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 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 at risk. It’s also the middle class and even some who may be considered 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. 72% of patients bankrupted by medical bills have health insurance.
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 patient’s lives at risk when it approves medications based on the influence of special interests and most medical devices without any testing at all.
Our broken medical system:
- puts profit before patients’ lives
- allows the cost of medical services to be hidden
- bankrupts people who can’t pay their medical bills, even those that are not usual, customary, or reasonable
- bankrupts people who can’t pay medical bills that are predatory or fraudulent
- won’t reveal 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 people for fair, safe, transparent, affordable healthcare. APRA empowers our members by providing them with information, resources, and programs to help them protect their lives and their money.
Our organization also helps our members by exposing those profit-driven medical entities responsible for causing 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.
>> REGISTER NOW
*Study by Harvard University. Learn more.