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"Clearly" you're wrong, as it has been shown time and time again that every American does NOT enjoy access to pre-emptive healthcare
They have the access. What some don't have is the financial sense to put healthcare spending needs in the front of their personal cost queue, thus they lack the funds to engage in voluntary trade according to their rational self-interest.
Susan Finley was more than capable of saving money for future healthcare expenses. I have been...for the last 21 years. She also could have gone to an ER and then negotiated a repayment schedule for costs incurred for having pneumonia. WalMart's attendance policy (at the time of her layoff) allowed for 8 absence "events" in a 12 month period for any full time employee who had worked for WalMart for more than 6 months. Calling off sick WITHOUT using PTO counts as 1 event. So between her 8 days worth of events plus PTO, she went past what WalMart allows in a policy she was aware of for 10 years. That is 100% on her, same as her choice to arrive at age 53 without any healthcare savings, arrive at that point with little or no saved up PTO, etc.
WalMart offers an HSA plan. Ms. Finley could have chosen that plan and funded it like I have funded my own for 18 of the last 21 years. Her medical expenses could have EASILY been paid for even after she lost coverage from WalMart, and assuming a healthcare.gov plan. If I lost coverage today, and went 100% without insurance of any kind, my HSA could cover the current federal out of pocket max for years, without me touching any other savings...and I am 54 years old.
So she had all sorts of access to insurance, medical spending savings, tax breaks, banking PTO, probably FMLA extended absence (check WalMart's policy, I did), etc. She CHOSE not to access much of that, leaving herself in a vulnerable position. I bet if we dig in deeper, we'd find disposable income being spent on all manner of things that she placed higher in the need/want queue than possible healthcare expenses.
That is the individual reality. Choices, and lots of them, land people at different levels of safety and security. If you are willing to use your money charitably to rescue others from the consequences of their choices, then feel free and good for you. I direct my charitable giving elsewhere. But I do not blame society for Ms. Finley's outcome, nor the system, nor WalMart, nor anyone other than the 53 year old who spent at least 10 years working for a company that offered all manner of financial and employment contract methods to easily handle pneumonia.
Albert; do you apply that "forcibly subsidizing" aspect to everything that is taxpayer funded?
You cannot take one step from your front door without utilizing some taxpayer subsidized feature, whether it be the sidewalk in front of your house to the paved street to literally hundreds of things you take for granted every single day without even thinking about them but, you choose to draw the line at "affordable and available healthcare for all".
I agree that instituting any type of single payer or universal system WITHOUT first addressing the usurious costs and the reasons for them would be utter folly.
Shooting ex-politicos who become paid lobbyists for the medical or big pharma companies as soon as they attempt to talk to a serving congress critter would be a grand step in the right direction. In what other country do you see so many politicians coming out of a career in politics as multi-millionaires.
It is a self-perpetuating, greed-based problem that will never change until you dig up the root.
I draw the line (initially) at UHC because it currently does not exist. One must first stop any further government expansion before one talks about shrinking it.
I draw the line (initially) at UHC because it currently does not exist. One must first stop any further government expansion before one talks about shrinking it.
What we are talking about is a "need" to save people from individual choices that have negative consequences, and that "need" is based on a relative measure of other countries who already punish their taxpayers more than we punish ours in order to save their citizens from the consequences of their choices.
That's all this is. Should we punish our taxpayers more like other countries do in order to bloat our government more and make our own citizens less likely to look after themselves?
In other words, how much do we seek to increase tyranny in order to foster individual apathy?
The US is on the wrong track in so many ways that if universal healthcare existed the government would be enforcing medical equity laws which simply means whitey can wait. They’re already trying it. No thanks.
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Location: Great Britain
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hawkeye2009
Not true-
People with national healthcare systems still travel to the US for the best healthcare in the world at Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, MD Anderson, Hopkins, and Penn. The wealthiest people in the world don't go to England, Germany, Norway, or Sweden for healthcare- they come to the US. If people in Canada need an ACL repair and they have the money- they come to the US.
In nations with national healthcare, total joint procedures are considered "luxuries" and it can take years to get approval.
Joint procedures are fairly common in most countries.
As for travelling all the way to the US to go to the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic if you want to go private, why bother as both have hospitals in London.
There has always been a private healthcare sector in the UK, with Harley Street in London being it's epicentre, and there are numerous private hospitals and facilities.
However many specialist NHS Hospitals also have private units for overseas patients, and number of NHS hospitals are highly regarded globally, as are a number of major NHS teaching hospitals, institutes, universities and medical charities.
The Royal Family often use the King Edward VII's Hospital in London which is also a hospital for veterans and injured military personnel, and is a registered charity.
"The hospital works with the Wellington Barracks and with the Ministry of Defence, and has treated wounded officers of the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War.[It has continued to support the treatment of all ranks of former servicemen, as well as the general public. Through the hospital's Sister Agnes Benevolent Fund, active or retired personnel in the British armed services, as well as their spouses, can receive a means tested grant that can cover up to 100% of their hospital fees. It has a pain management programme for veterans".
There is definitely more of a sense of unity in Canada. Not that everyone is holding hands and singing together. I watched your elections. The mudslinging is there only more polite.
But there is definitely more of an "us" here in Canada than there is in the States, where "Us v. Them" is far more popular.
They have the access. What some don't have is the financial sense to put healthcare spending needs in the front of their personal cost queue, thus they lack the funds to engage in voluntary trade according to their rational self-interest.
Susan Finley was more than capable of saving money for future healthcare expenses. I have been...for the last 21 years. She also could have gone to an ER and then negotiated a repayment schedule for costs incurred for having pneumonia. WalMart's attendance policy (at the time of her layoff) allowed for 8 absence "events" in a 12 month period for any full time employee who had worked for WalMart for more than 6 months. Calling off sick WITHOUT using PTO counts as 1 event. So between her 8 days worth of events plus PTO, she went past what WalMart allows in a policy she was aware of for 10 years. That is 100% on her, same as her choice to arrive at age 53 without any healthcare savings, arrive at that point with little or no saved up PTO, etc.
WalMart offers an HSA plan. Ms. Finley could have chosen that plan and funded it like I have funded my own for 18 of the last 21 years. Her medical expenses could have EASILY been paid for even after she lost coverage from WalMart, and assuming a healthcare.gov plan. If I lost coverage today, and went 100% without insurance of any kind, my HSA could cover the current federal out of pocket max for years, without me touching any other savings...and I am 54 years old.
So she had all sorts of access to insurance, medical spending savings, tax breaks, banking PTO, probably FMLA extended absence (check WalMart's policy, I did), etc. She CHOSE not to access much of that, leaving herself in a vulnerable position. I bet if we dig in deeper, we'd find disposable income being spent on all manner of things that she placed higher in the need/want queue than possible healthcare expenses.
That is the individual reality. Choices, and lots of them, land people at different levels of safety and security. If you are willing to use your money charitably to rescue others from the consequences of their choices, then feel free and good for you. I direct my charitable giving elsewhere. But I do not blame society for Ms. Finley's outcome, nor the system, nor WalMart, nor anyone other than the 53 year old who spent at least 10 years working for a company that offered all manner of financial and employment contract methods to easily handle pneumonia.
Written by someone who has no idea how people at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale get by.
Did you read the next piece of the article about the woman with ovarian cancer who was laid off by her employer immediately after being diagnosed? She let herself die because she couldn't pay the medical or insurance bills. That should not happen.
With an ACA policy, premiums plus out of pocket can be $10,000 per year. Do you think someone making $15 an hour can easily save up even a year's worth of costs, much less multiple years?
US funding of healthcare is broken beyond belief. If you lose your job, you lose your insurance, and can't get equivalent coverage on the market at a reasonable price. If you can't afford insurance, you go without care, or have to endure county hospitals. There has to be a better way.
I live in Ohio, and neither my income nor my use of any service I pay for begrudges anyone who earns less than me from using any of those services. Economics is not a zero sum game.
I do not take services away from people when I use them, I simply take my place in line, exchange money for goods and services, and go on my merry way. The prices paid for anything are supposed to based on supply and demand, not what I earn as income.
Not sure how using anything begrudges others from using it, outside of me owning that thing, in which case property rights are absolute. But a good or service that I and anyone else are free to trade for...not sure how my use begrudges someone else's non-use??
But even Christianity doesn't force human nature. It asks and lets free will be the decider. Jesus never forces anyone to do anything, He asks, He recommends or He advises. Never force.
I think you misunderstood my point.
My point is that many Americans here on CD have stated they don't want to pay for someone's else's healthcare, when they already pay through taxes, others police, roads etc. They will feel begrudged in regards to healthcare.
Of course the irony is that in the current system with so many under insured or those with no insurance, people are already paying the costs of that through health insurance costs, co-pays, deductible etc.
And bureaucracies exist only to perpetuate themselves. How do they do that? By wasting money and doing nothing.
And yet, ironically, the US system spends more money on administration and less on healthcare than any other first-world country. You don't think private companies can be bureaucratic?
Quote:
I have no desire to turn my healthcare over to the only organization on earth where you get MORE funding if you get nothing done.
Your health insurance company does better the more money they can extract from you when you're healthy, and the less they have to pay when you're sick. The less treatment you get, the better for them.
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