Being Sick. The $400 Challenge.
Hawk has been ill the past several days. I've written a few times about the course of her illness; here I'm going to write about the cost. And just the out-of-pocket cost; I won't attempt to compute the costs of pain and suffering. I tallied those out-of-pocket costs a few days ago, including estimates for care she'll need before she gets better, and arrived at $400. That amount, $400, is why I decided to write this blog entry.
You may recall a thing I last wrote about a year ago, the $400 challenge. Briefly, 40% of the US cannot afford a $400 unplanned expense without borrowing on credit cards to pay for it. I wrote a year ago that $400 could be as simple as "[A] minor heath emergency to replacing a broken appliance or repairing a leaky pipe." It turns out that emergency was too strong a term. Just getting sick and paying for ordinary medical care can burn through $400 easily.
Two important notes about this $400 cost: First, this is after insurance. Fairly good insurance, even. It's $400 in co-pays for office visits and prescription medicines. The full negotiated costs (what the insurance company has bargained the clinics and pharmacies down to) are over $1,000. Without that negotiation, BTW, the bills could have run to $3,000.
Second, this is a fairly garden-variety illness. It's a small virus picked up from somewhere in public. It's not like falling on ice and twisting your knee and needing weeks of physical therapy, nor like get hit hard in a sport and breaking a bone. There's no place for a tongue-clicking critic to admonish, "Personal responsibility!! You should be more careful in the future, and don't do those athletic activities if you can't afford the risks." The only risk Hawk took here was exposure to the background radiation of life. Through no fault of her own she picked up a virus from some sick rando in public... who may not even have known they were contagious, either.
Hawk was a little cross with me when I double-checked with her the costs that added up to $400. "It doesn't matter. We can afford it," she objected.
Yes, we can afford it. But that's totally not the point. The point is, what happened here is common, and 40% of the US can't afford it.
You may recall a thing I last wrote about a year ago, the $400 challenge. Briefly, 40% of the US cannot afford a $400 unplanned expense without borrowing on credit cards to pay for it. I wrote a year ago that $400 could be as simple as "[A] minor heath emergency to replacing a broken appliance or repairing a leaky pipe." It turns out that emergency was too strong a term. Just getting sick and paying for ordinary medical care can burn through $400 easily.
Two important notes about this $400 cost: First, this is after insurance. Fairly good insurance, even. It's $400 in co-pays for office visits and prescription medicines. The full negotiated costs (what the insurance company has bargained the clinics and pharmacies down to) are over $1,000. Without that negotiation, BTW, the bills could have run to $3,000.
Second, this is a fairly garden-variety illness. It's a small virus picked up from somewhere in public. It's not like falling on ice and twisting your knee and needing weeks of physical therapy, nor like get hit hard in a sport and breaking a bone. There's no place for a tongue-clicking critic to admonish, "Personal responsibility!! You should be more careful in the future, and don't do those athletic activities if you can't afford the risks." The only risk Hawk took here was exposure to the background radiation of life. Through no fault of her own she picked up a virus from some sick rando in public... who may not even have known they were contagious, either.
Hawk was a little cross with me when I double-checked with her the costs that added up to $400. "It doesn't matter. We can afford it," she objected.
Yes, we can afford it. But that's totally not the point. The point is, what happened here is common, and 40% of the US can't afford it.