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Comment by e_proxus | Hacker News Reader

I think there are a lot of data points missing in this anecdote.

What do you pay for health insurance? How many people in the lower levels of society could afford to pay what you pay for healthcare? Do you have an employer that provides you with healthcare benefits?

I agree that healthcare in many countries could be greatly improved, but at least in many of those systems you could just walk into an hospital to start the process.

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My employer offers a few options for health insurance. At the time I was a young and healthy 29 year old (or so I thought) so I was enrolled in the low cost high deductible option. It costs less than $200/month between both the employer and employee portion of the contribution for that plan today -- at the time (in 2009), it was less than $150/month, but our costs went up significantly with the advent of Obamacare. Total medical bill came to about $350k, down to $250k with insurance co's negotiate rates, of which I was responsible for approximately $5k. I was sitting on a pile of cashed earmarked for a mortgage downpayment at the time ... so I didn't have to go into debt over it, but even if I had, for most people $5k isn't a bankruptcy event type debt.

I'm from Europe and I know of a lot of people who wouldn't be able to front a $5K bill. With the US system I would still think there are many who would fall below that line as well. Free healthcare as exists in some european countries actually helps those people.

For a significant number of Americans, a $5k bill might as well be a $200k bill. A lot of people are living month-to-month on far less, and I wouldn't be surprised if most people couldn't actually afford that, or couldn't even manage to acquire $5k in debt, let alone pay it off.

The reality is that you're in a privileged position, and it may not seem like it to you but there are a huge number of people out there for whom your situation would be effectively a bankruptcy trigger. And that's even assuming that their company lets them off work long enough to get treatment and recovery, which, in at-will states, doesn't seem like a thing that's likely to happen for a lot of the working-class.

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