# $&@&#% Health Insurance **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 14, 2018, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926 "2018-10-14T08:23:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2018, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926/61 "2018-10-21T18:40:15Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > Emigrate to a first world country while you’re still healthy, or develop a single payor socialized health care system. It’s that simple. Really. > > As long as you insist on being a special snowflake when it comes to health care, you are doomed to melt. (Which brings us to an even more important issue . . . global warming.) > > So get out there and vote, and drag every left leaning person you can off their ass and to the polls. A healthy life will not come to you if you continue to sit about whinging. It is something you have to work for both individually and collectively. Emigration isn’t easy. Moving to a middle income nation would probably be much easier. A lot of southeast asian, eastern european and latin american nations have good health care that is affordable. Doing the math, you can cover all your bills in a place like Mexico or Thailand for less than just the medical bills not covered by medicare (assuming you also need a few years of long term care). And sadly go out and vote doesn’t work on many issues. We have a two party system in the US. A party that is nakedly and brazenly plutocratic (GOP) and a party that is tepidly plutocratic (democrats). Yes there is a big difference between them and the democrats are light years better than the GOP, but voting democrat won’t fix anything anytime soon regarding health care. All we will get is, at best, tepid reforms that leave the broken, brutal, overpriced system in place. In fact, for a lot of us it sadly feels the best we can hope for with voting democrat is at least the democrats won’t try to dismantle the ACA, medicare and medicaid. But they won’t improve these programs either. When voting our options are either keep the brutal system (democrats) or get an even more brutal system (republicans). Nobody is serious about making the system less brutal or more affordable. It’d be nice to get genuine reform. But I don’t see it happening in America. In between how divided we are, and how our politics works, we are probably fucked. Maybe on the state level we will see some reform, but I’m not holding my breath. Vermont passed single payer than balked. Colorado rejected single payer 80-20. California talks a big game but its all talk, they have no intention of actually passing health reform. On the plus side, medical inflation has dropped to sustainable levels. It has only been 2-3% a year since the great recession, so that is much more sustainable than the 5%+ rates we were seeing in the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2018, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926/62 "2018-10-29T05:35:21Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > The USA. For all three cases. Wow. Was I ever off the mark on that one! I had guessed North Korea. ---
**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:** [October 29, 2018, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926/63 "2018-10-29T12:54:13Z")
In my experience, travelling to the US, the health insurance is just a lot more expensive. I was doing a bit of travelling a few years ago, to the UK, France, Czech Republic and the States. Had to have two different policies one for the three European countries and one for the US , because the premium was so much higher for the US. It wasn’t double, but close. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2018, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926/64 "2018-10-29T13:07:30Z")
It all boils down to the fact that this nation believes health care should be a for-profit industry and not a public service. Until and unless that ever changes, nothing else bad will change, either. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2018, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926/65 "2018-10-29T14:15:55Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > They firmly, firmly believe that sky-rocketing healthcare costs are the result of attempts to make healthcare more affordable. You believe that the ACA was an attempt to make healthcare more affordable? How gullible can you be? It was a massive wealth transfer from taxpayers to insurance companies, nothing more. When you subsidize something, the price goes up, not down. That’s the whole theory behind farm subsidies. Why should it work any differently with health insurance? ---
**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:** [November 4, 2018, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926/66 "2018-11-04T00:21:57Z")
Came across an interesting article on Bloomberg: “Sky-High Deductibles Broke the US Health Insurance System”. Thesis of the article is that it dates back to when Dubya and Congressional Republicans amended the law regulating employer-provided health insurance to allow employers to “experiment” with high-deductible plans. The thinking (using the term lightly) was that would encourage employees to be more prudent in accessing medical services: > [@](#): > > The thinking has been that requiring workers to shoulder more of the cost of care will also encourage them to cut back on unnecessary spending. But it didn’t work out that way. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many families were hard-pressed to meet their soaring health-insurance deductibles. At the same time, studies show that many put off routine care or skipped medication to save money. So yes, people behaved in a rational economic way, (short-term): faced with high deductibles, they avoided going to the doctor or buying medicines, because they couldn’t afford it. Of course, long-term, that will increase their health risks and costs. > [@](#): > > Some big companies are sitting up and taking notice. "We all thought high deductibles are going to drive people to get involved - ‘skin in the game,’ " Jamie Dimon, the chief executive officer of JP Morgan, said in early July. Instead, “they didn’t get the surgery they needed, when they needed it, because they can’t afford the high deductible in one shot.” I guess when you’re making gobs of money working as the CEO of a major investment bank, you don’t have access to economists who can explain to you that people who don’t have money to pay for a product won’t buy that product. Or, you just assume that all your employees are good-for-nothing’s, just sucking at your teats Turns out, people without enough money won’t spend money. Who knew?!? [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-26/sky-high-deductibles-broke-the-u-s-health-insurance-system](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-26/sky-high-deductibles-broke-the-u-s-health-insurance-system) ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926/67 "2018-11-04T02:27:49Z")
> [@psychobunny](#): > > I honestly don’t see how people afford insurance. Living in a low cost of living area with Medicaid Expansion and/or knowing how to navigate the various ACA subsidy cliffs and manipulate MAGI. ---
**Author:** ![Batano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b487fb/32.png) [@Batano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batano)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926/68 "2018-11-04T07:17:58Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Wow. Was I ever off the mark on that one! I had guessed [spoiler]North Korea[/spoiler]. You were close, it is a country run by a crazy dictator worshipped by a cult-like populace and who surrounds himself with family members he can trust. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/health-insurance/822926.md?page=3)