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So your kid is born with a heart defect....existing condition.
Sucks for you.
This is what it ultimately comes down to. We as a society will have to decide if healthcare is a personal issue and a matter of individual responsibility, or if it is a social contract that begins at the moment of conception.
Despite my conservative politics, my social values lean towards the latter. However, some issues need to be addressed, such as illegal immigration and birthright citizenship. It would have to be a national program not an international program. You can't come here uninvited and participate.
Just to give you an anecdotal example of who might fall through the monumental cracks that your suggestion would have.
One of my good friends was disabled (shot in the head in a freak accident for which he had no culpability) when he was 18. He would've been a very productive member of society otherwise. His family is working class and couldn't afford the million dollar plus bills initially even if they had cashed out everything they owned, let alone the tremendous costs going forward (the last 30 years).
You think we should let him rot or what? Explain
Can we afford not to? It may sound harsh, but we do NOT have unlimited funds to pay for health care.
Bad things happen to good people. Those who text while driving, just that one thing, maim and kill 3 times as many people/year as do firearms (NTSB). Very frequently, their victims also had no culpability. Thousands of them even die. Every year. But they had no culpability. Should we just let people drive and own cell phones even though texting while driving kills thousands of people every year?
The VA may be a mess but people on Medicare kind of love it, and there has not been a lot of complaints as there are with the VA.
I already posted the BIG differences between free VA healthcare and Medicare.
Can't help but laugh at anyone who thinks Medicare is "free" healthcare for seniors.
To recap:
First of all, to even qualify for Medicare, one must have made at least 10 years of Medicare tax payments before eligibility for benefits (from a full-time job). Many people make 30-40 years worth of those payments before they can enroll in Medicare at age 65. And even once they enroll, there's a monthly premium for Medicare which is deducted from their SS check. There's also deductibles, a 20% co-pay, and limitations on certain benefits like the amount of hospitalization days they're allowed. If seniors want prescription and/or medical device, dental, and vision coverage, they have to pay even more to buy supplemental policies for that, themselves, out of their own pocket. Hearing aids, as well, aren't covered.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn't mean to make such a blatant personal attack, calling me sad and brainwashed.
With that said, our education and infrastructure are an absolute disaster and embarrassing when compared to what other countries do, and part of it is because of how much we grossly overspend on the military.
I don't buy the government "by the people" at this point, its government by the career politicians, lobbyists, and lawyers. Sure that can change one day, but I put higher odds on a collapse or other unstable ending rather than "the people" just gently changing that status.
I'm glad you give that benefit, because I meant it in a sincerely non-acrimonious way.
It is by the people, sadly it's the citizen's united definition of people. That can change and I have faith that eventually it will. Stealing the SC pick from Obama and giving it to Trump probably set back the time frame significantly but we eventually do the right thing in this country (as Churchill said, after we've exhausted all the other options).
Can we afford not to? It may sound harsh, but we do NOT have unlimited funds to pay for health care.
Bad things happen to good people. Those who text while driving, just that one thing, maim and kill 3 times as many people/year as do firearms (NTSB). Very frequently, their victims also had no culpability. Thousands of them even die. Every year. But they had no culpability. Should we just let people drive and own cell phones even though texting while driving kills thousands of people every year?
See what I mean?
We should also ban all video devices as it makes people sedentary. Cancel Sunday afternoon football, as it forces people to eat crappy food, get drunk and and sit around for 10 hours, which encourages alcoholism, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Which is the #1 killer in the USA.
Can we afford not to? It may sound harsh, but we do NOT have unlimited funds to pay for health care.
Bad things happen to good people. Those who text while driving, just that one thing, maim and kill 3 times as many people/year as do firearms (NTSB). Very frequently, their victims also had no culpability. Thousands of them even die. Every year. But they had no culpability. Should we just let people drive and own cell phones even though texting while driving kills thousands of people every year?
See what I mean?
You realize when we start letting the unfortunate fend for themselves (and die on the streets) we become Mexico. The cost of a first world country is taken care of those that can't (or won't in a lot of cases) take care of themselves. It might hurt your sense of propriety but it's a fact. Living in a third world country would hurt that fragile sense too, I expect.
Don't get the texting analogy? We can't help dead people. If they survive and they don't have insurance and the culprit doesn't either, we pay. We should and do and have enough money to.
So your kid is born with a heart defect....existing condition.
Sucks for you.
Or if a child is born severely autistic... perhaps when the world's human population reaches 10 billion, it won't be worth trying to fix that heart defect or trying to teach that mentally impaired child to minimally function in our society.
In nature, defective babies would die on their own. It's really quite unnatural to expend so much money trying to fix defective progeny. And those with severe hereditary medical issues shouldn't be making babies and passing along those genes. Just because advanced medical science can fix a medical issue for $300K, doesn't mean that it should be paid for by health insurance.
There is a finite limit to society's resources. Our planet already has several billion too many human beings on it. And if we could go back to the human population levels of the 1950's, we wouldn't need to worry about climate changes and changing over to electric cars. *shrug*
We should also ban all video devices as it makes people sedentary. Cancel Sunday afternoon football, as it forces people to eat crappy food, get drunk and and sit around for 10 hours, which encourages alcoholism, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Which is the #1 killer in the USA.
#banfootballforhealthcare
[sarcasm-ish]
I hear ya...
Sorry "emoting" liberals, nanny government CAN'T fix everything for you, nor should it.
I had an issue with my health insurance right after I started a new job. Had to go to urgent care, and paid $150 out of pocket, with no insurance.
Later, I went back with insurance and the urgent care charged my insurer -- for the EXACT same service -- $450. I paid part of that, more than my $150 visit cost originally.
When you asked them why they charged that way, what did they say?
Quote:
Originally Posted by newtovenice
Get rid of insurance. ANd then you WILL be able to afford healthcare.
Let me get this straight.
If I drop my insurance, and a year later I come down with some debilitating disease that will require a million dollars in medical treatments, I will be able to afford those treatments BETTER than if I still had insurance?
Please explain?
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