Truth be told, if you don’t win the “health lottery” and do require any medical procedures, you won’t have saved enough to pay for it without some sort of insurance. I had a friend tell me today that she received her hospital bill for a 5 day stay which included surgery for an emergency bowel problem. The bill was for $67,000. That’s for 5 days in the hospital. And since she’s been home, she’s having to have a liquid IV diet which runs around $2,000 per week. Unless one can guarantee they won’t have illness (and no one can)...saving up will not help that much.
Yup...health care is expensive...even moreso because there are many people that do not pay a dime to get their health care.
And, what is more important than someone’s health anyway?
Don’t get me wrong, I know the sticker shock involved...my daughter away at college had a kidney stone (we thought it was appendicitis), and her 4 hours in the ER and diagnostic tests etc was $4,000 (reduced of course by the facilities engotiation with the health insurance to about $2800).
But people DO NOT save for the health insurance costs or medical care at all for the most part.
They have no problem taking out a $50,000 loan for a car, a loan for a large house, paying for cellphone service, season sports tickets, vacations, dining out, cable TV, satellite TV etc...but when do you hear anyone say “you know, in addition to retirement I put some money away in case I get sick”? Heck, most people don’t even save enough for retirement!
There are plenty of people that are just betting that they get to Medicare age before they get sick...and for most it works out. But if it doesn’t, they express dismay at the cost of the bill despite knowing that it’s expensive. Further, if anyoen thinks that Medicare is going to continue on in it’s present form, and social security for that matter too, they’re not seeing the big picture.
People look at a bill and say, how can that be? Well, really it ain’t that hard to understand.
Some people pay nothing (self pay without assets and medicaid), hospitals and providers lose money hand over fist to provide this care....mandated by, you guessed it, the government. Not only do they mandate that we provide the care, but they make the federal system’s regulations nebulous (like the tax code) and then accuse both of fraud in billing. Throw on top of that piles of government regulation, malpractice costs, record keeping costs and you start talking some serious overhead. Technology is VERY expensive too...an anesthesia machine costs more than a decked out BMW and while I have no idea what an MRI or CT Scanner costs, I’m sure it’s well over a million dollars. Who pays the people to be on call for your friend’s ‘emergency’ surgery too, whether someone comes in to the facility with an emergency or not?
Not ragging on you, I just get exasperated sometimes with the constant displays of astonishment when they get a hospital bill...HEALTH CARE IS EXPENSIVE, and cost containment that is not market driven will decrease the availability and quality of the care available.
Most people who work and handle their finances prudently, and also maintain a healthy lifestyle, could afford to pay for private medical insurance throughout their lives (REALLY private, not the government-hyperregulated stuff that passes for “private” insurance these days), if they hadn’t been forced to subsidize other people through both government programs and government regulation of private insurance that drives costs through the roof.