Bullshit. I don’t know anyone who has $26K to throw down for a routine procedure, and my friends are all employed middle-class. If you can’t see why people get the impression you’ve got the same mindset as the idle rich, it’s these kind of shitty judgmental statements you make.
Also, Amex has to be paid off by the end of the billing period, so it’s hardly true to say it “has no limit”, except in theory.
And bear in mind that if Curl were to use her credit cards to cover her medical expenses and that were enough to drive her into bankruptcy, it would only prove that it is credit cards that cause people to go bankrupt and not medical expenses.
I know. I know! I really do. It’s just… it’s like picking at a scab. You know you shouldn’t. You know no good will come of it. But it feels so good when you first start scratching. And then, OW! MOTHERFUCKER! You ripped it off and now you’re bleeding again, and now you’re stuck with this bleeding wound that should have been healed up by now, but NO, you just HAD to keep picking at it, didn’t you?
Henceforth when I am tempted to reply to The Crazy, aka curlcoat, I will just poke myself with a sharp fork instead. It will likely be just as effective if not more so.
Especially when, IIRC, leander lives in Australia. Or was it New Zealand?
So what your saying is that no one should ever have a child unless they have $1,00,00 in cash savings and a fully wheelchair accessible domicile “just in case”?
How many people driving a 10 year old Chevy that belches smoke when they’re laid off and find out that, even if they wanted to get COBRA they can’t because they simply don’t have that much money?
Not everyone has credit card debt. For instance, I have ZERO credit card debt. I haven’t had credit card debt in… oh… nearly 20 years now.
What’s wrong with the US system is that we have 45-50 million people who don’t have access to the systemb saving for he ER. That’s 1 in 6 of us.
Presumably that means Fear Itself makes less than 300K per year. Seriously, this is a problem for you to follow? Is your disability status due to physical problems or just stupidity?
Numberz is hard. Big daddy hubby do all da ciferin’.
-Joe
This is what’s funniest about curlcoat’s arguments. Anybody who lives in reality knows your scenario is about a million times more common than her “driving around in a $40K Hummer with no COBRA coverage”, but she’s bought into the whole culture of fear douchebags like Glenn Beck use to rile up their followers.
Will there be people who would abuse the system? No doubt. But there are people who drive recklessly, and yet we continue to pay for roads. I’m truly baffled that some people don’t understand we pay taxes, for the most part, because they sponsor programs that benefit society as a whole.
Actually it IS the responsibility of emergency medical personal to take care of you unless you have gone through the legal steps to declare otherwise. If you don’t want them to do their job then you better have the proper legal documentation easily accessible and visible at all times.
As I said, better have an advance directive on hand, just in case - otherwise you might be subjected to unwanted medical if you should be found unconscious somewhere.
Thank Og we’ve progressed…well, at least some of us have.
Sucks to be you - yay for us!
No… some of them worked for the mob. So, did you work for the mob, or just beat up union guys?
But… why not? There’s all that FREE STUFF you can get!
Look at it this way: she had a Medicaid Funded Medical Emergency Event. But she was never on the permanent roll of Medicaid recipients and nothing outside of that hospitalization was covered. She didn’t get a Medicaid card, she didn’t get the “Welcome” packet that newly enrolled Medicaid beneficiaries get, and so on. It’s semantics, was she “on Medicaid” for the several days she was in the hospital? Sure you can say that, but it requires changing the understanding of what most people think of when you say that someone is “on Medicaid” quite significantly.
From personal experience, I was also “on Medicaid” in this same fashion when I had surgery in 2003. When I had a complication of that surgery 26 days later, I was not covered. That was 3 days in an intermediate medical unit, one CT scan, daily blood tests and thankfully, regular applications of Dilaudid (for the pain) and Phenergan (for when the Dilaudid made me want to barf up my toenails) and a total bill of just under $12,000. When I had a further complication 6 months after that, I was similarly not covered. Same deal, same unit (same room), CT, bloodwork, pain and nausea meds, this time for 8 days plus an ambulance ride. $42,700 and change. I’m still paying offf those bills today; ironically, had I not been turned down for pre-existing conditions, the only decent private insurance plan that I could find was financially out of my reach because of that medical debt.
You specifically referenced children conceived via IVF being less healthy than their intercourse-conceived counterparts. Unless you think that having impaired fertility means that the parents are terribly sick people passing on all sorts of illnesses, the logical interpretation of your comment was that IVF in itself created less healthy children. There is no evidence of either.
All insurance plans, then, are irresponsible. Because that is how insurance works, you pay in, and if you get ill, especially if you become significantly ill, you receive much more in benefit than you have ever contributed. You’re relying upon the healthy people covered by your plan, who aren’t using the dollars that they’re putting in, to pay for your care. Of course, by buying into that plan, you are also agreeing to take care of other people, many of whom will act in an “irresponsible” manner in one way or another.
But you have failed to demonstrate how either a.) a public healthcare plan for which people will pay premiums; or b.) putting strict limits on how insurers can treat individuals with pre-existing conditions; somehow amounts to anyone “sitting back and expecting someone else to take care of it.” It seems that you’re operating under some understanding that the public option being spoken of is going to be “free” in the same way Medicaid or Medicare are. That’s just simply false.
Probably quite a few. But honesty, how much planning is ever enough? The median U.S. household income in 2008 was $50,233. A week in the hospital, especially in a NICU or a pediatric intensive care is going to rival that. Are you really suggesting that people should have several years worth of income saved up before they have children? You do realize that this would mean that more children would be born with genetic illnesses because of advanced maternal age, because younger, healthier people who should be having babies, medically, wouldn’t be able to afford them, by your standard? It’s not realistic.
This is why people have insurance, and why those of us who don’t have it want it so desperately. There is no way that vast majority of U.S. households will ever be able to have financial solvency sufficient to pay for a significant medical event without incurring significant and often crippling debt.
When I couldn’t afford COBRA, which would have been $1,700 a month, I was driving a five year old economy car. I was getting unemployment totalling $948 a month. As it was I ate through my savings in the 8 months that I was unemployed making up the difference between unemployment and my monthly bills, and I didn’t have a family to support and was fortunate enough that halfway through that period, paying rent became optional.
No, those things don’t necessarily mean that there is anything wrong with healthcare in the U.S.
The fact that there are people who are working hard at professional jobs, full time jobs, and still aren’t offered insurance, and cannot afford private insurance means that something is wrong with healthcare.
The fact that insurance companies pay people to do nothing but deny claims made by people who have happily and willingly paid in every month, finding the most esoteric and arcane (and often untruthful) reasons to do so means that something is wrong with healthcare.
The fact that someone can be in an “in network” hospital and can be assigned a doctor and be told by the insurer that their services would be covered only to have the insurer change their minds later and leave the family holding a huge bill (see MsWhatsit’s story of her son’s NICU stay) after the fact means that something is wrong with healthcare.
The fact that we spend a larger percentage of our GDP on healthcare than any other developed nation and have the second worst infant and maternal death rates amongst developed nations means that something is wrong with healthcare.
The fact that people are denied coverage for pre-existing conditions for which they require absolutely no medical care and incur absolutely no medical expense whatsoever means that something is wrong with healthcare.
The fact that families are going bankrupt, people with insurance are going bankrupt, because of medical debt, means that something is wrong with healthcare.
And you keep coming back to this, but you’ve not given a single example of who is trying to do this, and what it has to do with the plan working its way through Congress right now.
As noted above, $26,000 is more than half the median household income. For single people, median income is even lower. For various minorities, median income is lower. $26,000 is around or slightly more than the average individual’s median annual income. So yes, having an unexpected expense equal to what someone earns in a year is significant. It may not be all that pushes someone into bankruptcy on its own, but $26,000 for a significant emergency medical event is more on par with a fall that breaks a few bones than anything that requires surgery or ongoing care. $26,000 is mild. Maybe the privilege of having an HMO/PPO through your husband’s work has blinded you to the fact but medical procedures are really damned expensive.
I don’t know…I’ve seen crazy before. I’ve seen, heard, been around, associated with many kinds and types of crazy. And even crazy folk tend to question and even doubt their beliefs sometimes, especially when in the face of others pointing out why they’re wrong.
Curlcoat doesn’t strike me as crazy at all. I don’t think ANYONE can be so crazy as to actually say they’re right and everyone else is wrong in face of everyone saying “you’re wrong” and showing cites proving they’re wrong.
She strikes me more like a person trolling around either for attention, reactions, or both.
It’s like
Person A: This is true
Person B: You’re wrong. Here’s proof
Person C: You’re wrong. Here’s proof
Person D: You’re wrong. Here’s proof
Person E: You’re wrong. Here’s proof
Person F: You’re wrong. Here’s proof
Person G: You’re wrong. Here’s proof
Person A: No, I am NOT wrong, you’re all the ones who are wrong…and I’m not going to look at all of your silly cites of proof, I’m already right, so if it says anything different then the cite is lying.
Yeah, that’s not crazy. Nobody is that dense. : p I just can’t believe it.
I think that’s someone playing a part on a message board. A made up part to rile people up and create trainwrecks out of many, many threads (which she has, this is about seven or eight now). I think she’s playing a part of “I am going to say I’m right NO MATTER WHAT…and most importantly, I am NEVER GOING TO GIVE UP OR STOP REPLYING to a topic once I start in it…UNTIL I GET THE LAST WORD.”
Her history seems to support my theory.
So if I demand that your taxes go up, why is that my problem? Are you threatening me?
I make less than $300,000 a year; my taxes won’t go up. Why is it my problem if your taxes go up to pay for universal health care?
Try to keep up.
“Could be”. You want me to sign onto a multi billion dollar experiment based on “could be”.
Seriously, this is all a joke, right?
You wont have to pay for it stupid. Just sit back and live your worthless, unexamined life and the smart people will make things better for you, kay?
No, it would be the responsibility of his parents. You know, those people who decide to bring yet another life into the world, without needing to ask permission of anyone? And now you want us all to pay for the healthcare of all these people without asking too.
None of which answers the questions, but what else is new.
I am not supported by taxpayers, I am supported by my husband and the “investment” I was forced to make for 38 years. I am nothing like those who live off the government for most of their lives. And I certainly have never demanded some service that others will have to foot the bill for.
You don’t vote, so it doesn’t really matter what you think, does it? You also don’t pay federal taxes. And you haven’t responded to any of the scenarios I’ve posted for your consideration. So really, who cares if you “sign on”? You’re a non-participant in every meaningful sense… unless, of course, one day you need help with your health care expenses…
No. It has nothing to do with the subject at hand and I am tired of you demanding I prove everything I say. If you think that Arizona and Texas provide the same amount of free stuff to illegals as California does, you can go ahead and find the cites.
Me unhappy? Me, whose only comment is that I am tired of paying so many taxes to support people who cannot be bothered to be responsible. Not you who is throwing about insults and accusations, making up stories and completely ignoring any logic? No, hon, I am quite happy. Despite all the pain and limitations I live with, I have a good life with a great husband, and the satisfaction of knowing that I have done the best that I possibly could over the years. And no, we are not even close to rich, no matter what you want to believe.
Which of course isn’t true, but your reality won’t allow that there are any shades of grey in the world. No, you are all black and white - either I fully support a UHC for all without question, or I must be evil.
Someday you will grow a brain and realize the big difference between getting back something a person paid into, and just sucking money out of the system without giving back.
You are completely ignoring the fact that many of the people who need help are in those circumstances, not due to irresponsibility, but misfortune. It is insulting and illogical of you to insist that all of them are just leeches, in the face of so many cites, examples, and explanations to the contrary.
I hope by “investment” you don’t mean Social Security. Those taxes weren’t saved up for you; they went directly to people who were getting SS benefits at that time. Likewise, any SS money you currently receive comes from people who are currently paying taxes, so you are, by definition, “supported by taxpayers.”