Just a hundred dollars a month here, a hundred dollars a month there, who doesn’t have that kind of money, amirite?
/s
And if you’re paying $100/month for cable you’re getting ripped off.
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Or that some future administrator would decide that $100 is NOT enough. NOW the payment is $1000/month.
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The second a church runs a business it is no longer a church. They’re in it to sustain themselves. Of course this isn’t universally true but when you get to scale of operations of say… a hospital do you think that they’re going to do the “Christian” thing of giving things away for free to those in need?
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A 21 week baby is not just premature. The intensity of treatment needed to make a baby this premature survive (and the “make” is used advisedly. At 21 weeks, they necessary mechanisms for extrauterine life just aren’t there.) The fact that this is even possible speaks to how advanced our NICUs have become, but that bleeding edge of care is also exceptionally expensive. This is the sort of situation where cost becomes almost meaningless, and the question of “How much is a human life worth” stops being equivalent to “angels dancing on a pin” philosophical and becomes very very concrete. At the provider level, honestly cost does not enter the equation at all. Maybe it should, but no, it does not. And it is (to me) a very different issue at the end of life, when you are buying a few extra days of misery for a person who has lived a life vs. buying an entire life (dealing with who know how many disabilities, but does that enter into the equation at all?) for someone who has not had a chance for even a day. Cue armchair philosophers, I guess.
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I’m not jealous of the decisions that a provider has to make. All respect.
I’m convinced the purely economic cost of human biological fortune is better spread across an entire population, rather than given as a bill to be paid by every random recipient of a bad deal.
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Absolutely agree. No excuse for USAians to be subjected to this shit in the richest country on earth.
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See, it’s a win-win for Boris, not only do he and his mates make loads of money, also, next time he father’s a bastard the high costs of having a baby make it more likely the unfortunate mother will choose to have an abortion.
Because of course, at the moment in the UK a 21 week premature baby would get about the same level of care for free*.
(* yes, we pay more taxes, but we pay less in taxes than Americans pay for heath care, and even people who have no money get treated)
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I’ve just opened a General Election thread, if anyone wants to continue this discussion without being off topic.
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The same thing could be said about any of the other major world religions. Only the ignorant or intellectually lazy believe that Christianity refers to one monolithic group of people or set of beliefs. It’s the same kind of stupidity that paints all Muslims with the crimes of terrorists or all Americans a MAGA hat wearing alt-righters.
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Their policy is clear - if not single syllable three-word phrase simple, which is why the tabloids and news interviewers are castigating it.
- Renegotiate a potential deal - much closer customs union, much more alignment with EU standards (workers rights, environment, consumer protection). Takes three months - especially as it will be much closer to what pertains today and they have already done much of the groundwork with EU leaders.
- Put that deal to the voters in a 2nd referendum. Takes another three months.
Hence six in total. Vote will be for the new deal or remain (I need to check if they are also going to put a no-deal option on the referendum papers)
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Thank you. For some reason the Tory/Libertarian owned media seems to be trying to put a negative spin on/under reporting Labour’s plans.
Go see other thread. I responded there.
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Without any detail about how long the baby was in the NICU (a very long time if it was 21 weeks), it is not the bill that strikes me as ludicrous, it’s the fact that she or her insurance is asked to pay at all. If the cost of health care is socialized society could theoretically provide this level of care to anyone who needs it. It doesn’t fully get us away from questions about what to cover and what not too, but at least it is a collective decision and not the profit motivated whim of an insurance company or for-profit health care provider.
It seems to me that palliative care and doctor-assisted death are increasingly the answer here - most people aren’t taking heroic measures to prolong a life for a few days, and in socialized health care systems it may not even be permitted.
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I think it is essential for the reality based community to use proper definitions when we report and share stories. This was not a Christian hospital. It was/is a christianist hospital. (Using the urban definition of the term)
A Christian hospital would attempt to follow the teachings of Jesus.
A christianist hospital would be more attuned to capitalist profit, obfuscation of the teachings of Jesus, racism, bigotry, xenophobia and a few additional terms. It only mouths the teachings of Jesus.
When we start using the correct terms with the correct definitions, the whole world becomes a lot clearer and make a whole lot more sense.
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FTFY
But, but, Socialism!
The average USAian isn’t even well off; most workers aren’t too far from being in dire straits if they become ill or lose their job. I worry about the coming shitstorm my American relatives are going to be subjected to when the full impact of the fiscal rape of their lives by Republicans (and Dems, they’ve played their part too) hits home.
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I have always been totally mystified, in the USian healthcare debates, about politicians always going on and on about people being able to keep their private health care if they want to. Are there actually Americans out there who have wonderful health insurance providers that are totally reasonable and caring and fair? Is there really a huge cohort of Americans that simply love their health insurance companies, that don’t regard them with loathing and dread and anger and frustration? Because somehow you never ever hear from them…
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Insurance companies are highly motivated to disallow what will be obviously very expensive outlays as they are profit based enterprises and the shareholder value is the prime motivator. That is the root of the insanity in this instance. And getting misleading info from the “help line” is frighteningly common. In many socialized medical system, this would never have arisen as they will often have limits on what will be covered. Back in the late 80’s-early 90’s Oregon tried to institute a system to limit outlay in their Medicaid system, and one that came up was to disallow coverage for “under 25 week premies.” Needless to say, this caused some consternation in my field! Outcomes at 21 weeks are pretty uniformly awful, but as I said above, what is a human life worth and who decides that this child will probably be too damaged to use up valuable resources? I am very happy to not have to make those choices. As one of my mentors used to say, “If you are going to play God, don’t be wimpy about it.” We should be as aggressive about withdrawing care as we are about instituting it, but cases like this can rapidly enter a gray zone and devolve into philosophizing. Not my bag, baby.
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Acts 4:32-35
The Believers Share Their Possessions
32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
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I always thought of it as telling a drowning person, "I’m not taking away your life preserver by pulling you onto the boat, I see how desperately you’re clinging to it; so tell you what, you can wear it around on land for as long as you need to, after we get you out of the water.
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Ask anyone in any country with a nationalized healthcare system (i.e. the rest of the world) if they would rather dump their healthcare for a completely for-profit system. If you tally up the results of a survey of 100K people, I can already confidently predict the naysayers will be measured as a handful. I also predict that the handful will be executives that want to make a killing gouging their fellow citizens for health related services, equipment and drugs.
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