But... I've come to realize that it is impossible to make people understand it or change it.
So, I've been proposing a lesser change: In theory Insurance companies business model is to hedge against the risk of people getting sick ok? Well, let's make the bet fair and remove them the ability to decide who gets covered and who doesn't. In the case of the original article: Let a neutral third party panel of professionals be the ones that decide whether the Health Insurer has to cover or not the case.
Otherwise, Insurers are behaving like Casinos that decide to pay or not to pay to people who win a game.
Why's that? Between mortgage, repaying education debt, supporting children, recovering from a husband's failed business venture...what is hard to believe about having trouble paying for another expense, especially after you've been reassured that the expense would be at least partially recompensated and that turns out to not be the case?
For example, that mortgage, did you stretch the very limit of your income or did you buy something reasonable?
Nobody forced you to buy a house, you could also rent or commute longer.
I lived in a crappy rental for five years and commuted and was able to fully pay off my student loans at the beginning of my career. As an example
Education debt can be put on forbearance or deferment under many life circumstances.
Given high income level, you also have many options available to you like personal loans.
As long as we’re throwing anecdotes, access to forbearance and deferment is shaky at best. I’ve personally had inconsistent success across various income levels.
They had the buffer! She’s top level medical doctor with top health insurance for her family, shelling out who knows how many thousands of dollars a month for it.
Those payments must have covered them, but they were denied instead.
American health insurance is a total scam.
UPDATE: also a minor proof in the days of wealth accumulation to the top 0.00001%, that (seemingly) wealthy Californian doctors and entrepreneurs are much much closer to bankruptcy than many of us could think.
Yes.
> If everybody had to pay for medical care, medical care would need to be affordable to survive.
How would people with zero income afford it?
Which charities have the funding to cover a $1M NICU stay?
My kiddos were born the day before the third trimester and spent two months in the hospital. Staff it at minimum wage, cap the costs at just the stuff used, and you're still talking a lot of money.
What you can't be sure of is the real cost in terms of resources, and how that would be accounted and paid for. The price of your childrens' stay, to you personally, could be far less than what you originally paid personally if healthcare was not reliant on private subsidy. You would also likely be subsidizing the costs of other children staying in the hospital through public subsidy using your tax dollars. I reckon that last point is where a lot of people in the US get hung up.
I am making the claim that the cost will be prohibitive to handle via charity, especially as a national healthcare strategy, as proposed upthread.
I do not think charity makes up a particularly signficant portion of that cost, no.
That's not charity!
Not according to any common definition.
I, too, can win every argument if I get to make up the definitions.
> compulsory collective charity
Compulsory makes it not charity. That's a tax.
I don't think there is a society in the world that ever had that successfully executed in practice. I live in Norway, and even if the public heath system is probably as good as it gets here, I often use private providers for non-urgent things simply because waiting time can be up to six month otherwise.
And even if you somehow manage this on paper, you'll be very surprised on how markets work. They don't need legal recognition. They don't even need money. See: USSR. Health care was public and medics weren't even a particularly attractive profession because there were too much of them already. Still if you wanted to survive an appointment you'd better have a package of some deficit wares ready.
What denies public healthcare money isn't "wealthy trying to cut public spending down". It's bureaucrats wanting their share of the pork barrel.