A terrible story.
Who do you think pays these costs for illegal migrants? They give birth in the same way, experience complications in the same way, have all sorts of medical conditions. Who pays? The five million (by the most conservative count) brought in by Joe Biden—who is paying for their healthcare?
Adult people who listen and nod when the TV tells them that there’s no free healthcare for migrants should be ashamed of their gullibility.
Open borders and welfare do not coexist. It’s not a possibility. Infinity migration always means crime, trash everywhere, slumification of many neighborhoods, rising traffic mortality, endless waits in emergency rooms, proliferation of scams and harassment, and absence of the institutions of state who should do something about all this. Because the nation-state is the only form of state that cares about this stuff. The post-nation state only cares to send police to shut you up when you complain about it.
Clarissa's Blog 
That’s a fair point.
But also: if $38k is “nearly a quarter” of their income, they are making over $150k/yr.
They should have a big enough emergency fund to cover that. What’s going on with these people, financially, that they can’t come up with $38k on a 150k-plus income?
And why should I be subsidizing them?
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It’s the weirdest thing. None of these stories make the slightest sense.
I completely agree that at this income level this should not be a heavy amount in savings.
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Even without savings, they should be able to work out a payment plan. Like the rest of us.
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” should be able to work out a payment plan. Like the rest of us”
Payment in US healthcare seems incredibly dysfunctional and/or downright criminal (insurers and healthcare institutions involved in various forms of financial fvckery).
That’s why they say to never pay the first bill…. it’s always negotiable and I’m wondering if 38,000 has already been worked down from the original.
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It’s a good question. And maybe if they are middle-class, they are more used to the idea of bankruptcy, than the idea of negotiating your own medical bills. Most people I know who are in that income bracket, kind of default to “the insurance will take care of it” and then they feel personally betrayed when the insurance doesn’t. Given how much they pay for it, that’s understandable.
We don’t have that kind of insurance, so we automatically default to: whatever the bill is, we will be spending at least six hours on the phone talking repeatedly with at least three different entities (the doctor’s office, the billing company, the hospital), to get the number down as low as possible, and then work out a reasonable schedule for paying it. As my mom says: as long as you pay $20 every time you get a bill, they won’t send you to debt collection 😉
-ethyl
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“as long as you pay $20 every time you get a bill, they won’t send you to debt collection”
My mother used to say that and I was never sure if it was true and if so…. then why isn’t it more widely known…
There’s also an old idea that the key to living well is to live beneath your means (and to have emergency funds at the ready). But the message everywhere in the US is to try to live above your means and spend not save…. maybe in a weird version of fake it till you make it.
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I’m not sure if it’s still true, but mom had reason to know.
Living beneath your means is certainly a concept I grew up with. My parents weren’t great at it, but in the extended family it was almost religious. Credit card debt was definitely more sinful than smoking, but perhaps less sinful than drinking.
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In the comments thread on that one:
https://x.com/macroviewer/status/1977201462456598987
38k was the initial billed amount. They got it down to 11k.
At this point, I have no idea why there’s even an article about it. This happens every day, and there’s no way that an $11k bill for a large, involved inpatient surgery is even a blip on the radar. It’s pretty reasonable, and they can afford it.
-ethyl
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—for comparison, we paid the *entire* no-insurance out-of-pocket cost for my husband’s outpatient hernia surgery, and that ran us about $5k. We were living on a fraction of these people’s income at that time, and we were still able to pay for it up front, without borrowing money. Because we plan for stuff like that.
I don’t feel bad about the expense: it makes me wonder how anybody this dumb with money is making $150k/yr, because I need to get into that industry.
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Of course, you should put your people first. But you also need to consider your neighbor’s problems because they are likely to become your problems.
https://iol.co.za/news/politics/2025-10-13-thabo-mbeki-it-hurts-me-when-operation-dudula-blames-foreign-nationals-for-sas-problems/
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