[HN Gopher] Being a victim of rape costs an average of $3,500 in...
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Being a victim of rape costs an average of $3,500 in medical bills
Author : DocFeind
Score : 76 points
Date : 2022-09-17 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| aaron695 wrote:
| alar44 wrote:
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > The bills can discourage rape reporting and compound victims'
| trauma.
|
| Are there any studies on how this knowledge emboldens sexual
| assault and rapists?
| belorn wrote:
| There are studies on crime reduction. One such finding that I
| remember is that harsher punishment tend to impact crimes which
| are premeditated, but not those occurring in the heat of the
| moment.
| smt88 wrote:
| I don't know about this specific crime, but a lot of crimes are
| correlated with arrest rate.
|
| For example, there were places with a lot of illegal street
| racing that were able to drastically reduce the problem with
| slightly higher arrest rates.
|
| Somehow the criminals have a mental calculus of their
| likelihood of facing charges (maybe just based on anecdata from
| media reports -- who knows!) and they behave accordingly.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| By far, the most effective deterrent is indeed "certainty of
| being caught" (far more than whatever punishment happens
| afterwards) https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-
| about-deterr...
| ouid wrote:
| The phenomenon is better explained by: much higher arrest
| rates -> fewer people doing it -> fewer people to arrest ->
| lower arrest rates.
| drc500free wrote:
| What's interesting is that severity of punishment has very
| little effect, while certainty of punishment has a large
| effect.
| olliej wrote:
| And then you have the costs incurred by forced pregnancy and
| forced child birth and forced child rearing. None of which are
| covered by the states forcing it.
| pizza234 wrote:
| The title is clickbait; the bill total is not what is generally
| paid by the patients (whether nothing be paid at all in such
| cases, is a separate topic):
|
| > On average, hospital emergency departments charged $3,551 for
| urgent medical care coded as caused by sexual violence. People
| who were sexually assaulted while pregnant faced even steeper
| bills, with an average of $4,553. Uninsured victims or those who
| chose to pay themselves were served bills that averaged $3,673.
|
| > the study found that insured victims paid an average of 14
| percent of their bills out-of-pocket, which for the average bill
| would work out to nearly $500.
|
| > [...] Among the 112,844 records, an estimated 17,842 victims
| were expected to pay their hospital bills themselves.
| verall wrote:
| Your own quotes suggest around 15% of victims are expected to
| pay the value quotes in the headline on average.
|
| I wouldn't call that clickbait...
| peyton wrote:
| "served bills" is not the same thing as "costs" when it comes
| to processing uninsured claims. The headline is clickbait.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Nearly every state has funds that cover medical bills for crime
| victims, are those an option? Or is the bureaucracy too
| convoluted?
| greatgib wrote:
| The worse is that even if you had to pay for it by yourself. The
| price is clearly conflated compared to the service provided.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Get raped, pay a 3000$ "convenience fee" . Then the police will
| either never process the kit or process it and put you in a dna
| database to be used against you. It a truly dystopian system
| undersuit wrote:
| Might I suggest you kill the stronger person forcing you to be
| raped in their sleep to escape and then having to pay $150000
| to their estate.
|
| https://www.cbs58.com/news/iowa-teen-ordered-to-pay-her-alle...
| bryan0 wrote:
| This is a reference to:
| https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/09/14/us/iowa-teen-
| restitution-...
| lostlogin wrote:
| Thanks - grim.
|
| A CNN link that's less ampy:
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/15/us/pieper-lewis-sex-
| traff...
| mattwilsonn888 wrote:
| Any medical treatment has a cost, regardless of who pays it.
|
| The article says that out of the people studied, 36% paid for it
| themselves.
| account-5 wrote:
| Everytime I read something like this I am greatful I live in the
| UK. In trouble as the NHS is due to Tory mismanagement (the
| cynical would say purposefully), it is better in everyway than
| the US health care model.
| hourago wrote:
| > the cynical would say purposefully
|
| Underfund public services, complain that they are bad and move
| them to more expensive private companies is a well known tactic
| to increase private profits a the cost of citizens well-being.
| It is tried over Europe by parties in more or less the same
| form.
|
| There are many studies that demonstrated how, for example,
| health care is way more expensive in private hands. If that is
| incompetence or malice I will go for the quote "It is difficult
| to get a man to understand something when his salary depends
| upon his not understanding it."
|
| It is extremely damning that someone that suffers a traumatic
| experience like is rape is thrown into a for-profit system
| which goal is maximizing profit.
| account-5 wrote:
| It's barbaric and completely unacceptable in my view.
| Shameful.
| rrdharan wrote:
| I don't this particular topic is the one on which to make that
| point:
|
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-violence-against-wo...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/world/europe/britain-rape...
| Rygian wrote:
| Same goes for France and Spain, as far as I can tell.
| lawn wrote:
| And the Nordic countries and probably many more European
| countries.
| hourago wrote:
| But there are always pressure to reduce public "costs" to
| reduce taxes. That European health care is better for the
| average person is not a given, it is something that
| Europeans need to keep pressuring to not lose.
|
| I have seen degrading healthcare in Spain, for example, as
| banks received millions of Euros during the housing crisis
| money for hospitals shrunk. But when things got better it
| takes a lot of fighting to just get some money back into
| public services.
|
| Part of what makes Europe such an amazing place to live is
| good public health care. It improves all well being
| metrics.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Nothing you couldn't fix:
|
| Every time the private interests increase their pressure
| to privatize things, vote for a more left-wing party in
| proportion to the pressure that the private lobbies are
| putting on the government. If they go full postal Ayn
| Rand, you go full communist in voting.
|
| As historically verified by the experience of many
| countries, nothing less than this fixes that problem. If
| they pull the rope one inch, you pull it two inches.
| dijit wrote:
| > But there are always pressure to reduce public "costs"
| to reduce taxes.
|
| You are right for some definition of this; but in Sweden
| people are very happy to pay tax even if it's a lot,
| because they see themselves as getting a lot back for it.
|
| That's not true when everything is mismanaged and
| underfunded though; which is the current case. Healthcare
| is in the grips of private hands for other reasons in
| Sweden, and that's that the healthcare system doesn't pay
| well for directly employed doctors- this leads to
| everyone working for the private health services and
| since there is a dearth of doctors working for the
| government: they must hire these companies.
| satysin wrote:
| As someone that has lived in both the UK and France, I have
| to say the French medical service is several levels above the
| UK NHS.
|
| Even during the pandemic I had excellent care. Compared to a
| friend of mine that had gallstones and was in terrible pain
| and was told the wait would be _a year_. He ended up paying
| to go private as he was in such pain. Had his gall bladder
| removed.
|
| I had a few health issues myself over the past two years. I
| never had an issue getting a same day doctors appointment,
| never had to wait more than 5 days for a scan (MRIs) and no
| more than two weeks for a procedure (gastroscopy under GA).
|
| Really opened my eyes to how bad things are with the NHS
| right now :(
|
| Of course the French system is not perfect, claiming so would
| be stupid. But when _all_ of my friends and family back in
| the UK complain about getting GP appointments or month long
| waits for scans I can 't help but think they're doing
| something very wrong when France has a similar population
| size, GDP, etc. and my experience has never been anywhere
| near as difficult or slow as in the UK.
|
| Even before the pandemic getting an appointment with my
| doctor in the UK was a pain. So much so I had sort of
| conditioned myself into avoiding do so unless it was
| something important so I avoided it the same in France when I
| first moved here. But seeing how functional the system is it
| really changed my attitude towards visiting my doctor. I am
| far more proactive now getting anything that hangs around
| more than a week checked out without question.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > NHS is due to Tory mismanagement (the cynical would say
| purposefully)
|
| They aren't mismanaging it. They are 'strangling it' in order
| to be able to 'save it' later. If you did not hear that phrase
| before, its privatization. That's how it is done anywhere. If
| you people don't stop it, you will end up seeing the entirety
| of it being sold.
| slantedview wrote:
| > In trouble as the NHS is due to Tory mismanagement (the
| cynical would say purposefully
|
| It's not cynical, it's just good business. If you're a private
| corporation wanting to get into some market, you're going for
| pressure politicians to kill off the government competitor so
| you can take over. This is how it works in countries all over
| the world, under pressure to privatize government services.
| Many governments, such as the US, fail at withstanding that
| pressure. And so we have awful stories like this.
| pessimizer wrote:
| To be expected in the US. Try having a child.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > To be expected in the US. Try having a child.
|
| I tried. It's truly stunning how having a child could bankrupt
| you if you don't have a "decent" insurance.
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(page generated 2022-09-17 23:02 UTC)