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No One Goes There Anymore

noonegoesthereanymore.blogspot.com

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Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#171

Post by sokoloff »

labawi wrote: post #168
sokoloff wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m no fan of health insurance as currently instantiated, but I don’t see it as screwing them at every opportunity if they are actuarially unprofitable otherwise.

Depends on framing. If you divide the population by an arbitrary standard with a very high health bias (employed, in big co), and adjust payments accordingly, then those on the wrong side of your arbitrary standard get shafted. The second group may be unprofitable with lower payments, but the insurer doesn't even want the second group, the profits are from decreased expenditures on the first group.

Absent an individual mandate with actual teeth (or outright government providing of healthcare), do you have a solution that seems workable on a voluntary arms-length basis for all actors involved?

I’m not arguing those other conditions shouldn’t exist, but rather making the weaker, more limited argument considering “given the arrangement of the insurance market as it exists today, what should the price for that insurance offer be?” In other words, “What should a for-profit insurance company do, acting on their own and immediately?” because I think that’s pretty close to the question they’re facing when setting pricing for individual plans.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#172

Post by exabrial »

packetslave wrote: post #85
zolpidem_dream wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about cold cuts, sliced cheese, a loaf of whole grain bread?

and where, exactly, are you going to keep "cold cuts" and sliced cheese from spoiling, when you're HOMELESS?

They can last days safely. I regularly packed freshies when backpacking.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#173

Post by knorker »

Smaug123 wrote: post #140
knorker wrote: post #137

I don't understand people who have serious hereditary medical conditions and have children. Yes, I know that "I just don't get it". Though I do have friends for whom serious illness in the family is the reason they don't have biological children. I do find it a bit selfish to reject adopting a child (and thus presumably making that child's life better), instead of essentially saying "no, I only care about my own gene…

I'll quote Doreen from elsewhere in this thread: > I didn't get a diagnosis until my kids were like 11 and 14, I think. I didn't have to think about that aspect, in part because my first child was the result of failed birth control.

Ah, yeah that adds information (not in the article) to this case. But note that I have downvotes on my comment. I'm not surprised. I think I'm being respectful here, but people take as a personal attack when the choice to have biological children is in any way questioned.

So this woman did not have that information available to her at the time. Like I said I know people that did.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#174

Post by foldr »

GordonS wrote: post #162
masonic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the U.K. the max marginal income tax rate is 45% That's a big change from years ago, when it was 95% (hence "it's one for you, nineteen for me" in the Beatles' "Taxman").

Also in the UK. When you take into account the council tax and national insurance (extra income tax by another name), the effective tax rate for is easily above 50% for most "high earners". And that is without considering fuel duty, VED, VAT etc.

No, you'd have to be earning an enormous amount to pay 50% tax in the UK. If you earn e.g. £150k, you get to keep £90k. Only £7000 of the money withheld is NI, so NI doesn't make that huge of a difference. Council tax isn't going to cost you £15,000 a year [1], so you're pretty clearly keeping more than 50%.

[1] If you're paying £15,000 a year in council tax, you must have some kind of gigantic property whose maintenance costs would dwarf that figure anyway.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#175

Post by mirimir »

dang wrote: post #114
cossray wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang, this is irrelevant to the topic but I needed to ask it. Are you an individual or several 'users/employees/maintainers' using the same username? Your omnipresent has always been intriguing to me

Just a guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVHq4xo5wcA To answer your question more directly: yes I'm a person, and we'd never have multiple people hide behind the same username. That corporate hologram shit makes my skin crawl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrBPFNX23mU#t=6

> That corporate hologram shit makes my skin crawl.

One reason that I love HN is that the primary mod says shit like that.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#176

Post by GordonS »

foldr wrote: post #174
GordonS wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in the UK. When you take into account the council tax and national insurance (extra income tax by another name), the effective tax rate for is easily above 50% for most "high earners". And that is without considering fuel duty, VED, VAT etc.

No, you'd have to be earning an enormous amount to pay 50% tax in the UK. If you earn e.g. £150k, you get to keep £90k. Only £7000 of the money withheld is NI, so NI doesn't make that huge of a difference. Council tax isn't going to cost you £15,000 a year [1], so you're pretty clearly keeping more than 50%. [1] If you're paying £15,000 a year in council tax, you must have some kind of gigantic property whose mainten…

Gah, you're right, I accidentally added an extra zero to my council tax!

My effective rate is actually 40%, not 50%. (although this doesn't include VED, fuel duty, insurance tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax, flight taxes, VAT or any of the myriad of little taxes here and there)

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#177

Post by philjohn »

barry-cotter wrote: post #148
QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nation-sized leverage. The same reason why equivalent pharmaceuticals are cheaper elsewhere in the world.

Quite. That’s why the US pays for more pharmaceutical and medical device R&D than anyone else. The US is where every pharmaceutical company makes the profits that incentivize further drug development.

Or, in the case of Valeant Pharmaceuticals they just jacked the prices up after buying smaller drug companies and getting rid of all the R&D teams ... that doesn't seem to have incentivized further drug development by them, did it?

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#178

Post by PragmaticPulp »

jerome-jh wrote: post #161
magicalhippo wrote: post #30

When I see about half my paycheck going to taxes it feels a bit rough. But then I think of stories like this, and how easily it could have been me with an illness requiring expensive medical treatment and possibly preventing me from working regular jobs. And so I pay my tax with pleasure, knowing that if something were to happen to me or my fellow citizen, at least there wouldn't be millions of dollars in hospital bi…

From this side of the Altantic, it looks like the US economy is organized so that the lower working class only earns just enough to live. No wonder they are homeless when illness, disability or bad luck strikes. I am not implying this applies to OP.

I worked at an international company where we frequently had employees from other countries visit the US for a while. Some even chose to relocate to the US.

These were almost all technical people, raised on the Internet, social media, and discussions in comment sections. It was fascinating to see how bad they expected America to be according to Internet comments and news articles. Many of them were shocked to realize that we do have social safety nets, disability programs, heavily subsidized or government healthcare for lower incomes, and so on.

I’ll be the first to admit that our systems require improvement and are far from perfect, but at the same time it’s not the dystopian society as portrayed on Reddit’s front page or in certain media outlets day in and day out.

I can’t speak to the OP’s situation because obviously we don’t know the particular details, but given the mention of nearly $10 million of medical treatment it’s possible they were referring to a new or experimental treatment that wasn’t yet covered by traditional healthcare options. We have a lot of cutting-edge and experimental treatments in the United States, but insurance usually refuses to cover expensive experimental treatments until the evidence is sufficient to support their use. For rare disorders, it can take an extremely long time to collect enough evidence to reach that tipping point. It should be noted that many nationalized healthcare programs won’t cover or offer these treatments for the same evidentiary reasons, so I wouldn’t assume this was a uniquely American problem without further details.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#179

Post by pvg »

dang wrote: post #114
cossray wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang, this is irrelevant to the topic but I needed to ask it. Are you an individual or several 'users/employees/maintainers' using the same username? Your omnipresent has always been intriguing to me

Just a guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVHq4xo5wcA To answer your question more directly: yes I'm a person, and we'd never have multiple people hide behind the same username. That corporate hologram shit makes my skin crawl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrBPFNX23mU#t=6

The job seems more like M. Piedlourde.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#180

Post by teddyh »

dang wrote: post #11
freefriedrice wrote: post #7

Holy hell. How do you have a life-threatening disease that puts at you risk of germ infection, costs $250,000 a year to treat AND manage to survive homelessness? Tragic. I'm sorry you don't live in a country with real health care. Holy hell why did I get flagged? She wrote a huge blog post about needing help and isn't getting it?

Since you've resumed posting flamebait, we've banned you again. Could you please not create accounts to break HN's guidelines with? You're welcome here otherwise; you've posted some quite good comments and I appreciate those, as I'm sure many readers have. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: That was probably the wrong call and I reversed it; see comments below.

I must say that I don’t see the alledged “flamebait” in freefriedrice’s comment. What is it that you see that I don’t?
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