- #26
mathwonk
Science Advisor
Homework Helper
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The main problem I have experienced in health care here is that it is job related. If you use your health insurance you can be fired afterwards and lose it. If you have a serious illness you have a "precondition" and then cannot get another health policy. This has happened to us.
It is clear to me that anyone at all can go bankrupt from just one serious illness in our system. Young healthy people have trouble believing this, but I guarantee you it is true. Just tell your congress person you want the same healthcare and retirement plan he has.
Another problematic aspect is aged care for physically fit but senile parents. i know middle class people who are spending around 75,000 dollars a year just to have one aged relative looked after physically. This does not include their psychological needs for real attention, just food, meds, making sure they dont fall down most of the time. A that rate it can cost easily a half million dollars to die. These are people who have essentially no serious illness. In some cases they might be happier if they did have.
The point is that in our system, even one serious ilness, or one long lived but infirm relative, can easily impoverish a middle class family. Questions like how long do you have to wait at the local hospital to get a broken arm set are relatively unimportant in this topic.
Another problem is over subsidization of "emergency" room care in locally funded public hospitals. This is the opposite problem. Here people who decline to pay even a $5 copay at a doctors office take up valuable time and space getting care for colds and other non emergency needs at enormous cost to the tax payer. The metro hospital in Atlanta is essentially bankrupt for partly these reasons. Offering essentially free "emergency care" it also draws patients from widely surrounding counties whose taxes do not support the hospital. I have personally seen the collections envelope for the whole ER containing less than $2, after a busy nights treatment.
these problems seem to me to require some way of spreading out the cost of health care more widely, and also konitoring its use. I.e. the local county cannot support the metro hospital alone, the individual family of a sick individual cannot support their care alone. But the public cannot afford to subsidize ER level care for sniffles and fever.
Attacking Michael Moore is beside the point. He may be unbalanced and ludicrous, but his points should be made public and responded to. He is just the messenger. Attacks on him seem to take on the flavor of patriotic defense of "our way of life".
It is clear to me that anyone at all can go bankrupt from just one serious illness in our system. Young healthy people have trouble believing this, but I guarantee you it is true. Just tell your congress person you want the same healthcare and retirement plan he has.
Another problematic aspect is aged care for physically fit but senile parents. i know middle class people who are spending around 75,000 dollars a year just to have one aged relative looked after physically. This does not include their psychological needs for real attention, just food, meds, making sure they dont fall down most of the time. A that rate it can cost easily a half million dollars to die. These are people who have essentially no serious illness. In some cases they might be happier if they did have.
The point is that in our system, even one serious ilness, or one long lived but infirm relative, can easily impoverish a middle class family. Questions like how long do you have to wait at the local hospital to get a broken arm set are relatively unimportant in this topic.
Another problem is over subsidization of "emergency" room care in locally funded public hospitals. This is the opposite problem. Here people who decline to pay even a $5 copay at a doctors office take up valuable time and space getting care for colds and other non emergency needs at enormous cost to the tax payer. The metro hospital in Atlanta is essentially bankrupt for partly these reasons. Offering essentially free "emergency care" it also draws patients from widely surrounding counties whose taxes do not support the hospital. I have personally seen the collections envelope for the whole ER containing less than $2, after a busy nights treatment.
these problems seem to me to require some way of spreading out the cost of health care more widely, and also konitoring its use. I.e. the local county cannot support the metro hospital alone, the individual family of a sick individual cannot support their care alone. But the public cannot afford to subsidize ER level care for sniffles and fever.
Attacking Michael Moore is beside the point. He may be unbalanced and ludicrous, but his points should be made public and responded to. He is just the messenger. Attacks on him seem to take on the flavor of patriotic defense of "our way of life".
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