See my post "Modern Medicine and Let Them Eat Cake Politicians" about the cost for the medical personnel for my open-heart surgery. It was $20,280.50 of which I had an out-ot-pocket expense of $50.50.
This week I received the statement for the hospital stay and some of the rehabilitation. It was $131,088.04. Insurance paid all but $600 of it.
Without this insurance, somebody earning $9/hour would have to work over 14,565 hours or 1,821 days or 364 weeks or seven years. On the other hand, Marissa Mayers earned $900,000 per week as she sold off Yahoo! She could have paid the costs of five open-heart surgeries each week and still have had $150,000/week left over.
I’ll let you judge how a medical bill like this would affect your own finances. My guess is that without insurance, many of you would have to take out an extended mortgage on your house or sell it out-right.
Heart disease only affects one family. Consider what would happen if someone who had a communicable fatal disease didn’t get treated because the family could not afford the necessary care. It has happened down through the centuries and still happens around the world.
