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POPSUntil Medical Bills Do Us Part A complicating factor was that this was a second marriage. M.’s first husband had died, leaving an inheritance that he had intended for their children. She and her second husband had a prenuptial agreement, but that would not protect her assets from his medical expenses. The hospital told M. not to waste time in dissolving the marriage. For five years after any divorce, her assets could be seized — precisely because the government knows that people sometimes divorce husbands or wives to escape their medical bills. “How could I divorce him? I loved him,” she told me.
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POPSU.S. Fails To Make Top 10 Quality of Life Index Sure, it's easy to claim a higher quality of life when you live in a place like France, where you get 30 days of paid vacation every year. Never mind that their productivity numbers nearly equal ours. Where's the index for rugged individualism and personal responsibility? How good do ya think them Frenchies would do on that, huh? They just don't have the stuff to accept a shorter life expectancy and crappy health care. (The lifespan for African-Americans in the former French city of New Orleans is about the same as that of people living in North Korea.) But, hey, they're not who we mean when we talk about Americans, anyway. I don't want your damn pinko health care. And keep your hands off my gun. Oh, and, U.S. outta the U.N., dammit!
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POPS Is Britain's Health-Care System Really That Bad? How does NHS health care compare with U.S. health care? Like most developed countries, Britain ranks above the U.S. in most health measurements. Its citizens have a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality, and the country has more acute-care hospital beds per capita and fewer deaths related to surgical or medical mishaps. Britain achieves these results while spending proportionally less on health care than the U.S. — about $2,500 per person in Britain, compared with $6,000 in the U.S. For these reasons, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked Britain 18th in a global league table of health-care systems (the U.S. was ranked 37th). However, there are measures by which the U.S. outperforms Britain: for instance, the U.S. has lower cancer mortality rates.
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POPSHealth Insurance Bankrupts Americans
A Harvard study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses. Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem. Consider the plight of David: David had to stop working as a truck driver after he was diagnosed with kidney cancer and has since been struggling to pay for COBRA during the two-year Medicare waiting period. His wife, Gloria, is his full-time caregiver and cannot work outside the home, and the couple has had to use much of their savings and borrow from friends and family to pay for their COBRA premiums. David cashed in his 401K at a 24 percent loss so that they will be able to continue to pay the COBRA premium until he is eligible for Medicare. Gloria tried to apply for Medicaid, but she learned that their income is too high. "There is not any help for people like us. We are not considered poor enough, but we don't have the money to pay it on our own," Gloria sa
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POPSYoung Man Dies for Lack of Public Option I want to tell you about my only sibling, my brother Eric De La Cruz.1 Diagnosed with Severe Dilated Cardiomyopathy five years ago and in need of a heart transplant, my brother Eric passed away far too early this July 4th. All because the health care insurance system in the United States is broken. You see, unlike most of us (but like millions of others), Eric couldn't get private insurance. His employer didn't offer it as a benefit. And his heart condition, while treatable, was a pre-existing condition that no private insurers would cover. Sadly, there was no affordable, public option to protect Eric. So he remained excluded from the basic right to life-saving treatment that all people deserve. Although a heart transplant would save him, without coverage, Eric's condition needlessly and slowly deteriorated. Continued at source....+ details of 'support health insurance reform' rallies around the US.
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