What damages could you cause to someone if you don’t get healthcare?
I could see if a nut didn’t get his medication he might go nutty. Is that what your contrived analogy hangs on?
Btw I usually ignore the insults unless they are decent, so don’t waste your scarce brain power coming up with duds like these.
We citizens do not agree, apparently, or there would be no need for the government.
Yes they are being abused, though something similar would exist in a free market transportation network, so I do t get too bent out of shape about that.
Yes, the Boomers will benefit greatly because they are such a big voting bloc. They have indebted the government and future generations quite handily.
The ONLY time I have paid for any medical treatment in my adult life was last year when I needed two skin cancers removed, and because of where I live now, there was no public hospital nearby with a derm clinic so I had to go private.
I have had four kids, numerous surgeries as in inpatient, outpatient care, and see a GP who ‘bulk-bills’ (does not charge the patient). Not once have I been required to make any payment at all. Nor have I had to wait inordinate times to access care. The longest was app 3 months on a waiting list to have an ear operation at one of the BEST specialist teaching hospitals in the world.
Just recently my daughter needed vascular surgery, and our local GP advised her the waiting time at our large, local hospital would be considerable. So he suggested a smaller regional hospital which had her booked in within two weeks. We had ‘extra cost’ going to that hospital, just because we had to drive 1.5hrs each way, and then the same the following day when I went to pick her up. 
But no hospital bill.
Your empathy for those with mental health issues is duly noted. It’s just what I would expect from an asshole like yourself. But that’s not what I was getting at. The uninsured are a drain on taxpayer money and health care provider incomes – which costs everyone – because ultimately the uninsured need emergency health care, even if it’s too late and they end up dying anyway. Usually they get this in the most expensive and inefficient and disruptive way possible, in emergency rooms, costing a fortune and tying up vital ER resources. This is money that in civilized countries is applied to proper ongoing universal health care for everyone.
Specifically, the uninsured create a large array of regulatory costs, direct industry compliance costs, indirect costs due to mortality losses, and many other direct and indirect costs. The AMA estimated that physicians incurred $4.2 billion in bad debt in 2001, equivalent to $6 billion today, or $17,600 per physician, attributable to ER treatment of the uninsured due to EMTALA regulations alone. There’s also a whole category of patient dumping abuses and financial settlements associated with those.
Thank you for informing me about your approach to insults, but I don’t give a flying fuck how your respond since my only objective here is to expose your ignorance.
Yep - parents never took him for shots, went to a private school that didn’t require vaccination for attendance, never got shots as an adult.
Weird, I know - the reason he hasn’t had measles or something is more likely herd immunity due to the rest of us getting jabbed rather than him being super-immune. Just don’t try to tell him that, he’s convinced it’s all Jesus and his own manliness.
Heh. If you ever get wind of a “measles (or chicken pox) party” in your neck of the woods, you should try to manipulate him into showing up at it…
That.
Most of the time, when I post about healthcare here, it’s because “someone is wrong on the internet” and I of course must correct him.
But, having been on this board for a long time, I’ve read my share of “horror stories” befalling dopers. Their loved one is gravely ill, and on top of that, they have to worry about their finances and spend whatever energy they might have left fighting insurance companies at every turn. Even the terminally ill person, for instance, might be worrying about the terrible financial situation he will leave his family in. Most of us unfortunately have experienced grevious health problems and death in our families, and thinking that you might have to deal with such crap and such worries at the same time is just terrible. And infuriating when you see people supporting the status quo on the basis of generally blatantly false arguments.
You’re welcome, davidm.
I don’t know if you feel like sharing, but did you have health insurance before it all happened? If so, are you surprised at the bills you’re getting?
I’m just curious about the statement being made by some posters in this thread that most Americans are happy with their insurance. Were you happy with your insurance before? Are you still happy with it?
Why is he paying at all? He’s where he is, his health under serious threat, due to a medical error !
Shouldn’t all his bills be guaranteed paid? And his lost wages, so he can pay his rent during his lengthy recovery.
What kind of nightmarish system is this, that seems to be okay with what’s happening to him. It truly stuns me.
I am annoyed that my pain Doctor is not happy with the amount my insurance pays, and charges me more. The laboratory does the same, $50 over what my insurance pays.
Is that even legal? Get your insurance company to refer you to a doctor and lab in their network.
Without knowing anything specific about davidm’s case, the general procedure in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is to pay up first, then go to court to recover damages (if you can). If he were to try to get the parties to cover his expenses up front it’s likely he’d die from lack of care long before any settlement could be reached.
And that is the crux of the matter isn’t it?
With a UHC system, the patient gets the care they need. With the LOTF and the HOTB system, you get care only if you are lucky enough. Bit of a lottery isn’t it!
For starters, a vast amount of the US healthcare system (both private and Medicare) involves paperwork used to assess eligibility for treatment (and what treatments are permitted or excluded). Some doctor’s offices and hospitals literally have a couple dozen people who do nothing but process insurance claims. If everyone is eligible to receive any treatment deemed medically necessary, all that paperwork, and all the people involved, and all the COSTS involved, go away. The ability to negotiate down drug costs is another big, big savings in UHC systems.
No system is perfect, but the US system is appalling.
Oh ok, the costs of the uninsured on others is entirely because of other government interventions. I can fix that for you too.
Social suicide by libertarian bullet - pass.
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:
Way back when, my US insurers could provide a list of “in network” doctors but I was still supposed to call each of them and ask if they took patients. The list mentioned specialties but did not provide information such as whether an obgyn provided pregnancy-prevention care or not.
That’s why I said on the average. The unlucky ones will get screwed, but even there the cost of sporting accidents is probably less than open heart surgery.
The benefit of insurance gets calculated by multiplying the cost of covered care by the probability of needing it. Then there is the factor that getting hit by uncovered costs is relatively worse than not using as much coverage as you’ve paid for.
Plus there is the problem that young people in particular don’t think it will ever happen to them.
For most young people not buying insurance is a reasonably rational economic decision, which is why the mandate is needed. For some it is an awful decision. But they don’t know which category they fall into until it is too late, which is why the mandate is a good thing.
You must have a dumb shit definition of abused. I don’t know what a free market transportation system is. If some clown causes damage to me, and is uninsured in your free market system, what is my recourse? Take his house? Enslave him? Take his retirement savings? Sell his organs?
You realize that Medicare started when the oldest of the Boomers was around 20, right?
When my father in law, not a Boomer, hit about 98 the insurance he had from his teaching job canceled on him since he was the only one in the pool still alive. (He might have been able to sue, but it was hardly worth it.) Luckily he turned on the Medicare. You think free market insurance companies would have been eager to give him coverage at anywhere near the Medicare price?
It’s legal. It’s called balance billing. It may be prohibited for in-network providers pursuant to their contract with the insurer.