121–130 of 383 posts
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And so it goes, National Healthcare like Britain or Canada is what America needs and what the medical establishment does not want. But somehow I think America would screw that up as well.
When a little bit of socialism fails, why is the answer always more socialism?
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> "I'll pay almost anything to ensure that a sudden medical event doesn't bankrupt me." Exactly, and reflects the mafia-esque choice imposed on the consumer when rates are increased: pay the absurd rate or face absolute ruin if (when) a sudden medical event occurs.
It's mildly terrifying. If you're unlucky enough to break a major bone or get cancer or something like that, you could literally be on the hook for millions of dollars. I lived overseas for a couple of years, and when I got back to the US one of the first things I did was obtain health insurance because of this.
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What was the lifetime cap on your pre-ACA insurance? Could you get it if you had been sick before applying? Here's a sadly common scenario: you have a baby born prematurely and they end up in NICU for a month because of a heart condition. They exceed their lifetime cap after two weeks because NICU has always been atrociously expensive. Because they have a heart condition, they are never able to get insurance on their…
$2M IIRC, and yes. The reason that NICU is so expensive is government has driven up the costs astronomically by intervening in the market place over the past 100 years. The ACA is not reversing that, but accelerating that. If the lifetime cap for infant care was $1M, the effect of this intervention is $961,583. Or put another way, that baby would cost %96 less or about $40k for the stay in the NICU. This is according…
And medical underwriting was a thing because people that have been sick before are bad bets. There's no need to imagine some kind of conspiracy here, it was just business.
But hey lets just make up some more numbers to fit the narrative.
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You can pay and get something or pay and get nothing.
If you don't go to the doctor and don't need medicine, the "something" isn't valuable especially if it's more expensive than the "nothing". (I say that as someone with a preexisting condition who is happy to pay my premiums and get the medicine I need; I also grew up in a family where we didn't have insurance but somehow always had cigarettes and cable TV, so I know multiple perspectives)
I'd have paid in tens of thousands of dollars over the course of that time, and for what? What ifs?
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When I read this stuff, I'm a little astounded about how bad the situation must be in other states. Here in the Pacific Northwest, my premiums have actually been going down and the plan offerings are getting better. The provider I was on did go out of business so I had to switch, and I'm now paying less for more services. And, to be totally frank, having had a pre-existing condition that kept me from buying any insur…
Yeah, it's pretty crappy in NC. First year of ACA we only had one company even offering any insurance in my county. And yeah, it's county-based for some reason - if I lived 2 miles in another direction I'd have had multiple options about 10-15% cheaper than what I had available. Second year we had another option in our county which was about 15% higher than BCBS (which had gone up about 25% from the year before). App…
Well, the increased Medicaid funding is temporary, but comes with permanently higher Medicaid spending. So a state might reasonably not want to accept that offer.
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> I think the fixation on "everyone should have good health insurance" is making this dysfunctional situation permanently unfixable. Nah. Every citizen should have good health insurance that requires no out-of-pocket expenditures. There should be one plan, available to every citizen. There should be one payer, the Federal Government. Anything else is a recipe for price-gouging and ballooning costs.
but see, that's not "insurance"
I'm a Canadian. I'm curious to know what it would cost to match my level of coverage in the US. 1. Public medical care. Good care, normally easy to see a doctor. Excellent quality. Can use this as much as you need. 2. Occasional use of the parallel private billing system. Costs less than $300 Canadian to see a specialist. 3. Private coverage for paramedical claims (Physio, massage, drug plan, dental, vision, etc.). P…
[1] http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/more-than-52-000-canadians-trav...
In Australia the penalty is 1% of your income (or more) https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Medicare-levy/Medicare-le... This makes it a no-brainer for anyone earning over ~$90k to get health insurance (as it's cheaper than not having it). Yet it doesn't force low income earners into having private health insurance: they fall through to the safety net of the public healthcare system. It's not a perfect solution; but i…
from TFA: > For 2016 and beyond, the penalty will be $695 per adult or 2.5 percent of household income, up from $325 per adult or 2 percent of household income last year. The difference is that health care costs in the US are nonsensical. So high that it's really hard for the penalty to be less than the cost of insurance, until you have a six-figure income. If you make low-six-figures, you very likely get good health…
I guess the difference is in the cost of healthcare then. Also we don't have health insurance via employers.
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Yeah, the vast majority of us have healthcare, aren't really sick, and occasionally when we do get really sick, our insurance pays the bills. I had an emergency root canal earlier last year in the US, cost me zero dollars, and I've got one of those high-deductible plans (it's the HSA that covered that). I'm actually a little surprised you (or anyone on HN) are so eager to jump at the "worst case" stories and presume…
> I'm actually a little surprised you (or anyone on HN) is so eager to jump at the "worst case" stories and presume they're normal. These "worst case" stories should not happen at all in any civilized country! One of them is one too much.
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The reason nobody could sell you insurance with your pre-existing condition before is that regulations prevented making plans for conditions. EG: You couldn't make a national diabetes insurance plan for people with diabetes (and the economies of scale that go along with a pool of all people with diabetes) because it was effectively illegal. If the ACA had merely fixed that, then your premiums would be going down more…
You know what? My pre-existing condition was that I'd had my gallbladder removed in the early 2000s. That's it. Uninsurable for 10 years because of an operation which I recovered from fully in less than a week. Telling me it's "regulations" that had every insurer reject me? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.