"No one should die because they can't afford health care"

[Brainiac]

@fessie

People WILL still die because they couldn’t get what they needed when they needed it, and people will still go broke because of illness. I’m not going to pretend that I can stop that.

They don’t go broke in Britain, except those being scammed by Mexican quack cancer cures that aren’t covered.
And people die there, but not sitting on the hospital kerb begging for pill money.

[Shodan]

@bouv

When you have no car and would have to take two trains/subways and a bus to get to a grocery store, or walk a block to get to fast food, guess what wins most of the time?

When I was poor, the bus won (almost) every time, because groceries were cheaper than McDonald’s. If you are spending $15 a day on lunch and dinner instead of riding the bus for an hour once a week, I start to lose sympathy for your convenience. Especially if it impacts your health - and you want me to pay for your health care.

@Iorek Byrnison

$50 (a month? a year?) to provide health insurance for a nation?

The $50 is the marginal increase, not the total cost. It is the amount that puts me over the top.

What I mean is, currently I am paying - what, $12K a year for my health care and my family’s. I also pay another $40K a year in taxes, of which, say, 20% goes to Medicare and Medicaid. OK - now my taxes have to go up by enough to pay for the half a trillion that Obama wants to pull to pay for part of his health care idea. They also have to go up even more to pay for the one trillion in unfunded costs that the surtax doesn’t address.

OK, assume we have done all this. There are still almost half the currently uninsured who are still without coverage. So now, if we want to cover them, guess what?

All the increases I am now paying have to be doubled.

I am already paying a shitload. I have to pay a shit load more to cover Obamacare. Now I have to pay another shitload. That;'s three shitloads. And notice that this is of zero benefit to me or my family - I already have coverage. I could dump that coverage and go for the public option. That doesn’t address the issue - someone has to pay for my coverage just as surely as I do now. And since, as the CBO points out, there is nothing much in Obamacare that addresses the root cause of increasing health costs, there is no assurance that spending all this is going to stop skyrocketing any time soon.

Now we can quibble about where the point is, but do you not agree that there will come a time that I really am justified in not wanting to kick in another $50 a month towards health care? Even if it means that some cute little kid with big eyes is going to die of an obscure disease?

Regards,
Shodan

[fessie]

@Voyager

Could you give me a cite indicating that when someone says that no one should die because they can’t afford healthcare it means that no one should die period?

OK - but if “no one should die because they can’t afford health care” at what point do they acknowledge that an ADEQUATE effort has been made? Where IS that line? Health care often fails people.

I thought the status quo was that hospitals HAVE to accept people who are in crisis, and I thought that the cost of treating them was something we all (except for the insurance companies) absorbed indirectly.

So it seems like the people we’re trying to capture now are people with chronic conditions - which are, IIRC, largely affected by lifestyle. Heart disease and diabetes are, for sure.

I don’t think people in this country are eager to pay for their neighbor’s bad choices.

I’m a lot more worried about kids who might die because they don’t get to the doctor soon enough because the parents are worried about the cost - adults also. Or who choose a cheaper but less effective remedy because of the cost. Or who go to their local quack or faith healer because that guy can heal them quickly and cheaply.

I thought kids were already covered in most states. Isn’t that the case?

I thought, too, that most of the people who had fallen through the cracks (the chronic homeless, for example) had mental health issues - and the states closed the mental hospitals during Reagan’s tenure, IIRC.

As to the working poor, yes. Absolutely. They deserve an affordable buy-in. No doubt. It’s ridiculous that it should be otherwise.

People who drink themselves to death - tough luck on them. That would happen with or without insurance.

I’m reminded of a snarky t-shirt Larry Hagman wore in public after receiving HIS liver transplant - something about being in the process of drinking his way through #2. I think about him with respect to this debate, how the people we all want to help are not necessarily sympathetic.

That’s all - I don’t buy the argument that we shouldn’t CARE about our fellow citizens. Of course we should. I just don’t know that we can afford to care as much as we might like.

I’m also a fan of Sheldon Kopp, who said “Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.”

[The_Hamster_King]

@fessie

I’m also a fan of Sheldon Kopp, who said “Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.”

Sounds like a convenient rationalization for sitting around on your ass and doing nothing.

Of course evil can be eradicated. What a silly thing for him to say! Sure, not all evil can be eradicated for all time in one swoop, but specific evils can absolutely be put to an end without merely sweeping the problem under the rug or dumping it elsewhere.

Take the example of slavery in the United States. It was a massive evil and it was eradicated. Pray tell what horrific new problems did the eradication of slavery breed?

[Lightnin]

@Shodan

Unfortunately, it is not a danger - it is a near certainty.

And surely you were just as concerned during Bush’s term, right? From your link:

“Of the remaining debt, Orszag blamed the Bush administration for worsening the nation’s fiscal condition. In the interview, Orszag said that roughly 50 percent of the borrowing that will be needed over the next decade stems from President George W. Bush’s refusal to pay for such expensive new programs as the 2001 tax cut, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the new prescription-drug benefit program for Medicare recipients.”
…
“And the way to reduce federal health care costs is by passing health care reform that contains: 1) universal health-care insurance that ends the economically absurd practice of routinely treating the uninsured in hospital emergency rooms at costs exceeding $1,000 an hour; 2) a public health-insurance company that will compete with private insurers for subscribers, and that will provide more incentives for insurance-premium containment; and 3) systemic changes to Medicare and Medicaid that lower per-person annual treatment costs.”

Liberals protest war, Conservatives protest health. So it goes.

[Shodan]

@Lightnin

And surely you were just as concerned during Bush’s term, right?

Yes, I was. I opposed the Medicare drug benefit, and I supported efforts to reform Social Security, also projected to suffer a crash in the medium term. Unfortunately, Congressional Democrats would rather deny Bush a victory than actually address a problem, so here we are.

Now, of course, with a Democrat in the White House, enormous increases in the deficit and unfunded programs are no longer seen in quite the same way. Pity.

Regards,
Shodan

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

I would say that no child deserves to die or go untreated because its parents can’t afford health care. I’d be happy if we just provided health care to children, the elderly and the disabled while letting able-bodied adults fend for themselves.

[Bosstone]

@Shodan

Yes, I was. I opposed the Medicare drug benefit, and I supported efforts to reform Social Security, also projected to suffer a crash in the medium term. Unfortunately, Congressional Democrats would rather deny Bush a victory than actually address a problem, so here we are.

Now, of course, with a Democrat in the White House, enormous increases in the deficit and unfunded programs are no longer seen in quite the same way. Pity.

Regards,
Shodan

But wars are totally awesome and totally worth the outrageous expense, right?

[asterion]

Of course, the Democrats weren’t in the majority in 2005 when Social Security reform couldn’t get past Congress or in 2003 when the money grab known as Medicare Part D was passed.

[gonzomax]

@Shodan

Well, I shouldn’t go broke because you got sick either.But some people should die because we can’t afford health care for them.

Both of these statements seem to assume that health care can be free, and that shifting the cost makes it go away. It can’t and it doesn’t. Hiding costs are a, if not the, major reason for health care inflation. Spending a trillion and a half dollars of someone else’s money to cover about half of the currently uninsured is pouring gas on that fire.

Regards,
Shodan

Who said health care should be free. It should be through our taxes. We spend more on health care now and get less. Because you have some libertarians sensitivities roughed up by the thought of universal health care, we should allow men . women and children to go bankrupt and lose their homes. Little countries without Democratic roots are going for universal care. Some people are so cold when it comes to the plight of others that I am shocked.

[bri1600bv]

@fessie

How much of that trillion-and-a-half represents the insurance industry? I see them as completely unnecessary to the system. Or rather, I see their profits as unnecessary - the administration probably does help move paper around.

How much productivity does the country gain by improving the health of the currently uninsured?

And how many of the completely uninsured are suffering health problems because someone else is benefiting from their poverty - i.e., they have asthma from breathing fouled air, they lack insurance b/c Wal*Mart doesn’t want to pay for it, they eat only fast-food b/c that’s what’s in their neighborhood, etc.

You could say that about any business. Profit is the grease that makes capitalism work and capitalism has somehow made this a very rich country. More profit = more competion and better products and in turn lower profits. What does Welpoint Health make a percent of revenues? 2 cents on the dollar?

All businesses work for profit, not the common good. The gov’t should take over every business then…I don’t see what these greedmongers have to offer! Grocery stores make HUGE profits. They should be confiscated and run by the gov’t…after all people are HUNGRY out there. They are hungry and the stores WON’T FEED THEM. Just because they have no money. The nerve! Doctors don’t work for the sake of compassion only…they make huge bucks. Make them all work for the gov’t at 30K per year. See how they like that!

And who is Wal-Mart not to provide unlimited gold plated health care for their workers? What do they think this is? A free country? Confiscate them!
If the workers don’t like working at WalMart then LEAVE. And if you think you can compete with them and give better benefits, then why don’t you start a company with that premise. “We’ll charge much higher prices and make no money (profit is evil) so that we can pay our workers more”. And when you can’t get investors or customers but everyone wants to work there what will you do?

[bri1600bv]

@gonzomax

Who said health care should be free. It should be through our taxes. We spend more on health care now and get less. Because you have some libertarians sensitivities roughed up by the thought of universal health care, we should allow men . women and children to go bankrupt and lose their homes. Little countries without Democratic roots are going for universal care. Some people are so cold when it comes to the plight of others that I am shocked.

There’s no limit on healthcare demands. The demand is infinite. “pay for it through our taxes”…through WHOSE taxes? 1/2 the people in the country don’t pay any federal income taxes and it’s unlikely they could afford 12K per family. What you want is for benefits to be paid through some other guys’ taxes. Why stop at health care? Why not buy everyone a free car, free house, free college education for their kids (actually Obama proposed that).

If people don’t want to lose their homes, they can BUY insurance. But then they’d have to make choices like cut off the cable TV, the mobile phones, etc.

If they are so poor they have no assets, then “losing the house” is kind of meaningless…they had no equity to begin with.

[Iorek_Byrnison]

@bri1600bv

If people don’t want to lose their homes, they can BUY insurance.

If they’re lucky. The problem with privatized health insurance is that the carriers are not in the business of providing healthcare coverage; they are in the business of collecting premiums. They are not looking to collect your premiums if they believe they will have to pay out more than you will pay in. That means people with preexisting medical conditions, family histories of certain medical conditions, etc, will either be denied or offered premiums that cannot be met.

That’s not even mentioning the problem of rescission. That’s where you did qualify for private insurance, and now you have it. You’re ill and need your health coverage. So, the carrier finds a tiny mistake you made on your application five years ago, or they find something in your medical history that they can claim as proof that you hid a pre-existing condition, and they dump you.

So, easy solution… Just get a job where your employer will offer you health coverage. Or get your spouse to do so. Great! I hope you never get fired. Or laid off. Or need to quit to take care of a sick family member. Or get divorced and dropped off the plan. I hope your company never goes under. I hope you don’t retire and expect your employer to leave your medical coverage alone without a union contract.

This is often thrown around as only a problem of the “poor.” I guess that’s true… if you’re not independently wealthy enough to survive getting laid off, losing your health coverage, and then getting a diagnosis of, say, skin cancer… You are part of the poor population who needs help.

[The_Hamster_King]

@bri1600bv

There’s no limit on healthcare demands. The demand is infinite.

No it’s not. With the exception of a handful of hypochondriacs, no one WANTS to go to the doctor. Most people would be blissfully happy if they never, ever had to set foot in a hospital or take a pill.

This is why the free market is a poor model for healthcare. With most other things I can balance the quality or amount of a good or service against my finances and desires. If I’m broke I can eat mac 'n cheese and ride the bus instead of eating steak and driving a Porsche. If sending my kids to college is really important to me, maybe I’ll scrimp in other areas of my life to make that happen.

But how am I supposed to scrimp on healthcare? I’m not buying it because I want to. I’m buying it because I’m forced to in order to avoid turning up dead or crippled. If I want lots of it’s not because I’m greedy but because I’m desperate. And if you’re desperate any thought of making rational economic decisions goes out the window. If the choice is between a million-dollar debt and DEATH, I’ll take the million-dollar debt, please! If the choice is between flushing my kid’s education down the toilet, and DEATH, I’ll flush away. Forcing people to make choices like that isn’t good free-market economics. It’s just cruel.

[Voyager]

@fessie

OK - but if “no one should die because they can’t afford health care” at what point do they acknowledge that an ADEQUATE effort has been made? Where IS that line? Health care often fails people.

Sure. If the person is able to get the same care he or she would get with insurance, I’m happy. Since I have good insurance, getting my wife’s retina reattached was a no-brainer. What would a person do faced with the choice of his wife losing eyesight in one eye or losing his house and going bankrupt? I don’t that is a choice we should force people to make.

I thought the status quo was that hospitals HAVE to accept people who are in crisis, and I thought that the cost of treating them was something we all (except for the insurance companies) absorbed indirectly.

Not quite. They have to accept them, but the people still get billed (assuming they aren’t on Medicaid.) The hospitals do eat some of the losses because the people can’t pay, but the people don’t waltz away with no bill.

So it seems like the people we’re trying to capture now are people with chronic conditions - which are, IIRC, largely affected by lifestyle. Heart disease and diabetes are, for sure.

Perhaps having good nonemergency medical care would help to educate people about their bad lifestyle choices - though since obesity occurs in people with good insurance, I’m not sure. But as we’ve been saying, it costs more to have a healthy diet in this country than a crappy one. If you have no money, what do you buy; ramen noodles and potatoes or low fat ground beef and fresh vegetables? Solving that involves solving poverty which is way harder than fixing health care. Anyhow, I’ve not notices the anti-reform crowd being out in front of issues like forcing McDonald’s to put the calorie count and fat content of their food up in big, friendly letters.

I don’t think people in this country are eager to pay for their neighbor’s bad choices.

But we all do, even those of us with private insurance. My rates are higher because of the bad choices in the insured population also.

I thought kids were already covered in most states. Isn’t that the case?

Only up to a certain point. You are thinking of SCHIPS. Remember, Bush twice vetoed attempts to extend this to more children. Obama signed it earlier this year. I believe that funding for children’s health care is being cut in California due to the budget crisis. This helps, but is not the full answer.

I thought, too, that most of the people who had fallen through the cracks (the chronic homeless, for example) had mental health issues - and the states closed the mental hospitals during Reagan’s tenure, IIRC.

I think a lot more people fall through the cracks than that. Those people probably qualify for Medicaid, and would be a problem no matter what. IIRC correctly in New York they were forced onto the street in a misguided effort to make sure they weren’t locked up against their will. I don’t recall seeing anything blaming that particular mess on Reagan, but I could be wrong.

[Voyager]

@bri1600bv

There’s no limit on healthcare demands. The demand is infinite.

Then you’ll be able to demonstrate that those with good health insurance make unlimited healthcare demands, right?

“pay for it through our taxes”…through WHOSE taxes? 1/2 the people in the country don’t pay any federal income taxes and it’s unlikely they could afford 12K per family.

Easy solution to that. Start paying them decent wages, and they will not only be able to pay taxes but will be able to buy some stuff and get the country back on its feet.

What you want is for benefits to be paid through some other guys’ taxes. Why stop at health care? Why not buy everyone a free car, free house, free college education for their kids (actually Obama proposed that).

Actually, there is free college education in many countries. And it is not just in “socialist” countries like England. In New York every kid had the right to a free education in a city college. My mother got her degree in Brooklyn College, one she wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. Many of the greatest intellectuals of the mid 20th century got educated for free at CCNY. This paid back far more to the city and the country than it ever cost.

If people don’t want to lose their homes, they can BUY insurance. But then they’d have to make choices like cut off the cable TV, the mobile phones, etc.

Let them eat cake! Do you really think the cost of a mobile phone and health insurance are remotely comparable? Especially health insurance that cuts in before you have to pay a deductible that represents a hefty portion of your income?

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

ITT:bri1600bv, the person who wants the poor to die in the streets, has an opinion on healthcare coverage. Just as Kim Jung Il has an opinion on capitalism.

[bri1600bv]

@The_Tao_s_Revenge

ITT:bri1600bv, the person who wants the poor to die in the streets, has an opinion on healthcare coverage. Just as Kim Jung Il has an opinion on capitalism.

This is supposed to make sense?

Let me guess, you want other people to pay for your “free healthcare” just like you want people to pay for your “free food”.

I’m all for healthcare. I just don’t want to pay for other people’s and I don’t want them paying for mine.

[bri1600bv]

@The_Hamster_King

No it’s not. With the exception of a handful of hypochondriacs, no one WANTS to go to the doctor. Most people would be blissfully happy if they never, ever had to set foot in a hospital or take a pill.

This is why the free market is a poor model for healthcare. With most other things I can balance the quality or amount of a good or service against my finances and desires. If I’m broke I can eat mac 'n cheese and ride the bus instead of eating steak and driving a Porsche. If sending my kids to college is really important to me, maybe I’ll scrimp in other areas of my life to make that happen.

But how am I supposed to scrimp on healthcare? I’m not buying it because I want to. I’m buying it because I’m forced to in order to avoid turning up dead or crippled. If I want lots of it’s not because I’m greedy but because I’m desperate. And if you’re desperate any thought of making rational economic decisions goes out the window. If the choice is between a million-dollar debt and DEATH, I’ll take the million-dollar debt, please! If the choice is between flushing my kid’s education down the toilet, and DEATH, I’ll flush away. Forcing people to make choices like that isn’t good free-market economics. It’s just cruel.

When people are sick there is no end to the amount of health care they will demand. Why wouldn’t they? They don’t have to pay for it. That’s why health care is so “expensive”…people USE a lot of it.

What will happen when a few hundred thousand dollars of stem cell treatments can cure heart disease, diabetes, lung cancer, etc. etc. Well…I guess those insurance companies will be paying quite a bit of money out! And who pays for that? And now you want to take people who pay nothing into the system and give them gold plated unlimited care…and that’s going to be paid for how?

Your solution to having people having million dollar health care bills is to put it onto the gov’t…like they have an infinite amount of money? People who pay nothing have the “right” to health care which was unavailable to everyone just a generation ago, because it IS available. It’s unsustainable.

In a perfect utopia, healthcare would be free and limitless…you need it you get it. Unfortunately in the real world, this costs money and the gov’t doesn’t have an unlimited amount of it.

[bri1600bv]

@Voyager

Then you’ll be able to demonstrate that those with good health insurance make unlimited healthcare demands, right?

Easy solution to that. Start paying them decent wages, and they will not only be able to pay taxes but will be able to buy some stuff and get the country back on its feet.

Actually, there is free college education in many countries. And it is not just in “socialist” countries like England. In New York every kid had the right to a free education in a city college. My mother got her degree in Brooklyn College, one she wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. Many of the greatest intellectuals of the mid 20th century got educated for free at CCNY. This paid back far more to the city and the country than it ever cost.

Let them eat cake! Do you really think the cost of a mobile phone and health insurance are remotely comparable? Especially health insurance that cuts in before you have to pay a deductible that represents a hefty portion of your income?

Sure pay them decent wages!

Raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour…that would be a start!