Out-of-Network Medical Insurance Hell

What Happens When You Don’t Pay a Hospital Bill? This article in the Atlantic gives detailed accounts. Every day you wake up not needing a hospital, you need to give gratitude. Where are all of the free-marketers when this rampant out-of-network bullshit is destroying people's lives. The government is not causing this, but it could offer solutions. Desperate and unconscious people WITH health insurance should not be unwittingly signing up for lives of harassment and economic destitution when they enter hospitals seeking medical care.

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The cost of asthma inhalers in the United States compared to other countries

I'm traveling abroad, a trip centered on teaching law school for a week in Istanbul. On the way out of the U.S., I had an asthma attack while walking through the perfume area of a Duty Free store in Atlanta. I had an inhaler, but it was getting low (my inhaler is the red Albuterol inhaler on the left. It costs about $70 or $80 WITH the insurance price. My first stop overseas was in Beirut, Lebanon, where I entered a pharmacy without a prescription. They didn't have Albuterol but the pharmacist sold me the Lebanese equivalent called Salres. Total price was $5. When I arrived at Istanbul Turkey, I visited a pharmacy and paid less than $2 for their equivalent, "Butalin," the one in the middle Again, no prescription needed, and the pharmacist assured me that this was an equivalent prescription. I am now in Madrid. Yesterday, I visited a pharmacy here, no prescription, and they sold me the "equivalent," the inhaler on the right. Price was 2.5 Euros (about $2.85). I spoke with the pharmacist in Spanish. I told her that in the United States, my inhaler costs about $80 with the insurance rate, $300 without. Her immediate reaction was shock at the price. The she became angry, and asked "What do children do when their families cannot afford the medicine?" I told her that I don't know, and that it is a terrible situation and that there is no excuse for it.

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Shall We Meet for Lunch or Hold a Walking Business Meeting in the Park?

“Let’s have lunch, OK?” That used to be my suggestion when I wanted to talk with someone, whether it be catching up with a friend or the need to discuss business. That was before the biometrics of Fitbit, among other things, nudged me to reach for a different way to conduct a small business meeting. Now, when I need to talk business, I often ask whether, instead of lunch, my acquaintance would like to talk while we walk in a park. I started doing this a couple years ago, and to my surprise the great majority of people would rather walk than sit in a restaurant or coffee shop.

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What Ails the United States Beyond Health Insurance Reform

According to this article from the conservative leaning National Review, the current debate needs to be much broader than health insurance. Who could possibly disagree with that? The article includes a stunning graph tracking middle-age mortality, and a even more stunning video-mapping of the increasing obesity across the US. Here's a haunting quote by the author, David French:

As Congress debated Obamacare repeal, I had lunch with a local critical-care doctor who seemed oddly indifferent to the outcome. His is a world dominated by addiction. “If it weren’t for addicts,” he says, “I wouldn’t have a job.” The intensive-care unit is overrun with people addicted to drugs, to alcohol, to food, and to tobacco. Insurance matters to the economics of the hospital, but it doesn’t matter so much to the quality of its patients’ immediate care or to their ultimate health outcome. They’re killing themselves, and the best health care and the most luxurious “Cadillac” health plans won’t stop their slide into oblivion.

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