Back in 2008 I was diagnosed with a minor medical problem that while not life threatening, was clearly going to be expensive to treat over the next year. My insurance company who I had paid premiums to for the previous 8 years (with no real claims) dropped me so fast off their roles that they even refunded a pro-rated portion of my last premium payment so they could drop me before the end of the month. Then I couldn't purchase insurance at any price.
In 2010 with the passage of the ACA (aka Obamacare); it became possible for me to purchase insurance again (at a steep price), and that is what I did.
Last week I had a gastrointestinal perforation (imagine your intenstines bursting and dumping their contents into your chest cavity); which resulted in a quarter of a million dollars in medical expenses. Without the ACA (Obamacare) this would have represented financial Armageddon for my family.
So I'd just like to say to those who oppose medical insurance for all; please go fuck yourself.
Subscription Note:
Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.
Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.
Holy shit! Glad you're OK after all of that, and have coverage.
But yeah, I can only assume that all the naysayers against universal healthcare have never seen a hospital bill. The charges are absurd under our current system, even for minor things.
My ex once had to go to the ER because she stepped on a piece of wire that had been left on the sidewalk, and it punched through the sole of her sandal and into her foot. By the time the doctor saw her, the wire had worked its way out of the wound, so all the doctor did was take a look at it, rinse it out with some saline, bandage it and tell her to keep it dry and change the bandage once a day.
She got the bill afterward, and the hospital charged nearly a thousand dollars for it. A thousand dollars. For a doctor to look at the wound, rinse it and bandage it, and talk to her for maybe five minutes. Our healthcare system in the US is completely FUBAR.
We had a similar experience while visiting the U.S. back in the 1990s. Our son, then aged 9, got a headache while waiting for a plane at Dallas-Fort Worth. I asked the airline counter attendant for an aspirin, but she called the paramedics, who whisked us all off to a big hospital, where they did all sorts of tests before telling us our son was just tired and to give him an aspirin. They then sent a bill for $14,000 to our travel insurance company back in New Zealand. The insurance company questioned it, and we started to get threatening collection notices from Pinkertons on behalf of the hospital and the Dallas Police.
There are so many things wrong with the healthcare system in the US it is hard to know where to begin to write a list for it all. However, there is a better solution that is working for every country that has adopted it. Universal healthcare.
Universal healthcare is not perfect, But it is both cheaper, and has better health outcomes than what the US currently has.
Part of the problem is trying to push a square peg in a round hole. Health "insurance" in the US is not really insurance anymore.
Insurance in its base form is supposed to be about: pooling money to help prevent the unlikely but expensive event.
Hypothetical example:
1 in 1000 people will see their house burn down from from a direct lightning strike defeating a lighting rods protection in a particular neighborhood in a given year. People not willing to take that small chance of financial ruin, decide to take the option of doing an insurance pool with 999 other households in their area. It costs 100k to replace the house with all the necessary equipment inside replaced as well in this neighborhood. These people do not have 100k in cash lying around to replace their home, but they do have 100 dollars lying around every year to add the selves to this insurance pool.
Obviously real life is much more complex then the above hypothetical, but that is what the idea of insurance is supposed to be.
In health care, they are trying to offer health services and call it insurance. People with preexisting conditions have a 100% chance of making a claim. It is no longer insurance, it is paying for service. In my example above: it is like not paying into the insurance pool for lightning protection, but while their house burns down, they pay 100 bucks into the pool, and then expect the pool to pay out for their loss. The math/system cannot work that way for obvious reasons.
However people should have a right to access for quality healthcare for life threatening situations that is not dependent on how wealthy they are. It is just that system should not be called health insurance, it instead should be called a service.
Absolutely.
I'm glad to hear you're recovering. Hospital is never a pleasant experience. The fear and the pain are bad enough, but the loss of dignity and self is hard to bear. I hope you'll tell us about any NDEs. I prayed for you. Did it help?
Health insurance companies here (Australia) can't turn you down for cover or dump you if something develops, though they can refuse to pay out on preexisting conditions. I got a small brain hemorrhage 3 months after signing up. They grumbled a bit but paid out in the end after I convinced them I didn't do it on purpose. And I got to experience stereotactic radiosurgery, which sure beats having a surgeon go under the hood.
Without health insurance in Australia/New Zealand, you're reliant on the socialized healthcare system. Everything is free, but you can't have any. People with painful, debilitating conditions languish for years on waiting lists while cataracts send them blind or hip joint problems cripple them.
There must a happy medium for healthcare in the U.S. Maybe shooting all the medical malpractice lawyers would be a good place to start.
Anyway, I wish you all the best for a full and speedy recovery. Try not to laugh.
I was going to say that didn't happen to me; but it kind of did:
The first two nights after my surgery I had the same nurse basically spending 10 hours a night taking excellent care of me. Sometime during the 2nd night she asked (or almost demanded) to know if I was a Christian. Perhaps it was the drugs, or not wanting to deal with being preached at, or the fear of not continuing to receive excellent care I had been; but in any case I lied and said I was. Not my proudest moment.
Nyarlathotep:
That's appalling. I don't blame you for lying. Never upset the lady with the needle.
Nyarlathotep,
It would be funny to see the nurse's reaction to her question if a patient told her that if he was a Christian he wouldn't be in the hospital because his church buddies would be anointing him with special oil and saying prayers over sick body in accordance with James 5:13-16. Real Christians don't go to the hospital; they rely upon the Bible's health care plan = oil and prayers.
James 5:13-16 (ERV) = "13 Are you having troubles? You should pray. Are you happy? You should sing. 14 Are you sick? Ask the elders of the church to come and rub oil on you[a] in the name of the Lord and pray for you. 15 If such a prayer is offered in faith, it will heal anyone who is sick. The Lord will heal them. And if they have sinned, he will forgive them. 16 So always tell each other the wrong things you have done. Then pray for each other. Do this so that God can heal you. Anyone who lives the way God wants can pray, and great things will happen."
2 Chronicles 16:11-13 (ERV) = "11 Everything Asa did, from the beginning to the end, is written in the book, The History of the Kings of Judah and Israel. 12 Asa’s feet became infected in his 39th year as king. Even though the infection was very serious, Asa did not go to the Lord for help. He went to the doctors instead. 13 Asa died in the 41st year as king and rested with his ancestors."
SIrach 38:15 (CEB) = "May those who sin against their creator fall into the hands of a doctor."
As an expat from the USA, I couldn't return to live at this point in time because in 2016 I had 9 kidney stones removed. Two months ago I was diagnosed with a non-cancerous brain tumor the size of a ping pong ball on my brain stem that has probably been growing for the last 15 years. I am living in South America now and I will pay the cost of the total treatment out of my own pocket for a total cost of under $12,000 in a private facility.
If Trump's WealthCare (a massive tax cut to corporations and the wealthy) presenting itself as health insurance passes, at age 60 with pre-existing conditions, $12,000 might pay for Trump's WealthCare for six months ... if I could obtain it at all.
ObamaCare addressed access while turning a blind eye to costs that included ever-increasing premiums with high deductibles and copays.
Trump's WealthCare (if passed) is intended to address the cost issue but will retract access -- mainly due to the prohibitive cost to mature adults, women, and those with pre-existing conditions.
Universal, single-payer health care supported through taxation is the ONLY way any nation can provide guaranteed quality health care to its citizens. It is the ONLY way citizens can have quality health care they can count on.
The conservatives ALWAYS talk about "rationing" when talking about a single-payer system even though they can't cite a dozen examples to support this false narrative. What these conservatives don't tell everyone when they're on their bully pulpit is that there is health care rationing in the USA right now! If you can't pay, you can't play. That's rationing in its purest form!
Agree.
I also want to add I wish people could understand, you can not force "insurance companies" to cover preexisting conditions without having a very expensive penalty for not carrying health insurance. It is basic math.
The bill that passed the house a month or two ago, changed the ACA penalty for lack of insurance to something like: the first year of health premiums can double in cost once you pick up health insurance again. AKA, everyone that is currently healthy right now and expect to be healthy for at least 1 year, should, as a cost saving measure drop their health insurance, and then buy it if, and when, they get an expensive pre-existing condition. And save them selves potentially, many thousands of dollars. Obviously if everyone healthy did that huge money savings maneuver, the health insurance companies would go bankrupt almost instantly.
Nyar, ever so glad you were able to access the care you needed without financial devastation.
Both my husband and I are fortunate to have excellent employer-subsidized insurance. We've each had medical expenses that would have cost us seven figures. We are lucky compared to so many.
In my youth (more decades ago than I wish to admit) I would have been against ACA. I'm grateful, however, to have grown up.
Nyarlathotep
"Go fuck yourself' strong words from a man who doesn't rightfully pay for the services he receives.
I myself have only been working part time for the past year, in which now I use "Obama care" for merely 20 dollars a month. Where I have procured numerous doctor visits, all magically free. Although it's not free, somebody pays for it, aka the middle class.
For it's not this "government" that pays for it but yet considerable taxpayers. I of course like most anybody would like to live in a world where healthcare is abundant for everyone, but it's an impossible dreamland not too dissimilar from the heaven that the theists hope for.
People pay for services rendered, now if it's the cost of medical services you have complaints about then I'll refer you to the problems there of.
Firstly the liability insurance doctors and hospitals have to pay that are ridiculous, but it's this sue happy world we live in to blame.
Secondly the high cost of education, mostly a monopoly of liberal interests and democratic spoils of student loans. A set of textbooks and a few patsy's will run you 6 figures.
If money is an issue I would recommend foreign medical care. I have friends that swear by Mexican dentistry and elective surgery. They get what they need done for a fraction of the cost in the US. But yet there's not that insurance guarantee.
My grandparents never worked white collar but yet worked hard, saved their money, and invested. My grandfather served in Korean, retired as a teacher, but since his investments were successful his retirement payments of social security, veteran, and teachers retirement are nothing because he's in a higher tax bracket. Is that fair? To lose privileges you rightfully earned just because you've made smarter choices and to reward those who don't... that's a system doomed to fail.
All that said,
I am deeply sorry for your medical issues and I sincerely hope you get well soon.
That isn't how it works. Social Security retirement payments are not a function of your current tax bracket. Someone has blown some rather serious smoke up your ass. You need to learn how the real world works; instead of spouting this worse kind of knee jerk libtard-ism.
You have to decide Closet_Atheist:
Is healthcare a privilege for the very rich, or should healthcare be a right in a country, that: if they brought their spiraling healthcare cost back into control, that the richest country in the history of the world could actually fairly easily afford?
The problem is also worse then you say, we are passing our debts on to the next generation, a sort of tax/loan with interest on the unborn to pay for things today.
Are you okay with the fact that Cuba has better healthcare outcomes then the US? Even though they spend a fraction per person the US does?
I agree, there is a whole bunch of crap, glut, waste in our current health system that needs to be wiped away. How do you do that? Expect capitalism do it? No, capitalism rewards the extremely rich, not the poor. Our other choice is to go back towards bigger government so many conservatives are so afraid of. You know, the big government after World War 2, that saw a time of prosperity in the US and a rising middle class like the world has never seen? And lasted mostly intact until the Reagan years when it began to decline?
Way to miss the point, Closet_atheist. We are literally the only wealthy Western country that doesn't have single-payer. It's not an "impossible dream," it's a reality literally any other place in the world you would actually want to live.
We could all be paying taxes to cover healthcare for everyone, and it would be cheaper for you than the insurance you currently "earn." But what I'm getting from your post is that you'd rather screw yourself and everyone else over on some foolish principle. Sounds to me like you have more in common with theists than anyone calling for universal healthcare.
http://www.pnhp.org/sites/default/files/A%20Superior%20System%20-%202013...
O-Care falls short and will continue to lapse. It was implemented as a grossly immature system and launched solely to come through after a campaign promise. It never did receive the proper research, coordination and organization necessary for a workable assemblage into a legitimate single payer agency with the professionalism instilled in its survivability over the long run, small tweaks aside. In short, it's more political do-unto-the people-and-then-run crap that some, like you, were able to get only by usurping your instinct to survive by making you pay through your nose. It will fail in the short term and everyone who knows anything about it will agree.
Get past your personal situation for a second and take an objective look at it to the extent that you know it, as in working knowledge and not just from the the subjective knee jerk stance it evoked in you because it got you a kitchen pass on life.
A legitimate single-payer system is not on the horizon because the insurance industry's deep pockets are preventing that. Like atheism, unilateral complicity depends on education and very very few people want to learn much about anything after running the gauntlet of their mandated primary education. Fewer still understand the world they live in even though they're sporting professional degrees framed and posted on their businesses office walls. A doctorates does not the genius make, to be sure, but the sad part is fewer can even claim to be street smart. And, most people's personal financial situations are train wrecks. This is the demographic from which the weight of pressure is needed to sue (and that's what it takes) the government to actually put together a real single-payer system. Until then, insurance company payola will keep them toying around bringing nothing to the table that wrests total control to the state.
BTW, good to read you're out of the woods. Take it slow. That condition sounds like a staff infection sitting on the edge between live and die. Hail the antibiotic gods.
Obama Care is lacking because it need republican votes to pass both houses of congress. It was suppose to be a one payer system.
Obamacare is lacking because the dummies in Congress let the drug companies write the law. All the idiots had to do was use the Medicare format. They could have also copied other plans from around the world, such as Israel's or the Netherlands'.
https://ldi.upenn.edu/news/overview-israels-universal-health-care-system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands
http://www.expatica.com/nl/healthcare/Healthcare-in-the-Netherlands_1000...
Remember, Trumpcare isn't a healthcare plan. It's gutted Obamacare.
Sort of true, Xenoview; the early version of the legislation had a public option on top of the insurance exchanges. But the Senate shot that down, so the public option was removed, which is one of the reasons it's had the problems it has; the half-assed state-level Medicare expansions just weren't enough to make up that difference (especially since several moronic Republicans Governors turned down the federal funds to do so), which put the price tag out of reach for a lot of people who should have qualified for Medicare. If the public option had been left in, the ACA would be a lot more functional than it currently is.
The only thing wrong with the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare is that there is an option for states to opt out. This reduced the pool of people that would use it that actually need it. Repukes know this so they have been trying to kill it by having states opt out.
It's like education. Repukes want to pay minimum wage to teachers and destroy the NEA Union. They also want to end public education and not replace it. This would force people that seek education to either have money to pay a REAL for an education or go to a church (government funded under repukes) and be brainwashed.
We need a one payer system in this nation. The UK is rated 1st in medical care and patient satisfaction and the cost is half of what Americans pay. They have a higher quality of life and live longer. Universal Healthcare is a smashing success. The lies about long lines and poor quality care are propaganda.
Republicans know that the Democrats can not have a victory like affordable healthcare for all. So they did everything they can to destabilize and destruct it. What eventually passed, was a bastardized version of what the Obama administration wanted, but there was hope they could win majorities in the future to properly fix it.
Another problem with ACA is: it did not properly address the graft, pork, malpractice, and other abuses in the health system that leads to ever higher prices. Healthcare has extremely inelastic demand. The industry in use, via capitalism, has "capitalized" on this fact, that healthcare so inelastic, to charge exorbitant prices. A strong case for making healthcare public, not private, is: you can not expect capitalism to "behave" on a product that is so powerfully inelastic. Basic economics 101 books will tell you this.
well said. congratulations republicans
Well I got my actual bill(s) today. Guess what? After my contribution (which was non-trivial but won't leave me in the poor house) the insurance company negotiated away almost $200,000 of the bill and paid the rest. By my calculation what they paid is about half of what I've paid in premiums. So even after all of this, the insurance company still has made a huge profit off me (and that is ok with me). But to the people who claimed I received what I didn't deserve/couldn't pay for, you can go fuck yourself, again.