^ Right, no one in the US waits for treatment. :rolleyes: Health care in the US isn’t rationed. :rolleyes: If you have health insurance you’re covered for anything. :rolleyes:
Stories like that make me puke.
I’m sorry to hear what happened to your wife, Fear Itself.
I am sorry too.
And I’m sorry that so many people in this country want to overgeneralize, be absolutists, or rail about health care in the abstract but completely ignore the fact that there are real individuals who need care and cannot afford it.
Just as there are individuals who would rather smoke cigarettes and drink rum than put away $50 a week in case they get sick.
Regards,
Shodan
Fear itself, I’m sorry too. Your story breaks my heart.
Great - just hope that you don’t get sick within the first 10 years, or you won’t be able to afford the cost of the average hospital stay And that assumes you have spent nothing at all in the 10 years on doctor visits or prescriptions, and just saved up.
If the OP were trying to stay fit by exercising every day and he hurt himself while lifting weights, would you have any pity for him?
Like I said before, for every guy like the OP that you can find fault with, there’s another guy who’s blameless in every way. Or a person like Fear Itself’s wife. Are you willing to pick over her life history and find a way to blame her for her circumstances?
We need to stop blaming people and just fix the goddamn system.
You mean the movie made by Michael Moore? The man who thinks that only knee or cataract surgery is delayed in government health care?
Thisis what we can expect from a single payer system using finite funds.
I can’t easily sue the government but I can sue an insurance company. I can also bypass them entirely and seek out my own recourse which is illegal in countries like Canada. If I had to I would liquidate my assets to survive. I did just that while being unemployed for 3 1/2 years.
Nobody has posted a reason why we can’t close the insurance gap for those who are not able to currently insure themselves.
You’d be surprised. If you have employer group insurance, you may not sue for punitive damages.
I would have sued for the treatment while looking for alternatives. Hard to say how far a lawyer would get against a building full of lawyers. And as much as you’d like to sue for damages you would certainly trade that for the treatment. This is something that legislation can address.
What I would like is legislation that standardizes the insurance industry so they cover themselves with shared insurance. This is what they do anyway but what is and is not covered should be on the table. If we get away from HMO style of coverage and go back to risk insurance it would be easier to deal with the situation you described. When I had to buy my own insurance it was just that, insurance. There was no stipulation what I spent the money on. I paid based on my current state of health (yes we know the response to that) and the deductible I wanted to leverage against my possible financial losses.
“Obamacare” which should really be named “Congresscare” was suppose to lower costs and eliminate problems with pre-existing conditions. I’m assuming it helped pre-existing conditions because my rates shot up immediately as did my friends in the same boat I was in. I can live with that if that was all that was done. However, it placed a financial burden on businesses and I think we’re seeing the results. businesses are drowning in their own money but are reluctant to spend it until the full damage is known.
What happened to your wife shouldn’t have happened in private healthcare nor public healthcare but it does. I would rather have the choices of private care and the ability to “fight the man” and seek out alternative treatment. If we go to a nationalized system then we give control to the government and decisions will be based on money available. The ability to bypass problems will now depend on the ability to travel for extended periods and the money front the venture.
Are you aware that all the insurance under Obamacare is through private insurance companies? How would it be different than what we have now, with respect to suing them?
As opposed to now, where if you don’t have sufficient cash on hand you are simply left to die. Or don’t you realize that our current system also has finite funds?
And I guess it just sucks to be someone with insufficient assets, right? My spouse almost lost both his leg and his life when he was 20, far too young to have amassed sufficient funds to pay for the care he needed. Do we just telll someone 20 who is diagnosed with leukemia or or something “sucks to be you - you haven’t earned enough to deserve to live!”?
Including you, I might add.
You do realize that there are more UHC models than just Canada and the UK, right? France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia… there are difference among all those different nations. Maybe we need to stop being afraid to look at what others are doing, maybe we need to finally admit we are NOT the greatest in this area. What we’re doing is leaving 50 million completely out in the cold, providing care only when they are in imminent danger of dying and utterly failing to give them any sort of preventive care. Tens of millions more are inadequately covered. We are far down the list in results - infant mortality, for example, we’re behind all those other countries that have UHC. They get better results, and they do it for less money per person.
What we’re doing isn’t working. And the situation is getting worse with every year. I sometimes think that too many people tolerate this so-called system we have ONLY because they’ve been told over and over it’s the best and they haven’t bothered to really look at alternatives. Americans fear rationing without realizing they’re already subjected to it, not by government but by private industry where decisions about coverage are made in closed rooms rather than out in the open with public input.
You keep saying you’d rather “have the choices” of a private system.
What choices are they? Because in the public system here (Australia) I can see any doctor I choose. I have never had to wait more than a couple of days to see my preferred doctor (he’s got a large patient list and works PT hours so occasionally there is a wait to see him specifically), but if I needed to see a doctor today I could - at any of dozens of surgeries around the city. If I haven’t attended a particular surgery before I may need to fill out some minimal paperwork, but there’s none of this “Out of Network” bullshit, I’m not tied to any particular surgery by the vagaries of an insurance company. And even for surgeries that don’t bulk-bill, the most I’ve ever had to pay out of pocket for an immediate appointment was approximately $65. If I’m travelling interstate, I can do the same thing - I can front up to any local doctor’s surgery and if they’ve got an appointment I can get in that same day. If they don’t have appointments, there’s usually a walk-in clinic not too far away. It doesn’t matter that I’m from another state, and not a regular patient of those surgeries.
The same goes for hospitals. If I have to call an ambulance, they will take me to the closest hospital to me. But if I choose to make my own way to a hospital, I can go to any hospital in the state. If I am assigned a specialist or a surgeon who I don’t like for any reason, I can take referral details and find my own choice of doctor or specialist. I can travel interstate to do the same thing if so required.
And the fact is that it’s easy to find news reports about government-run systems failing and resulting in people dying - because it sells. What you don’t get news reports about are the thousands, hell millions of cases each year in this country alone where the medicare system has effectively and efficiently either treated an illness at the first stage, so as to prevent a more serious illness developing later and costing the taxpayer more, or saved someone’s life by giving them the necessary medical treatment in a timely fashion.
I don’t speak much about American healthcare, because I don’t have first-hand experience of it and I don’t know the details of it. Yet somehow not having first-hand experience of single-payer systems doesn’t seem to stop a lot of the American anti-UHC crowd anteing up all of these specious arguments about not having choice, and about how everyone has to wait for necessary medical treatment and people will DIE if the government is in control of healthcare. It seems to me people are already dying without the government being in control of your healthcare, especially if they’re morally bankrupt enough to dare get sick whilst working a minimum-wage job, or living in other circumstances that preclude paying what seem to me to be frankly usurious insurance rates.
If that’s supposed to mean “I can go to a doctor paying out of pocket in the US but that would be illegal in Canada”, no it wouldn’t.
And people who think that means said people deserve to die. This reveals them to be proponents of eugenics. Only those who never make mistakes deserve to live.
I’m the last person to excuse alcoholics or smokers. Heck, I don’t excuse people who get someone pregnant, or who have sexually transmitted diseases because they couldn’t handle monogamy. I am far from non-judgmental person when it comes to people’s actions. But the second that crosses into saying that someone deserves to die for their bad choices, I stop. It’s no different from saying someone deserves to be murdered or raped, etc.
If it makes me an asshole to point out that wanting people to die is wrong (and not realizing that you are just angry and not thinking straight) so be it.
I don’t think UHC would ban consierge medical. So if you don’t want to wait like the rest of us poor schmoes, there will be SOMEONE who will accommodate you with out-of-pocket speciality services.
I’ve had to wait four-five months to see a specialist while dealing with horrible symptoms. Only then to be referred to another specialist and wait another four-five months. And I have excellent health care. Waiting is a part of the game.
Just pointing out that the UK telegraph link was for relatively minor conditions; no-one in the UK is seriously suggesting that people have been intentionally left long periods with life threatening conditions simply in order to save money. Yeah, it sucks not to get your cataracts removed for a few more months, and yes, it’s pretty cynical (if ultimately honest) to think some of the people on the waiting list will die or give up and pay for surgery at one of the many private clinics if they have to wait a few months. Really though- it’s pretty much the same as the ER- if you come in with something minor, you expect people with major injuries to get priority. Same works for funding, as the budget is unfortunately not infinite.
There is, by the way, a common shortcut in the UK- if the waiting list is too long- if you pay to see a private consultant, and they can often refer you back to the NHS for free treatment. That’s what my Mum did when she had a knee problem the (free to visit) GP couldn’t deal with, and the waiting list turned out to be several months to see an NHS specialist - it cost around £100 (around $150) privately to see a consultant, and she was referred to an NHS (free) physiotherapist, starting a week or so later. Oh, and medical insurance if you do decide to go fully private can be yours for less than $600 for a year, with a $150 excess, (according to the website of one of our major providers).
I’m sure some people do fall through the gaps in the NHS, but the gaps seem a hell of a lot smaller here; and I have never heard once of anyone in Britain losing their house to pay for medical treatment. The only medical fundraisers you see are for something so rare, there are no specialists in the country confident enough to deal with it, or for an experimental treatment not yet approved in this country (and the odd idiot trying to get an ‘Autism cure’ for their kid from some overseas quacky ducktor).
I am in the process of losing my job due to a back problem, which makes my current job impossible- I have a few month’s rent in savings, no dependents, and the condition (nerve issue) is not something that can remotely described as an emergency and I’m 28- please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I’d qualify for much, if any treatment or assistance in the US?
My medical treatment so far has cost about $30 equivalent for prescription painkillers (they’ll be free from next week), which have been prescribed by a doctor I didn’t have to pay to see, ( meanwhile, my rent will be paid almost entirely for me until I find a job I can do, on top on my jobseekers allowance) and I’m seeing a physiotherapist who I won’t have to pay a penny for- after seeing a few other specialists already, with only a short wait to see each. Sucks that my country’s system is such a trainwreck, especially for the poor.
You don’t see any difference between exercising, and drinking 151 proof rum and smoking cigarettes?
[QUOTE=BigT]
And people who think that means said people deserve to die.
[/quote]
I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t make things up and assign them to me.
Regards,
Shodan
The idea was that this guy couldn’t get to a dentist for his infected tooth, and therefore abused antibiotics and made the problem worse.
The hospitalization costs could have been avoided if he saved up $200 for the dentist. He could do that in a couple of months if he quit smoking.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t drink or smoke. I’m fairly healthy even, thank goodness. I use my fifty dollars a week to pay for health insurance. That’s almost exactly what I pay each month, as a matter of fact.
For a policy with a $5000.00 deductible. And a forty dollar co-pay for doctor visits and a $25.00 prescription co-pay. Oh and that is for health care only, not dental care.
So putting away that $50.00 a week just doesn’t quite solve the problem. Our system does not work.
Hey, if you break your leg running a marathon or falling down in a stupor, it makes no difference to your leg, or to your hospital bill.
Do you believe that only people whose behavior you approve of deserve medical care?