Just Saw Sicko, Now Have Question

[7ontheline]

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One of the problems with Sicko is that it does not touch on the rationing of healthcare that is necessary under any government system.

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Hate to break it to you but we ration healthcare in the US. We just do it in the most draconian fashion possible. We base it on means.

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I'm well aware that health care is currently rationed based on money. Just pointing out that the "Free Universal Health Care for All!" bit is a complete exaggeration at best.

[The4Aces]

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I dont see how healthcare is a basic human right. Taking from one group of people and giving to another is socialism. The USA was built on capitalism not socialism.

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All due respect, this is a really dumb opinion. One might say that the USA was built on the backs of African slaves, stolen from Native Americans, and layered over the corpses of immigrant laborers. Using reductio ad absurdum on your argument would leave us with a government that doesn't tax anyone for anything and does nothing. Hey, wait a minute...

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there was no socialised healthcare in this country for over 200 years. If more and more things start becoming human rights then people will pay 100% of their money to taxes and the goverment can give us each a stipend to live on.

[Lucky]

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I'm going to try and address the question and avoid a political debate.

If you are rich enough to have to worry about your described scenario, then you can afford insurance that doesn't have a cap on payments.

If you don't have that kind of policy, and are diagnosed with such an illness and would rather your family get your cash instead of the hospital then YSSCKY.

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I appreciate you avoiding the political debate, as that wasnt the purpose of my post. We have what we have in the USA; I was simply trying to figure out what people in the know have in place preparing for medical disaster.

As for me, I'm not rich, but I wouldnt want every bit of my money to go to medical care. My policy caps out for payments at a million. So basically, any serious illness could eat that up quick; then I go broke. So I'm looking for alternatives that preferably wouldnt involve suicide.
By the way, how much do policies with no caps cost?

[AdamBragar]

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I'm going to try and address the question and avoid a political debate.

If you are rich enough to have to worry about your described scenario, then you can afford insurance that doesn't have a cap on payments.

If you don't have that kind of policy, and are diagnosed with such an illness and would rather your family get your cash instead of the hospital then YSSCKY.

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I appreciate you avoiding the political debate, as that wasnt the purpose of my post. We have what we have in the USA; I was simply trying to figure out what people in the know have in place preparing for medical disaster.

As for me, I'm not rich, but I wouldnt want every bit of my money to go to medical care. My policy caps out for payments at a million. So basically, any serious illness could eat that up quick; then I go broke. So I'm looking for alternatives that preferably wouldnt involve suicide.
By the way, how much do policies with no caps cost?

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A one million dollar cap is pretty high. 1 million in medical expenses is very high and it's pretty rare this threshold is reached. However, caps on insurance, especially lower caps, are a major problem in the US health care system as many people are uninformed that their plan has a cap and if you do hit your cap, you are pretty much screwed.

[Fast Food Knight]

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I dont see how healthcare is a basic human right. Taking from one group of people and giving to another is socialism.

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there was no socialised healthcare in this country for over 200 years. If more and more things start becoming human rights then people will pay 100% of their money to taxes and the goverment can give us each a stipend to live on.

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QFT

[dzh90]

It is inconsistent to believe that everyone has the right to decent healthcare and to also believe that anyone has the right to million dollar healthcare.

[Emperor]

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I'm going to try and address the question and avoid a political debate.

If you are rich enough to have to worry about your described scenario, then you can afford insurance that doesn't have a cap on payments.

If you don't have that kind of policy, and are diagnosed with such an illness and would rather your family get your cash instead of the hospital then YSSCKY.

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I appreciate you avoiding the political debate, as that wasnt the purpose of my post. We have what we have in the USA; I was simply trying to figure out what people in the know have in place preparing for medical disaster.

As for me, I'm not rich, but I wouldnt want every bit of my money to go to medical care. My policy caps out for payments at a million. So basically, any serious illness could eat that up quick; then I go broke. So I'm looking for alternatives that preferably wouldnt involve suicide.
By the way, how much do policies with no caps cost?

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A one million dollar cap is pretty high. 1 million in medical expenses is very high and it's pretty rare this threshold is reached. However, caps on insurance, especially lower caps, are a major problem in the US health care system as many people are uninformed that their plan has a cap and if you do hit your cap, you are pretty much screwed.

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I had a policy with a 2M cap through a small company who paid half the premium. Total premium was <$400/month

[Emperor]

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I'm all for universal health care here, as I think the biggest problem with our system is people who are afraid to go to work and lose their state-covered health care.

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Only pregnant mothers and seniors have state-covered health care. Everyone else can go to the ER, hospital will bill them, and then never collect (IF the person doesn't have money). Health care for these people is subsidized by paying customers. "40Million people without healthcare" is a myth. 40million people may not be covered by insurance, but they surely wont be denied care, its against the law.


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You're talking out of your ass. In CA people on welfare are covered. But it's administered by county. In LA it's like an HMO. Some counties like Santa Barbara it sucks a lot worse. My friend has gotten $150k worth of eye surgeries at UCLA eye center because she's indigent and disabled (although not enough to get disabilty [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]) in LA County.


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My friend has diabetes. She got a job with a small company and her health insurance was going to be like 3/4 of her salary. That's nuts.

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That's life. At least the company was willing to cover 25%.


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Where do you get that? The company wasn't covering squat. Her premium was 75% of her salary. Large companies often cover a lot of the premium, small companies don't have to. I think after 6 months her insurance would go down substantially though.

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Sorry, you are correct. The socialist PRC does have state/county health care (for now). Most do not.

Apologies, I misread. I thought they were paying 75% of her premium. Insurance is not inexpensive. There are ways to make it cheaper:

1. Increase the supply of insurance companies (by encouraging competition, instead of protecting the industry through legislation)

2. Increase the supply of doctors (through education and immigration).

State sponsored anything costs on average 3x what deregulated anything costs.(you can find citation on CATO)

[7ontheline]

Emperor,

Increasing the supply of doctors is unlikely to decrease the price of health care. Doctor reimbursements are generally not set by the physician, they are imposed by Medicare/insurance. Also, with plenty of physicians in financial binds already due to malpractice costs and declining overall reimbursements (particularly primary care providers) you are unlikely to find a large number of people who want to be physicians who have been denied the opportunity unless you lower standards for admission or take a large number of foreign physicians.

[guids]

If people would get their priorities straight, and rather than buy crap they dont need, and use it for health care we wouldn't be debating this. IMO, denying people of means from health care (like they do in other countries) is the biggest [censored] crime in history. My solution would be to convince some of the big retail stores, to work out a deal with health care providers, basically they provide free health care for any of their employees in lieu of pay, dollar for dollar health care, it wouldnt be any more expensive if the govt provided tax breaks for the companies, and the rest of us who arent morons and get have their priorities straight dont have to worry about getting our hard earned dollars stolen from us.


oh ya, completely streamline teh system, make malpractice suits almost non-existent (tough, [censored] happens imo) unless it was REALLY negligent.