Health Insurance Difficulties

[Romanos]

What are some of the run ins you have had with health insurance?

 

[JRT]

In 1964 when I turned 21 universal single payer medicare became a reality in Saskatchewan Canada. Since that time I have never received a bill from a doctor or a hospital or a clinic. I have had no problems at all in spite of all the health problems I have had in recent years. For my friends in the USA I highly recommend that they adopt such a system. Of course I understand that a few billionaires and several dozens of millionaires will have to look for other people to parasite themselves on.

 

[Lamb]

In 1964 when I turned 21 universal single payer medicare became a reality in Saskatchewan Canada. Since that time I have never received a bill from a doctor or a hospital or a clinic. I have had no problems at all in spite of all the health problems I have had in recent years. For my friends in the USA I highly recommend that they adopt such a system. Of course I understand that a few billionaires and several dozens of millionaires will have look for other people to parasite themselves on.

Even though I'm Republican, I strongly desire a universal type of healthcare for the US...but Obamacare was NOT the right fit for the country. I have no idea how they can make something work here though because you're right that it's a big money maker here.

When I had my first cancer and I was in the hospital for a week recovering from surgery, I kept thinking about ALL the people I encountered who were caring for me, all the equipment and supplies they used throughout the week as well as the medicines and liquid food. My cancer was tiny but the amount of care provided was huge and if not for insurance would have broken us. I can't imagine what people without insurance do

 

[tango]

In 1964 when I turned 21 universal single payer medicare became a reality in Saskatchewan Canada. Since that time I have never received a bill from a doctor or a hospital or a clinic. I have had no problems at all in spite of all the health problems I have had in recent years. For my friends in the USA I highly recommend that they adopt such a system. Of course I understand that a few billionaires and several dozens of millionaires will have look for other people to parasite themselves on.

Single payer makes a lot of sense in many ways but ends up vulnerable to all kinds of abuse. When you pay nothing for a prescription there's really no incentive to make a decision whether you really need it or not, and if a prescription gets filled for a patient who doesn't even take the medicine it just wastes ever-more public money. Every once in a while it comes into focus in the UK when an elderly person dies and their familes find huge amounts of unused prescription drugs in their home, that end up being thrown away. Then you find that treatments still get rationed, only based on some other factor that might as well be totally random. For a time I lived next door to an elderly couple who spent their life's savings for private heart surgery for the husband. He was eligible for a free operation on the NHS but the waiting list was estimated at six months and without the surgery his life expectancy was less than six months. It's not much good being able to have the treatment without a bill if you'll be dead before you actually get the treatment.

Certainly the system in the US is broken, but a single payer system doesn't necessarily represent a land of milk and honey that's free from trouble.

 

[JRT]

Even though I'm Republican, I strongly desire a universal type of healthcare for the US...but Obamacare was NOT the right fit for the country. I have no idea how they can make something work here though because you're right that it's a big money maker here.

Obamacare is certainly not perfect (no system is) but was still much better than what came before.

When I had my first cancer and I was in the hospital for a week recovering from surgery, I kept thinking about ALL the people I encountered who were caring for me, all the equipment and supplies they used throughout the week as well as the medicines and liquid food. My cancer was tiny but the amount of care provided was huge and if not for insurance would have broken us. I can't imagine what people without insurance do

The leading cause of bankruptcy in the USA is severe illness or injury resulting in loss of employment. In a few exceptional cases they die.

 

[tango]

Obamacare is certainly not perfect (no system is) but was still much better than what came before.

That's highly debatable. It has caused insurance premiums to skyrocket only to then throw tax-funded subsidies at them, effectively taking tax dollars and throwing them at insurance companies. It also creates horrendous glitches in the system whereby effective marginal tax rates for people on incomes that can't be considered even remotely rich can rise to well over 80%.

A couple of years ago a friend couldn't figure out where his money was going because he thought he'd seen an increase in sales. It turned out he crossed a threshold you wouldn't expect to find in something allegedly intended to make healthcare affordable. I forget the exact figures but his income had risen from something like $25k to about $28k. Certainly nothing to write home about, but he was growing his business. Sadly the threshold he crossed meant his deductibles jumped from something like $250 to more like $1500 (for both him and his wife). They both needed healthcare that year, so out of his $3000 in increased income $2500 immediately disappeared in increased deductibles. Then he still had to pay federal and state income taxes on the $3000. The increased deductibles alone represented an effective marginal tax rate of over 80% on the extra $3000. How that counts as "affordable" is anybody's guess.

For good measure if you are unlikely enough to increase your income from 399% to 401% of the federal poverty level you instantly lose thousands of dollars worth of premium tax credits. For a couple without children that magic 400% level is a little north of $64,000 - hardly a jet-setting playboy's income. If you lose $12,000+ in tax credits it makes health care so much more affordable.

I think the ACA would be better named the Unaffordable Votes Act, on the basis it does little more than hike the cost of health insurance way past what most people could afford to pay, then throws huge amounts of taxpayer money at bringing it down again for some people, all while the Democrats get to howl about how the nasty Republicans would dismantle it and take away the tax credits.

But, you know, $1200/month for insurance to cap your total out-of-pocket costs at $24,000 is readily affordable for the masses, right?

The leading cause of bankruptcy in the USA is severe illness or injury resulting in loss of employment. In a few exceptional cases they die.

My elderly neighbors went from being financially quite comfortable to ending their days relatively poor because the publicly funded system let them down when they needed it. There's not much benefit to having a central, publicly funded system if the waiting list is so long you'll probably die before you receive the treatment you need.