Even after 50 years of Medicare, seniors in the U.S. had nearly twice the rate of cost-related problems accessing care than those of any other wealthy country. Our seniors also have more chronic illness, take more medications and struggle more to pay for health care than those in the 10 other countries studied. The difference is that in all of the other countries, everybody, not just seniors, have health care coverage. The study’s authors speculate that by the time we reach 65, we have a lot of catching up to do because of the inadequate care we received when we were younger, when preventive care could have made a real difference. The Consumer Protection Financial Bureau recently published a report stating that about 75 million consumers in the U.S. have had bill collection problems reported on their credit reports. They found that “roughly half of all collection problems that appear on credit reports are reported by debt collectors seeking to collect on medical bills claimed to be owed to hospitals and other medical providers.” NBC News concludes that medical debt is hurting the creditworthiness of 43 million Americans, and the systems in place to collect and report this debt can be challenging. An article appeared last week in the New York Times, headlined “ The Punishing Cost of Cancer Care.” The author, oncologist Mikkael Sekeres, puts the problem faced by cancer patients starkly. “As the price of chemotherapy now routinely reaches $100,000 for a full treatment course, my patients are forced more and more into making the equivalent of Sophie’s Choice when it comes to treating their cancer: Spend down their savings for an improvement in survival that might amount to a few weeks, secretly hoping that they will be one of the lucky few at the ‘tail’ of the survival curve — the handful of people who live years more; or decline the therapy and in so doing ensure that their families will be provided for after they have died.”
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 18:48:52 +0000
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