Why a health care mandate is essential

[umbrella39]

Nah that's just the smell of your upper lip reaching your nose. Here's a for you.

 

[flavio]

In my opinion, those services are not a human right. Our society is obviously based on money. You have it, you can afford things. You don't, well, go out and make some.

Hard to make money when you have a crippling illness. Our society is not entirely based on money. You don't have money to get basic protections like fire and police. You shouldn't have to to get basic health treatment either.

 

[Jack Ryan]

Hard to make money when you have a crippling illness. Our society is not entirely based on money. You don't have money to get basic protections like fire and police. You shouldn't have to to get basic health treatment either.

Obviously our opinions differ. Tell me one good reason why I should give up part of my income so you can treat an illness you can't pay for. Where is your family? Why aren't they helping you through your illness? Why is it the responsibility of strangers?

My stance is that if people want to pay into a social program because they believe in it then go right ahead. Just let people who think it is baloney to keep their money.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Obviously our opinions differ. Tell me one good reason why I should give up part of my income so you can treat an illness you can't pay for. Where is your family? Why aren't they helping you through your illness? Why is it the responsibility of strangers?

My stance is that if people want to pay into a social program because they believe in it then go right ahead. Just let people who think it is baloney to keep their money.

So if you have a child born with a severe illness or birth defect, that could cost $millions to treat over his/her childhood, what are you going to do? For 99% of the US, paying a couple million is out of the question without insurance. What are you going to do?

Are you really going to let that baby just die?

 

[Jack Ryan]

So if you have a child born with a severe illness or birth defect, that could cost $millions to treat over his/her childhood, what are you going to do? For 99% of the US, paying a couple million is out of the question without insurance. What are you going to do?

Are you really going to let that baby just die?

Actually, I work. As a benefit of working I have group health INSURANCE that I pay into. Insurance would cover my child. I don't see a problem.

 

[nonlnear]

So if you have a child born with a severe illness or birth defect, that could cost $millions to treat over his/her childhood, what are you going to do? For 99% of the US, paying a couple million is out of the question without insurance. What are you going to do?

Are you really going to let that baby just die?

How many millions are you asking for? two million over ten years? one million a year? 10 million a year? 300 million a year?

The cold hard reality is that there really is a price that is too big to be worth saving that life, and no amount of well-intentioned denial is going to change that fact. And that tragic reality is the same whether you are talking about for-profit private insurance, non-profit insurance, self-paid treatment, or single payer government provided UHC. The specific structure of that decision process may change, but if you think that UHC gives more transparency and accountability I have a senior's home in the Netherlands to sell you.

 

[KMFJD]

Actually, I work. As a benefit of working I have group health INSURANCE that I pay into. Insurance would cover my child. I don't see a problem.

Insurance company would try for the pre-existing condition clause and deny care, then what?

 

[Jack Ryan]

Insurance company would try for the pre-existing condition clause and deny care, then what?

Let's say that you are correct and my insurance would deny my child.

I would do the following:
a) Exhaust my personal funds
b) Inquire with charities/foundations in the name of said illness/condition
c) Investigate alternative medicine and/or research studies
d) Ask family/friends for help
e) Pray (I am not religious)

I do NOT expect any money from my neighbor or countrymen.

It is unfortunate that with the medical know-how only a few miles away from my house, I cannot get the care needed to save my child. But there is a reason why hospitals are in the business of making money and why doctors go to school for years and take on enormous debt. It is a service and I wouldn't be able to pay for it.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Actually, I work. As a benefit of working I have group health INSURANCE that I pay into. Insurance would cover my child. I don't see a problem.

I should have clarified, what if (hypothetical) you didn't have insurance? Or if you lost your job and lost insurance? What do you do with people without insurance?

Sure, with insurance, you will be OK, but what abuot for everyone that doesn't? Do you let the baby die?

 

[Jack Ryan]

I should have clarified, what if (hypothetical) you didn't have insurance? Or if you lost your job and lost insurance? What do you do with people without insurance?

Sure, with insurance, you will be OK, but what abuot for everyone that doesn't? Do you let the baby die?

Same as above.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

How many millions are you asking for? two million over ten years? one million a year? 10 million a year? 300 million a year?

The cold hard reality is that there really is a price that is too big to be worth saving that life, and no amount of well-intentioned denial is going to change that fact. And that tragic reality is the same whether you are talking about for-profit private insurance, non-profit insurance, self-paid treatment, or single payer government provided UHC. The specific structure of that decision process may change, but if you think that UHC gives more transparency and accountability I have a senior's home in the Netherlands to sell you.

There are many treatable (but expensive) problems. For a congenital heart defect, a baby could have multiple surgeries as he/she grows up. But is treated, the child can live a full normal life. So I am not talking about some terminal disease or condition.

So you could be on the hook for easily 1-2million over 10 years. With insurance, it would be covered. Without insurance (loss of job, can't afford it, etc...) what do you do? Like I said, 99% of us couldn't pay millions.

 

[nonlnear]

There are many treatable (but expensive) problems. For a congenital heart defect, a baby could have multiple surgeries as he/she grows up. But is treated, the child can live a full normal life. So I am not talking about some terminal disease or condition.

Neither was I. I was talking about prices.

So you could be on the hook for easily 1-2million over 10 years. With insurance, it would be covered. Without insurance (loss of job, can't afford it, etc...) what do you do? Like I said, 99% of us couldn't pay millions.

But where do you draw the line? If a condition is treatable for 10 million a year is it immoral to deny that treatment to someone who can't pay? Is it immoral to create a contract which precludes treatments that expensive (even if such a restriction is made explicit in the contract)? Is it immoral for a government UHC bureaucrat to deny such a treatment? What about 20 million a year?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Let's say that you are correct and my insurance would deny my child.

I would do the following:
a) Exhaust my personal funds
b) Inquire with charities/foundations in the name of said illness/condition
c) Investigate alternative medicine and/or research studies
d) Ask family/friends for help
e) Pray (I am not religious)

I do NOT expect any money from my neighbor or countrymen.

It is unfortunate that with the medical know-how only a few miles away from my house, I cannot get the care needed to save my child. But there is a reason why hospitals are in the business of making money and why doctors go to school for years and take on enormous debt. It is a service and I wouldn't be able to pay for it.

First off I call bullshit, it's easy to be magnanimus in a theorectical schenario

And secondly if you would sacrifice your child for your "personal responibility" principles your a cold hearted person, and thank God you can't make that decision for my family.

 

[Jack Ryan]

First off I call bullshit, it's easy to be magnanimus in a theorectical schenario

And secondly if you would sacrifice your child for your "personal responibility" principles your a cold hearted person, and thank God you can't make that decision for my family.

Right, resort to personal attacks because I hold my personal responsibility higher than you do.

I have always suggested the alternative of giving people a choice.
a) Donate money to a government/charity/program that they support, which entitles them to receive those benefits if they ever need to collect.
b) Keep their money and receive no benefits from that program.

You bring up a good point about deciding for your family. I don't want to decide anything for your family, as long as it doesn't interfere with my family. Taking money from me so you can get health care is making a decision for me that I don't want.

It seems to me that the supporters don't want to put their money where their mouth is. My option lets you still have the system you want, but you have to finance it yourselves. But there lies the problem. Your money is yours, but others' money is everyone's.

 

[Carmen813]

Jack,
The other people are missing an important point.

Insurance is having other people help you. That is the entire concept behind insurance, to spread risk among as many people as possible. I don't care how much an individual + their employer pays in premiums, when individuals face serious illnesses those premiums cover a fraction of the total costs. Even if you and your employer paid $10,000 a year for every person in your family for your entire life, it's almost a certainty that those premiums would end up only covering you for a month or two if you faced an illness like cancer.

A great deal of what this legislation is about is not giving away a freebie, it's about allowing people to have the option to buy insurance. You see it as a restriction on your freedom, and it is, because you would be required to always carry insurance. For a great deal of others, including myself, we see it as liberating. Finally, we have the freedom to take advantage of any opportunity we want and not worry about if we will be able to see a doctor or get treatment. I can assure that this is a REAL problem, I had to debate turning down a $60,000 scholarship because I was unsure if I'd be able to maintain health insurance.

We all benefit every single day of our lives from the money of fellow countrymen, whether we expect them to help or not. Roads, police, firefighters, EMTs, public schools, a military, ect. In addition, hospitals and doctors are already required to treat us when we go to an emergency room. When we can't pay for that care, the people who have insurance do. So we already had universal health care in America, just a horrible implementation of it. Even if this wasn't law, doctors would be required to treat you anyway. That's the Hippocratic Oath that has been around for thousands of years. This is the modern version from wikipedia.

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

Lastly, I see no reason to even bother surviving an illness like cancer if it means a person is financially ruined for life. Or if it means that an individual must live in constant fear that it will come back and die slowly and painfully because they lost their insurance. I've managed to keep my insurance, but trust me, I've lived this fear everyday for the past 5 years, and I am a person who has worked hard my entire adult life. Being covered under Medicaid for a couple of years did not turn me into a lazy government sucking waste. I worked hard to complete my undergraduate degree, starting 2 months after I finished chemo/radiation. I would GLADLY pay more in taxes in order to prevent anyone from ever having to experience the fear that I've lived with every single day since I was diagnosed.

I hold social responsibility higher than personal responsibility. Basically it's the belief that individuals, groups, organizations, companies, and government act for the best interests of society as a whole. It isn't communism or socialism, I do not expect equality of outcomes, and I absolutely want government involved in our lives as little as possible. I expect equality of beginnings, and for government to work to fill the potholes in the road along the way. It's up to the individual to go as far down that road as they can. Life is unfair, but we don't need to deliberately leave it unfair. It does not mean that I believe individual responsibility is unimportant. If individuals don't do their part, the whole thing collapses. Frankly, it's a more idealistic view of the world we live in, which I personally see as "me first."

-Carmen

 

[CADsortaGUY]

First off I call bullshit, it's easy to be magnanimus in a theorectical schenario

And secondly if you would sacrifice your child for your "personal responibility" principles your a cold hearted person, and thank God you can't make that decision for my family.

Yet you and those who want to have this gov't mandate and/or gov't healthcare are doing just that - making those sorts of decisions for my family.

 

[nonlnear]

Jack,
The other people are missing an important point.

Insurance is having other people help you. That is the entire concept behind insurance, to spread risk among as many people as possible.

There is no point here to be missed. 😱 Yes, risk is spread across a pool of individuals, but it is done so consensually. The difference is exactly the same as the difference between asking a soldier into your house for dinner and having them garrisoned in your home against your will.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Yet you and those who want to have this gov't mandate and/or gov't healthcare are doing just that - making those sorts of decisions for my family.

Waa Waa Waaa


You want your cake and eat it too. You want to keep the status quo where you can walk into the ER and get fixed up while I pay for it. You want the right to be totally irresponsible and pay nothing for health insurance while paying smucks like me pick up the tab when you or your family gets sick.

Well as of today the law of the land agrees with me and you will have to pay for your own coverage, suck on that freeloader

 

[EagleKeeper]

Why should we be forced to pay additional for the same level of coverage. That additional cost is due to people that can not/will not have purchased the insurance previously on their own and the government is going to pick up the tab for them. The tab is being paid for by those that have insurance already.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I think what CAD is getting at is why should he be force to pay additional for the same level of coverage. That additional cost is due to people that can not/will not have purchased the insurance previously on their own and the government is going to pick up the tab for them. The tab is being paid for by those that have insurance already.

If thats what he meant, thats what he should say.

And the point that he will pay more for the same coverage is pure conjecture and just flat wrong IMO, as your third sentence points out (kinda) the additional costs are currently being picked up by people like me who pay for insurance and our costs should go down not up once those costs are covered by their newly mandated coverage. The rightwing claim that those who have insurance will see higher premiums is a BS boogieman fear tactic argument thats going up in smoke before our very eyes, come back and talk to me again when it actually comes to pass and I will cry with you, until then I call BS

 

[JohnnyGage]

Oh you can get some healthcare without money but try getting angioplasty, a bypass, a transplant, regular dialysis, your daily meds, etc without it.

Patients get this stuff all the time without coverage, except maybe transplants. There are hundreds of thousands of illegal residents, unisured, and medicare getting dialysis as I type this. I know, I'm in the business. Actually, we have had instances were MD's in Mexico were telling their patients that needed to start dialysis to go to America to get it, because there is bascially no access for it there.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Waa Waa Waaa


You want your cake and eat it too. You want to keep the status quo where you can walk into the ER and get fixed up while I pay for it. You want the right to be totally irresponsible and pay nothing for health insurance while paying smucks like me pick up the tab when you or your family gets sick.

Well as of today the law of the land agrees with me and you will have to pay for your own coverage, suck on that freeloader

lol, you people are hilarious. Anytime we call you out on your facism you resort to some emotional whining and make claims about wanting the "status quo" when it just isn't true.
I will pay for MY Insurance needs. I do not want to pay for YOUR INSURANCE needs, nor will I tell you what your exact needs are regarding insurance. What you and your merry band of thugs are forcing on all of is more requirements both in scope and cost. You are also doing it the wrong way because you aren't pooling risk - you're just trying to widen the pool to include everyone ignoring risk.

I have a family with 3 kids. I know my risk is high but it's normal for a family of 5. I should not be lumped in with a higher risk family nor with higher risk individuals. The same goes for lower as well. It's just how INSURANCE should work. Now much of the problem stems from INSURANCE being bastardized by the gov't to the point where it is barely INSURANCE anymore and is just a payer for health costs(note - not "healthcare").

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Neither was I. I was talking about prices.
But where do you draw the line? If a condition is treatable for 10 million a year is it immoral to deny that treatment to someone who can't pay? Is it immoral to create a contract which precludes treatments that expensive (even if such a restriction is made explicit in the contract)? Is it immoral for a government UHC bureaucrat to deny such a treatment? What about 20 million a year?

I think that is a good question, but I think it is irrelevant to my hypothetical.

Insurance right now covers what I was talking about, say $1-2million for a series of surgeries to let a child live a normal life. That means that:

(1) there is no way that you are paying 1-2million in premiums if you have insurance, so the company is losing money on you, and you are by definition having other people pay for your care.

(2) If you don't have insurance, you have no way of getting that kind of money, and even if you could, you would be broke/bankrupt/in-debt for the rest of your (and your childs) life. So without insurance, basically, the child dies. Is anyone really willing to let that happen. Do you want to go back to having indentured servants, where rich people will pay for your childs surgery if you serve them for 10-20 years?

 

[ElFenix]

Hard to make money when you have a crippling illness. Our society is not entirely based on money. You don't have money to get basic protections like fire and police. You shouldn't have to to get basic health treatment either.

the deterrent effect of policing is impossible to exactly quantify and determine how much each person benefits. medicine is not at all the same. and the fire department often charges.

 

[Naeeldar]

I think that is a good question, but I think it is irrelevant to my hypothetical.

Insurance right now covers what I was talking about, say $1-2million for a series of surgeries to let a child live a normal life. That means that:

(1) there is no way that you are paying 1-2million in premiums if you have insurance, so the company is losing money on you, and you are by definition having other people pay for your care.

(2) If you don't have insurance, you have no way of getting that kind of money, and even if you could, you would be broke/bankrupt/in-debt for the rest of your (and your childs) life. So without insurance, basically, the child dies. Is anyone really willing to let that happen. Do you want to go back to having indentured servants, where rich people will pay for your childs surgery if you serve them for 10-20 years?

Life isn't fair... sometimes people die. I'm 26 and would be considered middle class from my income levels and while I have great insurance I can say without a doubt that I would not get the level of care Magic Johnson got for HIV. Just becuase the cure is out there does that mean I have a right to it? No.

It's expensive and the simple truth is just because we can cure somebody doesn't mean we should. It's not a pretty or nice reality but that is life. Life isn't always fair. Some peopel seem to have a hard time dealing with it.

If it cost a billion dollars to save a child's life should we do it?