Heck, I have a credit card with a $50,000 limit that I kept for true medical emergencies. It wouldn’t have covered any major surgeries.
ETA: “Kind of” creepy? I think we’re well into full-blown psychic detective creepiness.
That’s not how I started off, you shit-brained mouthbreather. You were the first one to throw out insults in our exchange in this thread, in your typical smarmy fashion.
Again, you are evidently far too retarded to even understand what you yourself say.
When someone says that “more X happens because of more Y”, where both X and Y are continuous variables, in statistical terms they are asserting that a direct relationship exists between X and Y.
In the case of your argument [sic], X = “having children” and Y = “government programs”. If this were true, then birth rates would be highest in those countries with advanced social welfare programs. However, as I showed earlier, the US has a birth rate 39.6% higherthan the European Union - which has 200 million more people than the US at a similar level of economic development, though with far more extensive social programs, including UHC.
This is in fact evidence of an inverse relationship between X and Y, where “less X happens because of more Y”. Looking at the rest of the world, it can be seen that the world’s highest birth rates are found in the most impoverished and desperate nations.
Here’s a lovely slice of disingenuity and imbecility. You’re being disingenuous when you say, “I haven’t said that welfare cheats are bringing down the Republic”, because while you didn’t use that exact phrasing, you certainly have expended an inordinate amount of energy denouncing “welfare cheats” as being both a major cause of present fiscal difficulties as well as a reason for the unfeasability of UHC in the US.
You’re being an imbecile when you assert that the fact that UHC works in other countries means nothing with regards to whether or not it would work in the US. It may not be conclusive evidence in favor of UHC in the US, but it certianly indicates a likelihood that it would. Put another way, if UHC didn’t work in those other nations, are you telling me that you wouldn’t take that as evidence to support your position?
Why can’t you at least be honest and admit that you’re against UHC, no matter what evidence and arguments are produced to support its passage?
The people who are born here might possibly be a “big tax drain” (I don’t accept that that is necessarily the case), but even if they are, they’re US citizens and thus legally equal members of the same society of which you also belong (despite your juvenile protestations).
And again, you continue to show more of your trademark ignorance here. Try googling “illegal immigration Europe” some time before you spout off about why UHC wouldn’t work in the US. Spain and Italy, especially, have severe problems with illegal immigration, and yet still manage to provide UHC for their inhabitants.
There is a story on CNN right now that addresses the issues of this thread: Should people help the uninsured? It starts with a woman who was laid off and then found out she had breast cancer. She’s currently $20,000 in debt and can’t pay for medical care. Anyone want to guess who pays? No doubt this story will be repeated throughout the day, or you can probably find it on the CNN website at some point. (I’d provide links, but I’m working and need to get back to the program I’m writing.)
I think the main disconnect is selfish cuntsocks who would kill the program even if it could be demonstrated that the vast majority of people on it were there due to real and unavoidable conditions.
I’m constantly amazed that there are so many assholes who would, quite literally, prefer that people die rather than have access to decent medical care.
There is NO WAY those against UHC want us deciding the issue based on who comes off as more honest, sincere, and likable.
The ugliness of curlcoat, Carol Stream, Crafter Man, and Rand Rover alone could make an entire continent vote against their wishes just out of spite. That’s how bad you all come across.
So, you really really really REALLY don’t want this to be about personalities.
This must be the best you all can do when it comes to persuasiveness. This is your good side! Hilarious.
You don’t know from big medical bills. My dad spent a month in the hospital - most of it in intensive care - while they tried to keep him from dying from complications of an infection in his colon.* The total hospital bill was over $500,000. That’s half a million dollars. Could you put that on your credit cards? I didn’t think so.
*He takes good care of himself and had no reason to anticipate this crisis. It was a surprise to everyone, including his doctor.
This is the exact problem with curlcoat: there are things in heaven and earth that are not dreamt of in her philosophy. To her, $10,000 is enough buffer for an emergency illness or injury. In her world, no one should ever have to ask for help for anything from the government (except her). If you get sick or hurt and can’t afford treatment, it’s your fault. If you go bankrupt, it must be because you were a profligate spender, and couldn’t be due to misfortunes outside your control. She has zero compassion and her imagination only conjures scenarios wherein the person suffering is to blame for that suffering and/or is a lazy scammer or illegal immigrant or pregnant teen. No amount of cites, statistics, personal anecdote, or analogy can penetrate her utterly solipsistic insistence that the world is as she believes it to be.
This is why, as Idle Thoughts keeps pointing out, we will never convince her. She is immune to reality. I’m not sure why she is this way. Maybe she’s a troll. Maybe she just lives a very sheltered life, tinged with paranoia about the world full of people outside who are trying to get something for nothing. In any case, I highly doubt anything we say will have any effect.
Fortunately, she doesn’t vote, so she’s just so much annoying, ignorant chatter on the internet.
I only made up up through page 25 of this excellent cross-section of the dope:
Has anyone yet had the decency to call poor DocCathode an indolent and morally bankrupt leech sucking from the parched veins of our beleaguered upper class?
Hey, Rand, we’re taking back our land. No more eminent domain, so you have to pay a toll for every person’s property you cross. At a density well over 1 per mile, that should be interesting.
And that school where you got your education? You need to pay for its construction yourself, now. Actually, all of them from kindergarten through grad school. After all, you are a proud alumnus, right?
Also, if you are ever the victim of a crime, you are on your own.
No, I mean you’re on your own. We have cops for us, because we supported UHC. But none of them work for you. Suck it up & take the loss like a man.
Randy bailed on this mess back on page 11. Guess he’s glad all his pals are doing his cause so much good!
Woah! When was there an explosion of posts? Last I saw (yesterday) this thread was only in the high teens of pages. What the fuck happened?
curlcoat happened.
This was already explained to you. If you are uninsured and have an emergency hospitalization for a life-threatening illness/injury, and meet certain, more relaxed income standards, Medical Assistance will cover the cost of that hospitalization and care and procedures performed during that hospitalization only. This coverage is date restricted, beginning at the time you are brought in through the ER (a requirement to qualify) and ending at your time of discharge. No follow-up care is covered, no medications are covered, no physical therapy or rehabilitative services are covered.
It’s a one-shot deal to try to prevent people from dying at home because they don’t go to ERs when their appendices are about to burst or, as in my case, their pancreas is inflamed and eating itself alive, or they’re vomiting up blood or having grande mal seizures, but know that going to a hospital could mean tens of thousands in dollars of bills that they cannot pay and/or would devastate their family or future or both.
If you want to be covered for anything else, you must go through the (time-intensive, exhaustive and invasive) process of applying for the normal program of Medical Assistance. As a single, childless person, you will not qualify, regardless of income, regardless of reliance upon other assistance programs (TANF, food stamps, Section 8, etc.) unless you have been officially labeled as disabled or have some (but, oddly, not all) forms of cancer.
Not if we’re lucky.
-Joe
Doesn’t work for you either, since I wasn’t talking about genetically transmitted disease.
Sitting back and expecting someone else to take care of it is irresponsible. How many people blither into baby-making without a clue as to what they would do if said baby had something wrong with it? How many decide they “can’t afford” COBRA when they get laid off, as they drive about in their $40,000 SUV? Or don’t think twice about carrying thousands of dollars in credit card debt at all times? These are all irresponsible choices that people make every day, and just because it is a medical issue that finally tips them over the edge doesn’t mean that there is necessarily anything wrong with healthcare in the US.
I have never said anything remotely close to that. What I have said, and what you willfully misinterpret, is that it is extremely irresponsible to expect that the taxpayer will cover all of your (generic your) medical expenses if you have done zip to try to pay for/plan for them yourself.
The (new) topic with the most replies became the “I hate children” one only because she posted 340+ posts in it alone. Most of it was people arguing with her throughout the whole thing. And she still got the last word in that topic. She’ll probably have the last word in this one too, becauseshe never stops replying as long as people are replying to her.
ETA Referring to this thread. Don’t read unless you have a hell of a lot of time to spare and a good forehead protector from how many times you’ll be slapping it.
But I don’t understand. She got a Medicaid benefit but she was not ON Medicaid? Explain how this is even possible.
(I understood all the previous posts to this effect prior to this one–I’m just pretending to be a clueless, heartless, thoughtless, citeless, brainless right-wing nutjob, or do I repeat myself?, in order to expedite this thread and produce the umpteenth explanation of this simple point. I think umpteen is the number we’re all striving for, isn’t it?)
You’ll have to point out where you have mistakenly decided that was hypocrisy.
How many indeed. Do you have any stats? Or are you assuming the worst of everyone again?
Read this article and tell me if you would be able to “plan ahead” for a type of cancer whose medications cost $10,000 per month. PER MONTH. One in four cancer patients have spent all of their savings. Why? Because, for instance, late stage cancer treatments can cost $25,000 out of pocket.
I hope that you and your husband have planned for such a contingency. A year of meds could cost you $120,000 (if you live that long). You do have that saved up, right? Right? I hope it doesn’t happen to you, but I fear that the only way you’d learn some compassion is if it did, and you were forced into poverty or bankruptcy through no fault of your own.
Who said anything about “expecting”? No one “expects” to get cancer, or to find out that their health insurance won’t pay for all the treatments. You can plan all you want, but I don’t know too many people whose planning was adequate to predict an expense like that. Try for a fucking minute putting yourself in someone else’s place, then read your own words and see how utterly compassionless and divorced from reality they are.
Fat chance.
He pigeonholes people behind the Orange Curtain. You pigeonhole him as a one of those narrow-minded people from that area who pigeonholes other people. And so it goes. But I don’t expect you to recognize your own hypocrisy. If you could, your post count would be significantly lower.