A 30 year old with diabetes will be screwed. He will not get insurance. If he had a lot of money ,the insurance companies could still reject him.
The problem is not people not buying health insurance. It is a system where people have to buy it. It should not be a for profit business. We should take care of our people.
Ahh yes but then at least I know where the money went.
Bolding mine.
Medicare is absolutely income dependent, both Medicare Part B and Medicare Part D. People with higher incomes pay more for each, whether they’re getting coverage through Medicare Advantage (with or without prescription drug coverage under Part D) or simply using traditional Medicare (Parts A & B).
Here’s the Part B premium information from Medicare.gov: Premium Info.
Although cheaper than traditional, private-market insurance that is not subsidized by the federal government, you do have to pay based on your tax returns from two years previous. Additionally, due to health reform, people with higher incomes now pay more for Part D.
As for Tricare for Life, that only applies to certain veterans, like full VA benefits. You’re required to do a certain amount of duty or be a certain percentage disabled (as determined by the federal government) to receive the full benefits of Tricare or the VA, respectively.
Also, not all VA coverage is as good as Medicare, so even if you have VA coverage, you probably need to have Medicare (at least Part B), which you would have to pay for anyway. The coverage you could get through the VA that would automatically require no premium is actually drug coverage, but you can only use it at VA or VA-approved facilities. If you really look at VA coverage, it’s far more “rationed” than Medicare - the sickest/most disabled and lowest income get priority.
People with Tricare are also required to have Medicare Part B unless they fall within certain circumstances (active duty, certain health plans, etc). If they don’t get Part B when they’re first eligible for Medicare, they could lose their Tricare. And, of course, unless you have an extremely low income, Medicare beneficiaries will pay a premium to have Part B.
With respect to people who don’t have insurance just being SOL, I think such a notion is asinine. You have 50 million Americans without insurance, one of the primary reasons being cost-driven - they can’t afford it. Up to 50% of Americans have a pre-existing condition among all age groups; in the 55-64 year old range, as many as 86% of the population has a pre-existing condition. So the idea is that, if one of these people have the temerity to get sicker because they can’t afford healthcare they should just drop dead? Or if someone gets injured they should be left to die because “they should have planned better?”
I can’t tell you how many times I hear those words in my field. And it makes me both furious and depressed every time.
Errr, you do now. Government is pretty open, as are its finances. You can look everything up. You even have (a modicum of, distant) input into where the money does go.
Can’t say the same about private enterprises.
Congressmen.
That’s me. I have to work for largish companies in order to get health insurance under a group plan. Without the group, I would be denied.
Of course you can, if my trash pick up becomes too expensive I can do without.
If the lettuce isn’t up to par, I look elsewhere.
(1) What if you can’t afford it?
(2) What if you can barely afford it, but missed a premium one month when you had to repair your car instead, when instead it would have been more rational—having consulted acturial tables and reviewing public transportation options using a high-school education during your break between two jobs—to have kept your health insurance current?
(3) What if you can barely afford it, but in a pique of sentimentality you decided to buy your son a luxury video-game system? As everybody knows, sentimentality is for rich people. Too bad you got COPD, poor single mom, but you made an irresponsible choice in buying that Nintendo and now it’s time to pay the piper!
(4) What if you’re relatively well-off under the current system and everything just so happens to look A-OK from your point of view? Obviously if there are failures, it’s the poor people’s fault, not the system’s. Didn’t you read the preceding two sentences?
Last time my mouth nearly got me into a fist fight was listening to someone complain (and will paraphrase intensely) about paying for other peoples’ religion. He was a member of a church and was sick and tired of all these low life trash that couldn’t donate much money.
I asked him what religion he was.
Christian, of course!!!
{me confused} Christian? Really? As in follows the teachings of Jesus Christ?
{him starting to be suspicious} yea…
Have you read the teachings of Jesus Christ?
{Thought I was going to be in a fistfight…but didn’t happen :D}
Yeah, I pay more than the median home tax for my city, but I’ve noticed a lot of poorer neighbors milking it: calling the ambulance when they have an ‘emergency’, being happy when someone comes to treat them after a car accident at no cost, mailing more than their share of letters, etc. They sure grow fat and happy off the pendulous udder of a caring society.
If that’s true, then why do we need to tax people in order to make it happen?
For the very same reason that everybody agrees that you should save for retirement, but we still need mandatory participation in Social Security to help ensure that people live up to their beliefs about what they ought to be doing.
Have Libertarians really never heard the old chestnut that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”?
Because we realize that it costs less in the long run to do it collectively than individually.
Yes, I’ve heard that. It means that we don’t really want to do “x”, but we like deluding ourselves into thinking that we do.
Bystander effect. Same reason you can get assaulted in front of an entire busload of people and 90% of the time nobody will lift a finger. Don’t think they don’t give a shit, either: everybody on that bus is outraged, everybody in the crowd thinks someoneshould do something, and all are distressed that none of these *other *assholes is doing anything !
The more of us there are, the more we think it’s someone else’s responsibility, assume someone else is going to take care of it or even believe someone else is already taking care of it, no matter what “it” is.
I think it is more accurate to say that we are willing to force other people to make sure that no one is dying in the streets. Which is what we do.
What we are really talking about is the great free market, as it applies to health care. Everything should be run according to the rules of a truly free market. If you buy health insurance, you get to live healthily. And if you choose not to buy insurance, you die when you get sick. How hard is this to understand? So yes, I wholeheartedly agree that if someone is too poor to pay for insurance, they should be turned away from hospitals and doctors. Hey you bums, you should have been born into a rich family, or worked harder, you free-loading pieces of crap!
While we are at it… we should get rid of child labor laws and minimum wage. The free market knows best how to regulate these things. If people don’t like child labor, they won’t patronize business that use kids for work. And people won’t take low paying jobs, so employees will self-regulate their wages, as the free market dictates.
Slavery is also another example of nanny-state overregulating our job-creating businesses. If slavery is so morally reprehensible, then the free market will select against companies that employ the practice of slavery since consumers will always use good moral judgment when purchasing goods.
The free market always knows best.
Why do we have to pay taxes for cops, then? Why can’t people catch their own damn criminals?
I’ll leave the art of distinguishing between what we really want to do and what we do because we have deluded ourselves into believing we want to do it to the phenomenologists of the Libertarian Party. For me, it is enough to prove that we want (really or deludedly, it doesn’t matter to me) to do a given thing when it happens that democratic majorities have passed legislation implementing that thing.
Isn’t that interesting? To the rest of the world it means the exact opposite-that we want to do something, but just won’t go through with it.
I’m not talking about not being able to afford insurance. In the context of the OP, the question was: You are a healthy 30 year old who has access to insurance but has consciously decided to not purchase insurance. You are in an accident that requires extensive and long term treatment. What would you do?
Strictly along those lines, a person has access and the ability to pay for health insurance. They make the conscious decision to forgo it. Who should be responsible for their poor decision?
Again, I don’t know how you enforce it. IN PRINCIPLE, I agree with the sentiment. If you engage in risky behavior and suffer the consequences due to that decision, I find it hard to justify having the rest of society bailing you out. I’m not cruel or uncompassionate but I do believe that we are responsible for the consequences of our decisions. IN ACTUALITY, this is why I’m in favor of the individual mandate of the recent health laws. Some people are stupid.