Re: Reintroducing myself.
- From: Alma Hromic Deckert <anghara@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:56:25 -0800
On Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:25:06 -0800, David Friedman
<ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers about how many people
can afford what from. Most people in the U.S. are insured,
<cough>
Define "most".
And define under what cirumstances.
Insurance should be an elective,not an essential, especially when it
comes to medical care. It should NEVER come to a choice between
getting a medical treatment done or NOT getting it done because you
don't have coverage. Your insurance, not your condition, is possibly
the first question aimed at you at most US hospitals outside the basic
ER scenario.
I speak from SOME experience. When hubby was hsopitalised for his
stroke, he was in the hospital's intensive care room for less than
three days - because he HAD to be. I won't give you the details of our
bill but let us say that even with medicare the amount was horrifying.
Now let us assume that the person who required such hospitalization
was someone like me - in my forties, self-employed, not insured (well,
I am, but I don't know for how long I can afford to keep it up on a
writer's "salary" and even what I have is catastrophic only with a
gigantic deductible and doesn't include ANYTHING like eyes or ears or
teeth or anything like that). If such a person was hit with the sort
of bill that my husband was presented with at the end of his hospital
stay, well, it's rather easier NOT to call the paramedics at all and
just lie down and die. SHould you be lucky enough to survive, you will
be stuck with the kind of bills that you are going to have to work for
half a lifetime to pay off - and many people who ARE hospitalised for
various highly traumatic or very advanced medical events, you will
have to accept, may not be able to take up full-time or indeed any
adequately remunerative employment at all from which such a debt is
supposed to be paid.
Even those who are lucky enough to have "coverage" through their work
- the coverage is less and less as time wears on, and even that is
enough to keep you effectively indentured to your job, whether you
like it or not, if that's the only thing that's providing the
insurance that stands between you and catastrophe, especially if you
have a family to support. Those of us like me - the writers, just to
take an example - those of us with no "employer" to take up the slack,
well, we'd better not get sick. That's all there is to it.
There are states like Massachussetts which are now apparently
mandating medical insurance - you HAVE to have it, by law. I just
wonder where the people who can't afford one NOW are going to find the
money to absolutely HAVE to have one in order to legally continue
living in their homes. THe solution to the insurance disaster isn't to
require that the people who can't afford it get it anyway. It's to
overhaul the system so that the people who can't afford it don't NEED
to pay upwards of 500 bucks a month for basic healthcare insurance.
And David, "most people are insured" is one of those callous things -
the haves have, and the have-nots be damned. Why is it, in what it is
always insistently described as the richest country in the world, if
you don't happen to be in Congress (oh, they have VERY good health
insurance) or a high-level whitecollar worker you should just accept
the fact that you can't GET health insurance, that the smallest
pre-existing condition is grounds for exclusion, and that the
insurance companies are apparently in the business of finding creative
ways to deny claims rather than passing on some of the accumulated
money that all those who ARE paying the insurance are putting into the
system? The point of an insurance company is not that the CEO should
retire in style at the end of his tenure. We the people aren't in the
business of supporting him. HE is providing a service to US, or at
least he is the figurehead of a company that's supposed to. HIS
profits shouldn't even be a factor in this equation.
and a large
minority of the ones who aren't are from the higher, not the lower, half
of the income distribution. Certainly there are people in the situation
you describe, but they aren't most of the population or anything close.
So what sort of percentage of people who aren't insured and don't have
access to good health care is acceptable for you, then?
And is it really okay with you if a lot of them come from what you
LIKE to think of as your own tribe, the writers, the people whom I
once heard TOm Doherty of Tor describe as "the dream makers" in one of
his speeches? Insurance premiums are wanted every month. My income
comes in checks which kind of turn up every six or seven months or so,
if I"m lucky. How do you suggest I approach my insurance company and
explain this to them? And why do I - a healthy enough 40-something who
doesn't smoke or engage in any risky behaviours have to keep cutting
down on the potential benefits that I might receive or increasing my
already large deductible so that I am not in a position of paying
three or four hundred dollars a month which I cannot afford on a
monthly basis into a fund which might take care of me if I should land
in the intensive care room which once sheltered my husband?
(I'm sorry, Irina, and anyone else who resents this kind of discussion
- it's veering dangerously close to real-politik. I apologise. I will
quit now.)
A.
.
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