When I qualified for MassHealth I did not need to change any of my doctors or hospitals, my out of pocket expenses were near 0, I had access to reduced cost dental care and I wasn’t paying hundreds of dollars a month for it. The health services I used while on Medicaid where among the best in the world, the low end of Boston hospitals outpace some of the best hospitals found in other parts of the country, I wasn’t getting some shitty second hand service because I had Medicaid. Overall, my Medicaid coverage was better than what I have now. There is no option that would grant me similar coverage.
Financially I’m in a much better place now and I’d never want to make so little I qualified for MassHealth again. I just disagree with the notion that it’s worse because it’s free to low income people. I’m certainly not bitter towards people receiving benefits, I’m happy to see my tax dollars are going to a program that actually benefits people who need it.
That’s not how I read it. If the rant was “People are morons when they vote against something that will help people, especially if it hurts the voter as well” then I would agree.
The OP seems more of “I do everything right and have less of something than THOSE people who’ve done everything wrong! Boo Hoo!”
Sort of like the argument “I work 80 hours a week and I have to buy cheap hamburger on sale and THOSE people are buying steaks with my tax dollars! Boo Hoo!”
The OP is pissed because people who “have less education, less marketable skills, no jobs, they don’t pay taxes” have something better than he does as an educated person with a good job. While conveniently forgetting that they are poor enough to receive the very handouts that he is glad the country provides.
Op says, "I’ve consistently voted and been an activist for UHC. I’d happily pay more in taxes for medicare for all. “, and " they’ve done everything they can to destroy UHC and they have better health care than me”.
Take it how you want, but those words pretty much put it into the former category, not the latter. Though I would phrase it as “People are asshole who would vote for something because it would hurt others, even if it hurts themselves.”
The complaint to me, is that they are benefiting from something that they wish to destroy and deny to anyone else, not that they are benefiting from something the OP doesn’t get, though, that’s the insult to injury part that makes it even more frustrating.
Its a little of both. I have friends on medicaid and have no problem with people getting it. It bothers me when people who seek to destroy medicaid and health insurance for others get it though.
I know old people on medicare who think medicare needs to be eliminated, but not until they are dead and don’t need it anymore. They want to pull the ladder up with them, it sucks.
Whether or not Medicaid has copays or deductibles varies by state, and in my state there are two tiers of Medicaid, one which is bare bones and has co-pays and the other requires monthly premiums (it actually has a different name, but essentially that’s what they are) and no deductibles/co-pays other than a $25 charge for an ER visit.
While I was on Medicaid I most certainly DID pay taxes. I didn’t pay Federal income tax because I wasn’t earning enough but I sure as shit paid state income tax, sales, and all other taxes. Can we please kill the myth that the poor don’t pay taxes period? It’s not true. They don’t pay as much in tax, but that’s because they don’t have as much.
It’s true most provides don’t take on Medicaid patients. If you’re on Medicaid you’ll spend a LOT of time looking for someone to take your insurance, and you’ll spend a lot of time on the phone trying to get your prescriptions justified. (I have a 50+ history of severe allergies. I could not get an epi-pen to save my life. Literally, that’s what epi-pens are FOR - saving a life. I still don’t have one. At one point it took two months to get approval for an asthma maintenance medication and then they gave me shit for needing an albuterol refill “too soon” - well, get me that inhaled steroid and I won’t NEED the frickin’ albuterol so much!)
When my husband was dying I thought it was all set up to get him into a hospice but when they found out we were on Medicaid they dumped us like yesterday’s used lunch. My husband never did get into hospice because of them jerking us around. I got him equivalent care with the help of his oncologist and a hospital willing to work with us but I got absolutely none of the services a hospice provides to a family, no access to professional grief counseling, nothing.
So while it may appear folks on Medicaid are getting “free stuff” they really aren’t, there are frequently gaps in service, major headaches and road blocks, and it really isn’t any better than private insurance.
For what it’s worth - I’m pro-universal health coverage, pro-ACA, and basically everyone opposite to what you claim the people you talked to were. But then, I’m not multi-generational poor, I just went through a really bad financial spot due to a lay off and the Great Recession, and I eventually climbed out of it (I no longer qualify for Medicaid and I’m on employer insurance again.)
I have no problem with people getting medicaid, SCHIP, etc. Like I said, I did minor activist work (to whatever degree I could as an individual by voting, calling politicians, educating myself, etc) to help get the ACA passed, which expanded medicaid to millions of people.
It bothers me when people who try to destroy medicaid and the ACA benefit from it, it bothers me double if it feels like their health care is better than mine, considering that I didn’t try to destroy those programs and tried to help get them passed.
The first part makes sense to me. The second doesn’t, if we are conflating “better” with “costs less.”
Would this be a fair way to restate your comments?
“It bothers me when people who try to destroy medicaid and the ACA benefit from it, it bothers me double if it feels like their health care costs them less than mine costs me, considering that I didn’t try to destroy those programs and tried to help get them passed.”
If that’s not a fair restatement, can you clarify what “better” means in this context?
The billed rate is essentially meaningless. It’s there to make everyone think they got a good deal (other than insurers, who know it’s meaningless). If you were a cash-paying patient, you’d get a similar discount (“adjustment”) at the time of payment.
Some people are just propagandised to an inch of their senses. Like for decades.
It reads to me - from afar - that some of the linkage of healthcare to the American flag/way of life/socialism has eased in the past decade. But I guess for many it’s still conditioning over the rational.
I am starting to seriously think that there are some on this planet who, given a choice, would rather pay MORE for their healthcare, if this ensures that someone they don’t like cannot get healthcare, and dies a horrible death.
They are willing to pay an extra fee, so that the guy down the street who got laid off from his job will not get proper healthcare. Because he’s “lazy” or “not like me” or “not a real American”
I even asked in one of the healthcare threads whether they would be willing to pay more and get less coverage, if it meant that they wouldn’t be paying for the coverage of others, and the consensus seemed to be that yes, the principle was more important. They were willing to sacrifice themselves for this principle. Of course, sacrificing others for their principle was even better.
Apologies for the vagueness, but I remember someone posting in some thread about some study where people were given a choice of getting $2 and their neighbor got $3, or they got $1 and their neighbor got nothing. Or something like that. And a majority picked getting $1 instead of $2. Does that ring a bell with anyone?
I don’t know about a study exactly, but I’ve talked to my dad ( very conservative) about such things, and think I shared that experience here, that may be what you’re thinking of. Or, there could be a study out here as well.
I asked him if he would take $20, under the condition that someone else would get $20.
His first question was, who gets the $20? I responded that it wouldn’t go to any sort of terrorist or criminal, or anything like that.
That wasn’t good enough, he wanted to know who would get it, because he wanted to know if that person deserved it.
Without knowing who would get it, even being assured that it wouldn’t be used for anything nefarious (a reasonable precaution), he would refuse.
