The fact is that EVERYONE in this country has the ability to get insured.
This is demonstrably false. If you have a serious pre-existing condition, you will never find affordable insurance. Most of you fools are just one bad diagnosis away from bankruptcy. Of course, you would enjoy becoming destitute because, as a loser, you would be upholding the right of the winners to profit from their hard work.
1) If someone has a significant chronic illness and 2) either didn’t have insurance or 3) dropped their insurance, and then 4) tried to get new insurance, then, yes, they would have to pay more. But they would still be able to get it, despite their poor choices. So “demonstrably false” requires quite a few “ifs”. But you were not talking, in terms of the 15%, of people who have “serious pre-existing conditions” - you were clearly referring to people who couldn’t afford it or have chosen not to have it.
Although that is not terribly clear. You said that someone is “making sure” that this 15% isn’t insured, “so as to assure superb health care for the rest of us”. (Thanks for admitting that the care here is “superb”. I will expect no more gratuitous slams about the quality of care here in the US.) Sounds like it is a conscious choice by this shadowy “someone”. Too bad that we don’t have the ability to interview this Person of the Shadows, to find out what his criteria are, isn’t it? And, of course, how he brings this off. He must have incredible behind-the-scenes power, mustn’t he? And, of course, people with your slant can never actually IDENTIFY who might be doing these nefarious tasks, or identify HOW he or they might be pulling it off. And, of course, how they might be ENSURING that the remaining people get “superb” care.
And as for becoming “destitute”, with in your opinion, I would “enjoy” (a perfectly stupid postulate, if you ask me), I assume that you are limiting it to “most of you fools”, which means, whom? Patients? Physicians? You need to become clearer in your writing. When we wade through your rhetoric, we often find...nothing there. Care to elaborate?
The fact is that EVERYONE in this country has the ability to get insured.
This is demonstrably false. If you have a serious pre-existing condition, you will never find affordable insurance. Most of you fools are just one bad diagnosis away from bankruptcy. Of course, you would enjoy becoming destitute because, as a loser, you would be upholding the right of the winners to profit from their hard work.
...
You need to become clearer in your writing. When we wade through your rhetoric, we often find...nothing there. Care to elaborate?
Just in case “Meliorist” comes back with a retort about your using the “royal we” and such, let me add myself to the set of people who’s interested in having him/her/it ‘splain.
1) If someone has a significant chronic illness and 2) either didn’t have insurance or 3) dropped their insurance, and then 4) tried to get new insurance, then, yes, they would have to pay more. But they would still be able to get it, despite their poor choices.
What kind of stupid game are you playing? If you go to a refugee camp in Darfur, you can proudly say that everyone there has the opportunity to pay for food and transportation. You could even lend them a satellite phone so that they could use their AMEX card to call for a limo.
People of modest means who have been diagnosed with serious chronic illnesses cannot obtain AFFORDABLE INSURANCE. You know this, but you play a debating game of avoiding the fact. This is just childish evasiveness. After you are backed into a corner and forced to admit that adequate medical insurance is unaffordable for large nubmers of people in America you will drop this thread, only to start up again with your absurd claims when you think no one will challenge you.
The PowerLiners cheat and retreat like this over and over again. They march out one of their favorite canards like “we don’t torture” or “there is plenty of oil in ANWR” or “Saddam hid WMD in Iraq” or “Americans have the world’s best medical care.” After a long exchange of messages, their point is debunked and they fall silent for a few days; then it starts all over again. The fastest way to get a PowerLine authoritarian to drop a thread is to conspicuously disprove one of their standard canards. But this is like cutting off one head of the Hydra. Within a few days, the same debunked nonsense will be spouted on multiple new threads.
The canard from the Left is that medical insurance and medical care are one and the same, and that somehow if an individual has no insurance, they get no care.
Medical care is available to anyone in the United States of America who bothers to seek it out - even the truly poor - even non-citizens. You may need to fill out some paperwork, wait a bit, or God forbid suffer the indignity of care that is not as expedient as care obtained by someone with Blue Cross/Blue Shield. But you’ll get care, in the same medical system enjoyed by everyone else.
It’s a good system we have, if government would just get the hell out, and let the market work. Look at all the market-based systemic infrastructure in this country, across the board. The systems that are the most f**ked up are the ones most interfered-with by government bureaucracy and regulation.
And if you oppose a market-based medical system, go to school and intern for 13 years, and then be told the government is going to regulate the value of the time and effort you’ve spent.
And Mealy-mouth, you like to flaunt the “fact” that once the number of uninsured becomes a majority, then we’ll have taxpayer-funded health-care. Understand, the system was not always like it is now. I realize you are but a youth. The system has gotten worse over the years in proportion to government interference and regulation in the system.
For crying out loud, government won’t even allow people to purchase insurance from out of state. How in the hell is a free market system supposed to function with that kind of arbitrary restrictive regulation? I want insurance companies to compete for my dollars. Only then will the cost of insurance and the value of the product reflect real market dynamics.
I realize that competition is antithetical to your liberal sensibilities, but it is THE best regulator for a free market system. F**k with it, and f**k with people’s lives and livlihood.
Medical care is available to anyone in the United States of America who bothers to seek it out - even the truly poor - even non-citizens.
Bull$hit. If you are uninsured and have a costly chronic condition or require an expensive repair procedure, you will not receive that care. The best you can hope for is to get treated in an emergency ward when your condition becomes acute, then get dumped out on the street once you are “stabilized.” I will put anecdotes of Canadians waiting for good care against anecdotes of Americans getting wretched care in emergency rooms any day.
We regulate the market economy in countless ways. This regulation is the product of centuries of experience in dealing with unchecked greed. Businessmen will become gangsters if they are not held accountable to laws that protect the public. If you think we need less regulation of business, take a look at the US financial markets. If the Fed had not stepped in, all of the Wall Street investment houses would have collapsed because of their swinish pursuit of predatory profits in mortgage and junk bond lending.
Medical care is available to anyone in the United States of America who bothers to seek it out - even the truly poor - even non-citizens.
Bull$hit. If you are uninsured and have a costly chronic condition or require an expensive repair procedure, you will not receive that care. The best you can hope for is to get treated in an emergency ward when your condition becomes acute, then get dumped out on the street once you are “stabilized.”
You don’t know what the hell you are talking about. Every city has several free clinics, and every hospital has liason staff that will direct people to them. There is staff at every medical facility that treats low income patients that will assist those patients in navigating through medical assistance beaurocracy. If uninsured people are willing to do what it takes, they can get government assitance if they qualify. If they don’t qualify, guess, what? That means they can pay. And I know first hand that hospitals and clinics will negotiate reduced fees and payment schedules with patients. They employ staff just for that purpose as well.
Emergency rooms treat acute situations. They are not set up to treat long-term chronic conditions. Just because patients off the street cannot get long-term care from the emergency room does not mean it is unavailable to them.
You are just so bent on everybody being treated exactly the same, that you fail to understand that for the vast majority of Americans, we have easy access to the best medical care anywhere in the world, and for the minority without insurance, they have access to the same system via alternate means. They may have to go through the “degrading” process of jumping through beaurocratic hoops to get long-term assistance, and going to the free clinic downtown for their primary care instead of the shiny new clinic in the burbs, but that is because their economic circumstances warrant it, not because the majority get the best care.
Bottom line is you think the system “unfair”, so you would see it worsened for all, so that the underprivileged could feel better about themselves. Stinking class envy.
If you think we need less regulation of business, take a look at the US financial markets. If the Fed had not stepped in, all of the Wall Street investment houses would have collapsed because of their swinish pursuit of predatory profits in mortgage and junk bond lending.
That is called market correction, son. Look, I know you’re an idealistic young man, but you need to take a reality pill. The government f**ks up everything it touches when it tries to stick its nose in the market by telling people dealing in legal commerce what they can sell, what they can buy, and how they can buy it.
I want to shop around the country for the medical insurance policy that best suits my needs, for the best price. Government prevents me from doing that, and thereby squashes competition for my dollar. This puts the HMOs in a position of offering less service for more money. That is laid directly at the feet of politicians who pandered to that industry and f**ked it up in the first place. Government regulation.
If the government had kept its stinking nose out of the medical insurance industry in the first place, we would not be in the situation we are in right now.
Not to mention the fact that out medical benevolence infrastructure is being overrun by illegal aliens who do not even have the right to be in this country. Government again.
You want this inept government to be in charge of the medical system that treats you, your “partner”, or your family’s children? You are insane.
You don’t know what the hell you are talking about. Every city has several free clinics, and every hospital has liason staff that will direct people to them. There is staff at every medical facility that treats low income patients that will assist those patients in navigating through medical assistance beaurocracy. If uninsured people are willing to do what it takes, they can get government assitance if they qualify. If they don’t qualify, guess, what? That means they can pay. And I know first hand that hospitals and clinics will negotiate reduced fees and payment schedules with patients. They employ staff just for that purpose as well.
What a load of rubbish. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are forced to declare bankruptcy every year because of medical expenses. Does this mean they don’t know how to find “free clinics?”
Medical Bills a Key Cause of Consumer Bankruptcy
The problem of medical expenses in the U.S. economy has been gradually (and sometimes not so gradually) increasing over the past 50 years. In recent years, that growth has accelerated to the point that in 2003, medical costs made up more than 15% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). If we continue as expected, that percentage will grow to approximately 33% by 2040.
As early as 1987, a comparative study found that more than 9 million families were spending more than 20% of their income on medical expenses. Many middle-class Americans feel insulated from these growing costs by medical insurance, but often when serious medical problems arise, that safety net either disappears or proves to be full of holes.
For most, medical insurance is employer-sponsored. That means the insurance can disappear when illness or injury makes working impossible. Although COBRA laws allow the employee to extend the insurance coverage by assuming payments, that solution falls short for many. First, COBRA coverage is limited in duration, so an illness or injury that prevents work in the long-term will ultimately outlast those benefits.
Even during the period that COBRA coverage is available, it may be cost-prohibitive for the now-unemployed person to cover ever-increasing premiums.
Finally, even people with active medical insurance coverage often end up with large bills as co-payments, non-covered services and other out-of-pocket expenses mount. Although many policies include “catastrophic” provisions that limit out-of-pocket expenses, the cut-offs are often so high that policyholders are bankrupted by the medical expenses that fall in the gap.
These radically mounting medical bills haven’t been absorbed easily by the average American family. In 2000, Melissa B. Jacoby, Teresa A. Sullivan and Elizabeth Warren reported that an estimated 326,441 personal bankruptcy petitions in 1999 were triggered by illness or injury involving the filer or a member of his household. More than a quarter of a million additional filers had substantial medical bills.
This is just the magic of the marketplace at work, right? This is what makes us such a great society? All these bankrupt families must make you smile because they prove we have the best medical care system in the world. Americans live in fear of getting seriously ill, because a catastrophic illness can destroy their financial security. But market worshipers like you love this climate of fear, because it makes people scramble desperately for the personal fortunes that are the only sure protection against medical bankruptcy. Of course only a few will become rich, but many more will suffer catastrophic illness. You have a word for these unfortunates: losers. You believe that protecting losers harms the “winners,” and this is anathema to you.
Zealots like you would shut down Medicare, Medicaid and the VA hospital system. Somehow, the marketplace magic would take care of all of the indigent and unfortunate. We are the only affluent nation in the world in which this fairy-tale view of health care capitalism persists, and our declining public health statistics show the price we are paying for this delusion.
This is just the magic of the marketplace at work, right? This is what makes us such a great society? All these bankrupt families must make you smile because they prove we have the best medical care system in the world. Americans live in fear of getting sick, because a catastrophic illness can destroy their financial security.
If people incur medical expenses they cannot pay because they failed to seek the proper channels available to them for financial relief, who’s fault is that? Mine? Capitalism’s?
And what the hell do you think bankruptcy is for? It is relief from uncollectable incurred debt, you dodo. You want to pay in good faith, but you can’t, and can prove you can’t, you get to file bankruptcy. Entrepeneurs do it all the time. Most millionaires have filed at least once. Bankruptcy does not mean you lose everything. It means there is a safety net to prevent that from happening.
Do you believe that somewhere embedded in the constitution or in some imaginary meliorist moral code that everyone has the “right” to financial security? Do you think it is a person’s “right” to be free from the risks that arise from the hazards of everyday living, including injury and disease? Maybe you should just live in a padded cell.
Zealots like you would shut down Medicare, Medicaid and the VA hospital system. Somehow, the marketplace magic would take care of all of the indigent and unfortunate. We are the only affluent nation in the world in which this fairy-tale view of health care capitalism persists, and our declining public health statistics show the price we are paying for this delusion.
Don’t tell me what I would or wouldn’t do.
And we have thus far staved off the substandard health-care systems that now plague so many Europeans and Canadians who thought it would be nice to suckle on the teat of the nanny-state.
Bottom line is, when they need the best, they come here.
If people incur medical expenses they cannot pay because they failed to seek the proper channels available to them for financial relief, who’s fault is that? Mine? Capitalism’s?
Are you seriously suggesting that bankruptcy is the most efficient way to handle catastrophic medical expenses? Are these people going bankrupt because they can’t find your “free clinics?”
Yes, this sickening state of unnecessary suffering is your fault, because you worship a form of capitalism that views misery as an essential fuel for prosperity. You just take the growing total wealth of society and divide it by the population and crow about rising per-capita income. Meanwhile, the ranks of the uninsured increase, bankruptcy filings are soaring, and America’s public health statistics are declining.
Like the rest of the PowerLine authoritarians here, you get a real buzz out of punishing life’s “losers,” those unlucky enough get the wrong illness or lose a job at the wrong time. You might feel some remorse at the suffering of their families, but that just inflicts more well-deserved pain on the loser who is being punished by the miracle of the marketplace.
Every single argument you make against government provided health care could be used to justify shutting down medicare and medicaid, and probably social security too. Is that what you advocate?
If people incur medical expenses they cannot pay because they failed to seek the proper channels available to them for financial relief, who’s fault is that? Mine? Capitalism’s?
Are you seriously suggesting that bankruptcy is the most efficient way to handle catastrophic medical expenses? Are these people going bankrupt because they can’t find your “free clinics?”
Yes, this sickening state of unnecessary suffering is your fault, because you worship a form of capitalism that views misery as an essential fuel for prosperity. You just take the growing total wealth of society and divide it by the population and crow about rising per-capita income. Meanwhile, the ranks of the uninsured increase, bankruptcy filings are soaring, and America’s public health statistics are declining.
Like the rest of the PowerLine authoritarians here, you get a real buzz out of punishing life’s “losers,” those unlucky enough get the wrong illness or lose a job at the wrong time. You might feel some remorse at the suffering of their families, but that just inflicts more well-deserved pain on the loser who is being punished by the miracle of the marketplace.
Every single argument you make against government provided health care could be used to justify shutting down medicare and medicaid, and probably social security too. Is that what you advocate?
Your personal attacks and wildly off-base accusations reveal the shifting sand and emotional nature upon which you base your entire argument.
This is just the magic of the marketplace at work, right? This is what makes us such a great society? All these bankrupt families must make you smile because they prove we have the best medical care system in the world. Americans live in fear of getting sick, because a catastrophic illness can destroy their financial security.
IDP has responded to this quite well, but I wish to add my perspective.
the fact is that bankruptcy is indeed a way out of enormous debt for people who confront catastrophic illness. Hospital bills are routinely written off because they were discharged in bankruptcy.
What is egregious is meliorist’s need to slime people who have the nerve to disagree with him. It is a variation on Oldjim’s style. It works like this: one either agrees with them or one is a proponent of the worst in humanity. It does nothing to advance an argument but it does demonstrate that those who use the technique are irrational.
I don’t live in fear of catastrophic illness because it will ruin me financially. My sainted ex wife has already done that. I don’t want to be catastrophically ill because I rather enjoy my life and I recognize that my life is enjoyable because I have good health. So I engage in healthy behavior. I am surrounded by people who make other choices. Obesity, cigarette smoking, no excersize, poor food choices and so forth. These people run a much greater risk of facing some sort of catastrophic illness.
Am I immune? certainly not, but the odds favor me over the fat cigarette smoker who just experienced a BKA because of diabetes.
Zealots like you would shut down Medicare, Medicaid and the VA hospital system. Somehow, the marketplace magic would take care of all of the indigent and unfortunate. We are the only affluent nation in the world in which this fairy-tale view of health care capitalism persists, and our declining public health statistics show the price we are paying for this delusion.
This is also egregious. IDP has said no such thing. I have worked in healthcare finance for thirty years. It is my contention that much of the struggle that hospitals face is the direct result of government meddling. Medicare and Medicaid are dysfunctional. They distort the market and routinely engage in wag the dog actions that drive up cost and reduce quality. States have insurance commissioners who’s role is the regulation of the industry. This approach has failed miserably everywhere. More government involvement will NOT improve healthcare.
As for caring for the indigent and unfortunate I, once again, point out that the vast majority of hospitals in America are organized as charitable institutions. It is not a accident that many fine hospitals are run by religious groups. These groups did not enter the healthcare field to deny care to the indigent and the unfortunate, quite the oppasite. but why let that simple fact interupt a spittle slinging rant?
As for healthcare capitalism, it works quite well. Neither the Mayo clinic nor the cleveland clinic are based on religious orders but they are very, very successful. they are both wide spread and widely recognized. For example, the cleveland clinic operates in both canada and Abu Dhabi. these organizations offer world class top notch care. They are non profit and provide a lot of uncompensated care. These are world class organizations that compete in many markets and in many market segments. And they compete by being leading edge and competitively priced. To say otherwise is to yet again demonstrate abyssal ignorance.
Meliorist is out of his league here. This is just another opportunity for him to vent his spleen with idiotic, pointless rants that simply show us how immature and thoughtless some people can be.
I have worked in healthcare finance for thirty years. It is my contention that much of the struggle that hospitals face is the direct result of government meddling. Medicare and Medicaid are dysfunctional. They distort the market and routinely engage in wag the dog actions that drive up cost and reduce quality. States have insurance commissioners who’s role is the regulation of the industry. This approach has failed miserably everywhere. More government involvement will NOT improve healthcare.
Why not make American health care a free-fire zone for capitalism? The periodic excesses will be corrected, and the unfortunate victims can be ignored. You can get rid of the FDA while you are at it, and remove all the drug laws as well. The model of unregulated medical care you imagine is a bizarre fantasy that exists nowhere in the world, with the possible exception of Somalia and a few other failed states. But why not come right out and advocate it? Tell us how the magic of the free market would work.
Don’t you know Skip, it harms the self esteem of children when they are ignored. You must hate all children
Yeah, you nailed it. I hate my daughter so much, for example, that I’m forcing her to suffer through a cleveland indians games saturday night. And its a clear example of creeping globalization because the indians are playing the toronto blue jays.
from a politically correct POV I’m wondering for whom I should cheer. Are native americans more oppressed that the avifauna of north America?
