Insurance

Every government in the world has faced difficulty in providing health services to the population, even Britain and Canada which subsidizes health care are finding it harder to allocate funds with the thinning resources, aging residents and expanding population. In 2009, for instance, the British National Health Service revealed it could not shoulder the costly drugs for renal cancer, earning public ire in the process. But when you think about it, the British are still much better than in the U.S. where Americans are not getting enough help with medical bills.

With meager resources, governments have to prioritize but sadly, health is not among the priorities in the market pie. The United States still relies on the private health institutions to provide help with medical bills for working families in the form of insurance. It's amazing when you consider that it is the only remaining superpower in the world, spending about $7,000 per capita annually according to the World Health Organization and yet its health system is maybe comparable to third world countries (most of which only allocate $35 annually per person) in terms of inefficiency. How else do you explain why millions of families file for bankruptcy because of medical expenses?

As the U.S. still grapples with the financial crunch and high unemployment rates, employers scrimp on insurance subsidy, resulting to higher premium for the employees. As a result, workers have to forego insurance and just pray to high heavens they don't get sick. But as always the case when you least expect it, things happen and they find themselves on the brink of bankruptcy if they can't find help with medical bills.

Although there are charity groups or religious organizations that offer help, and while hospitals have their own financial assistance programs, the resources are just not enough to equally share among the thousands of families in need of aid. With the proposed universal health care gathering dust on the shelves of the U.S. Congress, families who couldn't find help with medical bills turn to more extreme means to get by. The options become narrower and narrower: bankruptcy, high interest loans or be buried in debt.