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No One Goes There Anymore

noonegoesthereanymore.blogspot.com

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Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#311
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I took your number of 1/2 as truth, went through the numbers, and... our worker in Des Moines makes about 5k a year more than the one in Berlin. It'd still take 12 years to pay off the person above's unexpected medical expenses. That's probably quite accurate. But most people don't have a $60,000 unexpected health expenditure before they're eligible for Medicare at 65. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5…

I'm sure that as you say it works out for most people on a purely rational game-theory economic sense but I would definitely chose 100% coverage over an extra $5k/year. The whole system (not just health care) seems so stressful and antagonistic in the US. If I had an extra $5k/year I'd probably just spend it on meaningless consumption like a bigger TV or a better car, where as not having to give a second thought abou…

> If I had an extra $5k/year I'd probably just spend it on meaningless consumption like a bigger TV or a better car, where as not having to give a second thought about costs for medical care or higher education for my kids gives me so much more peace of mind.

We do. The median house in the US is twice as big as in Germany or France. We have 50% more cars per person than Germany and almost twice as many as France. Even excluding healthcare (to exclude the effect of inflated healthcare costs in the US), per person household consumption spending is 50% higher in the US than France, based on OECD data.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s true everywhere though. In 2014, the bottom 50% in France warned just 15,000 euros per year on average: https://voxeu.org/sites/default/files/image/FromMay2014/garb... . That’s only a little bit higher than the average income of the bottom 20% in the US: https://www.advisorperspectives.com/images/content_image/dat... . In terms of income, the people somewhat below the median in France are doing similarly to th…

and our private spending on insurance would drop by a similar amount. its basically zero sum. bernie's plan in worst case scenario was a few hundred billion a year more total but the coverage was superior to almost every private plan out there.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#313

This is a touchy subject but with my genetic condition I’m scared to have kids. It sucks having this and I don’t know if I would want to watch my kids suffer through it. But I’m glad my parents did cause life isn’t that bad in the end.

My significant other is in a similar boat. We’re convinced she has a genetic mutation that causes the way she looks. (Fortunately for her, that’s all it does so far) A doctor suspected she has it and so on. We haven’t done genetic testing yet to confirm 100% but it’s something we are considering. Personally, I would like to have children with her that are related to us. But, it’s hard because her genetic mutation car…

If I were in your position and had money to blow, I'd ask medical experts if it's possible to prevent the genetic mutation from being passed on. Can they do screening? Can they transplant a healthy chromosome to replace the broken one?

If I didn't I'd ask a healthy relative of hers to donate eggs to implant into her.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#314
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that as you say it works out for most people on a purely rational game-theory economic sense but I would definitely chose 100% coverage over an extra $5k/year. The whole system (not just health care) seems so stressful and antagonistic in the US. If I had an extra $5k/year I'd probably just spend it on meaningless consumption like a bigger TV or a better car, where as not having to give a second thought abou…

> If I had an extra $5k/year I'd probably just spend it on meaningless consumption like a bigger TV or a better car, where as not having to give a second thought about costs for medical care or higher education for my kids gives me so much more peace of mind. We do. The median house in the US is twice as big as in Germany or France. We have 50% more cars per person than Germany and almost twice as many as France. Eve…

I'm not sure if this means you agree with me or disagree?

America is a staggeringly wealthy country and yet you spend all that wealth on trinkets while saying you can't afford universal healthcare, free education, fewer working hours, more vacation days, paid parental leave & other social benefits almost every other developed country provides their citizens.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would statistics on medical debt be skewed by a society that has potentially grown accustomed to turning away medical aid for fear of the financial fallout?

Maybe, but are there statistics to support that? People point to things like the U.S. lagging on indicators like maternal and infant mortality, and life expectancy. But if you dig into the data, non-white Hispanics (which have a 20% uninsured rate) have similar maternal and infant mortality to whites (which have only a 5% uninsured rate). And hispanics have significantly longer life expectancy. American hispanics, de…

Where are you deriving these stats for Asian Americans and do they split out south vs east Asian?

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, for people who suffer from a chronic illness, they have to deal with people like you. You might propose something that seems simple and normal to you, like, let's go here for lunch. They have to explain they can't because they have a very real medical condition, then they have to put up with people not believing them, thinking they're blowing it out of proportion, or just not wanting to make accommodat…

Ok, but since it's a very real medical condition, why not lead with "I have Atypical Cystic Fibrosis, so I can't do X", instead of being all mysterious about it? You can't really blame humans for being curious when you stoke but deliberately choose not to satisfy their curiosity. I mean, HN specifically wants you to post "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". I don't know about others, but my intelle…

Often when you have a medical condition that is not well understood by most people you cannot do x, y or z. It might be exhausting to explain your limitations which may change day to day depending on how you're doing at that particular moment on that particular day. People may not believe you, and it feels awful to have to be around someone who won't take you seriously or gets angry with you if you try their supposed "cure" and it doesn't work. An ex-boyfriend of mine suggested a micro dose of acid would treat my migraines. I tried it and it made my symptoms worse. He got terribly angry with me for not trying hard enough because I didn't want to do acid for the fourth day in a row.

If I tell people I get migraines pretty much all of the time they think I get bad headaches, not that I can't see, lose my ability to talk, have my arm go numb and instead it feels like my jaw is stuck in a vise, I can't look at sunlight and every noise is painful. People don't want to hear about the ways someone they know is silently suffering.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#317
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true everywhere though. In 2014, the bottom 50% in France warned just 15,000 euros per year on average: https://voxeu.org/sites/default/files/image/FromMay2014/garb... . That’s only a little bit higher than the average income of the bottom 20% in the US: https://www.advisorperspectives.com/images/content_image/dat... . In terms of income, the people somewhat below the median in France are doing similarly to th…

and our private spending on insurance would drop by a similar amount. its basically zero sum. bernie's plan in worst case scenario was a few hundred billion a year more total but the coverage was superior to almost every private plan out there.

He claims this, but it's far from certain. The argument that public healthcare will be "basically zero sum" with superior coverage is one built on flawed assumptions, with cherry-picked data, and ultimately overestimates the potential savings.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/26/bernie-san...

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but since it's a very real medical condition, why not lead with "I have Atypical Cystic Fibrosis, so I can't do X", instead of being all mysterious about it? You can't really blame humans for being curious when you stoke but deliberately choose not to satisfy their curiosity. I mean, HN specifically wants you to post "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". I don't know about others, but my intelle…

Often when you have a medical condition that is not well understood by most people you cannot do x, y or z. It might be exhausting to explain your limitations which may change day to day depending on how you're doing at that particular moment on that particular day. People may not believe you, and it feels awful to have to be around someone who won't take you seriously or gets angry with you if you try their supposed…

That's fair, but do you really think your (apparently shitty) ex-boyfriend would've behaved better if, instead of telling him you suffer from highly debilitating migraines, you always said something like "no, we're not going out for dinner tonight because I have a condition", failing to ever explain what that was?

Again, if you are open about the condition, and someone responds to that knowledge poorly, that is their problem. Ignore those people. But if you keep the nature of the condition under wraps, that might make it "easier" to deal with in the short term at the cost of others being able to move forward with you at all.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often when you have a medical condition that is not well understood by most people you cannot do x, y or z. It might be exhausting to explain your limitations which may change day to day depending on how you're doing at that particular moment on that particular day. People may not believe you, and it feels awful to have to be around someone who won't take you seriously or gets angry with you if you try their supposed…

That's fair, but do you really think your (apparently shitty) ex-boyfriend would've behaved better if, instead of telling him you suffer from highly debilitating migraines, you always said something like "no, we're not going out for dinner tonight because I have a condition", failing to ever explain what that was? Again, if you are open about the condition, and someone responds to that knowledge poorly, that is their…

In this case yes, if he didn't know I was diagnosed with migraines he would not have randomly suggested acid. He had an "evidence based" reason for thinking acid would help. I let people I'm close with know my symptoms. You can't always ignore people who you depend on.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#320
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay 50% of my shitty income in taxes and then have to pay for health insurance on top of that because public health here is useless. Public health is not a panacea, although I’m happy for the people who get a good deal out of it.

Where is "here"?

Spain
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