Dear GOP - the collective you are an Idiot

[seawasp]

Originally posted by ladyqkat at Dear GOP - the collective you are an Idiot; I ganked it from kengr .

Original follows, my comments after:

There is a move afoot in the nation -driven by the GOP - to repeal the new health care laws, to protect corporate interests, to defend against fear-mongering (and stupid) cries of "socialism!", and to ensure that people are forced to choose between keeping a roof over their heads or getting necessary health care.

This movement is killing people.

Think I'm overstating the fact?

Ask the friends and family of writer/reviewer Melissa Mia Hall, who died of a heart attack last week because she was so terrified of medical bills, she didn't go see a doctor who could have saved her life.

From another writer friend: One person. Not the only one. That could have been me. Yeah, I have access to insurance -- I live in New York City, which is freelancer-friendly, and have access to freelancer advocacy groups. Through them, I can pay over $400/month ($5,760/year) as a single, healthy woman, so that if I go to the hospital I'm not driven to bankruptcy. But a doctor's appointment - a routine physical - can still cost me several hundred dollars each visit. So unless something's terribly wrong? I won't go.

My husband worked for the government for 30 years. We have government employee (retired) insurance. It is the only thing of value he took away from that job. His pension is pitiful. He still works part time. My writing income has diminished drastically. Our combined income is now less than what it was before T retired fifteen years ago. Inflation has diminished it further. In the last 30 days I have racked up over $8000 in medical bills for tests and the beginning of treatment. Our co-pay is 20% after the deductible. And there is more to come. Our savings are already gone. I have the gold standard of insurance and I still can't pay all the medical bills.

Another friend lost her insurance when her husband lost his job. She couldn't afford medication and ended up bed ridden for three months at the end of over a year of no job and therefore no insurance until he found work again.

It's our responsibility. All of us, together. As a nation.


We're trying to get this to go viral. Pass it along.

Comment 1:
Kengr added a codicil to the effect that no one was trying to kill the current insurance companies. I must respectfully disagree; if we succeed in getting the kind of universal health care we should have, we *WILL* put the insurance companies as they currently exist out of business. They will go from covering the majority of people (or rather, NOT covering them and saying they will) to covering small specialty groups.

Comment 2:
I believe the only way to successfully get such a health care plan passed is -- put bluntly, honestly, and in as hard and cold a factual way as I can state it -- to bribe the insurance companies to die. Take everyone at the top -- the ones who have the power and influence to kill the bill -- and pay them a few hundred million each. Yes, that'll be several billions. Then for everyone who's worked for one of those companies for, say, 5 years or more -- people who apparently have set on a career dependent on that industry -- give them a guaranteed pension of a large fraction of their current salary, increasing with inflation.

Is this fair? Should the top people get paid to get out of the way and do the right thing? Probably not, but I think it's the only realistic way to keep this fight from dragging on and killing thousands more people. And the insurance industry will be gutted, and I see no reason to add to our problems by having a few hundred thousand people who HAD stable jobs suddenly out on the street with nothing, so I say give the current employees a good retirement since we're going to kill most of their industry.

Personal situation:
I am an asthmatic. I've been one all my life. Without the insurance I have, and that I've had in one form or another for most of my life (and occasionally the assistance of other, much better-off members of my family), I'd have been dead, dead, dead many times over. If I had to worry about affording to go to the ER (well, I do, but not THAT much), I'd probably be dead again from diverticulitis or a few other things.

The ONLY thing that's keeping the whole family healthy is that New York State has a *GOOD* program for children, called Child Health Plus, that recognizes that even people making what would seem a very comfortable living could be pauperized by child healthcare if they have to address anything serious. All four of my children are taken care of under Child Health Plus, which basically pays **EVERYTHING** (well, I'm not SURE they'll pay for cosmetic surgery, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised). This costs me a quite trivial sum per month to maintain and saves me I have no idea how large a sum during a normal year -- because I have two children on medication constantly and each and every one of the four has been in for various operations, most notably the ear tubes.

Even with my insurance and Child Health Plus, I pay several hundred dollars per month in various health/medical expenses.

And I am one of the LUCKY ones.

This is unacceptable. We are the most powerful country on Earth. We can AFFORD to take care of our people, and we SHOULD.

This is not some form of corruptive socialism. This is ENLIGHTENED SELF INTEREST. When you allow people to get health care early and as they need it, overall you REDUCE COSTS . You don't have people waiting until their fever hits 104 and they have to be driven in via ambulance. You don' t have people trying to ignore that sore that won't go away. You don't have people, like queenoftheskies , who spend YEARS enduring pain and suffering from bad teeth and other health conditions because they're terrified of how much of their life they'll have to sign away at the hospital.

There ARE powerful, wealthy people out there who DO show some caring; despite the sneers levelled at Microsoft's products, Bill Gates has donated BILLIONS to various charities and is doing so at a rate that significantly impacts his personal wealth.

I challenge each and every member of Congress, each and every person who has enough money to live on for the rest of their lives, to remember that the powerful and strong have a RESPONSIBILITY to the weak. You want to be nobility? A true upper class? True nobles have DUTIES, and one of those duties is to take care of those below them.

In this case, it costs you NOTHING to vote it in, and the cost in taxes is -- properly enacted -- trivial. Not ONE of you will miss a meal -- even miss a meal of $100/lb Kobe beef, if that's your fancy. You'll still have your fancy stuff. You'll still be vastly better off than 99% of the rest of the nation. I, unlike some, DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT. I don't care if you're ludicrously wealthy. 

I **DO** care that people I know and care about might DIE because they do not dare walk into a hospital to have chest pains attended to, don't have the money to afford simple medications that will keep them alive, and so on. And YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT THAT TOO. Congress, you are our ELECTED OFFICIALS. That means it IS YOUR JOB TO CARE.

So FIX THIS. FIX IT NOW.

 

Comments

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree. Actually, I agree wholeheartedly. There is no reason why someone with the allegedly gold standard of insurance should be bankrupted due to medical expenses.

But I do have a concern... when they started treating a college education as a "right" and they started having to give student loans to ANYBODY... it led to a rise in costs because suddenly there was all this money out there and the schools leapt into action to soak up as much of it as possible. In exchange for having to give money to anybody, the loan companies got inescapable undischargable student loan debt provisions written into the law.

Sort of the same thing with housing... they started treating housing as a "right" and insisted that the lenders lower their standards and loan to just about anybody... suddenly there was ALL THIS MONEY out there, and the sharks were soon circling, sucking up as much of it as they could.

Health care isn't the same as education or housing; you never know who's going to need it or when, and not everyone needs expensive healthcare... but if we went to a single payer Medicaid-For-All system, what would that do to costs? Wouldn't the doctors and hospitals ramp up their prices to capture some of the glut of money that was flooding the system?

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Sort of the same thing with housing... they started treating housing as a "right" and insisted that the lenders lower their standards and loan to just about anybody... suddenly there was ALL THIS MONEY out there, and the sharks were soon circling, sucking up as much of it as they could.

This isn't even close to what actually happened.

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Maybe. But my point is that if we suddenly give everyone a pot of money to use for (whatever), then we will shortly have a ton of (whatever) vendors spring up who are only too happy to capture as much of the taxpayer money (by way of the beneficiaries) as possible. Due to the greater number of dollars chasing the same goods and services, you wind up with inflation, both in the sense of an increase of money supply and an artificial increase in the equilibrium price of the goods and services (what price the market will bear).

At least, that's my theory, based on anecdotal evidence of my own experience with student loans and the housing stimulus benefits and my observations of the cash for clunkers programs, etc. Do feel free to shoot holes in my theory.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

The system as it currently stands is already growing at an unsustainable rate. The most recent figures I've seen show Medicare rising at 8.8% a year, and private insurance is even higher.

Part of the problem is that people without insurance put off needed care until they reach the point that they go to the ER--which is the most expensive care of all. When people without insurance default on their bills, it's everyone else who pays. They could be cared for more cheaply and humanely by having, for ex: chronic conditions managed sensibly.

Part of the problem is that Congress will not allow Medicare to bargain for drug costs. It's not sick people who are exploiting the pot of taxpayer money, it's large companies.

Part of the problem is that competition in the health care marketplace causes doctors to overtreat, overtest, and overprescribe.

Part of the problem is that tax exempt status for employment-based health insurance drives up the cost of all health care.

Part of the problem is that U.S. health care is rationed according to ability to pay, which causes revenue-seeking prices that cost lives and bankrupt people.

Part of the problem is that we are not even permitted, even in the ACA, to study treatments to determine which are effective and which are ineffective. Opposition to the provision painted this as the first step toward government control of what your doctor will be allowed to do for you, but it remains true that we don't have a systematic way to tell what health care spending is being wasted on ineffectual treatments.

Too many people are worried that "OMG, the poor will over-use the health care system" while not acknowledging that our current system already has out of control costs that are not going to be addressed until the entire system is addressed. And yes, that means universal coverage, because you can't, for example, control costs in Medicare without causing doctors to drop Medicare patients. Everyone has to be brought into a single market before the market can be sensibly regulated.

Other countries have figured this out. They cover everyone and they use cost controls to keep things from getting out of control. Yes, this causes problems. In France, not too long ago, doctors went on strike for more money. In Japan, doctors visits can be extraordinarily fast. (Other problems with universal health plans that people fear, such as long waits for cancer patients, don't hold up under scrutiny)

Every system has problems. Overseas the problems are generally related to people not being paid as much as they'd like. In America, the problem is that people fall over dead from lack of care, or they go bankrupt because of medical bills (Pre-recession numbers put the number of health-care-related bankruptcies at 750,000 a year--I imagine things are worse since the crash). This doesn't even begin to discuss the number of people experiencing job lock--iow, an inability to leave their jobs to start their own businesses because they need decent health care.

It's important to note: We are already paying for the health care for the entire nation. But we are doing it in the most harmful and wasteful way imaginable. The ACA takes sensible steps in address that (personally, I'd rather see Medicare expanded to every citizen, cancel Part C, and let current insurers become non-profits that offer Medigap plans) but we could be doing much better.

[mzmadmike.livejournal.com]

Well those companies could just not produce those expensive medications. That would solve the problem. Not in a way useful to you, of course.

You have it exactly backwards.

The Third World cannot afford to pay for modern medications. What they get is donated or subsidized.

Self-aggrandizing assholes in Europe turn their noses up while their governments set prices and refuse to pay a fair price for those medications.

Thieves in China, Russia and in Japan (which is complicated by the next item) try to end around every patent and destroy it (Japan is NOTORIOUS for violating IP on as many things as it can).

It takes years to get a drug approved and tested for market, and usually longer in the US than Europe.

So that means a company has 3-4 years to recoup expenses from the Japanese and American markets, while the Japanese try to run around it.*

It's not that Americans pay too much, it's that everyone else refuses to pay enough.

In short, the wealthy (us) are subsidizing everyone else, and you don't like it.

Sucks when the shoe is on the other foot, doesn't it?

*The Japanese will duplicate the process and commence production before the patent gets finalized, then claim that because they're already in production, they're exempt from the patent restrictions, or that it can't be patented because it's in common use, and similar tricks.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

First of all, there's no such thing as "the third world." The second world is decades gone, so how is there still a third? They're usually called "developing nations" now, and they're developing at different rates.

Second of all, "Self-aggrandizing assholes in Europe turn their noses up"? Really?

Lastly, the U.S. taxpayer pays too much for it's medication, and Congress forbids us from bargaining for a better price. That's not capitalism. That's a distorted market. Government ought to have some say in what they're spending. Personally, I believe a sensible equitable arrangement can be reached.

As for the complaints of pharmaceutical companies, pft! Every company complains when they have to tilt their fat necks further into the hog trough to get their fill. A helluva lot of the basic research is still being done with government money, and if drug companies were *really* that concerned about creating new medications they'd put more than 15% into R&D.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

How is affordable health giving someone a "pot of money" for "whatever"? THIS IS NOT A LOAN. It's something that will in theory be there for when you need it - I SERIOUSLY don't think that everyone will suddenly start going to to the doctor for every sniffle and toe stub when they weren't doing so before, just because they CAN now. And if they do it's behaviour that can easily be corrected.

But it's silly analogies like equating a college loan with affordable health care that gets us into this sort of mess in the first place.

And yes, dammit. Education SHOULD be a right. Health SHOULD be a right. For every human being.

[mzmadmike.livejournal.com]

Rights are those things in which we are entitled to be free from interference. Travel. Worship. Speech. Choice of employment. They cost nothing to anyone else. My right to free speech means that someone may not justly silence me. It does not mean that someone has to buy me a newspaper. It merely means that he must not stand in my way, if I am able to do so, on my own.

What you want are "luxuries" that someone else pays for. Failing to understand that these things are luxuries is one of the things killing the West.

Go ahead and send me a check for $100 against my future medical bills, please. It's not a loan. It's my right. Unless you're selfish.

Go ahead and write another check for $100 against my kids' college. It's not a loan. It's a right.

It's not fair that some people have to drive older cars with inadequate safety standards. Write them a check too. They have a right to be safe.

There are kids near here who don't have yards to play in and have to cross a busy street to a park. This is not fair. They have a right to a safe place to play.

There are people who can't afford houses. There should be pools, that you pay into, so they can have the security of home ownership. It's a right they should have.

Every one of these is a proposal I've heard seriously put forth by members of the so-called "Democratic" Party.

Within 20 years, the so-called "entitlements" in the US budget will exceed GDP. There is nowhere to borrow the money, nowhere to steal it, tax it, fake it. In 20 years or less, the entitlement state, and all the luxuries you want (80% of which are paid for by the top 2% of earners) collapses.

This is an easily checkable fact for anyone with basic arithmetic skills.

You have the right to any health care you can negotiate for. You don't have the right to make someone else pay for it.

In a perfect world, everyone SHOULD live 80 years pain free.

Welcome to reality.

There's also the minor fact that there's no "healthcare crisis." Healthcare costs have gone up, but other costs of living have gone down. Americans spend more of their GDP on healthcare, and less on energy and housing, than they did years ago. The cost of the essentials of life (food, shelter, energy, healthcare - the basics that you need to live) has, as a whole, remained a pretty constant percentage of our total productive capacity. The ratio is just different than it used to be, but we don't spend any more hours per year on survival than we did, half a century ago.

But everyone here waaaaaaants it, so that makes it a right.

Well, not really.

[mzmadmike.livejournal.com]

This doesn't even take into account that those top wage earners are frequently in fungible businesses. They can move to nations that don't extort money from them while calling them names, and appreciate their presence, while telecommuting or otherwise remotely benefiting from the US economy, without having to be part of it.

You are about to be faced with the unpleasant prospect of taxing the people who use most of the entitlements---the poor.

Good luck telling them that. They're not going to like it.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

"Within 20 years, the so-called "entitlements" in the US budget will exceed GDP. There is nowhere to borrow the money, nowhere to steal it, tax it, fake it. In 20 years or less, the entitlement state, and all the luxuries you want (80% of which are paid for by the top 2% of earners) collapses.

This is an easily checkable fact for anyone with basic arithmetic skills."

yes. It is. And it wouldn't come out to your tidy sums.

What it comes down to is that you're one of those fine folks who don't like paying taxes because GOD FORBID somebody else might get something out of it (like drive on a road paid for by federal funds which are, hello, taxes... or expect to have a fire truck come along and pour water on their burning house...) and to that I say, terrific. Go into your (fully owned) house, lock the damned door, and never come out again. EVER. Because living in a society means being part of society. And being part of society means not being terminally selfish and seeing nothing but MINE MINE MINE. If we all paid in something in terms of taxes, we could have that basic healthcare for everybody - but so long as there are people out there who apparently don't care WHO dies, so long as it isn't one of their own and UNTIL it is one of their own, we will have people dying.

No it isn't a sin to be rich. But if you're a billionaire who's sitting in his castle counting his shekels while around you people less lucky than you are dropping like flies, you are no longer quite human.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Actually, we do have the right to create a universal health care system. Don't kid yourself, it's going to happen. If the ACA collapses because of lawsuits or because it's defunded by the right, some other option will be brought forward. Eventually, we'll win this fight.

Because we're already paying for everyone's health care. People who can't afford check ups and are forced to go to the ER when things become acute. People forced to seek charity care. People driven in to bankruptcy. We all cover those costs with higher insurance rates and Medicare overpayments.

If we're going to cover everyone's costs anyway, we might as well do it sensibly and humanely. We might as well do it in a way that doesn't cost tens of thousands of American lives every year. We might as well do it in a way that does away with job lock and lets people strike out on their own.

Your fantasy of privately negotiating for health care is cute but not particularly constructive. I've tried it. I know.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Er, my comment was way longer than I intended. Sorry about that.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

WORD.

Most excellent rant, and, I'm afraid, you're going to be totally right about the solution.

[condorfan.livejournal.com]

This is Condorfan's husband here. Some form of single-payer system like Medicare-For-All would lower the costs. We spend at least twice in health care costs as Canada, where my wife is from, and get so much less in heath care. You don't have to take my word for it. Do a little research.

[condorfan.livejournal.com]

Condorfan's husband here. Ryk knows who this is. We're the only country stupid enough to put money-men in between doctors and patients.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Kengr added a codicil to the effect that no one was trying to kill the current insurance companies. I must respectfully disagree; if we succeed in getting the kind of universal health care we should have, we *WILL* put the insurance companies as they currently exist out of business. They will go from covering the majority of people (or rather, NOT covering them and saying they will) to covering small specialty groups.

Somehow Canadian insurance companies manage to struggle on in the field of health coverage.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

How many Canadian insurace companies have CEOs sucking down twenty million bucks a year in performance bonuses the way some US companies do?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

From a CBC article:

Manulife Financial chief executive officer Dominic D'Alessandro retires from the company in May, but he'll leave with a generous pay packet.

D'Alessandro's total compensation for 2008 was $13.25 million, down from $17 million in 2007. The $13.25 million includes a salary of $1.36 million, $3.9 million in share-based awards, $3.9 million in options-based awards, $2.1 million in pension and nearly $2 million in perks, dividends and other compensation.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Wow, Canada isn't quite the Socialist Hellhole I had been led to believe...

The biggest medical insurance company in the UK is BUPA which provides top-up medical insurance for about 8 million people (not all in Britain). From Bloomberg, Ray King the BUPA CEO got about 840,000 quid in compensation in 2009 (about 1.3 million of your funny-shaped Canadian thingies). Company turnover is something like 4 billion a year.

Ah, a thought -- is Manulife primarily a medical insurance company or does it do other insurance work?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Other, I think. They're just the first Canadian insurance company to come to mind.

Our Gini Coefficient isn't as high as the US's and our top execs are not so much more lavishly paid than the lower grades of employee as would be the case in the US.

[kira-snugz.livejournal.com]

the way health care is handled in the states scares me so much. i can't even imagine what happens to people with mental health issues like mine who need to see a dr every month or more. i absolutely do not understand how any goverment can think bankrupting its citizen for basic health care is in any way right.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Minor note -- as a child I had plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons. It cost my parents nothing. Then again I live in the socialist hellhole of the United Kingdom where the NHS covers everybody with no co-pays, no top-ups, no paperwork and no arcane rules about eligibility and qualification for treatments because everybody is covered. KISS.

[mzmadmike.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, the NHS that almost killed my mother twice, almost crippled my father and destroyed my teeth.

And last I checked had a significantly lower success rate with cancer than the US.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

i'm terrified. even MORE now than i was last year, when people were doing the SaveLiz thing to keep me from dying.
[and oh GODS that fucking BURNED. having to do that. one person i know has given me over $600 - TOTAL STRANGERS, in one of the Carolinas, in Georgia, in DENMARK and GERMANY gave me over $300 between them. and while i have plans to pay back the friend - i CAN'T pay back the anon. doners, and most everyone else wants me to "pay it forward" which i *DO* [as much as i can right now and will do MORE later if i ever get Social Security or a new body that WORKS] but - i STILL feel like some sort of sleeze, taking money from people because i couldn't live otherwise...]

now i have Medicaid. the thing certain Senators and Reps. are trying to get rid of. and they're trying to get rid of Social Security, too - and BOTH of these are THINGS I PAID FOR!!! i paid MORE, every month, in Social Security than i did in normal TAXES! SS money is NOT tax money - the ONLY reason SS is having problems is because f-ing congress keeps BORROWING from it!

i started working, for pay, and paying taxes, when i was *15*. i worked - a LOT, often 2 jobs - steadily until after i was 30, and i BROKE. my body just stopped.
and it did THAT because - aside from an emergency gall bladder operation that i'm STILL paying too f-ing much for - i had ZERO health care from age 19 on. i have acute intermittent porphyria, rhuematory arthritis, fibromalgia, PTSD [and apparantly also had congenital displaysia of the hip - but as a FEMALE child, they took XRay cuz my mom insisted, but NEVER LOOKED AT THEM because "they knew she was making [me] hysterical" and "there was nothing medically wrong with me" - why are the statue of limitiations in medical things so SHORT? i could sue about 3 dozen doctors for negligence, otherwise...]

it wasn't until i was back in a 4-year college that REQUIRED insurance, and so sold it at a not-totally-bankrupting-price, that i was able to get back into ANY sort of treatment. and it was NEVER enough, because it wasn't until my last quarter in school that anything other than my hip wasn't a "pre-existing condition" that they didn't have to cover!



i *KNOW* what those a-holes "see" when they think of people who need healthcare - they see some stereotypical "lazy" person [of color, probably] who REFUSES to get a real job, for no reason, and who's health concerns are ONLY alcoholism and drug abuse.
and, while it's true that there ARE some people like that - they are NOT the majority. they aren't even a significant MINORITY.

most people who don't work [aside from SAHP who have a working spouse] are like me - too f-ing *ILL* to work [in whichever sense is true for them]; the rest of the people who don't have insurance are working jobs that DON'T OFFER IT, are working jobs that REQUIRE FULL TIME EMPLOYMENT FOR IT BUT WON'T GIVE *ANYONE* FULL TIME, and the rest are people who work for THEMSELVES, and DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO "INSURANCE" THAT'S WORTH THE INCREDIBLY ASSININE HIGH COST.


but none of us are millionairs. we DESERVE to die if we can't afford health care.

[what REALLY makes me mad? they hate hate HATE poor people - they WANT more of us to die! but they keep blocking access to contraception because they ALSO hate women and want us to be *punished* for "acting like me" and etc BS. they HATE US SO MUCH THEY WANT US TO DIE, but they ALSO HATE US SO MUCH THEY FORCE US TO BRING MORE CHILDREN INTO THIS SYSTEM SO THAT THEY CAN SUFFER TOO!!!!!! ***RAGE***

[denelian.livejournal.com]

erm. "men". "for acting like men". that's what my incredibly rage-induced rant at the end was ACTUALLY supposed to say. sorry. rage took over and i lost the "N" key

[claidheamhmor]

In South Africa, we have a big medical aid (health insurance) industry, but I reckon it would still manage just fine even if we did have a robust public health system, simply because the medical aid companies offer a higher level of service and treatment.

[mzmadmike.livejournal.com]

I assume, then, you also support the bill in Nebraska requiring people to purchase firearms?

The argument isn't black or white health care or no. The argument is that if the government can require you to engage in business with a corporation, they can require you to engage in business with any corporation of their choosing, for any purpose.

This is technically known as "fascism."

You might be aware I grew up with the grotesque incompetence of British National Health Care, and my family still suffers the after effects 30 years later.

I'm eligible for VA care here, but I'll pay out of pocket before I let those idiots touch me again.

I believe you're entitled to any health care you can pay for. When you want me to pay for it, I'm going to have an opinion on the subject, and you won't like it.

BTW, if you won't call it "socialism" or "national socialism," what exactly DO you call requiring people who don't need a service to buy into it for your benefit?

[seawasp]

Don't assume anything. Each bill is different, each issue is different. Firearms are not healthcare, military is not civilian, and if you want to get into that level of discussion, you'll need a lot more room than LJ gives us.

The universal healthcare plan that *SHOULD* exist (not the clumsy halfassed compromise that is currently on the table and slightly better than nothing) doesn't require you to engage in business with anyone; it requires COMPANIES to perform certain services for people, and the government acts as the single-point pay source, at least as I currently understand it. There is, as I understand it and as I would support it, nothing stopping any individual (such as yourself) from going to any other person or organization for your healthcare. There's simply a provision that if YOU cannot afford it, you can go to various providers and GET it, without having any out of pocket expense.

I have no problem with companies being required to do things that individuals are not; one of the major failings of our legal system has been the giving of rights of people to companies, which are not people and are fundamentally different in many ways.

As I've had multiple people relate horror stories of British National, and others sing its praises, I suspect the truth isn't yours or theirs; it is, like any other service, in the middle; okay most of the time, stellar sometimes, abysmal in others. Anecdotal evidence is... worthless.

I call it "enlightened self interest". In the end, we all end up paying for it in one way or another, unless you're willing to say "hospitals should be able to kick out dying or otherwise seriously suffering/incapacitated people and leave them on the street if they can't pay". You, personally, might be willing to say that. I, however, am not, and as a general rule our society doesn't countenance that.

This means... yes, you'll be paying for their care in some manner. But if they HAVE TO wait because they can't afford care, they will tend to be worse off, and you -- and I -- will bear a heavier burden.

Alas, this is going into a lecture I don't have the time for, right now, because the problem with healthcare as it stands isn't "the problem". It's AT LEAST six separate major factors, with a host of smaller ones, that interact in a pretty toxic fashion, even though each of them taken individually seems perfectly reasonable. I don't have time or the inclination to go through it all again, though; if I had enough time for that, I should write a chapter of Portal or Demons of the Past or something.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem is that health care expenses don't follow a bell-curve pattern, where the bulk of the activity is clustered around the median and the outliers are relatively rare. Instead, they follow what's called a power-law pattern, in which a relatively small group of extreme cases consume the most resources.

There's a wonderful articles in a recent issue of the New Yorker called "The Hot-Spotters" which deals with a statistician's effort to improve health care by focusing efforts at keeping that small group of very sick people from getting sicker.

I found out about it from Cory Doctorow's blog Boing Boing, where I noticed that several posters got all exercised about how this sort of program is just ripe for abuse by goldbrickers who pretend to be sicker than they are in order to get gold-plated healthcare. No matter how many times other people tried to show that this is a very unlikely outcome, and the few problem people (hypochondriacs, Munchausen syndrome, etc) can probably be identified and moved into treatment for their real problems, these posters insisted no, no, no, this is a real problem we've got to prevent.

I think the real elephant in the middle of the living room that none of these posters wants to really address is the issue of deservingness. While some of the "hot-spotters" are people who would elicit the sympathy of anyone whose heart isn't made out of stone -- children born with major health issues, or someone who's in a horrific auto accident that's not their fault -- a lot of the people who are described in the article have situations that hit a whole row of those "not deserving" buttons people have but which it's not politically correct to acknowledge. We're talking about people with major alcohol and substance abuse problems, perpetually indigent and homeless, who are often perceived as having screwed up their lives, so this kind of a program is perceived at some level as "coddling" them or "rewarding" them for their bad life choices. So we keep doling out just the minimum of reactive health care to keep them alive when they get so sick we can't ignore the problem, and then throw them straight back out to repeat the cycle, never mind that in the long run it costs far more to constantly deal with their problems instead of providing the support system that would enable them to get their problems under control.

[murstein.livejournal.com]

I think the real elephant in the middle of the living room that none of these posters wants to really address is the issue of deservingness.

You're likely right. One of the ways in which Americans are exceptional, is the extent to which we'll harm ourselves and our friends, in indirect ways, in order to punish those we consider undeserving. In this way, the main difference between Right and Left is who we disapprove of.