You think it's funny, but it's not. This is how things go down when you live without health insurance, especially in a Red state: Where the states stand on Medicaid expansion (advisory.com) Hospital dumping too. Yes, these patients have issues, which could have been prevented if they could afford to see a doctor.
Oh well. John McCain tried to warn the dems that geography was going to matter if they pushed obamacare through as was. Geography now matters. They could have avoided this. They chose not to because the election was over and Obama won.
I heard that Obamacare was intentionally supposed to be a broken temporary measure because it wasn't supposed to last. And Hillary Clinton was supposed to ride into the presidency in 2016 and save us all with single-payer healthcare. Well, it's the best argument yet to get Medicare for all up and running.
Well medicare for all is fine if you actually fix medicare first. The problem right now is so few people will take it or limit the number of medicare patients they do take because of the piss-poor reimbursements and red tape that comes with it.
There is a fix to Medicare and it's called Medicare Advantage. And the government pays out more for Medicare Advantage plans than they do for regular Medicare. But, I want a single-payer healthcare system so that everyone who needs medical care gets it for free or at a low, low cost.
Medicare advantage plans are done by private companies and are not uniform. That isn't a fix. It perpetuates the issues we already have.
I'm for whatever system you want, as long as I don't have to pay into it. I eat fresh organic foods and study the ingredients of anything processed, exercise and suppliment with essential vitamins. Part of the reason I can afford to do that is because I'm not helping to pay for dialysis for substance abusers or diabetes treatments for professional cheeto connoisseurs. And ya I know that not everyone with expensive health problems is at fault for their own health problems, but the very large number of people who are are the ones that ruin compulsory socialized medicine for everyone else, and making it 'free' (to them) isn't going to improve anything, it will make the problem worse. I'm also fully aware this might lead to me being that guy tossed out on the sidewalk in a gown. That's my choice to take that risk, no one else's, and no one else is at fault if it happens to me.
And those private companies get reimbursed by the government! The government pays more to those private companies than it pays for original Medicare. It's the biggest, largely unknown scandal in government healthcare!
I don't know if you're so young that you think you're invincible or so old that you're risking your nest egg, but catastrophic healthcare problems are waiting for everyone. It's time to start paying for the big insurance numbers now since that's the system we find ourselves in. Be prepared!
Well thats not bad advice, but I'm more interested in whether you think people should be legally compelled to pay for the big insurance numbers, or not.
Those on the Left want to make insurance seem like an all or nothing issue. The fact is, there are numerous laws, both state and federal, that limit the type of health insurance a person can buy by requiring that insurance to cover a long list of things. And the Left only want to keep adding to that list. This of course adds to the cost of insurance. The main point of insurance, or what insurance was originally for, is to cover emergencies, rare situations where healthcare costs are so unexpectedly high that you cannot afford to pay. If you can cut the need to have insurance out for the more routine and smaller expenses, the cost of that healthcare could become less expensive, in theory, because you have cut out the middleman. But in the U.S. there's another factor too, and that is total lack of price transparency or consumers having any familiarity with complex medical costs. So insurance companies fulfill a role of dealing with that, acting as an expert advocate to keep prices down and making agreements with healthcare providers in advance. Perhaps something should and needs to be done. But we should think carefully about what the solution should be.
I don't know. I haven't been in the position where I make enough income that I feel the full weight of having to pick between paying for insurance or putting food on the table. I will tell you, however, that I think people should be put onto government programs if they qualify. Insurance is the investment one makes into not going bankrupt. And you and I both, as we go into our 40s, need to make every effort into not going bankrupt. It's as vital an investment choice as picking what investments to make to save for retirement. Getting good insurance is one of the recommendations for middle age. That said, if we get a universal healthcare system in this country, I think that everyone should be required to apply. Just because that means fair and equal treatment in healthcare. You know the mandatory insurance requirement was added to the Obamacare legislation as a pair with single-payer healthcare, and I was so mad when they took single-payer out but not the insurance requirement.
Under the current situation, Doctors charge a high price and insurance companies pay a fraction of this. And anyone without insurance pays the full high price, which is wrong but necessary for doctors to get fair compensation from insurance companies. I admit that careful thought is required to fix the healthcare system. Politicians haven't figured it out yet, which is why the Wikipedia page for Medicare for All Act - Wikipedia is not recording any recent developments.
That is in large part very true. But maybe we need to find some alternative solutions to this. Surely insurance is not the only possible solution to this problem? There must be some other ideas of things government could do.
Having a universal price list on medication and healthcare procedures is one option for bringing the cost of ordinary care down, but there's still the problem that at any moment a catastrophic health emergency can happen and be up and away expensive beyond the reach of mere mortals. You could try to beef up other insurance to try and protect your assets. Umbrella insurance, for example. But then you're just shifting weight from one insurance to another. And you need higher insurance coverage to qualify anyway as I just learned while I was upping my auto insurance, after starting this topic, because I was spooked. You might argue that this is a job for health savings accounts, but I learned from my run-in with schizophrenia that no mere mortal can afford an emergency healthcare crisis. I received my insurance statement that showed $300,000, but fortunately, I had Medicaid at the time, and it wasn't a bill. I had just gotten on insurance thanks to Obamacare. I really lucked out.
I am thinking maybe something like a hybrid health provider plan, where hospitals kind of act as an HMO, but there are still a voluntary list of government set prices for procedures. People would choose the hospitals that comply with the list of government set prices, and then they would pay a membership fee to that health provider network to pay for the difference, the price of this membership fee would not be set by the government. I think that might be a very good idea. It would allow the free market to operate but still create a great deal of price transparency and keep prices reasonable. A hospital could easily charge more for healthcare, but that increase in cost would be reflected in a simple membership fee. So it would be easy for consumers to see which hospitals cost more.
Obamacare was designed by an equally represented committee in the Senate with similar attention in the House. Like many bills, features got removed in order to find a bill that could pass congress. I'd also point out that Obamacare is NOT what Obama wanted. Our system isn't set up to give presidents the legislation that they want.
Of course they should. But that stubborn is only a fraction of the people. How many heart attacks can you pay out of pocket?
If a driver hits you, breaks your pelvis to pebbels, tears your kidney in two, and leaves you with a bleeding aorta, you will not be a "consumer" that compares prices and costs,.
But someone will pay. You won't be left in the lurch. Your attitude reminds me of the anti-vaxers. All the blah blah blah, leave me alone and then they got covid and it was wha wha wha, look after me for weeks in hospital (on somebody's dime). Straight out selfishness.
I don't require that anyone pays my medical bills ...or treat me if I'm unable to reimburse them. Providers would be completely justified in tossing people who cant pay out on the street, including me, not that I'd ever show up for treatment that I can't pay for. Don't blame me for the actions of other people ...or for the actions you imagine other people must be engaged in
You say that now presumably in good health but how do you know you won't change your mind? Even committed people have a habit of behaving quite differently when it's life and death. It is a moot scenario anyhow. Very doubtful that providers or hospitals will just toss you on the street in an emergency. I guess you can always refuse to pay because you didn't ask for it. However, you're still pushing the burden to someone else while pretending to be independent. I'm not trying to have a go at you here. I actually work in allied health in the US and these scenarios pop up occasionally. This is not a fiction.
Who set the precedent that anyone but me is required to fork out the cash for my triple bypass or my chemo? Not me. If I become desperate and decide my burdens are society's burdens, society should by all rights drop me off at my own doorstep. Anything more than that is charity that I have no right to demand. No different than if we find out that an infusion of a pound of ionic gold increases lifespan by 100 years, its not up to the taxpayer to thus buy everyone a pound of gold.
