On a train, Mary Whitby (Merseyside Pensioners Association) interviews a young woman from Californina about her experience with the American health care system.
Transcript
Mary
Hi, Hayley.
Haley
Hello.
Mary
Where are you from?
Haley
I’m from California. Laguna Beach.
Mary
Brilliant. And you’re visiting England?
Haley
I am, yeah. Just for a couple days.
Mary
We started chatting about healthcare, didn’t we, and you were telling us what it was like where you live.
Haley
Horrible. Absolutely horrible at every single level. The highest level especially.
Mary
Would you recommend any country to copy the American system?
Haley
Stay far, far, far away. We always talk about every other country and how we wish that we were doing something like you guys did. So, don’t go away from that.
Mary
And as an example. You do have insurance, don’t you?
Haley
I do. I pay. I have a platinum level insurance, which is – there’s different levels. You can get bronze, you can get gold, you can get platinum. Platinum is one of the highest. It’s supposed to cover almost everything. In October this past year, I had to get my appendix out. I didn’t know it was an emergency surgery. I got to the hospital before it burst. So, it could have been far worse. I ended up still being out of pocket around $10,000. After everything, after insurance, which doesn’t make any sense. It was about $5,000 when I walked out of the doors, and then I got bills for a couple months, that ended up being about $10,000 for things that insurance didn’t cover. It’s insane. I was talking to a lot of nurses in the hospital who said that a lot of times it’s like that. My official bill is $70,000.
The insurance providers will have deals with the hospitals and somehow will settle it down to what insurance ended up paying out, which was less than the total, so I had to plug it to the amount of $15,000, which doesn’t make any sense. They have deals, like handshake deals, that they do to basically bring stuff down. They still need paying on top of that, monthly. So, not good. That’s just an example. I have another example of a person from my office who is on the same exact insurance. She went to the hospital a couple of weeks ago because she thought she was getting her appendix out, and it ended up being something else. But all that happened was that she was put on an IV. They didn’t keep her overnight, but only for about 3 hours. She got a $5000 bill.
Mary
Oh, my goodness!
Haley
Which is insane. Also, if you can’t pay it, there’s nothing that they offer. Sometimes payment plans. A lot of bills. You must pay now, or it goes straight to a collector, and then the collector will ruin your credit. It’s just a bad cycle.
Mary
So, we read that 40 million people in America have no cover. And something like 60% of bankruptcies in America are result from people being unable to pay their medical bills.
Haley
Definitely. I think one of the most interesting things that’s come from this is the amount of “Go Fund Me’s” that come up when people go through things like this.
Everyone knows they’re not going to be able to cover their bills. Have a baby? People think it’s too expensive, which is crazy.
Mary
We heard it was around $25,000 to have a baby. Is that right?
Haley
Yeah. And that’s like the low end of it.
Mary
And $50,000 if you have twins.
Haley
Exactly.
Mary
Absolutely shocking. Well, thank you, Hayley. Thank you very much and enjoy your trip in England. Thank you. All the best.