{"id":3239,"date":"2019-01-09T20:03:11","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T01:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/?p=3239"},"modified":"2019-01-09T20:03:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T01:03:11","slug":"3-5-trillion-a-year-americas-health-care-system-has-become-one-of-the-worlds-largest-money-making-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/3-5-trillion-a-year-americas-health-care-system-has-become-one-of-the-worlds-largest-money-making-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"$3.5 Trillion A Year: America\u2019s Health Care System Has Become One Of The World\u2019s Largest Money Making Scams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-wordpress wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-prison-planet-com\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"Ae0HJrRJkR\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonplanet.com\/3-5-trillion-a-year-americas-health-care-system-has-become-one-of-the-worlds-largest-money-making-scams.html\">$3.5 Trillion A Year: America\u2019s Health Care System Has Become One Of The World\u2019s Largest Money Making Scams<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prisonplanet.com\/3-5-trillion-a-year-americas-health-care-system-has-become-one-of-the-worlds-largest-money-making-scams.html\/embed#?secret=Ae0HJrRJkR\" data-secret=\"Ae0HJrRJkR\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" title=\"&#8220;$3.5 Trillion A Year: America\u2019s Health Care System Has Become One Of The World\u2019s Largest Money Making Scams&#8221; &#8212; Prison Planet.com\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>When you go to the hospital, it is often during a great time of need.&nbsp; If you are gravely ill or if an accident has happened and you think you might die, you aren\u2019t thinking about how much your medical care is going to cost.&nbsp; At that moment you just want help, and that is a perfect opportunity for predators to take advantage of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just consider the example of 24-year-old Nina Dang.&nbsp; She broke her arm while riding her bicycle in San Francisco, and so she went to the emergency room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The hospital that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated so much money to definitely fixed her arm, but later they broke her bank account when they hit her&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2019\/1\/7\/18137967\/er-bills-zuckerberg-san-francisco-general-hospital\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">with a $24,000 bill<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>A bystander saw her fall and called an ambulance. She was semi-lucid for that ride, awake but unable to answer basic questions about where she lived. Paramedics took her to the emergency room at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where doctors X-rayed her arm and took a CT scan of her brain and spine. She left with her arm in a splint, on pain medication, and with a recommendation to follow up with an orthopedist.<\/p><p>A few months later,&nbsp;<strong>Dang got a bill for $24,074.50<\/strong>. Premera Blue Cross, her health insurer,&nbsp;<strong>would only cover $3,830.79 of that<\/strong>&nbsp;\u2014 an amount that it thought was fair for the services provided. That left Dang&nbsp;<strong>with $20,243.71 to pay<\/strong>, which the hospital threatened to send to collections in mid-December.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Most Americans assume that if they have \u201cgood health insurance\u201d that they are covered if something major happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as Dang found out, you can still be hit with crippling hospital bills even if you have insurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, medical debt is the number one reason why Americans declare bankruptcy.&nbsp; Because of the way our system is set up, most families are just one major illness away from financial ruin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And this kind of thing is not just happening in California.&nbsp; The median charge for a visit to the emergency room nationally is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxbusiness.com\/features\/outrageous-e-r-hospital-charges-what-to-do\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">well over a thousand dollars<\/a>, and you can be billed&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxbusiness.com\/features\/outrageous-e-r-hospital-charges-what-to-do\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">up to 30 dollars<\/a>&nbsp;for a single pill of aspirin during a hospital stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our health care system is deeply broken, and it has been designed to squeeze as much money out of all of us as it possibly can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unfortunately, we are stuck with this system for now.&nbsp; The health care industry is certainly not going to reform itself, and the gridlock in Washington is going to make a political solution impossible for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you go to the hospital, it is often during a great time of need.&nbsp; If you are gravely ill or if an accident has happened and you think you might die, you aren\u2019t thinking about how much your medical care is going to cost.&nbsp; At that moment you just want help, and that is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/3-5-trillion-a-year-americas-health-care-system-has-become-one-of-the-worlds-largest-money-making-scams\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">$3.5 Trillion A Year: America\u2019s Health Care System Has Become One Of The World\u2019s Largest Money Making Scams<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3240,"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239\/revisions\/3240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esterlund.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}