# Health Insurance **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 19, 2018, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223 "2018-07-19T20:46:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223/141 "2018-07-27T03:08:39Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > the thing about Americans, you see, is that they’re trained from youth to live in terror that another American might be getting a benefit he or she didn’t entirely deserve. I’m curious. Did you message WillFarnaby and invite him to the thread to substantiate your claim, or did you assume one of the usual Libertardians would pop up soon enough. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223/142 "2018-07-27T03:19:26Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > if it is such a value proposition for you, maybe somebody else is getting fucked in that distorted economy. Does that enter the blinkered minds of the social democrat? No, they’re content to leisurely lap up the skimmings from the hapless taxpayer Or alternatively those hapless taxpayers are actually happy with a system that, due to the benefits of collective purchasing agreements and not having profit driven insurance companies involved at every stage, actually provides them better cover at a lower cost. Some things are always going to work out cheaper if you pool costs. It always amuses me that right wing Americans always decry the idea of collective funding for healthcare, but are usually all in favour of it for the military. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223/143 "2018-07-27T14:21:00Z")
> [@Gary\_Kumquat](#): > > I’m curious. Did you message WillFarnaby and invite him to the thread to substantiate your claim, or did you assume one of the usual Libertardians would pop up soon enough. I’m American, and that does in fact describe a great many Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223/144 "2018-07-28T06:26:26Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > What damages could you cause to someone if you don’t get healthcare? Well, you could infect them with a preventable disease that you didn’t get vaccinated against or treated for. Or you could cause them to lose time and money if they employed you to do work that you’re unable to do because lack of preventative care or treatment has exacerbated your illness or injury. Or you could be letting them down on the family or community commitments that you made and are unable to follow through on because lack of preventative care or treatment has exacerbated your illness or injury. Or you could cause them serious injury or property damage because your untreated medical condition interferes with, say, your vision or cognition or coordination so you drive your car into theirs. Or any one of thousands of other scenarios that play out in real life every day when somebody’s lack of proper healthcare causes substantial negative impacts not only on their own quality of life but on that of other people around them. Of course, the standard libertidiot response to such scenarios is to try to reframe them as easily resolvable transactional issues: the injured party simply fires the health-impaired employee or kicks out the health-impaired family member or sues the health-impaired person who unintentionally inflicted illness or injury upon them, etc. In the real world, however, most people recognize that all such efforts at problem resolution have costs much greater than the cost of simply avoiding the problem in the first place. E.g., contributing some tax funds for healthcare that keeps the workforce healthier is cheaper than constantly turning over employees in a sickly workforce by firing them whenever they develop health problems. Paying taxes to vaccinate the general population is cheaper than suing the unvaccinated person who transmits a serious disease to your immunocompromised child while also coping with the costs of your child’s infection. And so on. Long story short: It is cheaper, more efficient, and healthier for everybody in the long run when everybody is provided with decent healthcare in a low-overheads single-payer system funded with tax revenues. Only idiots believe that the people in such a system who have the good fortune to pay in more than they consume in healthcare resources are being somehow “abused” by it. Personally, I ask nothing better of life than to go on for the next few decades consistently paying much more for other people’s healthcare than they pay for mine, right up through a prolonged and healthy old age ending in a comfortable and inexpensive death. Now _there’s_ a lucky outcome. ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223/145 "2018-07-28T06:33:48Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Long story short: It is cheaper, more efficient, and healthier for everybody in the long run when everybody is provided with decent healthcare in a low-overheads single-payer system funded with tax revenues. Only idiots believe that the people in such a system who have the good fortune to pay in more than they consume in healthcare resources are being somehow “abused” by it. > > Personally, I ask nothing better of life than to go on for the next few decades consistently paying much more for other people’s healthcare than they pay for mine, right up through a prolonged and healthy old age ending in a comfortable and inexpensive death. Now _there’s_ a lucky outcome. One would think that your analysis and opinions were obvious. Obviously, it’s not. What the hell is wrong with the mindset of Libertardians? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223/146 "2018-07-28T08:48:32Z")
They’re greedy, selfish, and paranoid. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223/147 "2018-07-28T10:36:56Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Is it conclusive that it would be a lower premium AND no out of pocket? When people say things like that, it gives me a gut feeling that there’s some wishful thinking going on, and/or some kind of hidden catches that are carefully not being mentioned. That’s a fair question. “The devil you know” and all that. And an honest answer is that it would depend heavily on the design and implementation of the system. It’s possible to take a good idea and screw it up by bad implementation. But, the basic point is that universal health care systems in other countries do achieve that goal, of lower costs and greater coverage. And, speaking personally, I have never paid an insurance premium for health care, and have never made any out of pocket payments to cover medical care. Ever. There are health care matters in our system that aren’t covered, so I don’t want to be over-selling. Our system is designed to cover medical matters, defined roughly as services from a doctor or a hospital. That means things like pharmacy (when you’re not in hospital) and dental aren’t covered. Those we do pay for ourselves, and those expenses tend to be what get covered by employment packages, as well as special government benefit plans for low-income, disabled, elderly, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223/148 "2018-07-28T10:46:01Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > It’s been a long time since I had insurance in the US, but I can tell you that I found out was shitty after just one doctor’s visit. Americans who think that a system where you: > > - go to the doctor, > - file your insurance claim, > - get it rejected, > - contest the rejection, > - and finally get it accepted and find out how much you still need to pay over what the insurance covers > is good believe that because that’s what they’re used to. Sort of like thinking that boiled to death vegetables are good, before you discover that they actually come in more colors than “corpse grey”. 😃 That’s why in my own area, I’m a big fan of comparative law as a teaching aid at law schools. People are so used to their own system that they don’t always appreciate the choices that have been made because that’s the system they’ve been trained in. Looking at how another system works is actually a way to learn about your own system. I’ve always thought that sort of analysis should work for other social sciences, like “what’s the best way to deliver health care?” But, in this case, it seems to run into American exceptionalism. It’s puzzling. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223/149 "2018-07-28T11:16:04Z")
**Bump** , this isn’t a direct response to your question, but you may find it interesting as background info, comparing what Canadians and Americans pay in taxes, and what they get in return by way of public services. > **[Canadians may pay more taxes than Americans, but here's what they get for...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/canadians-may-pay-more-taxes-than-americans-but-theres-a-catch.html)** > > The real difference between the U.S. and Canada isn't what citizens pay, it's what citizens receive. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/818223.md?page=7)