WHY YOU SHOULD JOIN APRA
One in five Americans has medical debt in collections. Unexpected medical bills are causing over 500,000 people a year to declare bankruptcy (62% of all personal bankruptcies*). Many lose their homes. Some commit suicide. The medical debt typically comes from out-of-network doctors who people thought were in-network, hospital stays, or ambulance rides. And it’s not just the poor who are being threatened. Those who are middle class are at serious risk, and even some who may consider themselves wealthy.
Even people with health insurance, including Medicare, can be threatened with bankruptcy because of doctors’ fees, operations, procedures, tests and medications that their insurance, even supplemental insurance, won’t cover.
And a growing, hidden epidemic of preventable medical errors in our hospitals is killing between 250,000 and 400,000 people a year and injuring millions more. This is mainly the result of a misguided effort by hospitals, even “nonprofit” hospitals, to put profit before patient safety. And they’re not alone. Drug and medical device manufacturers, health insurers, and nursing homes are also guilty. Even the FDA puts patients at risk when it approves medications based on the influence of special interests.
Our broken medical system:
- puts profit before patients’ lives
- allows the cost of medical services to be hidden
- bankrupts people who can’t pay medical bills that are not usual, customary, or reasonable
- bankrupts people who can’t pay medical bills that are predatory or fraudulent
- won’t reveal the names of dangerous doctors
- threatens medical professionals who expose preventable harm
- doesn’t accept medical error as a cause of death
- allows hospitals to pay the organization that inspects them
- is secretive and hides serious harm and threats to patients
- won’t make patient safety a priority.
You Deserve Health Care That Heals You, Not Threatens You
American Patient Rights Association is a nonprofit consumer organization of patients for patients. APRA primarily works to bring safety and fairness to health care by informing the consumer, who is the medical decision-maker, and motivating medical providers to offer safe and affordable health care.
We are dedicated to fighting for fair, safe, transparent, affordable healthcare and empowering our members by providing them with information, resources, and programs to help them protect their lives and their savings.
In addition, our organization helps our members by exposing those profit-driven medical entities responsible for preventable harm and motivating them to change, bringing needed reform.
Membership in APRA is free, open to all, and confidential.
Register today to:
- start receiving instant membership benefits that can help you protect yourself and your family from preventable physical and financial harm when you receive medical care;
- support our fight for the safe, fair, transparent, reasonably priced healthcare that you deserve;
- keep APRA independent and free of the special interests that threaten the safety and financial well-being of everyone in need of medical care.