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Sure, because anyone can afford $2500/month. It's practically free.
by gozur88 10y ago
Sure, because anyone can afford $2500/month. It's practically free.
- M_Grey 10y agoJust wait until you have to pony up $3000 for one MRI.
- slowmotiony 10y agoThat... sounds like a better deal to me?
- gozur88 10y agoThat's what I was thinking. As long as I don't get more than six MRIs a year I come out ahead.
- gcp 10y agoThe problem with this reasoning (and by extension, any system where there's a possibility to opt out of healthcare) is that if you have a serious ailment that you can't afford to treat, we have to let you die. But I believe even in the USA you will get (emergency) treatment and the bills racked up, right?
- gozur88 10y agoYeah, that's true. The problem now is health care plans are so expensive the right thing to do from a green-eyeshades perspective is to pay the fine for not having a plan and go to the ER if you have a problem.
- kofejnik 10y agoThe problem with insurance is that literally everyone will have a serious ailment one day. Very few people die instantly, huge majority of deaths are from cancer and cardiovascular
- gcp 10y agoThis isn't a problem with insurance. You just let the ones without die off. It's a problem because humans are wussies that can't live with their decisions.
- gozur88 10y agoCardiovascular problems aren't necessarily expensive. Sometimes people just drop dead. There's the cost of an ambulance ride and some hubbub in the ER, but that wouldn't make a dent in the amount they paid in. The real problem with insurance is there are people with long-term, expensive medical conditions who will never, in their entire lives, make enough money to pay for their treatment. That just doesn't work under an insurance model.
- kofejnik 10y agoimho the problem with insurance is that it only serves to take money out of medical care, while inflating the costs. It makes sense to insure against terrible driving or burning your house, but taking insurance against something very likely to happen is simply giving money to insurance industry for nothing. Single payer models appear to be more effective.
- germinalphrase 10y agoI burned my foot without insurance. Out of pocket this twenty minutes in the doctor's office, two pain pills, and a nurse assuring me that it wasn't quite a third-degree burn cost me $2000+. It's not six MRI's the uninsured need to worry about, it's incidental injuries and illnesses that potentially cost several month's wages. God forbid you have a multi-day stay in the ICU.
- douche 10y agoUnder many of ACA policies, you would still end up paying that amount, because they have ridiculously high deductibles. So if you are a relatively healthy person that does not regularly go to the doctors to get that chewed up earlier, you are still going to be left holding the bag for non-catastrophic, but expensive services. I have been burned by this in the past.
- klipt 10y agoMRIs are cheap compared to surgery...
- M_Grey 10y agoYou're going to have a rude wakeup call, one of these days, in the form of crushing medical debt.
- slowmotiony 10y agoHighly doubt it, I have insurance. :-)
- xupybd 10y agoWhy is healthcare so expensive in the states? People seem to focus on private Heath insurance vs Obama care. But neither should be so expensive. Why are other countries able to provide way cheaper care?
- ozzy6009 10y ago1. The USA has the best doctors and hospitals. The marginal benefit to having better doctors and hospitals is completely dwarfed by their higher prices. Would you be willing to pay 2x to have a 5% better chance of no complications on a surgery for a rare condition? Well the USA does exactly that. 2. The USA subsidizes drug development for the rest of the world. All the R&D happens here, and the only reason so much money is spent on this R&D is because the drug companies can charge maximum price to Americans. Other countries negotiate as a block to lower prices. This is great for those countries (cheaper drugs) and the drug companies (marginally expanded markets), but it increases the fraction of money from the US going to that R&D.
- iainmerrick 10y ago2 is a good point, but I don't think 1 is correct. I've heard that Cuba has the best doctors, and they often play a crucial role in emergency aid to other countries. For quality of health care overall, the US is just a solid middle ranker when it comes to life expectancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... That's only one metric, of course, but it seems like an important one. It seems like the US pays about 3x more (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...) for moderately worse outcomes.
- tropo 10y agoCuba has people in a different climate, with a different culture, and different inherent susceptibility to disease. If we were to supply Cuba with bacon double cheeseburgers and unlimited soda refills, that life expectancy would not be so hot. Also, give them all desk jobs. Healthcare is better in the USA. We just like to do bad things to ourselves.