“Rich people do it all the time.”
-Plagiarized from another thread and poster.
My state doesn’t have a state exchange. My income is right around the magic $95k figure (huh, I guess I’m rich) where I can get no subsidies. When I looked on the healthsherpa website, the only platinum plan available to me would cost me $1,458 per month, or $17,496 per year. That would be 18 percent of my income before paying any deductibles and copays. (Affordable, my ass.) The figures I quoted above were for bronze and silver plans, not even gold ones, with pretty significant deductibles and copays.
Yes.
Regards,
Shodan
I believe I’m paying less than 10% for a gold plan with my employer, but if I added my Wife I’d be out 25% of my take home pay.
How about this plan: We take the insurance CEO that makes the most money, and his medical CEO counterpart, and crucify them in a public square? 
In what sense do rich people spend other people’s money?
I assume you don’t mean they spend money the government didn’t take away from them.
Regards,
Shodan
If I were the bank CEO, I’d say, “We’ll pay for your treatment. You don’t have to resort to this. But by the way, chemo does some awful things to your body.”
But if many other cancer patients came in, I’d have to say, “Sorry, we can’t pay for everyone.” Even though it would probably cause negative media coverage.
Banks being banks, they will probably offer her a loan at 25% below their normal rate.
:rolleyes:
Of course there is. But in some countries (i.e. those with “socialized” healthcare) that bound isn’t decided by whether or not you can afford health insurance.
In some countries (i.e. those with “socialized” healthcare), the answer would be “yes”.
Well, now you’re just being silly.
I’m not particularly wealthy, but I’m making somewhat more than my country’s median income, and so does my wife. We pay 30-35% of our gross income in taxes, and that includes medical services and a basic public pension.
For that, we get primary physician appointments when needed for a copay of about 40 USD, free hospital, subsidies on vital medications like BP meds, heart meds, insulin etc., and we’re refunded medical-related expenses - excluding non-prescripiton meds, but including all copays - above about 400 USD per person and year.
I’m quite comfortable with the fact that someone else is spending my tax money in a system that provides healthcare for all citizens, including those who don’t have an income. For that contribution to society, I get free healthcare if and when I need it, like:
[ul]
[li]When I had acute appendicitis, my total cost for consultation and operation was 0. I also had no paycut while on sick leave.[/li][li]When my son came down with Bell’s Palsy and spent two days at the hospital for tests (granted most of the time was spent waiting between tests and examinations, as it was on the weekend and the initial examination didn’t raise any serious concern for immediate tretment), our total costs were 0.[/li][li]Our total cost for examination, MR scans and one day’s hospitalization for my son who fell from a tree and hit his head rather seriously was 0.[/li][li]The cost for us for having a total of three children in a well-equipped and well-staffed hospital was 0.[/li][li]My parents’ expenses for my dad’s heart attack a few decades ago and his fairly recent cancer operation with subsequent radiation therapy has been 0.[/li][/ul]
On the other hand, non-vital treatments are put a bit back in the line and aren’t exactly prioritized by the public system. When I had a vasectomy some years ago, I could wait a few months for an appointment at a time which I had absolutely no control over, or I could pay for it myself and have it done at a private clinic when I could fit it into my schedule. I chose the latter option.
I’m curious, does that 30-35% in income taxes include what we here in the US would refer to as “local, state and federal taxes”? Workers in the US pay three levels of income taxes to their local municipality as well as the state and the federal government. We also pay taxes for our pension (social security) system and public health insurance (Medicare). It would not be at all uncommon for a taxpayer making a bit over median income to pay a similar rate as you quote if one included all forms of income tax. Plus, we shell out huge amounts for health insurance, as I’ve posted above.
Believe me, I’m not defending the US health care system. It’s a complete and utter costly mess, both before and after the Affordable Care Act. For me, personally, the ACA has made insurance much more costly. As the president so cavalierly noted, there are winners and losers. Well… it sucks to be a loser, and I will spend a significant portion of my income insuring my family - and paying medical bills on top of that - next year… in addition to all the taxes I pay. For my doctor, he complains about all of the extra red tape necessary to comply with the law.
At this point, I think I would rather have universal health care.
Still, back to the OP… there is no excuse to rob a bank, no matter what your personal problems entail.
Yes, it’s the difference between my gross income and what’s paid into my bank account. However, it’s far from all the tax I pay; we have a sales tax of 25% on both goods and services (14% on food), and we never notice it since all prices are given including tax. In addition, certain goods (cars, gasoline, tobacco, alcohol etc.) carry extra tax.
We have to research the regulations to realize how much of our total tax is national, municipal, or social security. For the average Joe, it’s all lumped together on the tax form.
My knowledge of optimal health care systems is at the same level as that of Joe the Plumber. OTOH, I have a hard time believing that the service the US system provides is proportional to the amount of money you pay for health care, so I’m a firm believer in universal health care. Besides, my political views would probably be regarded as raving socialist on your side of the pond (over here, I’m considered left-center), so I’m fine with a bit of distribution of wealth even if I’m probably contributing more than average to the system.
We will never get that, because the insurance companies won’t make money, and apparently development in the medical system will cease. 
OTOH, you might have less bank robberies that way 
ETA: Srsly, stories like the OP, or about kids selling lemonade to raise money for their dad’s cancer treatment, or about fundraisers to save someone’s life are things that really breaks my heart and almost brings tears to my eyes. IMO, there’s something fundamentally wrong when people can’t afford life-saving treatments. But that’s probably just my bleeding liberal heart talking…
Hers was one of three in our fair city this week, and there has been no mention of the others being ill; they just needed money for drugs.
Because it’s an absolutely terrible way of deciding who deserves to live and who deserves to die, for one. And because it’s an argument in favor of people doing things like robbing banks to survive, or starting revolutions dedicated to killing the rich. It’s both an argument that justifies lethal selfishness, and one that sets the rich up as the enemy of everyone else.
Really, the major reason why the sick get exploited so harshly is because they’re typically too ill to kill their oppressors.
Why? Why is she obligated to go along with the rules of a society that has decided to condemn her to death in the name of selfishness? Why are the rich allowed to be selfish, but not her? Why should she go crawl into a corner and die quietly to make the people who have condemned her to death happy? Why can they kill her for profit, but she’s not allowed to do anything about it?
Well said, Der Trihs.
I can sympathize. I’ve been off my cancer treatments for months now while I argue with my insurance over whether I’ve met my out-of-pocket maximum (I have). In the meantime, I can’t afford the copay for my meds, but I shouldn’t have one at all now. In fact, the copays I’ve already made went on a credit card I’ll have to pay off slowly with interest tacked on.
Never considered crime to pay, though. I’d like to rampage through my insurance company’s offices, but all is do is throw calculators at people.
Well, I don’t have much sympathy based on what is reported in the article. And I’m a healthcare socialist.
However, this woman is receiving treatment at UAMS. UAMS reported over $175 million dollars in charity and unreimbursed care in 2012. They offer prescription assistance and case coordinators to assist patients.
She should have told her doctor or one of the nurses administering her chemo that she can’t afford further treatment. The doctor could have referred her to a case coordinator, and this could’ve been avoided.
Since this woman is seriously ill, putting her in prison only serves to drive up the prison system’s healthcare costs and possibly bring about a lawsuit when that care sucks donkey balls. So I hope that her attorney can make the case that the woman was desperate and didn’t know her options, and get the sentence reduced to house arrest.
I can give a lot of examples about how terrible our healthcare system can be, but this really isn’t a good one.
Wait, that means you don’t need them, right?
Oh no! You shouldn’t have to put treatment on hold.
If you haven’t worked with the hospital’s care coordinators or patient advocates yet, PM me. I might be able to point you in a direction that can get you these meds for little or nothing.
Because people don’t die from not getting a cheeseburger from McDonalds. They can get one from Burger King, or Wendy’s, or make their own.
I don’t know how car parts are priced, but houses are priced based on what houses around you are selling for, and cheeseburgers are priced based on the ingredient cost X3 or X4 (depending on the fanciness of the restaurant) and what the cheeseburgers around you are selling for.
You can’t make free market arguments about medicine, because it’s not a free market. It’s fundamentally not free because people can’t decide to buy it elsewhere and people can’t decide to have a hot dog instead of chemotherapy. Even more than that, the person paying for the cheeseburger is not the person who is going to eat the cheeseburger, and the person paying for the cheeseburger would actually benefit from the person starving to death rather than getting his cheeseburger.
There is no meaningful competition for chemo drugs. There’s no way for Jane Doe to negotiate with the drug company to come down in price. In fact, the largest group of Jane Does (Medicare prescription coverage) is specifically forbidden from negotiating prices by law. It’s ridiculous, and it doesn’t work like that in most other first world countries. There, the drug company says “Ten bazillion dollars” and the national health service says, “nice try, we’ll give you ten bucks” and they end up somewhere in the middle.
I wouldn’t actually be opposed if the drug prices were set by some formula of [(development costs + ingredients) / doses sold] X 300% or something. That would be priced something like a cheeseburger. But the pharm companies don’t even do that. If they did, the price would come down in time, as the development costs were met. But they don’t. Drugs come out expensive and then go UP in price as newer competing drugs come out. This weirdness is partly explained by the fact that doctors generally make a percent off each chemo drug they buy and then sell to the patient’s insurance. So it’s in the doctor’s best interest to chose the more expensive drug. 10% of $5,000 is better than 10% of $1,000. So if your $1,000 drug faces new competition from a $5000 drug, they’ll raise the price on the $1,000 drug to compete. Raise the price…to compete. That’s, like, the *opposite *of free market, supply and demand economics.
And the fact that, in the rare cases when they have lowered the drug due to doctors - not patients, but doctors - refusing to buy it, they HAVE lowered the price, dramatically, just burns even more. It simply shows that the exorbitant first price was a total fiction. A money grab for vastly more money than the drug cost to develop and make - the traditional refuge/excuse for high drug prices. It’s like a mattress store that’s always having a 50% off sale…the only reason the “original price” is so high is that then “50% off” still gets them a tidy profit.
You might find this interesting. The cost of cancer drugs - CBS News
Now…I’m not condoning robbing a bank to pay for your chemo meds. But I do understand the desperation that leads some people to commit crimes to pay for health care, and I do hold pharmaceutical companies and the health insurance industry primarily responsible for that desperation.