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46% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 if they had to

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Re: 46% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 if they had to

Unread postby 2cher » Sun 13 Dec 2009, 01:20:37

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('2cher', 'I') make 22,000 a year, I put over 5,000 a year away in savings. Some people are just to stupid for their own good.
The problem with that is that you probably qualify for all sort of benefits with that kind of income. Low income electricity, low income phone, low income heating assistance, low income health care assistance expletives deleted And who pays for all this? Who would have guesses, the guy making $100k paying 30% income taxes. That's who.
ad hom deleted by eastbay I live quite well, I have never taken food stamps or any form of government assistance. I am responsible and live with in my means and given your comment to me, I can only assume you do not.

To the other inquiring as to how I can live on so little and still save money: After savings I have around 1400 a month to live on. My montly expenses are this
rent $375
utilities + Cable and Internet $200
insurance $90, apartment, and car
food $200 a little more if I eat out with friends
household items $50 sometimes a little more
so that accounts for close to 1000.00 that leaves me with 400 a month do with as I please, save for a new motherboard, car maintenance, go on a date(which never happens), or sometimes if I don't do anything else I save it as well. I may be getting health insurance soon since I am getting over 30, I feel I should bite the bullet. This will cost me 150 a month.
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Re: 46% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 if they had to

Unread postby SoothSayer » Sun 13 Dec 2009, 18:20:45

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou raise a good point. If you ever get down about the situation in your country, check yourself and be thankful you never have to deal with the financial nightmare of American medical care.

Thank your for your informative reply.

I really can't imagine living in the US - although I have visited several times to do small chunks of work.

I like guns - but I don't think I'd like your intense gun culture.

I certainly don't understand how you survive illness.

I have rich friends who live in the US ... and they fly home to the UK when they are ill! Not to save money, but to avoid the endless tests - and maybe unrequired surgery - designed to make the hospitals money.

England is in bad trouble - but at least I understand the environment!
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Re: 46% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 if they had to

Unread postby Tyler_JC » Sun 13 Dec 2009, 21:10:59

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SoothSayer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou raise a good point. If you ever get down about the situation in your country, check yourself and be thankful you never have to deal with the financial nightmare of American medical care.

Thank your for your informative reply.

I really can't imagine living in the US - although I have visited several times to do small chunks of work.

I like guns - but I don't think I'd like your intense gun culture.

I certainly don't understand how you survive illness.

I have rich friends who live in the US ... and they fly home to the UK when they are ill! Not to save money, but to avoid the endless tests - and maybe unrequired surgery - designed to make the hospitals money.

England is in bad trouble - but at least I understand the environment!


The gun culture is not "intense". Most people don't own guns, especially those living in the liberal coastal cities.

As for illness, the news reports about the health care crisis are mostly exaggerations designed to sell newspapers. Are there people who run up big medical debts and declare bankruptcy? Yes. Are there millions of these people? No.

For the vast majority of the population, health care is not a big issue. Either their employer or the government provides them with decent insurance that covers the bulk of their medical bills. There are a few $25 co-payments, maybe some co-insurance or a couple prescriptions to pay for but most part someone else pays the bills.That's actually part of the problem. No one pays the real cost of their medical treatment so they have no incentive to economize.

The average American only spends around $800/year on out of pocket health care costs. Obviously the sick and the uninsured will spend more but few people are sick forever. People should be saving around a $1,000/year to cover expected future medical bills.

But as the opening post shows us, too few people are doing this. Out of pocket medical expenses are merely the tipping point that pushes people into bankruptcy, it's not the root cause. The inability/refusal to save any money for the future is what is causing the bankruptcies.
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Re: 46% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 if they had to

Unread postby Sixstrings » Sun 13 Dec 2009, 22:26:00

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SoothSayer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou raise a good point. If you ever get down about the situation in your country, check yourself and be thankful you never have to deal with the financial nightmare of American medical care.

Thank your for your informative reply.

I really can't imagine living in the US - although I have visited several times to do small chunks of work.

I like guns - but I don't think I'd like your intense gun culture.

I certainly don't understand how you survive illness.

I have rich friends who live in the US ... and they fly home to the UK when they are ill! Not to save money, but to avoid the endless tests - and maybe unrequired surgery - designed to make the hospitals money.

England is in bad trouble - but at least I understand the environment!


The gun culture is not "intense". Most people don't own guns, especially those living in the liberal coastal cities.

As for illness, the news reports about the health care crisis are mostly exaggerations designed to sell newspapers. Are there people who run up big medical debts and declare bankruptcy? Yes. Are there millions of these people? No.

For the vast majority of the population, health care is not a big issue. Either their employer or the government provides them with decent insurance that covers the bulk of their medical bills. There are a few $25 co-payments, maybe some co-insurance or a couple prescriptions to pay for but most part someone else pays the bills.That's actually part of the problem. No one pays the real cost of their medical treatment so they have no incentive to economize.

The average American only spends around $800/year on out of pocket health care costs. Obviously the sick and the uninsured will spend more but few people are sick forever. People should be saving around a $1,000/year to cover expected future medical bills.

But as the opening post shows us, too few people are doing this. Out of pocket medical expenses are merely the tipping point that pushes people into bankruptcy, it's not the root cause. The inability/refusal to save any money for the future is what is causing the bankruptcies.


Tyler, even before the financial crisis hit, medical debts accounted for 60% of bankruptcies. You seem to shrug this off, since it doesn't apply to the "vast majority" of Americans. Well no duh, the "vast majority" aren't critically ill all at the same time you know.. most of us are lucky and it won't happen until we're elderly and covered by Medicare.

So you have no sympathy whatsoever for those who are unlucky enough to get ill before 65? I guess these pathetic, uninsured waitresses just need to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps," they need to stop "running up" all those medical bills, they just need to "pay the true cost" of their cancer treatment and everything would be fine.

Here are a few facts:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')nsurance coverage varies widely by age. In general, almost everyone aged 65 or older has health insurance, mostly through the federal Medicare program. About 90 percent of children nationwide are covered. The national insured rate drops under 80 percent for working-age adults, those between 18 and 64.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/health-212007-insurance-cities.html

So Tyler, are you arguing that the 10% of American children who are uninsured don't matter? And I guess the 20% of uninsured working people don't matter either? Oh, I misunderstood.. your point is these uninsured folks just need to "pay the true cost" of their medical care and then they could afford those surgeries and MRI's and chemotherapy.

Didn't Aaron post his own financial nightmare story on this forum? As I recall, his surgery saddled with him with something like an $800,000 debt that he has no idea how he'll be able to pay. I guess that's no big deal either, he's not in the "vast majority" so it doesn't matter.

To the Brits reading this, are you convinced? Would you trade your four pound hospital bill (parking) for Tyler's utopia of everyone saving up so they can "pay the true cost" of all their treatment?

(I don't like bringing others' personal stories into an argument, but I just can't see how you still think this way after Aaron shared his own experience with the forum)
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Re: 46% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 if they had to

Unread postby Tyler_JC » Mon 14 Dec 2009, 01:29:25

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')Tyler, even before the financial crisis hit, medical debts accounted for 60% of bankruptcies. You seem to shrug this off, since it doesn't apply to the "vast majority" of Americans. Well no duh, the "vast majority" aren't critically ill all at the same time you know.. most of us are lucky and it won't happen until we're elderly and covered by Medicare.

So you have no sympathy whatsoever for those who are unlucky enough to get ill before 65? I guess these pathetic, uninsured waitresses just need to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps," they need to stop "running up" all those medical bills, they just need to "pay the true cost" of their cancer treatment and everything would be fine.

Here are a few facts:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')nsurance coverage varies widely by age. In general, almost everyone aged 65 or older has health insurance, mostly through the federal Medicare program. About 90 percent of children nationwide are covered. The national insured rate drops under 80 percent for working-age adults, those between 18 and 64.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/health-212007-insurance-cities.html

So Tyler, are you arguing that the 10% of American children who are uninsured don't matter? And I guess the 20% of uninsured working people don't matter either? Oh, I misunderstood.. your point is these uninsured folks just need to "pay the true cost" of their medical care and then they could afford those surgeries and MRI's and chemotherapy.

Didn't Aaron post his own financial nightmare story on this forum? As I recall, his surgery saddled with him with something like an $800,000 debt that he has no idea how he'll be able to pay. I guess that's no big deal either, he's not in the "vast majority" so it doesn't matter.

To the Brits reading this, are you convinced? Would you trade your four pound hospital bill (parking) for Tyler's utopia of everyone saving up so they can "pay the true cost" of all their treatment?

(I don't like bringing others' personal stories into an argument, but I just can't see how you still think this way after Aaron shared his own experience with the forum)


1. The medical debt/bankruptcy thing is overblown. In 90% of bankruptcies, there was less than $5,000 in medical debt. Mind you, "medical debt" includes unpaid plastic surgery bills. That 60% figure you quote is based on the assumption that any bankruptcy that includes any medical debt means that medical debt caused the bankruptcy. That's just not true. There are some uninsured/underinsured people who get hit with huge medical bills they can't pay, leading to bankruptcy. But they don't number in the millions as the media reports. Medical debt is heavily concentrated in a few particularly sick individuals who fall between the cracks of Medicaid, Medicare, and COBRA. That's what we should be fixing.Source

You can argue that any medical bankruptcy is unacceptable in a rich society like the United States but you can't argue that medical debt accounts for most of the bankruptcies in this country.

2. When I talk about the true cost I don't mean having the patient pay 100%. I'm talking about having people pay at least something for their treatments.

Too many health insurance plans treat health care like an amusement park. You pay X amount to enter the park and then get to use as many rides as you want. Not only are the patients clueless about the real costs of their treatments but the doctors themselves often have no idea what it costs. One of the fundamental underpinnings of a free market is that both buyers and sellers have good information about prices. This isn't happening in the modern American health care system and it leads to a lot of wasteful spending.

How many billions of dollars are wasted on treatments with little prospect of improving the quality of life of a patient?

Just as an example, there are 25,000 Americans in persistent vegetative states who are being kept alive at a cost of $200,000/year. That's $5 billion that's effectively being thrown down the drain. If the patient's family had to pay even 1% of the cost of that treatment, more people would pull the plug.

A "single payer" system must either ration care or pass on the costs of excessive medical treatment to taxpayers. There's no free lunch.

3. The biggest problem with health insurance is that it comes attached to employment. This is an artifact of WW2 price controls. Why should anyone expect their employer to provide health insurance? Does your employer pay for your home insurance? Your car insurance?

Sick employees get fired and suddenly find themselves with no income and no insurance. That's a big cause of the medical bankruptcy problem and is something that should be addressed with COBRA reform.

But to get back to the OP, a quarter of people earning between $100,000 and $150,000 a year have effectively no savings. There's just no excuse for that. These comparatively rich people should not be so financially strapped that a $5,000 medical bill will send them into bankruptcy.
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Re: 46% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 if they had to

Unread postby SoothSayer » Mon 14 Dec 2009, 07:49:49

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')o the Brits reading this, are you convinced? Would you trade your four pound hospital bill (parking) for Tyler's utopia of everyone saving up so they can "pay the true cost" of all their treatment?

We DO pay for it - through high taxes.

That's fine with me ... except for one thing: the 'hospital tourists'.

In the London area we have 30% of the hospital beds occupied by people on vacation visas who 'suddenly' discover a few minutes after arrival that they have HIV or TB.

Overall I can't imagine having to show a credit card in order to enter a hospital.

You don't have to be a socialist or communist to know that it isn't right to ignore sick and dying people.

On this side of the Pond we simply cannot understand the anti-health care protests you have had in the US.
There is no discussion on the topic: it is simply 100% clear to everyone here that the US protestors who want to keep your privatised pay-as-you-go healthcare system are insane.

We all have the right to roads, clean water, police protection ... and healthcare.
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Re: 46% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 if they had to

Unread postby phaster » Wed 16 Dec 2009, 01:28:17

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kiwichick', 'h')ard to believe

what do people spend all their wages on?


simple answer, people were and for the most part are still spending way too much money on crap that does nothing but loose value...

The big problem I see is one of society as a whole placing too much value on shit that in the long run does not really advance the progress of the human race.

An extreme example of misplaced values I see in a consumer based economy is suppose random people were gathered together and given a choice between a book and formal training on how to build a boat and flawless 100 ct flawless blue diamond.

I'm 100% sure in the modern world everyone would choose the 100 ct flawless blue diamond because people think its something vary rare and its worth lots of local money. But if someone were stranded on a desert island, the skill set of knowing how to build a boat would allow an individual to exercise lots of options such as fishing, which could given time, evolve into a trading system, and the 100 ct flawless blue diamond would be pretty much worthless!

Knowledge and stuff that adds or creates lasting value, isn't sadly is really valued because its human nature is people for the most part only look and think about short term rewards.

Since this is forum is related to the topic of peak oil, I'm pretty sure the typical person here has a much greater appreciation for taking precautions to limit their long term down side risks, and stashed away more than $2,000 in anticipation for a "rainy" day...
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