A good hospital takes great pains to ensure that patients are far enough removed from administrative areas that they can heal in peace and quiet. However, there are going to be times when the quiet of a hospital room isn’t enough to stem the inevitable stress that comes when a person realizes the expense they’re being put under. Medical bills are more costly than ever, and it can be a serious pain to try and afford them.

While a person’s medical benefits will pay for a segment of the care received, a lot of people don’t have such benefits. It’s almost enough to make a person with that their condition were immediately lethal, because the costs simply weigh down a person’s ability to enjoy their life. If you owed more money than you were likely to make in a couple of years of full working capacity and you lacked this capacity, what would you do? How good would you feel waking up every day knowing you were burdened by this massive bill, being collective without mercy?

The feeling can be enough to cause a person’s recovery to stall out, or even to make them relapse down the line. It can trigger latent drug addictions, as fatalism turns into escapism when the stress level get sufficiently high. While most people who are sick or injured won’t suddenly turn to whatever drugs they can get their hands on, their levels of stress when faced with tremendous and seemingly unpayable bills can be sheer torture. While insurance companies only choose whether or not to pay for medical care, the ultimate result is a lot of people suffering needlessly.