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Good point. Where I live now, we have a lot of people who are uninsured and pay out-of-pocket. The healthcare prices are very low; meds are cheap and accessible (especially since most local pharmacies know that you can order online from WalMart and various places for less). Once everyone is "insured", the health care costs will go up, not down, for several reasons.
One is that right now, since I pay cash, my physician doesn't have to run unnecessary and repetitive tests to justify her treatments every time - we both know what's wrong, and we both know I can't pay for a cat-scan or an MRI every time she applies treatment, simply to justify some insurance company's ICD9 codes to get paid. Once I am "insured", she will be forced to run those tests to "prove" her treatment is valid - which means that my costs will go up.
Plus, people who are insured tend to visit doctors more often, especially for things that they previously treated at home like colds, flu, etc; these folks will overwhelm the medical community. The 15 minute waiting time will stretch to hours, and charges will be higher, not lower, to compensate the doctors, nurses, and PAs, as well as to pay for all of the increased tests and paperwork that will be required.
I can also foresee that there will be more impacts on employment; my own employer's accountant is in deep discussions about how they will be able to afford to insure everyone. They may have to let someone go to afford insurance for the other ones whom they currently do not insure. The one that they let go will have to go on the government insurance - and won't be able to afford it since they will be unemployed. This will happen in many companies that are just skating by on their 15+ employees; they won't fall into the "don't worry about it" 15 or less employee government coverage, and will have to cut costs somewhere. This will lead to more people on the government dole. Smaller governments will have to raise taxes to ensure that all of their employees are insured.
So not only are you going to be hard-pressed to find a place with 'affordable" and readily accessible health care, you will be impacted by an increase of people who are out of work and who still will be required to have medical care/insurance. Who's going to pay for that? Eventually, you. It is the whole Medicaid scenario - on steroids, because it will apply to everyone - all over again.
That's how I see it. I hope that I'm wrong, but I'm betting I'm not.
When we lived at Kilgore, 8 years ago, it was $50 in Valentine... But that's just for the office call. Heaven help you if you needed any tests run!
And if something was actually wrong?? You'd better be ready to donate vital organs if you're un/under-insured.
Yes there is: a tyrannical government hell-bent on going against the will of the majority of American citizens and hell-bent on controlling every aspect of our lives.
I could have written the supposed intent of the law in one sentence--henceforth, everyone in the USA will now get free government-provided health care should they want it. Merry Christmas.
Now, what do you think is in the other 2,299 pages?
note: I am NOT going to say one more thing on this thread about the Affordable Health Slavery Law as I have done on other threads where I've responded to a hijack attempt. Don't worry, I won't go ballistic here. Deep breathing... I can control myself... I can control myself... I can control myself... I can control myself... I can control myself... I can control myself... I can control myself... I can control myself... ... ...
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RomaniGypsy
I'm new to this forum but I do indeed believe that there will come a time, likely sooner rather than later, when the excrement will hit the rotating cooling device. My thought is that it is likely to be a total economic collapse, rather than some catastrophic weather phenomenon.
In the event of a total economic collapse, in theory, money would become worthless. It's happened before. We'd wind up in a situation where humans have to survive rather than live in their modern comforts. Some might say "well I'm stockpiling GOLD"... okay, gold will also be useless. What the heck do we use gold for anyway? It may have a lot of nifty properties that make it a good all-purpose metal for a lot of uses, but if someone showed up and flashed a shiny gold ingot, telling me he'd trade it to me for a supply of food I had grown, I'd be like "What the heck am I supposed to use this little paperweight for?!"
Anyway, with that being the case, what would you say is the best place to set up a home, to prepare for a scenario of SHTF? I have a hard time comprehending how to do it because of one topic: PROPERTY TAXES. It's easy enough to find a place where timber is plentiful and the ground is sufficiently arable so as to grow your own food and raise your own livestock, but I know of no places in the USA where there are no property taxes. It seems 100% totally and completely impossible to live totally independently, and subsist on your own without having to answer (somehow) to someone else. Therefore, I'm not sure just how well America in and of itself is suited for a SHTF scenario.
But maybe you know something I don't know. If you don't know a specific location that you'd consider best for preparing to survive, perhaps you could talk about the type of location that you feel would be best.
I don't really understand this post, because if civilization collapses you're not going to have to worry about taxes, right? There wouldn't be any govt workers to collect the worthless money, nor would cops work for free to enforce the laws. You'd only have to worry about defending what you consider to be your property boundaries.
If you mean taxes right now pre-shtf, well you shouldn't buy a piece of land without having a few years of property taxes put aside, especially if you have some money but a low income.
Personally, I'd probably squat on some National Forest land, that way I wouldn't come into conflict with a private owner. But I don't believe in the possibility of a total collapse of civilization everywhere.
When we lived at Kilgore, 8 years ago, it was $50 in Valentine... But that's just for the office call. Heaven help you if you needed any tests run!
And if something was actually wrong?? You'd better be ready to donate vital organs if you're un/under-insured.
I repeat: There's a reason Obamacare passed.
Weird. My doc in Valentine is $35 for an office visit (that's for uninsured, cash up front) - and they apologized for "charging so much". We thought it very funny. Of course, the ER hospital bill and IV antibiotic meds for me for a 12 hour outpatient day was $1500 - payable in installments.
Coming from the East Coast where a doc visit ran me $150, and an ER hospital visit was never less than $3000, I consider that a healthy difference. And the COL including the cost of medical care were a few of the reasons we moved here.
Of course, even the vets are cheap here - We had a dog in for surgery (outpatient) in the East, and it was $380 plus meds. Here it was $40 - they kept her overnight, and gave us 10 days of antibiotics.
Perhaps you had insurance and so had to be charged more?
Don't bother, Chris - those who insist Obamacare is the answer to all our problems will never ever believe otherwise... no matter how many facts you present. Me, I have lupus and pay my own way, and prefer to keep it that way; having been in EMS and having to do the billing for them for two years, I know what costs are and why they are, and what will happen with Obamacare. As I have done with most emotionalized political footballs, though, I quit the game and let everyone else kick them around... they'll find out who's really scoring in the end. <shrug> Too late, of course...
Obamacare will collapse under the weight of people refusing to get self- paid insurance, enforcing such a law, etc. It's a non issue, like the assault rifle ban in CA. Everyone knows that 200k people out there are committing felonies to keep such rifles un-registered, and Big Bro knows who they are, where they live, etc. But "he" doesn't have room for them in the prisons, and basically doesn't dare disturb the sleeping giant.
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