I think that some of the public faces of the bill are outright lying, knowing that nothing like the bill will ever actually make it into law. I have never seen any politician state anything as unequivocally as these guys are willing to state that no one will lose their health care. I imagine most Republican members of congress genuinely supported this bill, but I am pretty sure that the goal of its architects is to have the bill fail in the senate. These guys have gotten elected for doing nothing and blaming someone else since 2010, it’s the only plan they have.
If you read some of the republican responses to Jimmy Kimmel’s discussion of his son’s illness, they seem very upset that other people’s reality is interfering with their partisan politics. Partisan politics are more important than reality, and we should keep our reality out of them.
I think Gary Johnson has just the long term plan for health care you are looking for.
The irony is, there is an autoimmune disorder that runs in my family: celiac disease. My dad had it, at least two of my aunts have it, and all three of my siblings have it. I don’t have it. Been tested repeatedly for it. But my husband does! So to be fair, I probably gave him celiac disease.
None of my grandparents had even a high school education. Both my grandfathers had blue-collar jobs, and both my grandmothers were homemakers, yet they were all homeowners and able to provide for their children.
Nowadays, everyone has to pay out the ass for a Bachelors’ Degree which doesn’t even relate to their career usually, just so they can fight it out with the other wage slaves for table scraps.
Uh, off-topic, but did you know you can refuse an ambulance ride, and then they can’t charge you?
I refused an ambulance for a collapsed lung. In my case I told the people who had called the ambulance that they’d better call the hospital back, or they were likely to get charged when the ambulance arrived and I wasn’t there. They were very upset but everything worked out OK.
This whole thread feels quite surreal to me. I have called an ambulance for someone else, woke up in hospital after being picked up unconscious, accompanied another person in an ambulance called by a doctor, accompanied someone else in an ambulance as they were transferred from one hospital to another. On none of these occasions did it occur to me that there could be a charge and in fact there was not.
These events took place in three different countries: England, Norway, Poland. The first in the 1970s and the latest this century.
It seems crazy to me that someone with a life threatening, or even merely very distressing condition should need to consider the cost of an ambulance.
But that’s too much fast thinking to ask of an injured 17 year old kid. They teach “financial literacy” in high school now, and a good thing. Perhaps “healthcare literacy” should be added to the curriculum.
Back in the days when labor was worth something, even if it was unskilled. Recently some family and friends were discussing their experiences of how easy it was to get a job in the '50s-'70s if you had any sort of education, but they were fully aware that wasn’t the case anymore.
That’s definitely happening, though some just don’t seem to have any idea what’s in the bill (and admit as much when interviewed). The Republican website for it, until after the bill was passed, at which point it was “corrected”, had some blatantly wrong information about it not impacting those with pre-existing conditions. I suspect some members of congress were using that - or equally unreliable information - as their guide.
Turns out that one of the causes may be viral (that is, the viral infection triggers an existing genetic pre-disposition), so… maybe so. (But really, no, probably not.)
To make it more complicated (and stupid) if there are two different hospitals in town, which accept different insurance plans, it gets worse. If the ambulance goes to the “wrong” hospital, you are “out of network” and everything is all of a sudden even more expensive. If they gave you a choice, maybe it would be OK, but around here, the ambulances are associated with one hospital or the other so you don’t get to pick!
I imagine many are relying on BS information sources. But I’m convinced that some are just sure that there will never be a fact of what the bill did because it will never become law, and so they can say whatever they want. It was just the tone this one Republican took. I’ll find the clip later.
Yeah, no doubt that’s true. Also, it seems Republicans are more likely than ever before to simply not care what the facts are, because they calculate their base is impervious to them anyways, so they can say whatever they like and they’ll more or less get away with it.
Not entirely. Depending on the way your teeth are crooked, oral hygiene becomes difficult, leading to the infection problems you mentioned. Or you could end up with pressure in the wrong places, messing up your jaw. Guess how easy it might be to eat a healthy, balanced diet when you can’t properly open or close your mouth.
Dental is an incredibly important aspect of overall physical health, and it’s ridiculous how little it gets covered… even sometimes in places where single-payer is a thing.
Just an anecdote, but I was charged several hundred dollars to be carried one short block to the hospital by ambulance, and I’m pretty sure they would have delivered me more quickly had they carried the backboard by hand.
When I had my thyroid cancer surgery, I had to go in twice (they thought the lump was benign, it wasn’t, and it was way bigger than they thought). The second time, I got a bill from an assistant surgeon that my insurance said wasn’t in-network. I never met this guy. I was already under when he came in to the OR. I was never given a chance to approve or reject him, or even be warned I’d be paying him entirely out of pocket.
Just a whopping bill for services. For all I know he just wrote his name on my chart in recovery.
“So everyone with a pre-existing condition right now who is covered under Obamacare will continue to have coverage?”
“Absolutely.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone.”
Politicians don’t give answers like that. I swear he’s just thinking, “As long as this never becomes law I never have to answer for this, and this will never become law.”
I think you haven’t considered the new political reality that now, politicians aren’t afraid to just tell bald-faced lies now. All a part of what people were talking about when they said they were worried about the erosion of norms brought in by Trump.
