THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!

[AUwent 3,748]

 

[AUDub 11,147]

You don't understand. In this country, guns are a right and healthcare is a privilege. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

52 minutes ago, Bigbens42 said:

You don't understand. In this country, guns are a right and healthcare is a privilege. 

It's sad that this is a 100% true statement in the year 2017.

[SaltyTiger 7,789]

Are we saying universal health care should be a right?

[AUDub 11,147]

33 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

It's sad that this is a 100% true statement in the year 2017.

It's infuriating. 

[DKW 86 7,419]

54 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

Are we saying universal health care should be a right?

Yes, of course.

[AUDub 11,147]

3 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

Yes, of course.

We've pretty much already decided as a society that healthcare is a right with the passage of EMTALA. Very few Americans would support its repeal, and those that would aren't really worth listening to.

The question is who pays for it. Take the situation above. The people at the concert should be on the hook? If you're not outraged by the situation, you're not doing it right.

[AUloggerhead 2,227]

Don't have an issue with some politician setting up a Go Fund Me account to raise money for the victims' health costs.  Sounds like a great idea to quickly get donations into the hands of the people who actually need it.  We've heard news reports (don't know if they're accurate) that the murdering scumbag shooter was a "multi-millionaire" who owned multiple houses & aircraft, regularly bet huge sums of money and recently wired $100k to the Philippines to his alleged "girlfriend."  If any of this is actually true ... ... it's an outrage that this murdering scumbag shooter's assets haven't been frozen or impounded to help defray all the related medical costs.   

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

1 hour ago, SaltyTiger said:

Are we saying universal health care should be a right?

100%, without a doubt, yes.  Making people choose between running up mountains of debt versus affording health care is absurd.  I live this right now with my wife's health condition and it sucks.  I make more than enough to money to where we should be living comfortably, but instead we have high credit card bills because for-profit insurance companies refuse to cover treatments, even after we've paid deductible and "max" out of pocket expenses.

As a country, caring for your citizens has to be a priority.

[aujeff11 6,243]

8 hours ago, Bigbens42 said:

The question is who pays for it. Take the situation above. The people at the concert should be on the hook? If you're not outraged by the situation, you're not doing it right.

What’s the difference between that and getting shot at any other place? If I got shot at some random Mcdonalds, I’d still be paying for my care. 

 

8 hours ago, Bigbens42 said:

Very few Americans would support its repeal, and those that would aren't really worth listening to.

The minorities are always worth listening to. 

 

8 hours ago, Bigbens42 said:

We've pretty much already decided as a society that healthcare is a right with the passage of EMTALA

Healthcare is a right. Affordable healthcare isn’t. 

[TitanTiger 20,472]

11 hours ago, AUloggerhead said:

Don't have an issue with some politician setting up a Go Fund Me account to raise money for the victims' health costs.  Sounds like a great idea to quickly get donations into the hands of the people who actually need it.  We've heard news reports (don't know if they're accurate) that the murdering scumbag shooter was a "multi-millionaire" who owned multiple houses & aircraft, regularly bet huge sums of money and recently wired $100k to the Philippines to his alleged "girlfriend."  If any of this is actually true ... ... it's an outrage that this murdering scumbag shooter's assets haven't been frozen or impounded to help defray all the related medical costs.   

The issue isn't that someone stepped up to make this happen.  The issue is that it's needed in the first place.

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3 hours ago, aujeff11 said:

What’s the difference between that and getting shot at any other place? If I got shot at some random Mcdonalds, I’d still be paying for my care. 

Or in any situation where s*** goes south for someone through no fault of their own. One of my kids, my wife or I get sick? We'll live. It would suck as we'll be destroyed financially, but we'd live.

It depends on what kind of society we want to be.

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The minorities are always worth listening to. 

Not really.

I've heard the arguments. I reject them emphatically. ER's don't have to admit people who are dying or in labor? Letting poor people literally die on the street? Of course there are people in favor of this, but it's not a reasonable suggestion in the least. The starkest example of this was the 2012 SC GOP presidential debate where the crowd cheered after Ron Paul said, "Let' em die" in response a hypothetical about an uninsured ER patient.

This would be utterly terrible and not even just for the obvious reasons. Even if you had insurance if you were brought in unconscious and without your ID they could leave you to die on the curb. Even for those people who don't care about the uninsured dying on the streets, this would still be a worse system for them too.

Assigning any sort of credence to such lunacy is a prime example of a fallacious appeal to moderation, or balance fallacy.

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Healthcare is a right. Affordable healthcare isn’t. 

I may have access to a Lambo, but I can't get it if I can't afford it. Not really a right if access is prohibitively expensive.

With the way our system is set up, people are priced out of it too easily. The system sucks. We have work to do.

[alexava 6,973]

The NRA should pay medical costs. 

[aujeff11 6,243]

1 hour ago, Bigbens42 said:

ER's don't have to admit people who are dying or in labor?

No, they obviously do. That law was passed years ago. The hospital I used to work at took in homeless people numerous times knowing right good and well they wouldn’t be receiving a dime from it.

Regardless, it’s foolish to believe that affordable healthcare is a “right.” 

[aujeff11 6,243]

1 hour ago, Bigbens42 said:

I may have access to a Lambo, but I can't get it if I can't afford it

False equivalency. People can get healthcare;  whether they can afford the bill is another issue. If anything, it’s more appropriate to say “ I have my lambo; I can not afford it.”

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23 minutes ago, aujeff11 said:

No, they obviously do. That law was passed years ago. The hospital I used to work at took in homeless people numerous times knowing right good and well they wouldn’t be receiving a dime from it.

And since your argument was that we should listen to people arguing its repeal, do you believe that position has merit?

I work at a non-profit children's hospital right now. My dad worked triage in an ER in a poor part of town (tons of uninsured folks!) for 30 years until he retired two weeks ago.

23 minutes ago, aujeff11 said:

Regardless, it’s foolish to believe that affordable healthcare is a “right.” 

It's not a fundamental human right. Those are things that you are born with, and are only lost when others take them away from you. Things like life, liberty, freedom to speak and act and associate as you see fit. Those are fundamental. Anything that someone else has to give you is not a fundamental right.

But, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be socially provided, i.e. a civil right. Education is not a fundamental human right, but all wealthy societies have decided that it's in our best interest to guarantee some form of basic education for everyone.

I put healthcare in the same category. It's something that we wouldn't reasonably expect anyone to go without. It's something that almost none of use would choose to live without ourselves, and so it only makes sense that any society that has the money should provide to every citizen.

[AUDub 11,147]

1 hour ago, aujeff11 said:

False equivalency. People can get healthcare;  whether they can afford the bill is another issue. If anything, it’s more appropriate to say “ I have my lambo; I can not afford it.”

People can get emergency treatment in the ER when things get bad enough, but it can be a damn mess for preventive or other care. Obamacare made things better in some ways, but the system is still a mess in many others. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

1 hour ago, aujeff11 said:

Regardless, it’s foolish to believe that affordable healthcare is a “right.” 

It currently isn't, but the question remains: Why shouldn't it be?  Is healthcare and whether or not it can be afforded something we really want the market to decide for people?  I damn sure don't.

[wdefromtx 3,159]

7 minutes ago, Bigbens42 said:

People can get emergency treatment in the ER when things get bad enough, but it can be a damn mess for preventive or other care. Obamacare made things better in some ways, but the system is still a mess in many others. 

My main gripe with Obamacare is that while some things are better, but it also messed up things that worked fine for people and ended up with way worse plans under Obamacare. On top of that it has gotten worse over every year.

I am not sure what the best solution is and I don't have confidence that anyone in DC will ever do the right thing to fix it.

[oldaufeller 367]

1 hour ago, wdefromtx said:

My main gripe with Obamacare is that while some things are better, but it also messed up things that worked fine for people and ended up with way worse plans under Obamacare. On top of that it has gotten worse over every year.

I am not sure what the best solution is and I don't have confidence that anyone in DC will ever do the right thing to fix it.

I had 11 employees who opted for coverage 2015.  11 Families - BCBS  Florida $289,000 annually.  Do the math.  We folded shop, insurance too much.

[wdefromtx 3,159]

6 minutes ago, oldaufeller said:

I had 11 employees who opted for coverage 2015.  11 Families - BCBS  Florida $289,000 annually.  Do the math.  We folded shop, insurance too much.

I know it is ridiculous. It would probably be well over $300K by now too.... 

[AUDub 11,147]

1 hour ago, wdefromtx said:

My main gripe with Obamacare is that while some things are better, but it also messed up things that worked fine for people and ended up with way worse plans under Obamacare. On top of that it has gotten worse over every year

Premiums were already rising by 15-20% annually pre-ACA. The states that were impacted the most were states that were allowing garbage coverage to be sold. The ACA brought the minimum standards for health insurance up to 1st world standards, which was sticker shock for many people.

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I am not sure what the best solution is and I don't have confidence that anyone in DC will ever do the right thing to fix it.

Bernie's plan. Single payer would greatly simplify things. 

[DKW 86 7,419]

23 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

I know it is ridiculous. It would probably be well over $300K by now too.... 

But what if they got coverage and we all chipped in to pay for it. You could still be open and doing business. This is part of unfair competition from Foreign Companies. Their Medical Care Contributions are so much lower than ours.

[wdefromtx 3,159]

1 hour ago, Bigbens42 said:

Premiums were already rising by 15-20% annually pre-ACA. The states that were impacted the most were states that were allowing garbage coverage to be sold. The ACA brought the minimum standards for health insurance up to 1st world standards, which was sticker shock for many people.

This is not true. My dad for instance owns his own small company which is basically him and my step mom, so he has always had to get a private policy. In 2006 he had a major heart attack from a blood clot. He was getting his insurance through the state pool (high risk) and it was not bad. He was able to keep the doctors he wanted and premiums weren't that high compared to what they are now. Since Obamacare his premium quadrupled (even with one of the lower level policies), his doctors didn't take it, and his deductibles skyrocketed, co-pays went up. 

 

He is not an isolated case. Luckily he finally reached the age of medicare so his costs went down.

1 hour ago, Bigbens42 said:

Bernie's plan. Single payer would greatly simplify things. 

  And how does a single payer system get paid for without going even more into the red with our government debt?  Sounds great on paper but I doubt our governing officials are competent enough to run such a system without screwing it up somehow.

[AUDub 11,147]

1 hour ago, wdefromtx said:

This is absolutely not true. My dad for instance owns his own small company which is basically him and my step mom, so he has always had to get a private policy. In 2006 he had a major heart attack from a blood clot. He was getting his insurance through the state pool (high risk) and it was not bad. He was able to keep the doctors he wanted and premiums weren't that high compared to what they are now. Since Obamacare his premium quadrupled (even with one of the lower level policies), his doctors didn't take it, and his deductibles skyrocketed, copays went up. 

He is not an isolated case. Luckily he finally reached the age of medicare so his costs went down.

No, it's a fact.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/better-off-before-obamacare/507650/

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Throughout his campaign, President-Elect Donald Trump repeatedly vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare, which he called “

a disaster.”

That was music to his supporters’ ears. Repealing Obamacare is Republican voters’ biggest priority for the Trump administration, according to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll. People who are unhappy with the Affordable Care Act overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and now 74 percent of Republicans want it gone.

The frustration with the health law is understandable; many people are struggling to afford medical care even if they have insurance. The problem is, it’s not clear Americans would have been better off had Obamacare never been passed.

First, some people might be confused about what, exactly, they’re angry at. When we talk about “Obamacare,” we’re talking primarily about the 12.7 million people who are buying individual insurance coverage through state marketplaces or Healthcare.gov. Roughly 60 million people voted for Trump last week, so they can’t all be on Obamacare exchange plans. More than half of all non-elderly Americans still get insurance through work, and premiums on employer-based plans are actually growing more slowly than average. (About a third of Americans are either on Medicare or Medicaid, and the rest are uninsured. Only about 4 percent are on the exchanges.)

Before Obamacare, insurance premiums on the individual market were rising by about 10 percent a year. But, it’s important to note, the cost of any given person’s health plan purchased this way depended on how sick they were. Insurance companies could charge people more if they had cancer, for example, or deny them coverage entirely. Insurers were partly able to keep costs down just by keeping sick people off their plans. Under Obamacare, insurers can’t do that anymore.

In 2014, right after most of the Affordable Care Act sprang into action, a middle-of-the-road plan—the “second-lowest cost silver-level” plan—was between 10 and 21 percent cheaper than a similar plan was before the ACA in 2013. So concluded an analysis published in Health Affairs in July by the economists Loren Adler and Paul Ginsburg, two health-care experts at the Brookings Institution.

Since then, the price of individual-market plans has climbed higher. Health-care prices go up all the time, no matter what. We all wish they didn’t; they do anyway. But in the years since the ACA was implemented, individual-market premiums haven’t been rising as fast as they were before, according to Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They went up by “35 to 40 percent in the three years before ACA,” Gruber told me. “If you look at the three years since ACA, it’s still below that, including this year.”

There were a lot more garbage mini-med plans and stripped down catastrophic coverage plans. While the premiums were cheaper, in the case of the mini-medical plans the coverage was terrible. From a 2011 article by Kaiser:

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For example, McDonald’s”McCrew Care”� benefits (here’s an example in Montana) requires employees to pay $56 per month for basic coverage that provides up to $2,000 in benefits in a year and $97 per months for a Mid 5 plan that provides up to $5,000 in benefits. Ruby Tuesday charges workers $18.43 per week (going down to $7 after six months of service) for coverage that provides up to $1,250 in outpatient care per year and $3,000 in inpatient hospital care. Denny’s basic plan for hourly employees in 2010 provided no coverage for inpatient hospital care and capped coverage for doctor office visits at $300 per year. (The restaurant offered more comprehensive coverage to salaried employees.)

In the case of that McDonald's plan it was actually a pretty good mini-med plan from a perspective of cost vs benefits, $672 per year in premiums to get a $2000 benefit . The majority of this stuff was much worse than this.

Obamacare is a complex piece of legislation that includes subsidies for low-to-mid-income people, Medicaid expansion for even lower income people, a good bunch of regulations including the "covered until 26" one and the ban on preexisting conditions denials, and some taxes like the individual mandate.

Before Obamacare you would hear about people who came down with something bad and end up in medical bankruptcy. Either the claim would be denied due to preexisting conditions or caps. Folks getting cancer treatments seemed to hit this the most. It was a cross your fingers and hope for the best scenario.

Post Obamacare I have never heard this from anyone I know, and I know far more people and many much sicker than I used to. That fear is gone. The fact that preventive is free also has driven nearly everyone I know to get physicals, even the surly older relatives. And as someone who had to get insurance at 18, being able to keep my kids on until 26 is a godsend, it truly is.

That being said, it's a band-aid over a bullet wound long term. Fixes absolutely must be implemented to get premiums down, or the paradigm must change, so on to that:

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And how do you expect a single payer system gets paid for without going even more into the red?  Sounds great on paper but I doubt our governing officials are competent enough to run such a system without screwing it up somehow.

The system we have now is screwed up! Our citizens are way in the red. Before the ACA, people bankrupted over medical costs routinely, while also getting a s*** return on investment. Do you have any idea how much bureaucratic ****ery there is in the healthcare industry right now? It would make Hermes Conrad blush. Medicare/Medicaid is so much simpler than working with private insurance, it's laughable.

It's already the most expensive in the world by far, and as far as outcomes, we're outpaced by something like 30 other countries. Healthcare in this country is extremely hard to manage chimaera compared to other first world nations, and we're not getting a good return on investment. I mean, we're the laughingstock of the developed world because we don't have universal, free at point-of-service healthcare. There's no reason we can't look to international best practices for some ideas on how to implement one.

Full disclosure, my wife works in the insurance industry now as a med review nurse. She's have to find a new job should private insurance go the way of the dinosaur. Hell, been involved in healthcare for the whole of my career, as was my father, my mother, my sister, both of my sister's-in-law and my wife. My aunt is the current EO of the Alabama Board of Nursing. I'm the odd man out. They're all nurses. I'm a clinical engineer. ;-D