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Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

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Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#321

Post by s1artibartfast »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #272
hedora wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem is that the actions of the federal government aren't even correlated to public opinion any more. When Obamacare was passed, 70% of the population wanted Medicare for all instead: https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412545-70-... In 2020, 54% supported single payer health care: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/29/increasing-... overage/ I can't find any post-covid polls, but…

I literally linked those two polls just yesterday, hah [0]. Did you see my comment, or did you just happen to do a similar search and get those results? As I mention in my other comment, I speculate the possibility that people think "Single payer" and "Medicare For All" are different things [1] and so report a different opinion on each, similar to how the ACA was viewed MUCH more favorably than ObamaCare despite one…

There is a fair bit of data on this and most of the difference is around prohibiting of private supplemental insurance.

Medicare is generally understood to work with supplemental insurance. Single Payer is often marketed as a prohibiting supplemental insurance.

The whole topic is disgusting, particularly the rejection of opt-in Medicare at cost by both sides.

This rejection is hypocritical to everything either party claims to stand for.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#322

Post by notch656a »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #318
notch656a wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I see, doctors aren't supposed to work for free, just other taxpayers (who most likely make far less than a doctor) working for free to pay the (much higher salary) to cover someone elses expenses. Got it.

My tax money goes to schools that I don't send children to. My tax money goes to building roads that I won't drive on. My tax money goes to police dealing with crimes I'm not a victim of. Do you consider EVERYTHING funded by tax payers to be the result of people "work for free to cover someone else's expenses"?

I'm opposed to tax funded police, roads, and schools. If you want to create a roads charity, by all mean I'm fine with that.

Sometimes tax payers are funding their own expense, sometimes not. What I take issue with is being involuntarily compelled to pay someone else's expense at gunpoint.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#323

Post by JaimeThompson »

notch656a wrote: post #313
JaimeThompson wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find that being this uncharitable is an effective way to communicate with others? You haven't actually been poor like that in the US. That isn't a question, it is a statement. I have as have others I know so yes even a few dollars per day can make/break the budget.

>You haven't actually been poor like that in the US. That isn't a question, it is a statement. I have as have others I know so yes even a few dollars per day can make/break the budget. I don't know how poor you have been or are. And you don't know how poor I have been either. I'm not going to play oppression olympics with you. I have been homeless, sleeping in ditches and parks before, living off of minimum wage day…

> I'm not going to play oppression olympics with you.

That wasn't my point. Honestly please take a look at your interaction with me and reflect on it, it isn't necessary to engage in such a hostile fashion. You have read a lot into what I have written that simply isn't there.

You have a pleasant rest of your day.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#324

Post by buffington »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #263
paxys wrote: post #203

America has socialized healthcare with a hundred extra steps and implemented in the most inefficient way possible so that everyone comes out worse. Hospitals aren't allowed to deny care (obviously). They will bill people outrageous amounts and know that they will only ever see a fraction of it. So prices for people who do pay are raised considerably to make up for it. People don't get early preventive care due to cos…

I think Americans are smarter than that. In my country doctors don't give a shit about who you are or how much money you have. They do triage. You can be a millionaire yet have to wait 3 months for a new hip because there is someone with more urgent medical needs. It is pure unadultared fact based medicine to allocate scarce resources instead of market forces that turns you into a drone. Universal healthcare is beati…

I'm trying to understand what point you're trying to make here. Are you saying America's system is better or worse than that of your country?

I'm in America, and I have fantastic health insurance (by American standards) and waited over a year for a hip replacement surgery. Even with insurance, I paid almost $10,000 for the surgery.

Without insurance it would have cost well over $100k. I suspect that in any other country that provides universal health care it would have been less expensive (for everyone) and I would have waited less then 15 months to have it done.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#325

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #216
paxys wrote: post #203

America has socialized healthcare with a hundred extra steps and implemented in the most inefficient way possible so that everyone comes out worse. Hospitals aren't allowed to deny care (obviously). They will bill people outrageous amounts and know that they will only ever see a fraction of it. So prices for people who do pay are raised considerably to make up for it. People don't get early preventive care due to cos…

Emergency rooms at hospitals that accept Medicare are not allowed to deny care under EMTALA. Hospitals that do not accept Medicare can run a 24 hour, high level of service department and deny care all they want. There's no requirement to provide non-stabilizing care.

[deleted]

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#326

Post by acheron »

suture wrote: post #259
rayiner wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had 60 votes to get Obamacare enacted, which was a historic achievement. Obviously your coalition won’t agree on everything and you have to keep the marginal votes on board. That’s just how politics works. My point is that there is a more potent democratic coalition out there even within the framework of the Senate system. To the contrary, the Senate system long benefited Democrats because it favors working clas…

The country and politics of the nation have shifted. The divide is rural/urban now. The cities have the vast majority of the wealth but not the accompanying representation. The rural areas of the country are overwhelmingly conservative and increasingly white nationalist in sentiment. What the state of things 50 years ago was is no longer relevant.

Approximately nobody is “white nationalist”. Believing nonsense like that is not helping you.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#327

Post by erentz »

colpabar wrote: post #182
yalogin wrote: post #161

None of these metrics will change the political stance our one majority party took. They have shut their eyes and ears and are hell bent on preserving the interests of the lobbying companies and fetishizing “free market competition”. I can bet a sizeable amount of money that nothing will change in the next 50yrs even. Today there is still a rule that a hospital cannot say no to a patient, I strongly believe that is o…

I make this comment in a lot of threads, but if democrats wanted to fix this problem, they would write legislation for it and try to get it passed. Instead, all we get (from both parties) are massive 1000+ page bills that include a bunch of completely unrelated stuff. Why haven't democrats produce a 10 page bill with a tl;dr of "medical debt is hereby abolished"? Stop pretending the clowns pretending to be politician…

Here’s Medicare for All. It’s 130 pages. But double spaced with massive margins and indentation space and geriatric sized fonts so really probably about 20 pages. You can read it pretty quickly (I have).

https://www.congress.gov/117/bills/hr1976/BILLS-117hr1976ih....

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#329

Post by klyrs »

colpabar wrote: post #182
yalogin wrote: post #161

None of these metrics will change the political stance our one majority party took. They have shut their eyes and ears and are hell bent on preserving the interests of the lobbying companies and fetishizing “free market competition”. I can bet a sizeable amount of money that nothing will change in the next 50yrs even. Today there is still a rule that a hospital cannot say no to a patient, I strongly believe that is o…

I make this comment in a lot of threads, but if democrats wanted to fix this problem, they would write legislation for it and try to get it passed. Instead, all we get (from both parties) are massive 1000+ page bills that include a bunch of completely unrelated stuff. Why haven't democrats produce a 10 page bill with a tl;dr of "medical debt is hereby abolished"? Stop pretending the clowns pretending to be politician…

Democrats have no problem getting bills passed in the House. They'd need 60 seats in the Senate to make those bills law with a Democratic president, 66 with a Republican president. Majoritarian rule is not a feature of the US political system. It's a federation. The states elect the president, and the states control the Senate. Individual states are federations of counties. Politicians aren't held to account for massively unpopular policies (or failure to enact massively popular policies) because the electoral machinery simply isn't built that way.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#330

Post by defterGoose »

jmyeet wrote: post #217
oceanplexian wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What depresses me the most about this situation is the callous, unempathetic disregard a significant portion of the population has for everyone not like them. "Just get a good paying job with health insurance" is not and should not be the basis for a health care policy. The problem is this is a straw-man argument. We can agree that healthcare costs are too high, and have empathy for people who are being screwed ove…

This is a borderline bad faith argument because the US stands alone as pretty much the only developed nation without universal health care [1] while simultaneously throwing our hands up in the air saying there's nothing we can do. And that's the problem. Insulin as just one example is spectacularly expensive in the US [2] for absolutely no good reason and the only way this is allowed to happen is that the Federal gov…

> AND to disallow the importation of the exact same medication from other countries.

In other words, "free markets" only and exactly when it benefits the owners of American corporations.

And please don't throw some stupid safety and efficacy arguments this way. Pretty sure people in other countries don't like buying tainted drugs either.

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