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Well, it's what we've got right now and it beats the heck out of going into massive debt or foregoing necessary medical care.
What a lot of people don't realize is that many countries who have single payer systems or socialized medicine also have supplemental insurance because their country's government provided healthcare doesn't cover everything either.
Yep. Just had a lengthy argument with Canadians here on city-data. Canada has national health care, but 75% of their population STILL buys/earns supplemental private health insurance to cover the health care costs for which Canadian health care doesn't pay.
Yep. Just had a lengthy argument with Canadians here on city-data. Canada has national health care, but 75% of their population STILL buys/earns supplemental private health insurance to cover the health care costs for which Canadian health care doesn't pay.
Right.
Quote:
“Basically, every single country with universal coverage also has private insurance,” says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies international health systems. “I don’t think there is a model in the world that allows you to go without it.”
Other developed countries routinely use private insurance to fill in the gaps of their public plans or to offer patients a way to get to see a doctor a bit faster. Some countries, like Australia, even take aggressive steps like offering tax benefits to encourage citizens to enroll in private coverage alongside their public plan.
Wow, this is an excellent article by the way, and it really clarifies debate points.
Quote:
None of our peer countries have built a health care system like this. Canada, France, England, Australia, and the Netherlands all run health care systems that have gaps in coverage.
Not one of our peer countries has found a way to provide health care that covers all benefits at no cost to patients — the price is just prohibitive. Instead, most provide free or low-cost access to core medical services while asking patients to kick in something for the parts the government can’t afford.
When you look at America’s peers, the key question doesn’t seem to be whether there will be private health insurance. Instead, the key question seems to be what role private health insurance will play.
I don't know all the details, of course, but MANY old people do not have family and friends close by. And even if they did, although they could have had Social Service intervene, I am not sure how much help they would have received.
And even if they did have friends and relatives who knew, depending on their circumstances, they might not have been able to help financially without going into debt or damaging their own financial security.
In any case, this is just one more example of why the entire healthcare system in the U.S. needs to be seriously overhauled.
If one enters the story with a lens that the health care system needs to be overhauled, sure. ie, if you're LOOKING for reasons to declare this as an example - as it appears the news media wants to - then of course, it's an example.
But from the link, we know almost nothing about their situation.
We don't know the medical conditions involved.
We have no idea what their financial situation was.
We certainly don't know what current avenues of assistance they pursued.
But we could do a helluva lot more than we do now if we'd stop going all over the world fighting endless wars of choice for others while crying SOCIALISM! at the mere thought of buying even a Band-Aid for an American.
In an irrational world, full of hypocrisy and legal contradictions, perhaps suicide was the rational choice?
It just might have been.
Consider they must have had medicare which covers 80% off the top. For them to have bills so high for the other 20% they may have had far more than just those bills.
If they both had huge health problems maybe it was a way out of their pain more than their money issues.
I'm not too far behind them (age) and we just had a scare as my wife landed in the ICU for 8 days last week. She is making a full recovery, but at some point in the near future, anything that goes wrong may not include a full recovery. I also know what living with pain is like. It gets old at times.
ACA has nothing to do wirh this. They should have been under Medicare, and people over age 65 are NOT eligible for an ACA plan with financial assistance whether they have Medicaid, Essential Plan or Advanced Premium Tax Credit; in fact, they are sent Marketplace notices 45 days before they turn 65 that they will be disenrolled from whatever plan they are in once they turn 65. They can keep Medicaid under Fee For Service, but ONLY IF they also enroll in Medicare. Medicaid can actually help to pay their Part B premiums - it's called the Medicare Insurance Premium Plan.
Of course it is. Regardless of whether they had Medicare Obamacare was supposed to cure everything. And be cheaper. I bet your old people believed the lies of the century. And paid for it.
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at the mere thought of buying even a Band-Aid for an American.
