It was three weeks after Christmas when the bombshell letter arrived. Guy Shahar and his wife, Oksana, looked at each other in stunned disbelief.
They had followed the Guardian’s investigation into the carer’s allowance scandal that has left thousands of families with crippling debts and criminal records. Not once did they think they would join them.
“Important,” it read in big bold type. “You have been paid more carer’s allowance than you are entitled to. You now need to pay this money back”.
In some weeks, she was paid just 38p more than the threshold – but for that tiny infraction she is being forced to repay £64.60 each time, the rate of carer’s allowance at the time.
Wait… An outrageous medical bill in the UK is ~13000 USD? An ambulance ride here costs 8k alone…
That’s not an outrageous medical bill. It’s an outrageous bill for clawing back government benefits for those whose full time care for family members prevents them from working.
No. Here’s a good (albeit infuriating) explanation of what happened.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/03/mother-of-autistic-boy-left-with-10000-debt-after-breaching-dwp-rules-by-192-a-week
I (USA) literally can’t get my tooth fixed because I don’t have dental insurance or a spare $2,000 for the root canal, not counting the crown which is probably another grand. We live in hell and now there’s some Brits feeling our pain, and all I can think is “yeah it ain’t so funny when it happens to you, is it?”
Look for a dental college. They’re cheap and sometimes even free.
examples:
https://activebeat.com/your-health/6-dental-schools-that-offer-free-or-budget-friendly-dental-work/
It costs $8k without insurance or with a high-deductible plan. Marketed hospital prices are not the same as what patients pay. Yes, a lot will pay around the $8k, but a lot more will pay a few hundred dollars.
I’m not saying the US has affordable health care, but if you’re going to criticize something, you have to keep the nuance.
I think an ambulance ride on my plan is covered 80% by insurance before my deductible, so I pay 20% out of pocket until I hit my deductible and then they cover it all.
So at most I’d pay $4000, but my neighbor took a ride to the hospital when he fainted and it only cost him a few hundred bucks (obviously our insurance coverage isn’t the same so it’s hard to cover like for like)
The real cost is the nearly $700 a month I pay for insurance just to have insurance to “negotiate” prices for me to pay. My $4000 deductible shakes out to like $8400 a year out of my pay for them privilege of paying “negotiated” prices for the first 4000.
I may end up with a $300 ambulance ride but I w already doled out $8k+ for the luxury of being allowed to only have to pay 20% of that ambulance ride.