Most people happy with their health insurance haven’t had the kinds of horror stories that you constantly hear about people with health insurance getting fucked because their health insurance didn’t cover something. This is usually because they haven’t had the opportunity, not because their insurance provider was actually any good.
Linden, as someone who has lived under the US system and a far more nationalized, European system, let me be frank. You are working against your own best interests and are the victim of propaganda. Your health insurance company is not your friend. It is an unnecessary, profit-driven middleman who will sooner leave you to die than give you a fuckin’ red cent that you aren’t contractually owed (and since they wrote the contract you’d better believe they know of a lot of situations where you think they’d owe you money but they know they don’t). You deserve better, and if it’s smug of me to say so, I’m very sorry, but I’ll be Smuggy McSmuggerson when it comes to this issue, because in aggregate, you, and the people who think like you, are just simply wrong.
Unless you purchase your health insurance independently, on the open, private-policy market no you don’t. For most Americans with health insurance their EMPLOYER chooses what they will get, or what few options they can choose from.
Actually… individuals often DON’T know what’s best for themselves. Just look at all those smokers out there “choosing” to be nicotine addicts. You pre-suppose that the average individual is an expert in everything, and they’re not.
There are numerous countries full of millions of people who have already been guinea pigs ahead of us. At this point, it’s sticking our collective heads in the sand and refusing to believe what has been demonstrated as successful time and again.
Back when, Obama made his sales pitch by saying that, if you like your plan, you can keep it; I mention this not to shriek “liar”, but to note that he apparently knew what Warren apparently doesn’t: that some folks do, in fact, like their plans, to the point of really wanting to be reassured that they’ll be able to keep on keeping on.
Why she’s saying otherwise, I honestly don’t know.
I moved (as an adult) from the US to Australia, pre-Obamacare.
Over here, there is private health insurance, but it is strictly supplemental, basically adding dental and optical coverage, and some perks. The UHC, Medicare, is taxpayer-funded and government run. I don’t bother with private insurance here, and increasing numbers of others don’t, either.
Having experienced both, there is no fucking way I’d want to go back to the State’s way of doing things. For a slightly higher tax rate, I don’t have to worry when changing jobs, or between jobs, or whatever - I’m covered. When the doc says “you should have that test done”, I’m covered. I can go to pretty much any doc I choose; I don’t have to go by a list provided by some company who’s trying to maximize profits, to a doctor who’s trying to maximize profits, or just get paid by the insurance companies. The longest wait I’ve had for medical care was for a spot in a private hospital, for a dental procedure not covered by UHC, for which I waited two months. Everything I’ve done in the public part has been within a week.
Oh, and that slightly higher tax rate? I pay about 10.6% more income tax than I would pay for the same income if I lived in the States. I don’t pay any insurance premiums over and above that income tax. Nothing but income tax and some retirement contributions are being taken from my paycheck. I’m pretty sure I come out ahead on the deal, along with never, ever, having to worry about it.
In other words, you’re simply, utterly wrong, Linden Arden. UHC is superior in every conceivable way.
I’ll just point out that even in UHC systems there often exists a second private tier of health insurance for those who want more than the basic healthcare service. And because this doesn’t have to cover emergency and critical care cases (which are prioritized in UHC systems), it’s much much cheaper as it only has to cover medically necessary but non-urgent procedures.
So everyone has access to the USPS, but you can still shell out for a FedEx service if you want.
I completely agree with you on the electoral politics of it. I wish Elizabeth Warren had maintained her strategic silence on the matter. The best “plan for that” on health care is “I’ll sign whatever manages to pass” and then shut up.
But Jesus, it’s so dumb. Health insurance plans are not permanent! Nobody ever keeps their plan, because plans are inherently temporary. Even if you count a new policy from the same company with crappier terms and premiums as “keeping their plan,” employer-based insurance is inherently something that gets taken away, over and over and over, every time an employer trims the budget or someone gets a new job (which the average person entering the workforce can expect to do around a dozen times).
And it’s not just “Medicare for All” that will result in a massive national hissy fit, though that’s probably the easiest electoral target. Any real reform will bust up the employer-sponsored insurance racket (this is actually the only way to create that vaunted “choice” we keep hearing about but never experiencing) and “take away” most people’s insurance.
Before the ACA, the vast majority of Americans didn’t even have health insurance at all. They thought they did, and they paid significant amounts of money to companies that claimed they were insurance companies, but if anything ever happened to make them unprofitable, the “insurance” companies would drop them instantly without paying out a dime. If you’ve got a plan that will drop you the moment they have to pay out, then what you had was never actually an insurance plan; it’s a Mafia-style protection racket that was somehow legal. But most people didn’t realize it, because they hadn’t yet gotten to that point, and so they thought they were satisfied with insurance they didn’t even have.
And the whole idea that people are out there exercising “choice” is a joke. Most people pay for their insurance with thousands of dollars in company scrip that can only be used for one particular offering, and the law even backs this up by banning you from buying subsidized insurance on the market if you opt not to buy that one option with your scrip.
It’s sad that there has to be a purity test in the Dem primaries with some people. Polling is very clear and consistent in the US. People like their healthcare and they like their insurance by large %'s. Sanders and Warren might think they are well-intentioned. But their insistence that private insurance be done away with is foolish at best. There are other ways to achieve UHC that do not require this approach.
If Trump wins because Dems are supporting a candidate who vows to do away with the Health Insurance industry, then I hope people won’t say they weren’t warned.
Are there? Right now, most people buy insurance at the company store, with scrip provided from their employer for that purpose alone (plus a portion of their own paychecks, but mostly scrip). I agree that there are lots of ways to do UHC, but I’m not sure that any of them can coexist with a system where your employer chooses your plan and forces you to take it or lose thousands of dollars a year in compensation, which is what people claim to like. Any real reform of that will “take away” insurance from most people.
I like Warren but for the life of me don’t understand the reasoning behind getting rid of private insurance. It doesn’t make sense practically and is nearly suicidal politically (with the center). I started a thread a while back asking about her and Sander’s likely reasoning behind it and and no one could really come up with an answer. The only reasonable argument was that it created a potential for preferential treatment of the privately insured. That would indeed be a problem but is easily legislated away. If the public option is good, people will choose it over private, and the private insurance industry will die a natural death. The optics (not the reality) of this issue, reparations, and decriminalizing illegal immigration are going to put Trump in office for another 4, possibly 8 years. I can’t believe my fellow progressives don’t see that. You don’t remodel the kitchen when the house is on fire.
Maggie liked her insurance. But it wasn’t enough. And ironically, because her insurance was through her work, when the same illness she needed the insurance for caused her to be unable to work, it affected her ability to pay for ongoing treatment for that illness.
Maggie the Ocelot has now sadly passed away (which may well be unrelated to the insurance situation - her initial prognosis wasn’t great to begin with). But the point I’m making here is that lots of people are likewise “happy with their insurance”, not realizing exactly how small a safety net it may be.
Except the only way to allow people to freely choose the public option will likely involve the destruction of the employer-sponsored insurance that 158 million people have and most of them say they like.
To give people choice, I think you’d have to force employers to pay their portion of premiums to the government whenever an employee takes the public option. And if a company has to do that, well, then they might as well ditch all of the HR people who are administering the company plan and offload everyone onto the public option. It won’t be a “natural death,” it will be quite sudden. And all of those people will unzip their wrists and bleed about how their insurance was tooken away by the nasty Biden/Harris/Buttigieg/Klobuchar/O’Rourke.
I don’t follow you. Why would employers pay when an employee takes a public option? That’s not how national health care is financed. Yes, there would be dislocations as an industry died (more accurately transformed) that would likely require remedy, but that hasn’t ever stopped us before. Industries die and/or transform all the time.
Because they pay when an employee takes the private option. “Choice” requires not penalizing people who don’t take their employer’s offering.
Edit: If your cash pay is a year $50,000, your employer pays $5,000 for insurance, and you pay $2,000 for insurance, switching to a public option that provided the same benefits at half the cost would still cost you (or the government) $1,500. Your employer would then get $5,000 for doing nothing.
> According to Gallup polling from late last year, 82% of Democrats said the quality of health care they received was either good or excellent. A large majority, 71%, believed their health care coverage was either good or excellent. Even when it comes to health care costs, 61% of Democrats said were satisfied with what they paid in health care.
Before I read all the replies so far, I want to say how I would answer this poll. I am generally happy with the care that my doctors provide and so far the insurance I have is fine, too. With one HUGE exception that they never ask about in polls: the pharmacy benefit management program (PBM) sucks giant brass donkey balls. I hate them with the heat of a thousand suns. They make me fight tooth and nail to get the prescriptions my doctors order for me. Over the last 10 or so years I’ve changed insurance companies many times and have used all the majors by now except for Kaiser. (So, all the major PPO’s I guess.) So I’m used all the major PBM’s also and every single one is operated by satan himself.
They’re so bad that if they took away our insurance programs and replaced them with something different that didn’t use PBM’s I’d be happy.
What is best for every American is UHC, as shown in many other countries.
To illustrate this, here is my examples from the UK, where we have both the wonderful National Health Serviceand also private health schemes.
Yes, you can have both if you want to!
Whenever I visit Europe, I simply fill out a form and am covered for treatment by their UHC under a reciprocal agreement.
Whenever I visit America, I take out $1,000,000 in health insurance (as recommended by our Government.)
I once cut my toe in Las Vegas. A doctor cleaned the minor wound, disinfected and bandaged it. For 15 minutes work, he charged $450.
Meanwhile I’ve had an eventful year here in England:
I developed gallstones, which required an MRI, an ultrasound, a 4 hour operation and a week recuperating in hospital
my enlarged prostate was causing problems with my bladder function. Again I had an MRI plus several hospital visits as an outpatient. The condition is being controlled by two separate pills daily for the foreseeable future
the worst was liver sepsis (potentially life-threatening.) After a blood test revealed the problem, I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance and spent 3 days with strong antibiotics administered through a drip. I then spent another 4 days in hospital recovering.
I’m fine now - and the total cost (including the pills) was prepaid through taxes. Total cost therefore = £0 ($0).
Friends in America reckon the cost of all the diagnosis, testing, ambulance, surgery and hospital stays would be around $200,000 in the US.
N.B. I find it hard to believe that you are charged for ambulance rides in the USA. Just when you need urgent medical attention, you have to find the money?!
From here:
on average, an ambulance company will charge anywhere from $350 to as much as $2,000 for a trip without insurance.
even with health insurance, an ambulance ride may not be covered 100 percent. Refer to your insurance documentation to see exactly what is covered; most of the time, the insurance company will only cover the payment if it were a medical necessity and your life was in danger. Some insurance policies have a flat fee/co-pay, while others may say you are only responsible for the deductible.
(according to the LaTimes) a patient was billed more than $1,538 for her ambulance ride. This was after the insurance company had paid more than $750.