Freedom: Guns versus Health Care

How many politicians want to abolish the 2nd amendment? Who are they and what have they specifically stated?

 

Nope. But the cash I do have burning a hole in my pocket is a direct result of my extremely low health insurance costs. If I were paying to cover major surgery or cancer treatments that I may never use, I would be broke and less able to afford the better food, suppliments and active hobbies that reduce the chances of my need for major surgery or cancer treatment.

If I get cancer, I won't be going to a hospital to incur massive debt. I dont see a life of more wage-slavery in attempt to prolong mere existence as preferable to living a shorter but more free and more prosperous life.

 

Sorry, but I find it very hard to believe you’ll just accept dying and not try to do anything to try to save your life.
You would be broke having employer based health insurance?

 

So healthcare is part of the constitution

 

general welfare.

 

NOPE ER's will not turn you out!

 

I understand his position, I have lived his point! Even the very best of insurance only pay 80/20, with that said, have you 20% of ten million to dish out on a HOPE?

 

Not at all. Why, you might ask? Because I don't think it's the government's place to rob from Peter to pay Paul's medical bills. It's one thing if Peter and Paul and 5,000,000 other people agree to pool a little bit of money to pay for those unlucky enough to need it, because that's voluntary.

It's an individual's responsibility to pay their own bills, one way or another. You CAN buy your own insurance. I know that, because I did it for years. And I was one of those contributing to others who needed it when I didn't. Now, I'm insured by my wife's employer, and the millions of other people insured (or reinsured, look that up if you don't know what it is) by the same company, or family of companies.

 

The biggest obstacle to single payer health care, is before the ink is dry they will unionize it and use that power to do much more damage than Biden is doing now to gut our energy sector because someone told him it was a good idea. There is an entire underclass of Americans who derive their power from the democrats and hate the middle class.

 

Not sure about 'employer based' as I havn't priced it, but I save about as much every month as 'Obamacare' used to cost before the mandate was lifted. If I was on that, I would be living paycheck to paycheck and less able to afford some of the more nutritious foods I eat a lot of, like grass-fed beef.

 

Are you talking about private employer based health insurance as only being 80/20? The plan I’m on has a $2,500 out-of-pocket limit. Covered 100% after that.

 

Why wouldn’t you have priced out what your employer based insurance would be? Odd you haven’t bothered to do that. Something doesn’t sound right.

 

Thats pretty, now what's your monthly premium..

 

$45.75/wk

 

Better than I could do working top shelf jobs in my time. No worries now, Medicare, plus supplement, about the same I think.. I don't pay much attention to it anymore; I suppose I should

 

Well, for starters, airlift can occur in urban areas as well as rural areas, but that depends on the situation from which the airlift would need to be utilized. And yes, it can get expensive as in this case.

But health insurance is not tied to employment. If you are disabled, you can obtain health insurance from Medicare. That is not based on employment, is it? If you are employed, you can obtain health insurance from your employer if the employer offers health insurance. Many small businesses do not offer health insurance to their employees. From this link, it says, "Fifty-nine percent of firms offer health benefits to at least some of their workers, similar to the percentage last year. The likelihood of offering health benefits increase with firm size; only 49% of firms with 3 to 9 workers offer coverage, while virtually all firms with 1,000 or more workers offer coverage to at least some workers." 59% is a majority, but it also shows that health insurance is not exactly tied to employment, is it. It is the easiest way to get health insurance though, which is a different argument. And this only applies if you do have group health insurance under employment per federal and state law. COBRA does not apply to individual plans.

Furthermore, in order to get Cobra insurance, one would already need to have had group health insurance with the company and second, COBRA only applies if you are let go from employment from that company. It can include if you quit or if you are terminated. But that is a very specific situation though. Depending on the employer and depending on the group health care will depend on what your coverage is.

Yes, I can with this link. About 57% are nonprofit, including hospital systems such as Baylor and Methodist where I live, and another 18% are state and local, such as Parkland and Clemons Hospital where I live. Second, to be nonprofit means that they have a 501c filing with the federal government. Nonprofits, like Baylor, means that they can still make a "profit" but its primary goal for profit is different from that a for-profit hospital. And any state/local government hospital is also nonprofit by definition.

 

You kinda do if you use a credit card or a loan to purchase a firearm.

 

I don’t see an issue with it at all and prefer it over state ran health insurance all day long. I do believe that the government does not have the constitutional authority for state ran Healthcare either.

 

Based on the bolded text (emphasis mine), I would say there's a good chance you yourself had something to do with getting let go, or at the very least saw, or should have seen it coming. You should have gotten a new job.

But you made a choice not to.

Whose choice was that? When my wife had several jobs to choose from, we chose a lower salary at a non-profit hospital (and yes, most of them are) simply because of the health insurance they offered. Mind you, this was many years before I got hurt, and the idea of me being a cripple who couldn't even change my own panties without help was laughable, but we still chose to be prepared. Just in case.

You did not. Your failure to plan ahead does not make it the responsibility of your neighbors and many millions of others who don't even know you exist to take care of you, or your wife. Don't get me wrong, I'm very sympathetic, especially for your wife

And yes, I do believe there are non-employment plans available like you described because I had and paid for one for myself for a good decade, give or take. Now, that was before Obamacare came in and f-ed up the whole industry, so you may be right, if so, now you know whom to blame for that. Aside from yourself. Either way, "Cobra" has always been a joke, and way more expensive for a person that just got canned than buying a policy from the market would be.

You should have planned better. Because we did, my $1,000,000 hospital bill cost us $200, and my insurance company just bought me a $27,000 wheelchair. Now, it's criminal that my wheelchair cost $27,000, it's nice, but it's not that damn nice.

The only thing keeping you from a full auto surplus M60 is money, a clean record, and a $350 license. If your record is good, it's easy to get, it just takes months and months. Oh, and when I said money, lots and lots and lots of it. More than several years of your Cobra would have been.

There is, thankfully, no "collective" in our society. I know many people seem to want it, but history has proven many times over that they do not work.

 

I paid 0.002% of my million-dollar hospital bill, and that's assuming it was only a mill. I think it was more like 1.4. Yes, we have great insurance. But your statement is simply not true, and I'm living proof of it.

 

Which has nothing to do with general welfare=healthcare.

 

There is an interesting gap in how the government covers medical. If your income is below a certain value that scales on the size of your family members then you qualify for mostly subsidized coverage. If you're old enough then you qualify for medicare coverage, and as you point out, also if you qualify for disability. But folks in-between retirement and making more than the lower income thresholds are on their own and the costs of many common medical services can be exorbitant. Although technically your argument is correct, for the majority of people in the US our health insurance is most certainly tied to employment and equivalent coverage is not practically available for an affordable cost. I assume this is a significant factor contributing to people being fed up with our government, even if it may be the case that some of these same people buy into the better dead than red current version of McCarthyism that includes a whole bunch of false narratives about "socialized" medicine.

Is UHC a non-profit? Is Humana a non-profit? Is Aetna a non-profit? How about Blue-Cross Blue-Shield?

Are you asserting that because Baylor, Methodist and MD Anderson are non-profit hospitals that they are affordable or will even admit a person without sufficient health insurance?

I never said anything about cobra being anything other than you describe it. I merely pointed out that although there is a law that provides folks with the ability to continue their coverage after leaving a job for whatever reason - it is prohibitively expensive and I doubt that many people choose to cover it on their own.

 

You're asserting that the people I mention who claim that our ability to own guns demonstrates our freedom are the same people that also talk about abortion as freedom, but oppose females with guns?

I think I might be misunderstanding what you're intent is with this idea....

 

That's an excellent plan sounds like to me. How much do you think it would cost you to continue it under Cobra if say, you decided to quit and take a year off?

 

You're talking about a mixed bag of health insurance companies. There is no one BC/BS company, there are several, but they all have licensing to use the BC/BS brand. In CA, it's different. Anthem BC is for profit, but Blue Shield of CA is non-profit.

The rest, UHC, Humana, Cigna, and Aetna are all for profit.