$300,000 debt nightmare for a family in America

Brooklyn Park, United States, Jan 29 (AFP/APP): The Maccoux family receive visitors to their beautiful home in a Minneapolis suburb with an infectious warmth that belies the fact their youngest daughter Olivia has had more than 140 brain surgeries, all by the age of 24.

Mom Cathy smiles tenderly as she scrolls through photos of Olivia on hospital beds at various ages, from a baby to toddler to a teen.

“That’s just a hole in her skull from one of the shunts, isn’t that crazy?” she says.

And dad, Dan, is close to laughing as he reads from bills sprawled out on a table cataloguing medical costs going back to 1996 — including parking tickets and hospital meals.

“Very surprisingly, very few people have a love of records,” says the 57-year-old independent consultant in the semiconductor industry.

The family’s case is a telling illustration of the flaws of the US health care system, which Democratic candidates for the White House have promised to overhaul or scrap ahead of their first primary contests in February.

Despite spending the most on health care in the world, 27.5 million Americans are without any health insurance.

And for the “lucky” insured, sky high costs can lead many to bankruptcy, or as in the case of the Maccoux, indebted for life.

Olivia was born three months early, which is at the root of her misfortunes.

She has a rare condition called hydrocephalus, meaning fluids build up in the cavities of her brain that require valves and catheters to drain down toward the abdomen.

But the devices have needed to be changed dozens of times — not to say anything of the epilepsy she experiences, among several other neurological conditions.

“I grew up with no hair,” she says of her childhood.

But the Maccoux family are fortunate in one respect: Dan has a six figure income, and has always had health insurance.

When he worked for a company, his insurance coverage was “gold,” he says.

The problem is that in the US, coverage rarely covers 100 percent of people’s needs. The system is largely privatized, and reimbursements to patients depend on negotiations between a hospital or pharmacy and the insurer.

The level of reimbursement varies from case to case. There are different levels of “deductibles” — the amount paid by the patient before the insurance kicks in, as well as “copays,” the fixed amount of out-of-pocket costs for doctor visits or drugs once the deductible has been met.

“It was the copays I think that killed us because we had so many appointments,” said Cathy. “We were drowning for a while because it was just constant, constant.”

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