US Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Health Care Act

[Bolty]

My issue is if they didn't have to have that other 16K+ if they were dealing with my insurance, why did they bill it at all? I mean, they accepted just over 10% of the total bill as paid in full.

Can someone educate me on that? I've never gotten a straight answer on it. To me, *that* is a big part of the problem. Where is this seeming 9x multiplier coming from? I've seen similar write-offs on every major bill (Four births, my heart issues in 2004, wife's knee surgery, etc) I've seen in the last 18 years, since the birth of my oldest.

My understanding is that they charge the extra $16,000 as an "insurance" of their own. The logic goes something like:

1) Most people who don't have medical insurance (e.g. poor and/or unemployed) can't afford to pay the ~$2,000 bill for the medical work, so the hospital just winds up eating that loss. Sure, they can bill the person, but if they can't pay it, what's the point...
2) Maybe 1 person out of 10 can actually pay that bill, and just chose not to have insurance for whatever reason.
3) Charge that one person 9x the price in order to make up for the 9 out of 10 people that they don't see a dime from.

The end result of course is that you're enslaved to medical insurance just to be able to afford even basic care. Personally, I'd rather have "catastrophic" medical insurance to cover sudden unexpected huge payments, and then just pay sane rates for basic preventative care. Sort of like having car insurance with a high deductible. That option doesn't exist currently in the United States, because you need those insurance companies to tell the doctors and hospitals that their procedures don't cost what they try to bill for.

It's funny when you look at the history of medical insurance in the United States. It's a fairly recent development having employers provide this, and over the years employers have enjoyed having the extra leverage over their employees that group medical insurance provides. You have to work, because that insurance just costs too damn much on a single policy.

I'll be waiting to see what effect "Obamacare" has on this. If it becomes more viable to purchase medical insurance as an individual due to the exchanges that will be set up, will employer health care plans start to disappear? Individuals would have more freedom and wouldn't be tied to whatever plan their employer decides to choose, which you're currently stuck with.

Time will tell.