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dint work, but click thru from google works
Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
41–50 of 442 posts
Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a big factor for many people in deciding whether they want to quit their cube jobs that keep them insured to strike out on their own. And I think that's total bullshit and people who don't want to strike out won't and will find lots of reasons not to, while people who want to strike out will, and figure out how to make it work. Kind of takes us to a rhetorical dead end, since we're both wildly speculating about…
One of my good friends is a mechanical engineer, young, single, and healthy, but with a thyroid problem. He requires pills every day for the rest of his life. He would not be able to afford those pills for long without insurance if he quit his cube job and tried to innovate in his field: high efficiency engines and biofuels. These aren't imaginary people.
I haven't had health insurance in over 10 years. I get sick, my family loses everything. During that time I've been self-employed and worked on several startups.
You think telling me a story about your friend is somehow going to enlighten me on the subject of health insurance? How many anecdotes would we need to share to gain any ground in this discussion?
Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you looked into this (for California but there are different plans in every other state)? http://www.healthcare.gov/law/provisions/preexisting/states/... "$499 for a 50 year old subscriber in San Francisco" Looking at other states, there are premiums as low as $172/month. It would surely be much cheaper for you as a 26-year-old. Not quite the $50-100 you're looking for but I'd bet you could afford it. Things are…
I'm 28 in Florida. I have a very decent plan for $75 a month. I have to pay for office vists (tho I am reimbused $50 for each one, they're usually around $125 or so) but i have a very low deductible that will cover me for any major illness or accident, and even for services beyond my coverage I get the benefit of the lower negotiated insurance company rates. You can see these plans for yourself by checking our Blue C…
Wow, for a family of five I pay $1200/month. And not a very low deductible. Also Blue Cross... go figure.
Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
#44I would have died at the age of 19 if it weren't for the help of the UK's National Health Service. My parents and I didn't have to worry about hospital bills, future insurance issues, being tied to a job, any of that crap. Just get some rest, get better, go out there and be productive again. The American system looks like a horrible joke from over here. I just can't understand any of it.
"I just can't understand any of it."
Neither can those of us who live here.
I mean, I can kind of understand the series of historical accidents of how we got here. What I can't understand are the politicians promising to fight tooth and nail to roll back the very minor reforms just enacted, and all of the people who enthusiastically just voted them into office last election, based on that platform.
Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
#45I'm glad we don't have these issues in Australia. The American healthcare system would be one of the only reasons not to move there to start a business.
Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - the MA health care law ("RomneyCare", which is functionally very similar to "ObamaCare") is really what let me start a startup - the money wasn't the issue, but the ability to get an individual policy at a reasonable (not at all subsidized, just group-negotiated) rate was.
Do you have to have lived in MA for a while to be able to get this or do you just need to live there when you apply for medical insurance?
You can do it right away - and in fact, basically have to, since the other part of the puzzle is that you MUST be insured. Ultimately it's not really that clever - the state just acts as a giant group purchaser, and the fact that it's compulsory spreads the risk around so that it's not an adverse selection problem. It seems silly to shill for it, but all the details are (more or less) explained on the site: http://www.mahealthconnector.org
Note that the reason you can apply for it right away, unlike other state "benefits", is that it's not really a benefit - there's no subsidy (at least, not for self- or startup-employed folks like me who very well can afford it), so there's no real cost to the state of letting 1, 2, or 17000 more people buy in (and in fact there's an advantage, because you increase the risk pool).
Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
#47This really highlights how utterly insane our system is. I'm living off of my own business, which means that I don't have an employer to cover me under group insurance. But I really only make enough to live frugally and save a tiny amount each month--to me, an affordable health insurance plan would be between $50-$100 a month. Fat chance of that happening. And if it did, the deductible would be so high as to make the…
> to me, an affordable health insurance plan would be between $50-$100 a month. Fat chance of that happening. And if it did, the deductible would be so high as to make the plan worthless for anything short of a car-crash-emergency-type-situation. This fits a fair number of cost complaints I hear over healthcare. Who wouldn't like to pay $50-100/month to have something better than emergency healthcare support? But thi…
At $50-100/month, they would have to sap you for nearly a decade to make up a single surgery.
How many surgeries per decade do you think typical healthy nonsmoking twenty-somethings are having?
Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
#48[deleted]
> That makes it a political article. Expressing political opinions has been the entire point of the New York Times ’s op-ed page for 40 years. What did you expect?
I believe he expected that it wouldn't make it to HN, given the assumed, and sometimes enforced, focus of the site.
Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
#49I would have died at the age of 19 if it weren't for the help of the UK's National Health Service. My parents and I didn't have to worry about hospital bills, future insurance issues, being tied to a job, any of that crap. Just get some rest, get better, go out there and be productive again. The American system looks like a horrible joke from over here. I just can't understand any of it.
"I just can't understand any of it." Neither can those of us who live here. I mean, I can kind of understand the series of historical accidents of how we got here. What I can't understand are the politicians promising to fight tooth and nail to roll back the very minor reforms just enacted, and all of the people who enthusiastically just voted them into office last election, based on that platform.
Those "minor reforms" were 10,000 pages long and I doubt that anyone understands them except the lobbyists who wrote them.
Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm 28 in Florida. I have a very decent plan for $75 a month. I have to pay for office vists (tho I am reimbused $50 for each one, they're usually around $125 or so) but i have a very low deductible that will cover me for any major illness or accident, and even for services beyond my coverage I get the benefit of the lower negotiated insurance company rates. You can see these plans for yourself by checking our Blue C…
Wow, for a family of five I pay $1200/month. And not a very low deductible. Also Blue Cross... go figure.
Wow Just to make it even worse for you, that's 1 year of Blue Cross for my wife who is studying in Canada currently. This is a private insurance provided by Blue Cross for students.