[quote]Tancredi wrote:
[quote]cord13 wrote:
exactly. health insurance is a business, which means their goal is to make money. If you can’t afford health insurance you can pay full price for your doctor visits. if you can’t afford the doctor, you can just tough it out next time you get the sniffles.[/quote]
My father worked for an american company for 30 years, paid into his insurance every single one of those years. He worked his way up from the line into management.
Then one day the company was brought, sold, and he was downsized since he was getting pretty close to retirement, and they didn’t want to pay.
My mother started working for wal-mart when my father went back to school at the age of 57. They paid their cobra until it ran out, and started on a partial insurance offered by walmart for the first 6 months of employment. During those first 6 months the coverage was limited to oh-so many dollars, I don’t remember how much.
My brother broke his leg in 5 places wrestling for 1st place in the district meet for the state championship. They covered it, but only after much haggling and nearly exhausting the limit. A lot of rehab care was left out due to cost. Can’t really tough out a leg broken in 5 places. Thank god this didn’t stop him and now he is a E-7 in the army, despite having a leg 1 inch shorter than the other.
A couple months later my father had a clot discovered in his heart, that threatened to come loose any minute and kill him. Emergency quintuple bypass surgry was necessary. Not much coverage was left, but we decided since we love him we’ll do what we can and thank god we had great credit and. . . .charged half of it on a visa, and had the hospital bill us the rest. It was difficult, but they still have the house, thank god. And he finished school, and found a new job at 59. Can’t tough out these sniffles.
As for me, I’m a medical clusterfuck in the eyes of the insurance companies and hence uninsurable. I’m perfectly physically and mentally healthy but my history won’t let me buy anything affordable. But I can’t let my coverage lest I literally loose one of my senses completely, my hearing. I speak and hear and loosing my hearing would be suicide for my social life and for my job.
I’ve come close to getting good group insurance via my jobs in industrial maintenance and drafting at a engineering firm, but both times buisness slowed down. I’m on pernament call at the engineering place. I now receive SSI and Medicare and deliver pizza the maximum I can without loosing benefits. I hate it. But I can’t simply tough out not hearing for a period of time-my ablitiy to get a job would be comprimised.
So you loose a little bit of freedom when the government takes over health care. I don’t give a rats ass about that and fail to see why I should. I and my family have been extremely lucky to get any care at all. A few $$ in the bank saved my dad, and despite doing everything “right” barely got the care he needed.
Fuck privately run insurance companies. I’ll take my chances with obamacare.[/quote]
So looking at now and fifty years ago. Fifty years ago hospital bills were cheaper, insurance was cheaper, there was less stress when getting procedures that needed to be done because they did not cost a lot. However, compared to now people cannot pay for most things out of pocket, insurance cost more, and the stress related with going to the hospital is much higher.
So the difference between now and insurance fifty years ago, is fifty years ago insurance was rarely regulated, it now has a ‘little regulation’ which in fact does not. It has a lot of regulation, and it has become more expensive over the years. So you say you want ObamaCare, I think you should rethink that.
