> Health insurance is a pretty terrible product.
What's the alternative?
What's the alternative?
If you are an alcoholic with a history of OWI/DUIs and you have a pre-existing car accident and no job, no one expects you to get free car insurance paid for by the government that will fix your already damaged car and make sure you can drive again as a human right.
In Healthcare, we assume that product should exist and we demand that it be called insurance for some reason.
The alternative to health insurance is free Healthcare. It isn't insurance at all.
In my mind, the alternative to health insurance is paying market rates out of your pocket for everything. It's not a good idea and that's why most of the countries have universal health insurance coverage.
Or a hybrid system with Medicare for all with income limits, above which you must either get third party insurance or pay a small tax is how it was done in Australia last time I was there. It seemed to work well when I was there, and I did have need of it. I had to go to the ER when I was peeing blood after being kicked by a horse directly in the kidney. Fortunately there were no blood clots and it passed after a day or two, but they had to do tests to verify it all and also an MRI I believe. I never got a bill.
I had more medical expenses from mandatory screening fees for visa applications there than from a potentially life threatening medical emergency. And it was included in my yearly taxes with no fees at the point of usage for anything I can remember offhand.
Meds were cheap because the whole country’s Medicare board bargains with the pharmaceutical companies directly, and if your meds are too expensive, they will just go with a competitor and leave that vendor out of the Medicare coverage schedule. This is not unequivocally a good thing, but those meds are still available on the market, but you will pay more for them unless you have third party coverage. Generics are also available just like most places.
Not sure if it’s changed since, as that was like 15 years ago.
Medicare in Australia: https://www.health.gov.au/health-topics/medicare
> Medicare is Australia’s universal health insurance scheme. It guarantees all Australians (and some overseas visitors) access to a wide range of health and hospital services at low or no cost.
Medicare in Canada: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/canada-healt...
> Medicare is a term that refers to Canada's publicly funded health care system. Instead of having a single national plan, we have 13 provincial and territorial health care insurance plans. Under this system, all Canadian residents have reasonable access to medically necessary hospital and physician services without paying out-of-pocket.
Hope you're feeling better now. That kidney kick must have been hell of a painful one.
I still feel bad for the horse. It got spooked, and was entirely blameless, if a bit anxious. It was a windy day, and the tin roofs of the surrounding buildings set the horse off somehow. I had too much slack in the lead rope, the horse walked ahead just far enough away for me to be in the danger zone right behind. I saw a motion blur of horseflesh, reflexively covered my face, and took a rear hoof right below my ribs. I almost kept my grip on the rope, but some part of my mind decided to let the horse win this one, and I dropped it right as my legs gave out from the impact and the sudden pain. The horse ran, and trampled it’s own rope, broke the bit in its mouth. The poor thing’s tongue was cut top to bottom, and halfway across.
I failed the horse in my careless handling and lack of empathy and situational awareness on that day. As these were racehorses, I’m glad that they received medical care and made a full recovery after missing some races. On balance, maybe the horse got off easy compared to how hard they run them on race days.
That was the worst experience I had with a horse. The second worse was being lifted off the ground by my bicep by a mother horse when I calmly petted her daughter. And the younger horse was nearly as big as her, so not a baby by any means.
Horses are to be respected. All animals ought to be; doubly so for those that can literally trample you to death.