Amber's finances - assumptions galore

[Clown Baby]

People are legit sperging in here about healthcare lol

I know someone who went to the emergency room while unemployed and uninsured. He ended up needing to stay in the hospital for a week, and was discharged with a 40k bill. When he got out he immediately applied for charity care-a long process that involves lots of paperwork and interviews with a case worker. After sufficiently proving his poverty, the entire hospital bill was expunged, and the only thing he had to pay for was the ambulance ride.

This is why people are now penalized on their tax returns for not having insurance, because anyone with no money/no insurance has always been able to get their hospital bills expunged through charity care. "The hospital will just leave you to die if ur poor." No, they won't. Most people are just too lazy and stupid to research their options, which is what the hospitals are counting on.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

I watched a documentary about him - it's on YouTube. To do his surgery, they had to reinforce the operating room, recovery room, the room he'd be in post-op & I think, some of the halls. They also had to procure a lot of bariatric & other special equipment. The rationale was a slimmer man would in the long term, be less of a burden on the NHS. I wasn't aware he'd moved, regained the weight & wants another surgery.

I know what my answer would be.

Bullets and high dose of morphine are only a few bucks.

This happens in the USA too, a country where working people go bankrupt and die from lack of healthcare coverage. But the govt will pay to care for Baroness and Baron Harkonen and even subsidize the food and money to keep them immobile human slugs. See Tammy Slanton and Life by Jen, 600 lbs of useless, vile humans the govt provides shelter, food, health care and $700 a month. Like the world’s weirdest, gross and most obscene pets.

I’ll never understand how immobile fatties maintain their enormous weight. Once they can’t get up they are dependent on others to get them food.

Why the U.K. and USA allows health aides to keep bringing bags of fastfood or opening the door for delivery people like Paul is a mystery to me. (oh well I’m the USA they will allow fatties to “hire” family members to be caretakers. So in those cases they have a vested interest in keeping fatty fat. The gibs might dry up if they lose weight, fatty might even be expected to get a real job and we can’t have that.

Spoiler: Healthcare sperging

People complain that the US doesnt have as good a healthcare system, but if you compare the taxes that Europeans pay with what US citizens pay, it's crazy difference. Most of my paycheck stays in my pocket but some eurofags have to give half in taxes. I'd rather pick my charities and support my community than to trust the government... that's how you have freeloaders like that- a charity worth anything wouldn't help him, but government loves any excuse for more power and bloat

NZ citizens pay 1% of their income for healthcare, most countries citizens pay less than 6% of their income for healthcare. They pay taxes for other things to drive up the total tax rate. But Americans pay about 30% on their income and don’t get any healthcare. I’d consider it a steal to get healthcare for anything under 10% of my income because I already pay way more than that for private coverage.

Never forget Americans do pay taxes to provide free healthcare for poor people. The US govt subsidizes total care for more super obese people than the UK. (See Tammy Slanton and Life by Jen)

For every Paul in the U.K., there are 10 Tammy’s. 95% of the patients on My 600 lb life are on Medicaid. Dr. Now’s practice would shut down if Medicaid stopped covering the care of human slugs.

But here many working people are shit out of luck if they get really sick, the super fats are covered by Medicaid. At least in the U.K. people other than just fats, intellectually disabled and dead beats get full healthcare coverage and they dont even pay taxes!.

 

[King Daddy Telomerase]

People are legit sperging in here about healthcare lol

I know someone who went to the emergency room while unemployed and uninsured. He ended up needing to stay in the hospital for a week, and was discharged with a 40k bill. When he got out he immediately applied for charity care-a long process that involves lots of paperwork and interviews with a case worker. After sufficiently proving his poverty, the entire hospital bill was expunged, and the only thing he had to pay for was the ambulance ride.

Yes, but that's if you can prove poverty. There's many people going through hospital everyday that are legit poor and broke, and Medicaid will be provided for them in short order in the US. Amber won't be able to do that.

 

[Clown Baby]

Yes, but that's if you can prove poverty. There's many people going through hospital everyday that are legit poor and broke, and Medicaid will be provided for them in short order in the US. Amber won't be able to do that.

My main point was that hospitals will not leave you to die if you can't pay. Someone in Amber's position could get her bills talked down/negotiated by applying for charity care. She might not get them expunged because her income is too high, but she also won't be turned away from treatment based on her lack of insurance.

 

[DefCon Dumb]

I doubt she'll ever come clean about her medical bills or how she's paying them... if she does. That GoFeedMe that was started for her has received as of earlier this morning, not one red cent. The page hasn't been shared either & it's 10 days old. So... looks like that's a non-starter. Back when he had his heart issues & fresh on the heels of Norma's GoFundMe, her husband tried a GFM for expenses & that didn't raise a single dollar either.

One thing I'm waiting to see is how Amber reacts to the bills. She squalls loudly & bitterly enough about the cost of antibiotics when she feels she must take them so some real & hefty medical bills might generate an interesting response from her.

 

[TomatilloSalsa]

Amber just couldn’t stand paying $300-600 per month for health insurance. But another factor is that the insurance marketplace requires tax returns to enroll and I don’t think she has been paying any taxes, regardless of what she says. (Maybe she finally got scared into doing it last year or so but I have my doubts. There’s a reason Amber tries to have shit put under everyone’s else’s name - rent, car, credit cards, phones, etc...

You only have to give them tax returns/proof of income if you're getting subsidies for your coverage. If you're okay with paying the full cost of the premium yourself, you don't have to give them that, just attest that you are not eligible for insurance through your job or for Medicaid or Medicare.

AL wouldn't qualify for any subsidies anyway since she's a single person and her income is fairly high.

 

[SituationTypeThing]

My main point was that hospitals will not leave you to die if you can't pay. Someone in Amber's position could get her bills talked down/negotiated by applying for charity care. She might not get them expunged because her income is too high, but she also won't be turned away from treatment based on her lack of insurance.

Your main point was about an unemployed, uninsured guy who went to the emergency room. They have to treat you by law if you go to the emergency room, and if you're admitted from there.

We really need to get out of this emergency room paradigm, because that's not relevant to this situation. Amber isn't going to be treated by an emergency room. And an oncologist does not have to treat you if you can't pay, a cancer center does not have to treat you if you can't pay, a hospital doesn't have to admit you for a pre-scheduled procedure if you can't pay.

So, yes, if you have a heart attack and are rushed to the ER, have an emergency quadruple bypass and need to stay a week in the hospital for complications, and you have no money or no insurance, the hospital will take the loss or make a payment plan or if you're poor enough, you can have charity help. The followup with the cardiologist? The stress tests and things to keep you alive? Unless you're poor enough for chairty help, no pay, no service.

I'm going to restate my original statement about healthcare in america: you need to either be poor enough for medicaid and chairty, or wealthy enough to pay down a mountain of co-insurance and co-payments. Anything in the middle (like amber) is screwed. Earning too much for chairty or medicaid, not enough to meet the payments in an expensive catastrophe like Cancer. There's always a helping hand for the poor, but there isn't for the working poor. That's just how we roll here.

 

[TomatilloSalsa]

My main point was that hospitals will not leave you to die if you can't pay. Someone in Amber's position could get her bills talked down/negotiated by applying for charity care. She might not get them expunged because her income is too high, but she also won't be turned away from treatment based on her lack of insurance.

Multiple people ITT just explained very clearly why she absolutely can be turned away due to lack of insurance.

If she goes in with no insurance, they are going to ask for a cash deposit. They're going to send her bills for whatever she owes on top of that. If she doesn't pay her bills and they go to front end collections, the doctors will terminate their treatment of her and she will have 30 days (varies by state) to find another doctor before they discontinue treating her.

Understand that doctors' offices are not charities. Even the ones that are technically not-for-profit still have to make enough money to pay their expenses. Many of them are going through financial difficulties due to Covid-19 right now and have missed out on a lot of income. Many have taken on debt to keep their doors open. Many are even getting bought up by private equity investors who demand high profits. They're not just going to give AL a full cancer treatment for free (particularly when she's such a high risk patient who will probably require more resource utilization and there's the risk that if she dies, MethMama will sue them on a trumped up "malpractice" claim in hopes of getting one last whack at her daughter's financial pinata).

 

[Pinky&Perky]

What if Amber used a teaching hospital or university hospital - would it be cheaper or free - ?

 

[Clown Baby]

Your main point was about an unemployed, uninsured guy who went to the emergency room. They have to treat you by law if you go to the emergency room, and if you're admitted from there.

This entire thread is supposed to be speculation about Amber's specific finances, and I saw like 4 different people lamenting how poors can't get treatment in the US even when they're lidurally dyeeng. It's completely false. They can, and they can have the whole bill expunged. That was my entire point. I have no desire to argue about Amber's cancer treatment.

 

[TomatilloSalsa]

This entire thread is supposed to be speculation about Amber's specific finances, and I saw like 4 different people lamenting how poors can't get treatment in the US even when they're lidurally dyeeng. It's completely false. They can, and they can have the whole bill expunged. That was my entire point. I have no desire to argue about Amber's cancer treatment.

Again, that is only true for care you receive in an emergency room.

Acute ER care is not enough to treat serious illnesses like cancer. So yes, if you don't have insurance and can't pay yourself, you will be left to die of cancer.

My friend's boyfriend died of liver failure. He needed a liver transplant. He didn't get one because he didn't have insurance, couldn't pay for it, and they don't do organ transplants and aftercare in the emergency room. He didn't get a liver transplant and then have his bill "expunged" after the fact. He went to the ER when he was in critical condition, those bills got written off, but he never got the treatment he actually needed to save his life because he couldn't afford to pay for it.

Please stop acting like that doesn't happen and educate yourself about when/why it does happen.

 

[Barbarella]

Federal and state laws require certain hospitals to treat low-income and uninsured patients.
Yes, she will have to get rid of everything she has, as I said, but it’s possible to get treatment. She may have to sell her car, give up YouTube, I doubt she has money in the bank but that will have to go. She may have to call social workers, government agencies, etc, which will be too hard for her even if her life was at stake. (It isn’t). Nobody will make it easy.

However, there is help out there. I wrote badly-no, you can’t walk into any hospital you want and get services, but there are some. She just has to find out where they are in Kentucky, another things she’s too lazy for

Information about the middle of the page, it wouldn’t let me cut and paste.

https://www.livestrong.org/we-can-help/insurance-and-financial-assistance/health-care-assistance-for-uninsured

 

[SituationTypeThing]

What if Amber used a teaching hospital or university hospital - would it be cheaper or free - ?

Maybe. Typically, we treat teaching hospitals as higher tier hospitals, for instance, John's Hopkin's Hospital, connected to John's Hopkins University Medical school. So they are places everyone wants to be treated, and if they can afford it out of network, they'll go to a university hospital. Then there's the studies and clinical trials at university research hospitals as well as the National Institutes of Health, Studies and clinical trials would be free, but there would need to be a protocol enrolling people with amber's condition. That would be free, or even possibly provide payment for time and effort. But here's the rub: most studies I've seen require the patient to be healthy. By that, I mean obviously if someone has cancer or some other ailment, they are not healthy, but they can't have high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity and/or various other issues. I know Amber says she's just big but hulthy, but when you go for your initial exam to see if you qualify for a study, they take like 20 vials of blood, some are immediately put on ice, some are wrapped in tin foil, just all sorts of blood tests that are bewildering. They get values for everything under the sun. There will probably be some reason to disqualify her, again, that's IF there's a study that fits her issues.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

This entire thread is supposed to be speculation about Amber's specific finances, and I saw like 4 different people lamenting how poors can't get treatment in the US even when they're lidurally dyeeng. It's completely false. They can, and they can have the whole bill expunged. That was my entire point. I have no desire to argue about Amber's cancer treatment.

You have no idea what you are talking about and don’t understand the difference between legally mandated acute emergency care and what it takes to get ongoing treatment for cancer or other diseases. They won’t even begin treatment until either your insurance approves it or massive deposits and payment plans are in place.

Poors do get treatment because they qualify for Medicaid. People that make money, like the money Amber makes from YT, and don’t have insurance (or even have crappy insurance) die all the time because they can’t afford the cost of ongoing treatment for cancer and other chronic conditions. (Dialysis is the only long term chronic care that is legally mandated regardless of money thanks to obscure law Nixon spearheaded)

Most of the massive debt you read about being written off is either ER bills for Ambers or the debt people owed AFTER their insurance coverage. For instance after scheduled surgery the hospital bill is $30,000; private insurance pays $23,000 of that and $7,000 is due from the patient. So a lot of “written off” debt is what the patient couldn’t afford out of pocket - but the hospital still got 80% of the total bill paid by insurance. You won’t get scheduled for surgery in the first place without insurance though. And

You will not get appointments for treatment at cancer center without insurance or a big deposit and payment plan. People get credit cards and bank loans just to get treatment started

What if Amber used a teaching hospital or university hospital - would it be cheaper or free - ?

They tend to be just as expensive as regular hospitals. The only hospitals I know of that actually got court orders to garnish paychecks were university affiliated ones.

You only have to give them tax returns/proof of income if you're getting subsidies for your coverage. If you're okay with paying the full cost of the premium yourself, you don't have to give them that, just attest that you are not eligible for insurance through your job or for Medicaid or Medicare.

AL wouldn't qualify for any subsidies anyway since she's a single person and her income is fairly high.

A plan without any level of subsidy would cost more than $1200 a month so there’s no way she’d ever go along with that cost. I think she would balk at $300 month ffs. She’s 520 lbs of immediate gratification and no long term planning.

 

[najobo]

The tl;dr of all this healthcare sperging is that Amber would be infinitely better off were she destitute. Gorging herself on YT for easy $$$ may well have condemned her. If not, she'll lose every last penny, and wind up... destitute, just like she was before, but now she's older, stripped of all assets, and has lifelong medical issues.

I can't think of a more brutally ironic punishment.

 

[Turd Fergusson]

Without insurance, america will definitely let you die. In fact, even if you have insurance, but you've racked up high bills through co-insurance (usually there's a limit to what the insurance will pay, like 80-90% but 10-20% of hundreds of thousands is still a lot of money to come up with) and you can't afford more treatment, yes, they will let you die.

Even with insurance, they may not cover you entirely. I know someone who needed double hip replacement surgery. In Nevada, the surgery was over $100k and his copay was about 20%. The insurance company proposed to him, which he accepted, to have the surgery done in India. They pay for him and his spouse to fly there, hotel for two weeks, no copay, and the total cost was less that than $25k.
I am not sure if this could happen to Amber if she get insurance in November.

 

[DefCon Dumb]

Her immune system is so messed up, Lord only knows what a load of new germs, (those endemic to any region in India), would do to her.

 

[Beetus Knuckles]

Amber is not poor, she’s irresponsible. Even 30k a year for a single person in KY with no dependents is above the level where you would get charity assistance. She likely makes at least 50k a year pre-tax, so she is fucked. Being sued for unpaid medical debt signals to me she doesn’t qualify for assistance.

 

[Red Mask]

The tl;dr of all this healthcare sperging is that Amber would be infinitely better off were she destitute. Gorging herself on YT for easy $$$ may well have condemned her. If not, she'll lose every last penny, and wind up... destitute, just like she was before, but now she's older, stripped of all assets, and has lifelong medical issues.

I can't think of a more brutally ironic punishment.

And it could have been prevented if she, oh I don’t know, PURCHASED INSURANCE. She easily could have done that. Oh well, I guess eating and hauls were more important.

 

[Situation Type Deal Gorl]

What if Amber used a teaching hospital or university hospital - would it be cheaper or free - ?

Even the university-affiliated hospital in my area wants you to pay *something*. But they can and do get patients treated after going through their financial aid request, via federal subsidies. But, since Big Al has claimed to make a lot of money (and probably does), when they look at her documentation - if she isn't too fucking lazy to put together the paperwork - they would want her to front cash for some portion of the cost for what the expected treatment/procedures would be.

It’s important to remember that AL is an anomaly in that she has done everything possible to avoid having medical insurance or maintain the possibility of getting it in the future. I’m struggling to come up with a good metaphor for her behavior, but it’s bizarre.

Big Al gets a ticket every night for parking on the street between two signs that say "no parking by hydrant". People suggest, repeatedly, that she just go to the parking garage right past that no parking zone and pay for parking there instead of having to pay out all the time for those tickets (and all the shit she's bought). She smugly, and repeatedly, tells people that she could do bolth, pay for her tickets and crap she's bought AND pay for garage parking. But she keeps parking there on the street, and keeps getting tickets. Then one day, the fire department has to break the windows in her car to hook up to the hydrant to battle a fire across the street. Water everywhere inside, windows broken - tsk, the car's a wreck. Guess she should have listened to people and just paid for parking in the garage after all.