Quite possibly the most awful commercial on cable news right now is the one in which a woman explains how she had an asthma attack and the treatment cost $17,000.
As if $17,000 for an asthma attack wasn't obscene enough, apparently, in this story, she had to pay this ridiculously humongous bill with a credit card.
From there, she was forced to negotiate a payment plan with her very generous credit card company. Awww. Those credit card guys are all heart. I can only imagine that part of the deal involved stretching the bill over a longer period of time -- possibly paying interest-only in order to reduce the payments. There's no way the bill was reduced in any way, so she's definitely on the hook for $17,000 -- now with interest that could be hiked to 30% without warning.
Whatever the negotiation may have been, credit cards should NEVER be a part of the healthcare equation. This fictional woman (with a not-so-fictional conundrum) is pretty much screwed. All because she had an asthma attack and needed life-saving treatment.
By the end, the commercial shows the woman happy and satisfied, but here we have yet another corporation profiting from an average American's will to live. And now she's trapped. What if she has another asthma attack? How much unsecured debt will she be able to handle?
Actually, I take it back. This isn't an awful commercial -- it's an excellent, yet tragic, commercial in support of a public option.