5 ms·

I would rather be uninsured and take my chances than work a low waged job and pay for Obamacare. $500/month for a single person, highest deductible plan is ludi

I would rather be uninsured and take my chances than work a low waged job and pay for Obamacare. $500/month for a single person, highest deductible plan is ludicrous. Thats fucking 80-90% rent for many people where I live...if not 100%+.

danans 6y ago
> I would rather be uninsured and take my chances So you won't seek medical treatment at a hospital if you get injured or become severely ill? Or do you plan to go to the hospital and pay out of pocket? Or, like some other voluntarily uninsured people, will you ask for medical treatment and then just not pay? > than work a low waged job and pay for Obamacare. Why would a "low waged" job be a requirement, unless that's the only job you can get? You can pay for Obamacare with a middle or high wage job too. You can also pay for it if you are self employed (which is a lot of people on Obamacare).
- im3w1l 6y ago
  I think he is saying that for many people it's just too much money. And that if they would be denied care, then so be it. This is where it gets uncomfortable, isn't it? That their lives are so miserable, that they would gladly trade away years and years of expected lifespan for higher quality of life.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    It’s illegal to turn anyone down in the ER for their ability to pay (at most hospitals). If you show up with an emergency, you will get treated, and the bill comes afterwards. Now, you’re definitely not going to get a luxury treatment, but they will patch you up so you’re not dying. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_... It isn’t the way we should want this to work, but it is certainly something that people actually do.
    - StanislavPetrov 6y ago
      The ER isn't going to offer you cancer treatment, pay for costly prescriptions or provide the medical care, routine and otherwise, that is often required to live a long life.
      - kube-system 6y ago
        Yeah, anything that requires long term treatment would be a problem, because EMTALA is only good until you get stabilized enough to discharge, and when you come back, it’s scheduled care and not an emergency.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  Well seeing as a sizable majority of human history has gotten by without health insurance for...I don't know, 10k years plus, as I've said, I'll take my chances. As for paying out of pocket, there are plenty of local urgent care centers where their business model is basically only cash. They do things from popping cysts, removing hangnails, to stitches. Lots of stuff that if you went to a hospital, would cost triple or more simply because of insurance. I'm saying low waged as in I make $14/hr or less. I mean it boggles my mind that you'd even say that because there frankly, is a large portion of the US who don't make Silicon Valley salaries.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    For a long part of the sizeable majority of human history, the average lifespan varied from 25 years to 30 years tops.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
      The reason mortality rates were so high was primarily due to child mortality from disease, virus, or bacterial infection. Not because people just dropped dead after 30 years. Once people got outside of the age of 20+, the average lifespan drastically improved for the individual since they survived the most difficult portion of life in terms of survival.
      - fakedang 6y ago
        Actually, one of the leading causes of death, apart from early child mortality was bacterial infection caused by bad dental hygiene. Not to mention a host of other diseases that waited for them such as cholera, Typhoid, TB, etc. People didn't magically live off till their 60s and 70s and 80s after becoming 20 years old. Your statement of average lifespan "improving" for individuals is simply nonsense.
        alentist 6y ago
        > Your statement of average lifespan "improving" for individuals is simply nonsense. It’s factually correct. For example [0]: Life expectancy increases with age as the individual survives the higher mortality rates associated with childhood. For instance, the table above listed the life expectancy at birth among 13th-century English nobles at 30. Having survived until the age of 21, a male member of the English aristocracy in this period could expect to live: 1200–1300: to age 64 1300–1400: to age 45 (because of the bubonic plague) 1400–1500: to age 69 1500–1550: to age 71 17th-century English life expectancy was only about 35 years, largely because infant and child mortality remained high. Life expectancy was under 25 years in the early Colony of Virginia, and in seventeenth-century New England, about 40 percent died before reaching adulthood. During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The under-5 mortality rate in London decreased from 74.5% in 1730–1749 to 31.8% in 1810–1829. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over...
- kube-system 6y ago
  I would absolutely do the same if I worked a low wage job. Despite our messed up insurance situation, US laws regarding access to emergency care and bankruptcy are very progressive. Someone making $15/hr is likely does not have any assets that would be surrendered in chapter 7 bankruptcy. A lot of people would gladly crater their credit score for a few years to delete an $80,000 bill. Plenty of people crater their credit scores over dumber stuff.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    You don’t even need to declare bankruptcy. Most hospitals will just write it off if you talk to them and work it out.
  - rweir 6y ago
    this may be the most depressing post in the whole thread - healthcare is fucked, insurance is too expensive for normal people, but hey, bankruptcy is pretty easy!
- 93po 6y ago
  I expect any reason for me to go to a hospital to basically cost me $30k+ without insurance. My plan is to go to the hospital and then declare bankruptcy and hope I don't need to go to the hospital again for another 7 years. I deliberately make lifestyle changes to avoid hospitalization. I don't ride bicycles or motorcycles. I don't play sports. I don't do manual labor or work with saws. I don't drive at night (not sure if this is any real difference but it makes me feel safer). This is the life I have in capitalist America. I'm afraid to do basic things like ride a bicycle in fear of it financially crippling me to the point that I'm incapable of paying rent and becoming homeless
rayiner 6y ago
Where are you? Here in Maryland gold level plan for a single person age 36 making $35,000 a year is about $250/month, with $1,750 deductible. In France or Germany, you’d pay about 10% of your income in health insurance tax, so this is quite comparable.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  In Germany, the figure is 14% of your gross salary, and in France it’s over 20%.
  - orwin 6y ago
    I don't know about Germany, but in france, the 20% include retirement plan and something else untranslatable, but think financial help for familly with children, youth camp and childcare founding, association founding, financial help for college students. I think the "secu" (health care) take around 30% of our blocked slaray, so it more like 7-8%.
  - sammax 6y ago
    It should be noted that in Germany if you are employed, half of those 14% is paid for by your employer, so you only pay 7% of your gross salary yourself. And there are no deductibles. I think the closest thing to a deductible is having to pay for ambulance (about 20 euro for the trip, probably free if you can't afford it) and for hospital stays (10 euro per day, up to a maximum of 280 per year).
    - xyzzyz 6y ago
      > so you only pay 7% of your gross salary yourself. Tax incidence doesn’t not depend on who writes the actual check to the government. When you get your monthly paycheck, your employer had already withheld the income tax and sent it to the government treasury. Does that mean that you pay no income tax, and the employer kindly covers it for you? No, of course not. When you buy a new phone, 19% VAT tax is paid. Who pays it? The retailer is responsible to send the money to government, does it mean that he pays full tax, and consumers pay no VAT? Of course not, VAT is reflected in price, and if there was no VAT, the prices would fall down. Suppose that government said that half of VAT is paid by buyer, and half by seller. Would that make any difference at all to anyone involved? No, the final price paid by the customer would be the same, the amount of revenue received by the seller after VAT would be the same, and the government would receive the exact same amount of money. Of course, the outcome would be exactly the same for any other government mandated “split” in who pays VAT. Similarly, any split in who nominally pays healthcare tax does not in fact matter in the slightest with respect to who actually bears the burden of the tax. Government cannot mandate that half of the burden is on employer and half on employee, because it simply has no power to do so: tax incidence depends on relative elasticities of supply and demand, and not at all on what the government claims the incidence to be. In case of taxing labor, almost all of the incidence is on the seller, that is, on the worker. So, government might say that half of tax is paid by the employer, but the only result of it is that some people are tricked in actually believing that.
mariojv 6y ago
Your premiums will be capped at a certain percentage of your income if you make around $51K or less.

danans 6y ago

> I would rather be uninsured and take my chances So you won't seek medical treatment at a hospital if you get injured or become severely ill? Or do you plan to go to the hospital and pay out of pocket? Or, like some other voluntarily uninsured people, will you ask for medical treatment and then just not pay? > than work a low waged job and pay for Obamacare. Why would a "low waged" job be a requirement, unless that's the only job you can get? You can pay for Obamacare with a middle or high wage job too. You can also pay for it if you are self employed (which is a lot of people on Obamacare).

im3w1l 6y ago
I think he is saying that for many people it's just too much money. And that if they would be denied care, then so be it. This is where it gets uncomfortable, isn't it? That their lives are so miserable, that they would gladly trade away years and years of expected lifespan for higher quality of life.
- kube-system 6y ago
  It’s illegal to turn anyone down in the ER for their ability to pay (at most hospitals). If you show up with an emergency, you will get treated, and the bill comes afterwards. Now, you’re definitely not going to get a luxury treatment, but they will patch you up so you’re not dying. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_... It isn’t the way we should want this to work, but it is certainly something that people actually do.
  - StanislavPetrov 6y ago
    The ER isn't going to offer you cancer treatment, pay for costly prescriptions or provide the medical care, routine and otherwise, that is often required to live a long life.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      Yeah, anything that requires long term treatment would be a problem, because EMTALA is only good until you get stabilized enough to discharge, and when you come back, it’s scheduled care and not an emergency.
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
Well seeing as a sizable majority of human history has gotten by without health insurance for...I don't know, 10k years plus, as I've said, I'll take my chances. As for paying out of pocket, there are plenty of local urgent care centers where their business model is basically only cash. They do things from popping cysts, removing hangnails, to stitches. Lots of stuff that if you went to a hospital, would cost triple or more simply because of insurance. I'm saying low waged as in I make $14/hr or less. I mean it boggles my mind that you'd even say that because there frankly, is a large portion of the US who don't make Silicon Valley salaries.
- fakedang 6y ago
  For a long part of the sizeable majority of human history, the average lifespan varied from 25 years to 30 years tops.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    The reason mortality rates were so high was primarily due to child mortality from disease, virus, or bacterial infection. Not because people just dropped dead after 30 years. Once people got outside of the age of 20+, the average lifespan drastically improved for the individual since they survived the most difficult portion of life in terms of survival.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      Actually, one of the leading causes of death, apart from early child mortality was bacterial infection caused by bad dental hygiene. Not to mention a host of other diseases that waited for them such as cholera, Typhoid, TB, etc. People didn't magically live off till their 60s and 70s and 80s after becoming 20 years old. Your statement of average lifespan "improving" for individuals is simply nonsense.
      - alentist 6y ago
        > Your statement of average lifespan "improving" for individuals is simply nonsense. It’s factually correct. For example [0]: Life expectancy increases with age as the individual survives the higher mortality rates associated with childhood. For instance, the table above listed the life expectancy at birth among 13th-century English nobles at 30. Having survived until the age of 21, a male member of the English aristocracy in this period could expect to live: 1200–1300: to age 64 1300–1400: to age 45 (because of the bubonic plague) 1400–1500: to age 69 1500–1550: to age 71 17th-century English life expectancy was only about 35 years, largely because infant and child mortality remained high. Life expectancy was under 25 years in the early Colony of Virginia, and in seventeenth-century New England, about 40 percent died before reaching adulthood. During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The under-5 mortality rate in London decreased from 74.5% in 1730–1749 to 31.8% in 1810–1829. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over...
kube-system 6y ago
I would absolutely do the same if I worked a low wage job. Despite our messed up insurance situation, US laws regarding access to emergency care and bankruptcy are very progressive. Someone making $15/hr is likely does not have any assets that would be surrendered in chapter 7 bankruptcy. A lot of people would gladly crater their credit score for a few years to delete an $80,000 bill. Plenty of people crater their credit scores over dumber stuff.
- rayiner 6y ago
  You don’t even need to declare bankruptcy. Most hospitals will just write it off if you talk to them and work it out.
- rweir 6y ago
  this may be the most depressing post in the whole thread - healthcare is fucked, insurance is too expensive for normal people, but hey, bankruptcy is pretty easy!
93po 6y ago
I expect any reason for me to go to a hospital to basically cost me $30k+ without insurance. My plan is to go to the hospital and then declare bankruptcy and hope I don't need to go to the hospital again for another 7 years. I deliberately make lifestyle changes to avoid hospitalization. I don't ride bicycles or motorcycles. I don't play sports. I don't do manual labor or work with saws. I don't drive at night (not sure if this is any real difference but it makes me feel safer). This is the life I have in capitalist America. I'm afraid to do basic things like ride a bicycle in fear of it financially crippling me to the point that I'm incapable of paying rent and becoming homeless

rayiner 6y ago

Where are you? Here in Maryland gold level plan for a single person age 36 making $35,000 a year is about $250/month, with $1,750 deductible. In France or Germany, you’d pay about 10% of your income in health insurance tax, so this is quite comparable.

xyzzyz 6y ago
In Germany, the figure is 14% of your gross salary, and in France it’s over 20%.
- orwin 6y ago
  I don't know about Germany, but in france, the 20% include retirement plan and something else untranslatable, but think financial help for familly with children, youth camp and childcare founding, association founding, financial help for college students. I think the "secu" (health care) take around 30% of our blocked slaray, so it more like 7-8%.
- sammax 6y ago
  It should be noted that in Germany if you are employed, half of those 14% is paid for by your employer, so you only pay 7% of your gross salary yourself. And there are no deductibles. I think the closest thing to a deductible is having to pay for ambulance (about 20 euro for the trip, probably free if you can't afford it) and for hospital stays (10 euro per day, up to a maximum of 280 per year).
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    > so you only pay 7% of your gross salary yourself. Tax incidence doesn’t not depend on who writes the actual check to the government. When you get your monthly paycheck, your employer had already withheld the income tax and sent it to the government treasury. Does that mean that you pay no income tax, and the employer kindly covers it for you? No, of course not. When you buy a new phone, 19% VAT tax is paid. Who pays it? The retailer is responsible to send the money to government, does it mean that he pays full tax, and consumers pay no VAT? Of course not, VAT is reflected in price, and if there was no VAT, the prices would fall down. Suppose that government said that half of VAT is paid by buyer, and half by seller. Would that make any difference at all to anyone involved? No, the final price paid by the customer would be the same, the amount of revenue received by the seller after VAT would be the same, and the government would receive the exact same amount of money. Of course, the outcome would be exactly the same for any other government mandated “split” in who pays VAT. Similarly, any split in who nominally pays healthcare tax does not in fact matter in the slightest with respect to who actually bears the burden of the tax. Government cannot mandate that half of the burden is on employer and half on employee, because it simply has no power to do so: tax incidence depends on relative elasticities of supply and demand, and not at all on what the government claims the incidence to be. In case of taxing labor, almost all of the incidence is on the seller, that is, on the worker. So, government might say that half of tax is paid by the employer, but the only result of it is that some people are tricked in actually believing that.

mariojv 6y ago

Your premiums will be capped at a certain percentage of your income if you make around $51K or less.