Except that by their own admission, the Republicans’ system doesn’t cover everyone, and by everyone else’s analysis it will make deductibles and premiums larger while lowering the quality of coverage, whereas literally every other industrialized nation has proven that a nationalized health care system is capable of caring for all of its citizens better than ours does, for less money, and without turning everyone into unemployed thralls.
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As per usual, it isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s supposed to make their supporters angry.
This is just a variation on the idea that if you are truly poor, then you should own nothing and live in misery.
In this strangely short-sighted, supposedly moralistic worldview anything that might contribute to a person’s feeling of self-worth or might even give a moment’s enjoyment is proof that the “poor person” is either feigning poverty at taxpayer expense or is too self-centered to be allowed to manage their own finances.
Is the person carrying a cellphone? Obviously they aren’t poor, even if it is the only way for employers (current or potential) to contact them and it is a low-end refurbished model.
The strangest part of this worldview is that it assumes that people exist in a steady state, financially. If you are poor now, then you have always been poor and will always remain so. Therefore, anything nice that you might own must be the result of fraud or poor decision making, not that you lost your job after you acquired your belongings, or that the nice clothing you just bought is for the benefit of a potential employer who probably won’t hire someone dressed poorly.
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It has always struck me as a particularly barbed irony that ‘Obamacare’ and its alleged ‘death panels’ were what (at least in theory) put an end to ‘lifetime maximums’, which are about as ‘death panel’ as it comes(unless you count organ transplant committees; but they have the rather compelling excuse of simply not having enough organs to go around, period).
The ‘lifetime maximums’ are also extra insulting because they go well beyond the “Insurance is about risk pooling; and we’ve also rigged basically all the fine print to ensure that we profit on as many policyholders as we can” stuff and straight into “You’ve been kicked out of the casino because the house always wins, period.”
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I have had three broken arms, sprains, stretched-thankfully-not-ripped ligaments, a nearly fatal concussion, and more things than you would even want me to list.
The answer, to be blunt (kinda like my last major fracture), is get used to pain and injury. My last big one was slicing my hand open to the bone. I passed out, woke up, and literally (not figuratively) duct taped myself back. Cause the ambulance itself, with insurance–not the ER visit, just the ambulance–would have been over a grand.
Jebus, I was traveling a few weeks ago and didn’t pack my script of colchicine, which is used for arthritis. Generally costs, I dunno, eight bucks for a two year supply. It is similar to a better Aleve or advil. The doc I went to see to get a single pill, and this is not an opioid, told me I had to go to the ER. Again, a grand out of pocket. For. One. $0.50 pill.
So what does one do? Limp, grimace, and do without.
Edit
And that wasn’t on the ACA, which would have been cheaper. That was a top of the line PPO from a fortune 500 company, to an in network hospital.
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“The left is making a big mistake here; what they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul.”
Yeah, it does take a special kind of monster; especially to be so candid about it(though, in a broader sense, the custom of screwing people on worldly goods and promising them salvation goods in return is an old one).
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So, how do we as a nation pay for that cost?
I think the comparison of pricing medical procedures in units of iPhones is a little deceptive; Chaffetz was saying people should be buying insurance (not procedures) instead of iPhones. Insurance costs are lower and are fixed. So the comparison should really be how many iPhones a month a family of four has to pay for insurance.
I still think it’s a horrible argument for Chaffetz to be making. I actually debated a republican guy in law school about this extensively (though he used the example of “big screen TVs” instead of iPhones) and I think I actually brought him around when he finally understood the real cost of health insurance.
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If you’re asking “How do we divide the costs?”: you can emulate Canada, where half is paid for federally, half by the individual states/provinces.
If you’re asking “How do we afford it?”: did you miss the part where single payer is being done elsewhere for less money than the US already puts into healthcare?
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BUT FREEDOM!!!
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Well, this is the thing, isn’t it?
The people who are proposing this don’t buy health insurance, they get it through work, so they don’t know (or care) what it costs.
Has anyone done a study asking people what they think the ‘average’ health insurance policy costs?
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…Taxes?
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So I guess I’m not that smart. Explain to me how other countries provide better care at a lower cost.
That’s the thing that infuriates me most about the anti-“socialized medicine” people. The only “freedom” that matters to them is the freedom to comparison-shop hospitals after a life-threatening car accident. The freedom to change jobs without losing the ability to see a doctor, or the economic freedom that comes from not have to spend a third of your monthly income on an insurance policy, apparently don’t matter.
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Thats just so fucked up tho…
I smashed my forehead on a brick wall two years go. (Yes, I was drinking, shut up) My head split open, blood, so much blood! A quick call to 911, ambulance ride and neck brace and CT scan later, I got 7 stitches and sent home.
That cost me $45. Total.
I got paid time off from work because I had a Doctors note that said I needed it. Done.
Limping and grimacing through pain when one is healing is just not right!
I don’t want that for you, I don’t want that for anybody! Thats a tragedy.
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Not that they are remotely interested in anything resembling intellectual honest at this point; but those ‘luxuries’ are absurdly poorly chosen because all of them are very useful tools for making food at home, preserving leftovers and purchased perishables, and similar home economics stuff.
If they filthy poors didn’t have refrigerators and the like, they’d either find the cost of home prepared food even higher(since they’d have to shop more frequently, couldn’t buy anything in bulk to avoid spoilage, would be unable to preserve leftovers or prepare meals ahead of time to accommodate their schedules); and we’d probably be hearing about “Did you know that welfare queens dine out or takeout 60% more often than Real Americans; yet still act like spending money on food and being fat and unhealthy is the fault of something other than a lack of personal responsibility!!!”
It’s a cruel, ugly, position; but at least the “Filthy poors have absolutely no right to complain about anything if they have ever possessed a good, or purchased a service, whose purpose is pleasure, relaxation, or dignity.” position has a certain internal consistency.
Treating acquisition of utilitarian consumer goods that make it easier for them to do thrifty things as a sign that they must be faking it(while being perfectly happy to switch to attacking them for a lazy reliance on convenience goods if they don’t buy the utilitarian goods) is just so overtly intellectually dishonest that the mind reels.
Yeah, sure, in The Broad Historical Arc, technological changes mean that people today have things that were literally unavailable at any price in the past; but that is of minimal interest if you are trying to live today. Hey! Did you know that refined aluminum was Unobtanium until the 1820s or so; and cost more than gold for some decades thereafter; so the guy with a shopping cart full of scavenged cans is obviously better off than Napoleon, who only had enough aluminum silverware for some of his guests, the rest making do with gold? TrueFacts!
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Sounds like a good time for this:
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The income level mentioned in the article that Obama was responding to is 40-50,000 US. That is well within the guidelines for adjusted income CSR in the ACA. So he is still talking about people sacrificing phones, etc. to pay for health care. Except these folks really do have to sacrifice because they aren’t gaming the system and getting free health care.
Go to your local ER in the US and complain of abdominal pain.
Go to a clinic in Canada and complain of abdominal pain.
Then, while resting on Dilaudid do a quick search of the GDP, tax rates, and real income of both countries. I promise you will have time, Dilaudid and morphine last quite awhile.
This. Isn’t. Rocket. Surgery. 
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