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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (1929)	8/31/2007 5:07:50 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

What do you think, that the hospitals say "OK you don't make much money, you don't have to pay"? The question was whether poor people paying full freight are subsidizing insured people. Sure, if I refused to pay my hospital bill, that's what they would do. They would make the effort to get that money from me because they could, eventually. If I were poor, then their I effort would be throwing good money after bad because poor people, by definition, don't have that kind of money. And if poor people aren't actually paying those bills, then they aren't subsidizing anyone. They can hound a poor person until the cows come home but that doesn't subsidize anyone. Hounding is what you do to deadbeats, not poor people. The hounding process for poor people would be a net cost to the system, probably picked up by the insured in the form of escalating costs, a waste of effort. Poor people either have their emergency costs covered by Medicaid, by charity, or through a loss taken by the provider. In non-emergency situations, they just don't get the prodecure, so no money changes hands. The poor cannot possibly be a net contributer. They have no money so it makes no sense. You haven't demonstrated a basis for your claim that the poor subsidize the insured, assuming that that's a meaningful framework, which it isn't. If you have some info that supports your suggestion that poor people magically come up with $940 on a sufficient basis, please share. The only way giving a sonogram to a poor person would produce a subsidy for an insured person would be if a non-poor relative or friend picked up the tab. Bet that doesn't happen too often.

To: Road Walker who wrote (1929)	8/31/2007 7:38:35 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

They can only garnish wages after a successful judgment against you. In other words they have to sue you first. In practice they are likely to settle for less than that $940, at least if you really are poor. If you reasonably wealthy (at least solidly middle class if not better) and you just decided not to get insurance, than maybe they push you for the $940 sometimes, but often people without insurance or even people with insurance that doesn't cover the procedure, get billed less than the full official rate.