptions is downright criminal.

2. Create public access to records of medical errors. It is difficult or impossible to compare hospitals and doctors by medical error rates, (although doctors have access to records of patients who have sued for malpractice).

3. Develop a standardized medical billing form. The costs associated with maintaining hundreds of different paperwork requirements for different types of coverage is obscene and creates non-productive overhead and delays in receiving benefits when corrections and resubmissions are required.

4. Firm legislation controlling Rx advertising to consumers and the use of freebies (and paid 'consulting' gigs and other ways money is funneled to healthcare providers).

5. If government dollars are used to help research a drug or medicine, then it should not be available for exclusive patent (which drives up cost).

6. Require that all 'peer review' publications have a vetting process prior to publishing articles, which includes listing all direct and indirect sources of funding, conflicts of interest, etc.

All these measures can be implemented while the debate about a long-term solution continues. The problem is so big that we are ignoring the easy changes that can result in immediate benefit, (digital prescriptions to reduce handwriting and transcritpion errors, for example).

Health insurance should not be for profit! That's the bottom line. Why can't people see that?! Take profit out of the equation and you would see a lot of the reform you are talking about. Other than that we are all fucked.

A case and point of why I support socialized health care. With insurance companies having the right to deny health care to people based on random histories of family members and the ability to cancel your policy in the middle of a catastrophic illness we might as well be paying into the government the same money we are throwing at insurance companies - at least then we might have a chance.

See, in a perfect world, this is exactly the sort of thing health insurance would be for. There's car insurance in case of an accident; there's homeowner's or renter's insurance in case of fire or theft or other such disaster.

But health insurance in the United States, as it currently stands, isn't "insurance" like that at all. It's "the right to access medical care." Or, as in the case of a blindingly obvious emergency (man on fire), it's the right to a real life afterward. $1.2 million is a ludicrous sum -- even very well-to-do, financially savvy people won't just have that much money lying around in savings.

@linus: You said "I think before we draw the line, we need to figure out why it costs so much."

It's because the system is severely flawed. Insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, etc. all want their hands in the pot to make as much money as possible. You may not want to think so but your life has a price tag associated with it as far as corporations are concerned.

I think it sucks that I have to pay taxes to pay for a road I don't drive on.
But you know what?
It's nice to have when I need to drive on it.

So, to all you pinheads who are "healthy" and don't need health insurance, and whine about paying for it, just wait. You will need it someday.

@basket548:

California capped malpractice claims many years ago. It has proved to have almost no impact on health care costs.

@kaptainkk: Who would want to go to school for 8 years and rack up all kinds of student debt, just to come out and realize you get paid crap, work crap hours, and still have all this money to pay back.

We are all supposed to die, from one thing or another, there is no such thing medically as a natural death, there is always a reason. If you want to live longer even when your card is being pulled, it's going to cost you.

The creepy thing is that, from the insurance companies' standpoint, refusing Sean turned out to be a good call on their part--not because his counseling predicted anything, just because it means they're off the hook.

@kaptainkk: whoops nevermind. I thought you were talking about something else. I didn't even mean to hit submit. I went to hit refresh, my brain farted and I pushed the closest button to my pointer.

@Squeezer99: Because there's not an insurance plan out there that pays retroactively. If by some miracle, he were to find a job that had health insurance now, he wouldn't be able to get them to pay any previous bills, nor any future bills that pertain to the conditions that created the original bills.

It depends on the carrier though. I saw a psych when I was in college, graduated, insurance lapsed, and then I got a job with insurance. Because the carrier doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, i had to pay for my psych visits out of pocket for 1 year until the insurance would start covering them.

It depends on the Carrier, but short of debt forgiveness or winning the lottery, this guy is unfortunately F'd in the A.

@snoop-blog: True-dat. I lived next door to a med-student. I saw his schedule. When he wasn't working, he was studying. 6-figures isn't enough to get me to live that life.

Considering 1.2 million dollars is an awful lot of money, he should appeal to the state to take care of it. Most states have a fund that takes care of under or uninsured hospital patrons, so it really shoudn't be a feat. In fact, at least in Maryland, the hospital would submit it automatically in the event that you were uninsured, and then treat you like anyone else.

@Squeezer99: Read the comment code. Playing the blame game on the victim is not kosher.

@erytheis: The funny thing is, I support going ahead and "finishing" the socialization of medicine just to get what we already are paying for.

I'm pretty libertarian in a lot of my views (live-and-let-live), but I'm also practical. Today's society just ain't gonna stand for the anti-corporate medical shake-up I'd love to see. Meanwhile, we have essentially "insured" everyone with very expensive, ineffective, tax-payer and consumer funded policies by requiring hospitals to take emergency patients. If folks can't pay, they don't (of coarse, their credit is ruined). The cost of their inability is borne by others who must use the hospital. If the hospital fails, a publicly funded hell-hole is opened in its place.

The problem is that this haphazard way of doing things is FAR more expensive and unreliable than if they just took ALL of the money they already spend on health care and made an actual government program out of it. Folks should still be able to purchase, and employers still offer, supplemental insurance; but a minimum level of preventative and emergency universal coverage should be made available.

it sounds like washing the truck had nothing to do with him being on fire. i call spontaneous human combustion.

@kaptainkk: removing profit removes the incentive to innovate and excel. Look at the medical imaging advances in the last 20 years and think about what would've happened instead if the smart people who developed the technologies couldn't make any money at it.

The problem with any kind of standardized national health system is that the people proposing it are mostly arguing from emotion and their plans are just as shallow.

Er.. I know bankruptcy law has been tightened recently, but 1.2 mill' is a lot. Let's be honest, most 'average' people wouldn't be able to repay a debt like that, especially if interest is accruing. If he really has nothing, bankruptcy seems like the best option. Sure, it's a black mark on your record, but at least he'd be in the clear when it was all over.

I see situations like this becoming more common. Today I just read how insurance companies are accessing your prescription history and using that as a basis to accept or deny someone. So apparently getting treatment for something means you shouldn't be eligible for health insurance. :-(

If you're going to socialize something, make it the catastrophic coverage so people can't get into something like this with no possible escape. Congrats to Tim on getting married and getting a job with benefits. He should be looking at his options for medical bankruptcy, because life with lousy credit sucks far more than a few years with none.

Lesson for young folks who often decide to take the job without benefits "because it pays better." Stop taking the jobs without benefits and those jobs will stop not having benefits.

If you want to know why healthcare is so expensive, next time you have to go to the doctor's ask them up front how much a certain procedure costs. You won't get an answer because no one there knows.

ToOrt reform isn't the answer. Including legal fees, medical malpractice suits cost less than one half of one percent of health care spending.

Reducing the number of forms might help, but is just a drop in the bucket.

When a bit chunk of your premium isn't going towards CARE, but towards salaries, towards denying care, advertising, and the like, something is seriously screwed up.