2022-06-01

• Some thoughts on financial risks of American healthcare system
  • I routinely read on Twitter about people who have received outrageous medical bills. Predictably in these tales, the insurance companies dodge and avoid doing anything about it. Sometimes, the person has some luck and they manage to stalk the right person on LinkedIn and that employee helps them from the inside. Many times, the person just has to foot the bill or run away from collections people forever and have their credit score destroyed.
    
  • This situation seems like a real risk when dealing with our existing healthcare system. I wonder if there’s a way to mitigate the risk using some clever financial engineering tricks.
    
  • One thing that comes to mind would be “what if I, as a person, simply had no assets that could be claimed in some sort of medical bankruptcy proceeding”. Maybe this could be accomplished through putting all your assets in a trust or something. Then, at least you could defend against a real bankruptcy scenario. I’m not sure if there is any structure that would work like this, but it seems worth exploring.
    
  • Obviously, such a situation doesn’t resolve the problem of having my credit score destroyed. Nor does it resolve the massive headache it would be to deal with this kind of problem. But at least you wouldn’t go broke, and that would be something.
    
  • Just some morning thoughts. Hope y’all are having a great week.

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