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The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

aaronstannard.com

331–340 of 431 posts

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come other countries have better healthcare at lower real costs? Basically every developed nation has better healthcare outcomes than the US. All other nations have cheaper healthcare. America is not special, we've just brainwashed our less-observant citizens into believing that solutions the entire rest of the world uses will never and can never work here. There's nothing special about our population or economy…

As someone who has lived in several countries, I do not believe every developed nation achieves better healthcare outcomes than the United States. Many European countries, as well as Canada, offer some form of universal coverage with free general treatment but waiting times for appointments and procedures can vary widely. That said, I still think universal healthcare is preferable, as these systems tend to prioritize…

> There is no clear overall winner.

A lot of countries are likely clear overall losers though.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I mentioned, in multiple places, that this is the cheapest PPO offered to me through a limited selection of potential brokers / marketplaces - and that's important because it covers our current health care providers AND child birth as a benefit. 2. If we weren't trying to have kids, our options for purchasing health insurance expand drastically. Individual marketplace plans become a viable, for instance, since the…

What exactly does covering childbirth mean? We've had two children now and it's not something I've considered when choosing insurance (my company's vs my wife's), so maybe we just got lucky. Is there anything different about child birth vs simply in-network hospital coverage? I assumed we'd just hit our out-of-pocket max.

Above comment is discussing choosing via marketplace, which indicates it might not be an employer funded plan. (Which are gonna be better)

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had a sports hernia and the bill was about $30k. And what the OP is pointing out is that if your injury is $30K, insurance covers nothing , because the premium + deductible is $40K.

> And what the OP is pointing out is that if your injury is $30K, insurance covers nothing, because the premium + deductible is $40K. The point of insurance is to mitigate risk. If you think you have enough money to cover your risk, there's no reason to buy insurance. The sleight of hand here is first complaining that you did not incur enough hazards to offset the risk premium and then citing this as a reason the ris…

Risk is not the only factor. Premium cost is probably the more important one for most. If someone can afford the $40k deductible option, but not the $5k option, you’ll just have to accept the risk. Increasing earnings significantly right now is harder than hoping medical bankruptcy won’t matter in the long run.

30% of US households make less than $50k. That’s more than 100,000,000 people in homes with less than $3.6k/mo for all living expenses. The stories you ask for are simply inevitable

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car depend infrastructure is amazing to families. A mom can take her children to the grocery store in a car in relative safety without worrying about mentally ill homeless people on the subway.

wow. this thread is microcosm of how wild and polarised the internet can be.

It's pure facts. I used to live in a city where me and my wife were terrorized by homeless people on the light rail. Now we live far away from public transportation and no longer have to worry about the safety of ourselves or our children and our neighbors are fantastic people.

Car dependency and castle doctrine is essential in a low trust society with a legal system that puts violent offenders right back on the street.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car depend infrastructure is amazing to families. A mom can take her children to the grocery store in a car in relative safety without worrying about mentally ill homeless people on the subway.

Men would rather build a continent-sized car-dependent infrastructure that deal with mentally ill homeless people on the subway...

Correct. Lack of accessibility is a feature when you live around bad people and the legal system doesn't function to eliminate the threat

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#337
post #2

The corruption is so entrenched and so out of control, the only way out of this mess is for regular people to just stop using the health care system. Yes, there's no alternative, and yes, it means living a riskier life. It sucks, and it's not what we want to hear, but they can only charge us if we show up and purchase the product, and that's the last lever of power we can wield.

"Healthcare too expensive? Have you considered dying?" Sorry, what are you going to do when you get into a car accident and they rush you to the hospital? Assuming you're even conscious. "No, I'm voting with my wallet!" flatlines Come on. What if we used our collective power to fix the system? (Up to and including replacing it with something that works for the majority, and not the minority.)

How can you be so naive? Like I said. It’s not what we want to hear or think about. But it is the only route left. Either we stop buying the product or they keep raising prices on us.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#338
post #2

The corruption is so entrenched and so out of control, the only way out of this mess is for regular people to just stop using the health care system. Yes, there's no alternative, and yes, it means living a riskier life. It sucks, and it's not what we want to hear, but they can only charge us if we show up and purchase the product, and that's the last lever of power we can wield.

Regular people are already not using the healthcare system to a large degree. But it's not a realistic ask in perpetuity. If someone gets ill enough, they will get healthcare or they will die.

> they will get healthcare and they will die

FTFY

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car seats as contraception is just a specific enumeration of the general. "busybodies as contraception" problem wherein the "has so few real problems they stop minding their business and mind other's business" classes try to force priorities on the rest of society that the rest of society can't yet afford to have. And it's not just contraception or kids. Pretty much everything in our economy gets shot in the foot by…

Contraception is a bargain deal for any class, assuming you were not intending to have a kid. I also question the idea that safety regulations (let's call them that) are the result of a class of people who have "so few real problems they stop minding their business and mind other's business." I get the idea, but couldn't the high cost of obstetrics and child car seat requirements be due to the wishes and decisions of…

[deleted]

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> extremely high quality health insurance in a western country (Sigh...) Let's put some facts. Infant mortality and under-five mortality rate (U5MR) are one of best simple indicators of the quality of healthcare. USA's mortality is x3 (!!!) of the countries on top. This puts USA around place 50 in the world, worse than Russia...

Health care could be more evenly distributed, of course, but the health care that OP is receiving is definitely very high quality. General statistics about the entire population cannot speak to that.

No. The original claim was "all the systems that subsidize health care for those less well off don't apply because you're wealthy. So you are bearing the full cost of extremely high quality health insurance in a western country.":

1. The quality is high.

2. The OP pays the full price.

1 is incorrect. The OP is paying a lot, but is getting the same subpar quality healthcare as everyone else. He differs with people without money in only one thing: the latter don't get the full access to the subpar health system. The system itself is the same and its general quality is well indicated by the core metric of the infant mortality.

The health system is subpar and there is absolutely no reason why such a system should cost that much.

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