This is the first
article I've ever found with hard numbers and analysis of the real cost of medical care, including how it's borne by a combination of consumers, taxpayers, and providers in the absence of health insurance. I know you'll be shocked to learn that the ACA's solution of universal expensive subsidized coverage makes absolutely no sense, regardless of whether you're concerned about medical bankruptcy, erosion of life expectancy among the uninsured, the profit margin of doctors and hospitals, or the burden on taxpayers. On the subject of life expectancy, by the way, we'd all do better to stay married, go to college, lose weight, and quit smoking--all of which are at least as effective as being insured, if not much more so.
It makes great sense if the idea is to create an expendable slave market. One can't have the slaves lasting long into the next century. It's better if they wear out sooner, so the market is stimulated and the US Regime, the Leftist alliance, and their founding Democrat member faction can get more profit.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, livestock has healthcare, of a sort. But when a horse is crippled... what's the point of prolonging its life past a certain point then? The Left does not consider Americans human. Yet many Americans deem Leftists human. Equality and egalitarian values, will be the death of somebody's civilization.
Humans eat and care for livestock. Democrats and Leftists will care for those below them. It's natural.
Define "insured," and define "covered." In the context of articles like The American's, that's the only context in which "risk" can be defined.
ReplyDeleteI've talked about my wife's mastectomy before; here it is again. At the time, we had by our choice no health insurance (in those days, actual insurance still was available), even though it was available through my job. At the time, too, we were at around 120%, or so, of the then Federal Poverty Guideline. We were betting on the come that the three of us (our daughter, too) would stay healthy.
That bet turned out to be a bad one. Her biopsy came back more than a little iffy, but not definitive. The doctor suggested that a useful course of action would be annual biopsies until (!) one came back positive and definitive and then do the mastectomy. Far from delaying the cost of the mastectomy as far as possible in our "uninsured" state, we actively sought it out: we told the doctor we'd skip that middle part, thenkyouverymuch, and go right to the end game. We had the mastectomy done. The post-op analysis confirmed that what the biopsy had found was pre-cancerous and further, that it would have gone cancerous much sooner rather than later. My wife had lost that bet.
But we were "covered." Despite being in that low income state, we'd taken care of the money we had, we'd accumulated it, and we paid cash for both the biopsy and the mastectomy, and we paid cash for the associated hospital and lab expenses, also. And we had savings left; although we certainly needed to set about rebuilding them.
Until even studies like this deal with folks like my wife and me who self-insure and maintain the funds actually to be covered, and until they deal with others who use other non-standard (but non-welfare) means of covering themselves, these studies will be at best misleading.
And my wife's and my experience gives the lie to all that underlies Obamacare.
Eric Hines
Wrt life expectancy--picking your ancestors correctly is a major factor too.
ReplyDeleteKarl Denninger's take - worth a read- he is totally non PC, abrasive, and sharp as a tack.
ReplyDeletehttp://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229243#discuss