Whatever you do, don't get sick in the USA

Time Magazine: Why medical bills are killing us.
This is a long article, lots of details, on how and why the medical system is broke. There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle including the worst: the incredible greed of the medical establishment in the USA. I can say with certainty that this is a "USA problem" with the perspective we have in Bolivia. Yes, doctors are relatively well compensated here; yes a good hospital (private) or clinic will cost more than a public facility. But there is no conceivable way that the 10s, 100s of thousands of dollars that one sees in the USA could possibly exist here. And thinking of the millions of dollars that are not that uncommon: impossible.

One of the reasons (other than not having a job or a way to pay for return expenses after being abandoned overseas during the Great Recession.) that we have not moved back to the USA is simply we don't have medical insurance. And at the age we were dumped six years ago (late fifties) and with some no-so-serious-but-impossible-to-hide medical issues, it was impossible to get health insurance.

My solution: universal health care-single payer just like Medicare. Or, if you want to put the greed business out of business: nationalize the entire system. But whatever you do, don't get sick in the USA. You could lose everything.