Medicaid is the correct answer. Surprised more people aren’t mentioning it. It’s specifically in place to cover people with low incomes who often don’t have insurance through an employer.

Medicaid will often cover the cost of child birth for low-income people 100%.

That being said, if you have slightly higher income than allowed to enroll in Medicaid, your only option may be a long-term payment plan and lots of debt that you may carry for the rest of your life. It’s an awful system that really only benefits the strong.

Canada, don’t go down that road.

Natural selection would have taken place if you were American

This was pre-Obamacare, and the birth alone - with c section - was $20k.

I’m not American so maybe I’m getting something wrong… But aren’t you making a faulty assumption about people having a plan at all? Isn’t the amount of completely uninsured in the us in the double digits or something?

Purely anecdotal, since I can only draw from my own personal pool, but I don’t have a single friend or colleague who feels even remotely secure in their life. We’re all one emergency away from bankruptcy.

The effects of having low grade stressor like that, combined with non-federal sick leave nor vacation and predatory corporate labor laws are what you witness in the US every day. Precipitously declining mental health for everyone, reduced social and coping skills. Commonplace violence and rage and incredible rates of anxiety and depression and resultant medication.

I whole heartedly agree… We should ban all gum… Big chew included 😋/s

I wonder about the effects of having a low grade constant stressor like that.

Heart disease like irregular heartbeat and stroke. Gastrointestinal problems such as ulcers and IBS. Increased susceptibility to illness. Ability to learn/memorize/perceive are reduced. Not to mention the effects of maladaptive coping mechanisms such as drinking, smoking, drugs etc.

Source.

Many disorders originate from stress, especially if the stress is severe and prolonged. The medical community needs to have a greater appreciation for the significant role that stress may play in various diseases and then treat the patient accordingly using both pharmacological (medications and/or nutraceuticals) and non-pharmacological (change in lifestyle, daily exercise, healthy nutrition, and stress reduction programs) therapeutic interventions.

Yep. I make ok money and have insurance. Things being what they are, rent has skyrocketed over the past couple years. Food seems to be coming down in price but for a while there it was pretty alarming. I haven’t had a significant raise in about 3 years to keep up with cost of living increases. Choices must be made and if life and limb aren’t in immediate danger, I choose to not have a bill of several thousand dollars for something like a few stitches and/or fight with my insurance company over coverage.

And yet so many Canadians seem to want to dive head first in to a fully private healthcare system as if anyone could take that financial hit.

That’s the ridiculous thing. Americans would rather pay a few dollars less in taxes than let people have free healthcare. And it ends up costing them far more than they would have paid in taxes.

I’m Canadian and I gladly pay more taxes than you so that I and my friends get free healthcare when we need it.

Here’s the thing. I worked in America for the better part of a decade and I had to submit two tax forms, one to each country. You end up paying the greater of the two and using it to offset the other.

What I know is this: every year, every year, I paid an extra 1% to America. No matter how my (binational) tax guys worked it, my obligation to America was always higher.

The year after I came home I still had to submit taxes (January layoff scares so I moved back) and it was still higher for America despite sitting in a different country (it’s a factor) and using different services. It didn’t matter.

In Canada I pay 1% lower income tax and enjoy healthcare access. While they’ve done away with the regional premiums, I was even okay paying that; as my yearly outlay, proudly at the top bracket, was still less than copays while in America. I would gladly pay the same premium to ensure equal access to dental and optical care for me and especially people who can’t drop (now) c$1000 on some specs or way more on a dental crown.

It’s not that I’m a good guy, but I pay taxes for schools because I don’t want to live around dumb people. I do and will pay taxes so we can take people who aren’t healthy and skilled and contributing income tax and make them so they are. Poverty should be no excuse for not being employable.

1990 was around the time of Hillary-care and Romney-care, so the politicians knew that they were going to have to fix it sooner or later by that point.

Because we made too much (over minimum wage, dual income household). I was making $13k as a sales manager, my wife was making $8k as an assistant manager, and minimum wage was $3.35/hr or just under $7k/year back then. After taxes, we made about $1200/mo, and our rent was $650 for a single bedroom apartment. No car, we took the bus, barely had enough for food and utilities.

But we were considered way too over the “poverty line,” which was I think less than $6k/year then. We had been using birth control but when they say some form of birth control is 99% effective, the DO mean 1% failed. I have no regrets our son was born, because it turned out we couldn’t have kids later when we tried. And then later my wife died when he was 22, so if we had kids later, I would have been a widow with younger kids.

I feel awful he grew up poor with us until he was about 10, though.

Yes it does

Yeah, just the American version

It affects where you can rent housing, what houses you can buy, whether you can get a car, etc

The US version is a system that calculates the risk of loaning money vs being paid back. In order to be approved for a loan the credit score is used to evaluate whether or not it is likely to be paid back within the terms of the loan. As a result those with bad credit have trouble getting favorable terms for cars, housing and basically anything that can’t be purchased outright. Does it negatively affect people for things outside of their control and perpetuate cycles of poverty? Absolutely, but it is based in actual fiscal risk to calculate sustainable loan practices.

China on the other hand took the US term of “credit” and abused the everloving shit out of it to punish people that the government dislikes. Did your cousin post a Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh meme? Well too bad that you were shopping for a house, because your “credit” is no longer high enough to not be homeless. You should have thought of that before you were related to someone who disagreed with the government!

Not being able to demonstrate to a bank that you are financially reliable enough to pay back a loan is unfortunate, but a rational reason for an unfavorable interest rate or denial of a loan. Making people ineligible for even renting an apartment that is within their financial means because the dictator in charge dislikes you is a completely different thing altogether.

It’s similar but only take into account financial and professional information. As I understand it, the Chinese version also covers your daily activities.

At this point, pretty much

As the name hints, a credit score is used to rate the risk of making you a loan. It’s not some essential personal ID. It only comes into play if you are applying for credit and is a set of shared records that financial institutions and private companies use to decide if loaning you money is a good risk or not.

Someone else said it’s used to decide if you can get a car and that’s not accurate. If you need to borrow money to buy a car, your credit history will be checked. It’s the loan, not the car.

Is it crazy that lenders would want to know if you’ve walked away from your bills in the past? Making it sound like dystopian China is a gross exaggeration.

Landlords want to know if you will be able to pay rent and they may ask to know what you earn, what’s in your bank account, and if you have insane debt. It’s not credit per se but they are entering into a financial agreement with you which you could default on, so it’s got many of the same characteristics. Don’t want to give all this information? Don’t. It’s not required by law. Not everyone demands it. Some may choose not to rent to you without it.

Not really. It just keeps track of how often you miss your credit card payments so creditors will know how high of a risk you are to lend money to. If affects if you can get loans and what interest rates you can get on loans. But if you just pay your loans/credit card bills, you’ll be fine.

yes, but in the classically American fashion we only care about money so much only the money stuff even goes into calculating it

It’s illegal in the Emergency Room. Anywhere else they can. Poor people end up relying on Emergency care, ignoring bills, and the hospitals write it off as “charity care,” which helps them justify their non-profit status, when they’re non-profits

Depends on the severity of the issue.

For a life threatening emergency, no

For like pain relief, yes

The hospital must stabilize you and save your life from immediate danger. They don’t have to make you better or solve the problem.

I understand the point you are trying to make, but I’m not sure what you are reading into? The question was “how do poor people in the states…” I am a poor person in the states, if I was to answer I would probably say they, maybe ‘we’ if I was feeling like sharing. And it’s true, many medical bills throughout my childhood that we couldn’t afford just went unpaid, with debt on my parents credit.

This is unfortunately true, though. A lot of people just don’t pay them, especially homeless people. How are they gonna get billed? They have no address and many don’t even have a phone. I’m not making a moral judgement, but it does happen very often.

Source: husband is an ER doc at a city hospital that serves most of the city’s homeless and below-poverty-line population where we live.

Wow u just made up all that in ur head…just …wow.

Downvotes without any replies? Yeah, that checks out.

Everyone over 65 is eligible for Medicare, regardless of income, but others can qualify under some circumstances.

In 2022, according to the 2023 Medicare Trustees Report, Medicare provided health insurance for 65.0 million individuals—more than 57 million people aged 65 and older and about 8 million younger people.

You have to qualify for Medicaid, and I think different states have different requirments.

Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with low income in the United States, providing free health insurance to 85 million low-income and disabled people as of 2022; in 2019, the program paid for half of all U.S. births.

There is also CHIP, and I think that is part of Medicaid.

People are thinking you mean the poor people, not the hospitals.

It’s very expensive to be poor.

Ohio awaits program completion and results to “improve” on it.

Might want to take a look at this then.

And this.

And this too.

EDITED TO ADD: While court cases involving “debtors prison” exist, NONE of them have “made debtors prison a thing of the past” in the US because imprisonment for private debt is very much alive and well today in 2023. Given that a person imprisoned over debt is unlikely to sue unless an organization such as ACLU takes on the case, and even more unlikely to win in courts that are dominated by commercial interests and partisan judges, it’s only going to get worse, not better. Going by the above linked articles that is exactly how it’s working out right now. Trying to prove that this horrific problem of criminalizing poverty does not exist today by pointing to a single 1983 lawsuit and going, “See! I told you!” is just completely privileged assholery.

If they’ve got a masters and 20 years of experience they’re either a genius or almost 50 years old. Children are already a huge commitment, being older makes it that much harder

Health insurance still leaves you with a large bill. Expect like $10k for the hospital part for a lot of insurances. Don’t forget the obgyn visits throughout the pregnancy (probably only $25-$75 per visit, depending on if you need a specialist). Labs are extra. In fact, the one that really tells a lot of info (lots of recessive gene issues can be found with it) is like a $750 lab that insurance doesn’t usually pay for (“it’s too new, and not required”).

Yea my bad on my comment, I was just talking about general cost of how to afford not insurance of birth costs. Also I guess it’s really 15 yrs since masters, I included prior jobs and internships.

Sure, maybe the hospital bills but raising 3 kids and going on vacations every year? You’re talking multi million dollar salary to be able to afford all of that on one income in SoCal of all places

I’m convinced many have family money

When he leaves California, he will leave his salary too (and possibly his industry too)

Until it goes wrong.