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Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

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Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#171

Post by rdtsc »

TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #159
clarky07 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1865 - Slavery was something that states shouldn't have the right to. They also shouldn't allow stealing, murder, etc. Turns out after the Civil War we didn't in fact repeal the 10th amendment. 2006 - No, as for a state and nationally are 2 different things. But even if he did, why should that matter here. I never said anything about Romeney, I don't really like him, and he most certainly was not my choice in the pri…

Slavery is not an enumerated right, to control or to tax, for federal powers listed in the Constitution. Therefore it should fall to the states, or their respective citizens. A war was fought over this very issue. States lost. Get over it. Functionally, Massachusetts Health Care Insurance Reform Law is similar to Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. One is state law, and the other one federal law. Questions we…

> Slavery is not an enumerated right, to control or to tax, for federal powers listed in the Constitution.

So? It is not in a paper composed 200+ years ago that we somehow feel the need to worship and treat it like a set of magic tablets given to Moses on a mountain or something.

Aren't the citizens supposed to be able to change and update that as they see fit, isn't that even more in the spirit of Founding Fathers than say just to continuously point a 200+ year old paper

Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#172

Post by rdtsc »

clarky07 wrote: post #149
TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then please, for the sake of the public good, do the following: Don't drive on the roads. Do put out your own fires if you house catches fire. Do hire private police for your security. Don't use public transportation. Don't use the Internet (including HN). Don't use, or have your children use public schooling. Do pay completely, without subsidy or federal grant, for all your higher education. Pay for a septic tank if…

You're right. Clearly because I don't want socialism it means I want 100% anarchy and no government whatsoever. That doesn't follow at all. You also added several things in there that the government doesn't provide, so I'm just really confused by this comment. (side note I could probably get by without almost everything on this list except for food and roads. I'm disregarding internet, as the gov't doesn't provide th…

> Turns out Kroger has a vested interest in not poisoning me.

Are you sue? Last time I checked, Kroger had a vested interest in getting your money. If you get cancer in 10 years and your children get born with deformities it doesn't matter for them. They've already got your money and good luck proving it was them doing it and not WalMart.

> I suspect I could get private insurance to cover this though in a free-market.

Make sure to also buy "bring you back from the dead" insurance you might need that too.

> Don't drive on the roads. -do want roads, those the gov't should provide

Why? What's your justification? There are actually private highways and roads in this country and make good money off of people driving on them. They are expensive but usually well maintained. Why roads and not say a rescue squad?

> I could do with less from the EPA.

You make your own lead and pesticide testing kits? Are you going around to every grocery store and test every single product for bio , chemical and radiological safety?

> Police are nice for keeping things relatively civil?

So no police then. Alright. So when you abolish them let me know so my local militia friends can come and raid your house.

Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#173

Post by rdtsc »

mgkimsal wrote: post #105
encoderer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not fair, and not right, but it is a fact that for the most part, most of us here don't have to worry about that. If you're a software engineer or systems administrator or similar type of professional earning a fair living it's not at all uncommon to have completely free health insurance for yourself, and affordable options to cover your family. I haven't worked for a place with an individual premium in 5 years.…

As others have said, it's a problem for anyone who wants to do work outside of the "middle class employment cocoon". I'm self employed, and even if I go back to working for a larger company, I would prefer to continue to keep my private insurance. I have private homeowner's insurance. I have private car insurance. I have private life insurance. Why oh why do we demand/insist that employers provide health care, to the…

> Conservatives in this country should be in an uproar that the 'free market' isn't allowed to run its course

Because unlike cars and homes you only have one life. If you let a profit seeking entity control and dictate what happens to your health, you might not have a chance to go back fix the problem by choosing a better one. You could be dead.

There was just recently a story on Reddit about someone who's relative a was killed by a driver and his dead relative' insurance company effectively provided council for the defendant. That's the kind of stuff you'd be dealing with. You health insurance company would be interested in killing you promptly as soon as you develop a chronic or expensive condition. And they'd all want to do it. All 1 of them after they merge into a giant conglomerate (since you know can't be messing with the free market and stuff, there will be nobody protecting against monopolies).

Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#174

Post by rdtsc »

tptacek wrote: post #95
abtinf wrote: post #73

For complex reasons, I was without insurance for a couple days last week. I happened to have an appointment schedule. I went into the clinic and, since it was my first time there, I filled out a stack of paperwork. And then they told me my insurance was inactive. So I figured, whatever, I'll pay it out of pocket and file for reimbursement. I asked how much the specific service I was requesting would cost. And they ha…

Last year, my daughter caught a stomach bug and for a few days woke up each morning nauseous. We took her to her pediatrician and were surprised to find out that "waking up nauseous" is a Big Deal; it can be a neurological symptom. We were pretty sure that wasn't it (there were... other symptoms... corroborating our "stomach bug" hypothesis) but the doctor was adamant: if she kept waking up and puking, she'd need to…

Making up prices is routine. Got my wisdom teeth extracted. They said there would be a $170 X-ray fee. I already had X-rays done from my regular dentist and brought those in. During the checkout they scratched the $170 X-ray fee and then added at the bottom a $170 consultation fee. I thought pissing off people who are about to knock me out and operate on me is probably not a good idea and didn't say anything.

Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#175

Post by rdtsc »

Stratoscope wrote: post #112

> We’ve got a strategy for dealing with the COBRA expiration, but it’s complicated and requires a lot of hoop jumping and is more than a little silly. Whatever the author's strategy is, it sounds like he's quite misinformed. There are no hoops required to get HIPAA guaranteed issue coverage when COBRA runs out. All insurers are required to offer it regardless of preexisting conditions. It will cost more, but coverage…

To someone from a country with a sane health care policy this whole procedure sounds ridiculous.

Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#176

Post by smsm42 »

abtinf wrote: post #73

For complex reasons, I was without insurance for a couple days last week. I happened to have an appointment schedule. I went into the clinic and, since it was my first time there, I filled out a stack of paperwork. And then they told me my insurance was inactive. So I figured, whatever, I'll pay it out of pocket and file for reimbursement. I asked how much the specific service I was requesting would cost. And they ha…

This is what is happening now, when there are still some people who pay cash. Imagine how complex and impossible to understand this system will become once there would be virtually no people paying cash as there would be public insurers of last resort. No 1/4 cash price lists would exist anywhere - anybody who paid 1/4 price now would pay the full price, provided from the public coffers. Of course, there would also be a need for a huge bureaucracy to check all these payments, argue about them for months, send stacks of papers back and forth, etc. These people would have to be paid, provided with nice benefits and pensions - after all, they work very hard.

On the other hand, you will never have to pay out of pocket for it and probably will never ever made to realize there's a payment in there somewhere. You'll pay out of your taxes and you wouldn't even know how much you paid, so nobody would be up for an unpleasant shock of knowing how much all this costs. 23,800 is not going anywhere - these nice people in the hospital still need to be paid, and they don't deserve the pay cut (if anything, many of them consider themselves underpaid and many of them are right), and these machines and medicines must be paid for too. So it still will be paid for. And it's not getting cheaper - remember no more 1/4 prices for anybody at all? Somebody would have to pay for it, or, more precisely, everybody would pay for it, but won't know how much and where it went. Some think it's better this way.

Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#177

Post by smsm42 »

petercooper wrote: post #47

Naïve European who'd pay nothing for this here (ok, taxes, but supposedly we still pay fewer % of our GDP overall) with a question: I’ll have to have to pay less than 6% of that, because I’m lucky enough to still have insurance. Why? If you have insurance, shouldn't that cover the whole expense? Or is it a bit like an excess on a car insurance policy? Can you get insurance that covers everything?

Did you ever have car insurance or any other kind of insurance? Most insurances have deductibles, and the point of that is that insurance is to prevent catastrophic loss, not every expense. There can be insurance that covers 100% of expenses, but it will be very expensive, especially for health, as it won't be insurance at all.

Imagine that 1000 people pay each $100 into insurance pool. Then if somebody has a problem there's $100000 available for him, and if the chance of this problem is 1/1000, then this works. Now imagine each of these people has $50 in regular expenses that they want to be paid from the same pool. Then to get the same coverage one needs either to pay additional $50 into the pool (which then is not insurance but just a very expensive savings account) or accept that his coverage dropped by half. And that's not counting insurance company's cut, which makes it worse.

Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#178

Post by [deleted] »

kefs wrote: post #13
fleitz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Canadian but lets be realistic, there are many things that would cause serious financial hardship due to medical costs in Canada. A friend of mine right now is suffering through intense pain from her teeth that aren't being fixed because she doesn't have money/insurance. She's deciding between healthcare and money. You can also lose your life on a waiting list in Canada. Not much purpose in having $23K in the ban…

Chemo is most definitely covered for me.. just as everything else that would be medically required. http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/msp/infoben/benefits.html#notcov... Nothing you have commented with is based on fact. Edit: OP added a ninja-edit to his comment that included the part about teeth-pain... as my link explains, non-emergency dentalcare is not covered by default.

[deleted]

Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#179

Post by Nitramp »

tptacek wrote: post #85
forrestthewoods wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8% sounds great. US currently spends around 16% of GDP on health care every year. I think the majority of Americans would support a universal health care system that provides far more coverage at half the cost. Instead our total spend is expected to double by 2020. Source: http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/28/news/economy/healthcare_spen...

Worth noting that the US leads Europe in outcomes for serious illnesses (particularly cancer), and the US provides access to specialists in days where other countries often have multi-week or even multi-month delays.

> the US provides access to specialists in days where other countries often have multi-week [...]

This is a view that's strongly distorted by the UK. It's seems to hold there, and the wait times sound terrible, but it's definitely not the case in the majority of countries, by a long shot. As far as I can tell from personal experience, wait times are not an issue in The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, or France; outside of that I've never heard of really long waits in any country of Europe, with the exception of the UK.

The European systems are all different in sometimes surprising ways, throwing them together into one bucket is an incorrect generalization. E.g. the UK system with the NHS is entirely tax funded, where the Germany system has insurance paid 50/50 by employee and employer, and the Swiss system has 100% privately paid but mandatory and state regulated insurance.

These are really massively different systems, and the effects on e.g. waiting times are huge. They are all state regulated and sometimes state funded, but that's by far not the only interesting characteristic of medical systems.

Re: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite

#180

Post by Nitramp »

_delirium wrote: post #43
fernly wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your legal status in Denmark, and how did you achieve it? Are you a "resident alien" or an immigrant or what? What restrictions/hoops did you have to jump to get permanent residence status? What did it cost?

Unfortunately it's not the most friendly country for immigration, partly as a result of the right-wing coalition that tightened rules over the past few years (Sweden is better, as far as the Scandinavian countries go). But there are some exceptions: it's easy for EU citizens (due to being in the EU), and it's easy if you have a professional-level job offer (no US-style H1B quotas). I'm a researcher hired by a Danish…

I don't entirely understand the permanent residency for EU citizens part. As far as I understand, EU citizens have work permits and no restrictions on residency in all European countries, what would permanent residency get you on top of that?
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