Knightmessenger wrote:
What is so bad about what she said? These mandates are why health insurance is so expensive in the first place. By requiring people to pay for everything, the cost is so expensive that they don't get any health insurance at all. Insurance is supposed to cover catastrophic expenses. Otherwise it just makes stuff more expensive.
how wealthy are you, anyway? who in hell can afford to pay for a doc's services strictly out of pocket? do you have any idea how expensive a routine visit is? in 1988, after a car wreck, i was sent to a "doc in the box" who didn't even look at me, but charged me almost a hundred clams and called it an "extended checkup" - they didn't even look at me! they just asked me precisely 4 questions. insurance which doesn't pay for office visits is therefore totally useless. and do you know how expensive mental health services are? nobody but mr. moneybags can afford this out of pocket. that is why insurance is mandatory in these cases. insurance is supposed to cover what ails you, period. i can only afford catastrophic coverage which means that if i get catastrophically sick from accumulated ailments that i can't afford to pay out of pocket for treating, then they will finally fork over the treatment. you think this is good to make people like me live like this? this is why i avoid republicans like the plague.
Knightmessenger wrote:
Look, if you went into a store and wanted to buy just a new tv, would you like it if the employee told you that was against the law. You could only buy a new television if you also got it with a new sound system, 5 blu-ray movies and the most expensive HDMI cable. You couldn't just buy the tv, you were mandated (thanks to the tv accessory lobby) to buy stuff that you don't really want or need.
a misleading analogy. insurance is
worthless unless it can enable a person to afford to go to a doc's office in the first place.
Knightmessenger wrote:
Given 900 a month vs 100, which state do you think is more likely to have more uninsured?
again, misleading. the $100 per month is substantially cheaper than my catastrophic insurance which pays for precisely nothing but catastrophic medical care, i.e. tertiary care in the ER/OR. so $100 per month would probably be even more useless, whereas the $900 per month would probably actually cover needed services and be useful. again, most working class folk simply cannot afford to pay for all medical care out-of-pocket, that is the whole reason comprehensive medical insurance is necessary.
Knightmessenger wrote:
Why can't you buy insurance for just the stuff you want insured? That's how it would work if we actually had a true free market system. If you want fewer uninsured people in America, you have to make it worth the price. Many of the so called 50 million uninsured have incomes over something like 75,000 per year. I bet many without health insurance still have cable tv, a cell phone and internet access. And it's not that they don't want health insurance, I'm sure most do. But not when it's that expensive.
i'd like to see your stats. i don't believe a word of it. our problems are a result of too damned much "free market" freedom to gouge customers. and your claim that most uninsured make
over $75k per annum? hogwash. that kind of rich salary would pay for a gold-plated plan and leave $65k to spare. i've never even seen that kind of moolah. i make do without cable and cell coverage, i'm too technologically challenged to use one of them danged infernal complicated cellphone thingies anyway. but living an hour outside of civilization means that if you don't have at least dial-up ISP you might as well be living in a cave. so anybody that would suggest that a person should be happy to pay over 5k per annum for decent individual health insurance [the going rate for 50 and over] even if it means they must do without the internet is just as ridiculous as that nutjob pol's suggestion that one can barter chickens for healthcare.
Knightmessenger wrote:
Mandates make health insurance into a ripoff.
the american health care financing system is already a ripoff, insurance or no insurance. and YES we already do rationing in this country, by one's ability to pay. the homeless can go to ERs but the average working class person would be bankrupted if they even set foot in one of those places, unless they were one of the few lucky ones to have real health insurance that actually covers what ails one, and not just like those worthless supplemental auto warranties that covers only things that will never break down.
24 Sep 2010, 2:27 am
