
‘Maybe you’re just someone with blood in their urine’ - daegloe
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/medical-mysteries/maybe-youre-just-someone-with-blood-in-their-urine/2019/07/26/4c53c7c0-8b93-11e9-8f69-a2795fca3343_story.html
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na85
$21000 in out of pocket expenses for a cancer not attributable to lifestyle
choices?

US healthcare is positively barbaric.

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sempron64
I hate to say it because I'm generally an advocate of nationalized health care
and think it's a good idea, but this is exactly the kind of case where in a
national system she would have gotten no help. The US system allows for a lot
of coverage for specialists for middle class patients that would be completely
inaccessible in a single payer system. For those I know in developed countries
with single payer systems what they've done for complex and critical medical
cases like this is fly to the U.S. and pay what they can out-of-pocket.

21000 is a lot of money, but I would say the specialist care in this case was
worth it. And her insurance undoubtedly paid out at least 4x that amount. It's
sad that far from all people can afford an amount like that, but I would say
this is more of an example of the system working rather than not working,
since it seems like the alternative is no one (except maybe celebrities and
elite) getting such care at all.

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guitarbill
> And her insurance undoubtedly paid out at least 4x that amount

A bold assumption.

The whole argument is a bit of a straw-man, too. Single-payer isn't the only
way to do universal healthcare, which could also drive other costs not
associated with the specialist down.

Anyway, I'm not sure the article supports any such kind of speculation. And
morally, I'm not sure which arguments you can make based on one person, nor do
I want to.

