Osmel Martinez Azcue, who had been to China, started developing flu-like symptoms after returning to Miami.
So he did what anyone would do: he went to the hospital.
As it turned out, he did not have the dreaded virus, just a garden-variety flu.
But as the Miami Herald reported, two weeks later, Azcue received a bill from his health insurance company for $3,270.
As the Herald reported:
"In 2018, President Donald Trump's administration rolled back Affordable Care Act regulations and allowed so-called 'junk plans' in the market. Consumers mistakenly assume that the plans with lower monthly costs will be better than no insurance at all in case of a medical catastrophe, but often the plans aren't very different from going without insurance altogether."
Azcue is responsible for $1,400 as long as he produces three years of medical records to prove his flu wasn't a result of a pre-existing medical condition.
Azcue commented:
"How can they expect normal citizens to contribute to eliminating the potential risk of person-to-person spread if hospitals are waiting to charge us $3,270 for a simple blood test and a nasal swab?"
Georgetown University professor Sabrina Corlette explained:
"When someone has flu-like symptoms, you want them to to seek medical care. If they have one of these junk plans and they know they might be on the hook for more than they can afford to seek that care, a lot of them just won't, and that is a public-health concern."
This is exactly what the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka "Obamacare") was intended to prevent.
Global health expert Jonathan D. Quick of Duke University, whose book The End of Epidemics: The Looming Threat to Humanity and How to Stop It, explained measures world governments can take to protect themselves against devastating disease outbreaks.
His analysis leans more toward a "worst-case scenario," explaining:
"We've now seen cases on six continents, apparently 'silent'--that is, at least partly asymptomatic chains of human-to-human transmission both inside and outside China, with additional countries reporting cases within the last week--bringing the total to 47 and new, accelerating outbreaks in Iran, Italy and South Korea. If it becomes a pandemic, the questions are, how bad will it get and how long will it last? The case fatality rate--the proportion of cases that are fatal--has been just over 2%, much less than it was for Sars, but 20 times that of seasonal flu. There are still many unknowns--we may have underestimated the period during which a person is contagious, for instance, and the variety of ways in which the virus spreads."
When asked about the United States' preparedness, Quick asserted:
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