Medical bills add insult to injury for Colorado shooting survivors

[Canuckistanian]

Robert Blache sits next to his daughter as Christina “Crispy” Blache speaks during an interview from her hospital bed at Swedish Medical Center, Monday, July 23, 2012 in Englewood, Colo. Ms. Blache was one of the people shot in the attack early Friday at an Aurora, Colo., theater during a showing of the Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises.
(Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

The senseless shootings of people in a movie theatre, a place of worship and a college campus are barbaric.

But in a country without universal health insurance, the fate that awaits the survivors is, in many ways, just as barbarous. In addition to injury, they will face the insult of medical bills.
Take the case of Caleb Medley, one of 58 people injured during the July 20 mass shooting in a movie theatre in Aurora, Col. Twelve others were killed by the gunman.

~snip

Insurance for all – rather than the pay-as-you-go or charitable models – is seen as the most sensible approach because so many health care problems are unpredictable and costly. Pooling resources allows societies to spread risk and individuals to avoid financial catastrophe on top of physical woes.

Yet the U.S. remains a stubborn holdout. Instead of universal health care, it has some 50 million uninsured citizens and as many again who are underinsured – meaning there are caps on how much of their care will be covered.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/medical-bills-add-insult-to-injury-for-colorado-shooting-survivors/article4465642/

[OnyxCollie]

1. Universal health care was a non-starter.

There's no profit in that.

[kenny blankenship]

2. Those people should have taken out Another Senseless Tragedy Policy

Aka: Mass-Murdering Psycho Terrorist Gun-Nut Coverage. All responsible individuals carry this coverage on themselves and their families.

Instead they stagger into the ER and expect the rest of us to take care of them!
Some scofflaws have no insurance whatsoever, if you can believe it. They claim they can't afford that and food too. Others expect that their ordinary health insurance policy should pay out for extraordinary Senseless Tragedy claims. And people wonder why our system is broken. I don't know which group has more contempt for American capitalism and the constant good faith efforts of our uniquely American insurance industry - those that won't work hard enough to afford basic premiums for private insurance, or those who expect the insurance they can afford to cover more than a case of the flu or a broken arm.

If there's anything more predictable in American life than your insurance premiums going up, it's that Another Senseless Tragedy that no one saw coming is just around the corner. Going without Senseless Tragedy coverage is like going to the cinema without taking your hollow points!