Hospital Bills

[Typhizard]

Should you have to pay Hospital bills if you get a broken arm or something? In my honest opinion, you should, but it should be cheap. I'd say 35$ for a broken arm and so on. What do you think?

 

[psyanic]

Uh, yeah, you should pay your damn bills. I wouldn't say that it should be cheap, though. It's expensive with all the drugs, the cost of the casting itself, the service of doing the whole check, x-rays for broken bones, etc. That's not cheap, so why should you have it cheap? However, there are a lot of things that hospitals do to lower the bill, such as financial aid for those who need it. And there is insurance, so you don't end up paying that much for hospital bills.

 

[✔]

Well in the end, someone has to pay. Healthcare is a large part of the economy, and whether your insurance covers your bills or not, I don't think there's all that much room for change in the system. Like psyanic said, medical operations and their respective associated drugs, equipment, etc., cost a lot of money. But I see the situation much like education. Financial help should be granted to those who deserve it. That's not to say the wealthy should not be treated to lower bills, but that someone who has an accident and does need immediate financial help should be able to comfortably pay without having something hang over their heads.

Bottom line, yes you should pay. But there needs to be a way to soften the blow of bills that result from unfortunate accidents, that usually are out of your control.

 

[Nihilego]

I think it's ridiculous that there are places where you have to pay through the nose for healthcare, something which you require in circumstances beyond your control. In the UK we have the NHS, the National Healthcare Service, where everyone pays slightly higher taxes but as a result part of those taxes fund the healthcare system and so people who need it pay no more than people who don't need it. I don't really see anyone complaining about the way it's done here and it saves lives both literally and financially. It's a fairly overloaded system so yeah, it's slow at times (but for those who can't deal with that, I believe that are still places that will do it privately for a price - not sure though, never been in a position where we've had the money to use one), but otherwise it's brilliant and I wish it's something that could be adopted on a much wider scale. It just seems really unfair in my eyes for someone seriously ill through no fault of their own to have to bankrupt themselves and possibly their whole family for any hope of getting better. Spreading it out across the whole population, even if the majority of them will never need to use much healthcare, is a much better way of doing it imo. So yeah, I think that no, people shouldn't have to pay directly for healthcare. The money for healthcare should be taken out of taxes.

 

[Livewire]

Pretty much what Razor Leaf said. The fact that the healthcare Industry (The fact that it's an industry at all is bad) is more about money & profit than treating the sick is itself sick. People before profits.