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42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

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Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#101

Post by yazr »

andreygrehov wrote: post #96
J5892 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a $60k car seems like a completely insane concept to me, even with a Silicon Valley tech industry salary. Even $16k (used) was higher than I wanted to pay for my current car.

Respectfully disagree. Recently leased a $60k car and I enjoy every single minute I'm driving it. I'm not paying for a transportation vehicle, I'm paying for joy and pleasure. What else should I spend money on? Burgers and coke?

/s Well - u could save up for cancer treatment /s

Seriously though. Enjoy it. I had a cool sport car as a young-ish engineer and it gave joy after every long dreary day at the office.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#102

Post by Agathos »

ravitation wrote: post #79
moonbug wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that net US personal taxation isn't far off that found across the EU.

Not only is it not far off, the practical personal tax rate is actually higher in the US than in several European countries. It's not as simple as "the US has lower taxes, and therefore fewer public benefits".

Yeah, the US spends more on socialized medicine than anyone. Most of it goes through Medicare.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#103

Post by kpommerenke »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #63
Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is China civilized? No. The rampant corruption, lack of free speech, etc don't qualify as civilized IMO.

By those metrics (and others), United States isn't a civilized country either.

Not true: Corruption: The USA ranks 16th (1 is best) out of 180 countries according to Transparency International: https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept... Free speech: If anything, there is too much free speech in the USA, as people can and do say all kinds of nonsense, starting at the very top.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#104

Post by seanmcdirmid »

yazr wrote: post #101
andreygrehov wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully disagree. Recently leased a $60k car and I enjoy every single minute I'm driving it. I'm not paying for a transportation vehicle, I'm paying for joy and pleasure. What else should I spend money on? Burgers and coke?

/s Well - u could save up for cancer treatment /s Seriously though. Enjoy it. I had a cool sport car as a young-ish engineer and it gave joy after every long dreary day at the office.

I was totally going to buy and enjoy a sports car when moving back to the states after 11 years abroad with no car at all. Then we got pregnant and...the dream has to wait ~5-10 years as I'm now into fancy strollers. :).

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#105

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

api wrote: post #46
village-idiot wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again and again history reveals a surprising fact: you can push people really far before they finally reach their breaking point. And when that breaking point is finally reached, the trigger will not be what you expected.

This is especially true when there are no obvious and politically viable good alternatives. In the US everyone outside the center-left or center-right seems to be an absolute lunatic of one sort or another, and even if that weren't the case the two party oligopoly system is deeply entrenched and guarantees that alternatives can't succeed. There's nobody who is both sane and electable that isn't part of the mainstream…

Even if we could just find a way to keep people from thinking about political parties the same way they do about sports we could make a lot of progress.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#106

Post by nowarninglabel »

ams6110 wrote: post #36
chrisbennet wrote: post #2

I think if I get cancer I'm just going to have to die. I can't leave my wife destitute.

Here's the thing. Cancer comes in basically two types. That which is treatable, and that which isn't. This can be either because of the type of cancer, or based on how early/late it was detected. A lot of (possibly most of?) the money spent treating cancer is spent in cases that have very little chance for long term success. I don't think it really is, but it almost seems like a deliberate attempt to extract all the…

It'd be helpful to track down where the wealth goes. It seems to be broken down between the care provider, hospital, pharmaceutical companies and possibly the insurance company. Has anyone fully tracked down averages on where the money tends to go (possibly different for different types of cancer?)

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#107

Post by dionidium »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #63
Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is China civilized? No. The rampant corruption, lack of free speech, etc don't qualify as civilized IMO.

By those metrics (and others), United States isn't a civilized country either.

This is silly. Please don't make easily-refuted, throwaway political statements like this. On almost any corruption index, the United States ranks far, far better than China. Here's one example:

https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept...

People do try to measure this stuff.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#108

Post by FabHK »

rayiner wrote: post #57
mikeash wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire point of insurance is to pool risk so that a bunch of people together pay reasonable amounts, instead of a few people paying enormous amounts and the others paying less. Lifetime limits give you lower rates in exchange for making the insurance much less like actual insurance. If we’re talking about “don’t piss on my leg and tell me its raining,” don’t sell me “health insurance” that will leave me high and…

It's absurd to say that imposing a limit is somehow misleading for something sold as "insurance." "Actual insurance" almost always has a policy limit. Everything from car insurance to corporate liability insurance has a limit. I can't think of any "actual insurance" besides health insurance that doesn't have a limit. Again, I'm not arguing against having health insurance be unlimited. I'm taking exception to your rhe…

FWIW, insurance in other countries has limits, but rather high ones.

For example, my private liability insurance (50 EUR/a premium) is limited to 50 million EUR/event. So, yeah, if I ever accidentally create 60 million EUR damage (in one fell swoop), I'll be broke.

My travel health insurance is 12.50 EUR/a, and pays 100% of medically necessary out-patient and hospital treatments (for an unlimited number of trips up to 8 weeks), as well as repatriation, without limit. (This works, presumably, because if shit hits the fan, they'll fly you home and hand you off to the normal health insurance).

I can't emphasise enough how good it is to be in a civilised society where the existential risks are covered and shared. Furthermore, because they are borne by someone (either insurers or gov't), there are also experts dedicated to managing them, and reducing them.

It all works because everyone is insured, so the insurers don't have to worry about adverse selection.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#109

Post by djajshgsjja »

andreygrehov wrote: post #96
J5892 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a $60k car seems like a completely insane concept to me, even with a Silicon Valley tech industry salary. Even $16k (used) was higher than I wanted to pay for my current car.

Respectfully disagree. Recently leased a $60k car and I enjoy every single minute I'm driving it. I'm not paying for a transportation vehicle, I'm paying for joy and pleasure. What else should I spend money on? Burgers and coke?

I won’t tell you what to do with your money, but there are a lot of cheap fun cars to drive out there. If you want fun to drive combined with new features like automatic lane keeping, dynamic cruise control, etc. you may need to shell out a little more for it.

I encourage high-earning tech workers to save more money in general - these are boom times. $60k pays rent on a room in the bay for a long time if you’re unemployed. I’m gonna buy the house before I lease the Tesla. But don’t know about your personal financial situation.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#110

Post by existencebox »

api wrote: post #46
village-idiot wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again and again history reveals a surprising fact: you can push people really far before they finally reach their breaking point. And when that breaking point is finally reached, the trigger will not be what you expected.

This is especially true when there are no obvious and politically viable good alternatives. In the US everyone outside the center-left or center-right seems to be an absolute lunatic of one sort or another, and even if that weren't the case the two party oligopoly system is deeply entrenched and guarantees that alternatives can't succeed. There's nobody who is both sane and electable that isn't part of the mainstream…

I'm glad this is finally being discussed cogently. For the longest time one would be painted as un-patriotic or some other slur-of-the-moment for even suggesting there were vicious-cycles of pathologies in the current incarnation of this system. (And in how human psychology/game theory plays into it) But as you summarized, all incentives are aligned to maintain the status quo. How do we break out of this? Expansion of executive/corporate/partisan power is _nothing new_ in American history, and the trends and outcomes are very clear cut. (I do not know the answer, I've been contemplating this nonstop for the last decade at least, and the best answer I have is trying to engage more people to think about it)

What's remarkable to me is that very few people are even aware of the sheer mathematical/structural issues at hand: e.g. that we've expanded congressional representation from 1:(max)30000 citizens at the start, to 1:747184 as of 2017. We're engineers. We should understand scalability, and that _alone_ should be a giant red flag regarding its implications.

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