I wasn’t eligible, as my income was too low, but yet not low enough to get any assistance with it.
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It’s like guns. Nobody dies of being shot, they die from internal bleeding. Sad!
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I’d say they die because of COVID-19, even if they don’t die of COVID-19 Count 'em.
(Also, traffic fatalities and workplace deaths will be down.)
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So, clearly the result of this health and economic disaster will be universal health care and universal basic income.
(I guess I have to add an /s. Sigh.)
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what was that about death panels?
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When i worked retail my income was too low and couldn’t get any kind of coverage, i basically was in the bracket that could opt out and not get penalized. You’d figure that people in that situation should get free insurance but you know… capitalism.
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Even when ACA was new and not “chipped away,” the damage was already done, because the party that passed it was entirely beholden to the insurance industry. My brother was trapped in that “you don’t make enough for this to be free” while not making enough to afford it zone, and he died without insurance. In a first world country, he might still be alive.
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@vermes82 “Efficiency and progress is ours once more”, but only if we all get back to work by Easter
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Thanks, that made my day. 
(yeah, I’m going to hell, but really, it’s not so bad looking right now)
it’s called medicaid, the insurer of last resort. anyone with income levels in the range of standardized deductions should at least read eligibility requirements in your state. odds are you qualify for free, adequate coverage.
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Good to know but thankfully back then i didn’t have anything come up that required medical attention, appreciate the comment though
If something did come up you get 3 or 6 months (can’t recall) to apply and they’ll back date the coverage. Depending on which state your in, whether it’s got a decent state level system or accepted the medicare expansion it mostly covered the gap. Either cause you would have qualified, or because once something happens then you can get it anyway.
Many places it’s not a terribly stable way to get coverage. But that did happen to me while I was a bartender, didn’t quite qualify couldn’t afford to purchase on the exchanges. Got injured and was able to get medicare coverage. Covered 100% of a nasty injury, and I stayed on NY medicare after. Though my sister went through the ringer trying to line up stable mental health care and meds the same way in California. Apparently they kept swapping over the program leaving gaps in her coverage and switching up the providers.
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This depended on the state. There definitely was a range of income where you did not qualify for Medicaid and also didn’t qualify for ACA. Many states passed laws that made up the difference somehow, so that everyone in the state could be covered. I don’t recall how they made up the difference because I was not in one of those states.
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So there are allegedly multiple “perfectly healthy” people dying “from coronavirus”. This is the first one I’ve seen that actually kind of mentions HOW they died. But how does a virus that attacks the lungs cause cardiac failure? If the lungs don’t work, the heart wouldn’t be the only organ failing. How do we know this wasn’t homicide? Drug overdose?
The heart and lungs work very closely. Increase in fluid in the lungs mimics the cardiac effects of congestive heart failure (which in itself causes buildup of fluid in the lungs). Fluid in the lungs increases the resistance of blood flow through them for oxygenation, which makes the heart work harder. At the same time, there is less oxygen circulating in the blood, and one of the first muscles hindered by reduced oxygen is the heart. This leads to a feedback loop where the heart keeps working harder, demanding more oxygen, while getting less oxygen. Throw hypertension into the mix and you get acute heart failure.
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Thank you. I learned something new today.
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In order to make it something within the power of the federal government it can’t really be illegal to not have health care, so you can’t jail or fine them, but the federal government has a lot of discretion in how it taxes people. So essentially you get taxed for not having insurance by enough money that it is cheaper to just have insurance. Most of the existing insurance infrastructure was left in place because it is hard enough to do anything with healthcare laws that the focus was put on things like forcing insurance to cover any preexisting conditions and cap the growth of insurance premiums.
Urgent Care isn’t forced to provide care for anyone, only Emergency Rooms are. So if you run an urgent care you can choose to let people die. If you run an ER you must treat, and you can charge them for it, but even if you know for a fact that they can no or will not pay you need to treat them anyway. (this remains unchanged from pre-ACA)
As a country we likely pay a lot more for health care because many people are forced to seek treatment at an ER as opposed to a doctor, so they have to wait until it is an emergency which costs more (and the ER has to provide rapid response with less know lag of the patients history which is less successful and more costly as well). Oh, it also kills more people. But they are mostly poor people, so I guess we are ok with that. (and by “we” I mostly mean republicans, but to some extent that even includes me because I care more about other priorities, except when I really stop and think about it)
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Everyone is supposed to have car insurance too. Isn’t reality.
Back when I was contract, but had a job, still didn’t have insurance. There are exceptions for getting coverage, at least back then. I am on a Tribal Roll, so I used that as my excuse, and was excused from paying a fine.
I have a friend who was freelance, no insurance, suffered a stroke. She’s so fucked right now.
IIRC, its like 9% of the population that isn’t insured. That’s a lot of people.
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My very basic understanding is that often covid-19 and other diseases like it exhaust the body’s defenses which eventually makes it possible for secondary infections which lead to things like pneumonia which then kills the person. So your analogy is pretty accurate and bad faith trumpanzees in clerical portions might just take advantage of that to help out the idiot in charge.
I’m sorry for your loss. He might have lived also if he was in a developing country. Last year my girlfriend needed a major surgery for something that would eventually cause her death. Thankfully she was in the Philippines and so the costs were reasonable and I was able to just pay for it out of pocket. If she had been in the US she would have died and there would have been nothing I could do about it short of selling my home quickly to maaaaybe cover the bill.
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The gap is more between subsidized plans and being able to practically afford insurance that was worth a shit. Anyone can buy insurance on the exchanges, and subsidized plans kick in right after medicare.
But jus above that is where all those very high deductible, very low coverage plans you hear about live. Many of them unaffordable and no better than not having insurance.
States seem to have filled the gap through the medicare expansion, their own state equivalents. And offering their own additional subsidized plans targeted at the gap. So basically by spending the money the Federal Government didn’t.
My sister is still on a NYS/Obamacare subsidized plan. It costs a 3rd what it would to get insurance through her employer. And covers a hell of a lot more, especially on the mental health front. Once you’re on it you can basically just stay on it and they adjust the payment/subsidy. I think her payment went up 5 bucks when she switched to a job that paid like double from when she signed up.
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