Economics... (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Seven
- Start date
@Seven is my hero.
thinking the US healthcare system (if you wanna call it like that) is
good, or even worse, better than most of the european ones
you are eather rich, have never been seriously ill before,
or are working for a private insurance company to think like that.
a lot of people in the states simply can't afford the insurances,
which isn't exactly their fault.
all they can do is hope to never get a serious disease,
otherwise they'll be ruined.
and serious doesn't even have to be THAT serious. btw.
thinking the US healthcare system (if you wanna call it like that) is
good, or even worse, better than most of the european ones
you are eather rich, have never been seriously ill before,
or are working for a private insurance company to think like that.
a lot of people in the states simply can't afford the insurances,
which isn't exactly their fault.
all they can do is hope to never get a serious disease,
otherwise they'll be ruined.
and serious doesn't even have to be THAT serious. btw.
Dude. I work as an insurance lawyer. I know that there is always a point where they stop insuring. An aleatory contract is indeed a sort of bet. The insurance company hopes the risk will not materialize. A 65 year old cancer survivor however will always need healthcare. The risk will always materialize. You simply can't get insurance if you know the risk you are insuring for will happen.
How do you not get this? It just goes against the basics of insurance. Which is why, in real life, insurance companies will refuse to insure.
How do you not get this? It just goes against the basics of insurance. Which is why, in real life, insurance companies will refuse to insure.
No you're not.
Well, let me put it this way: Healthcare to me isn't necessarily a human right on the same level as say freedom of expression or personal liberty, but it is an essential human need. And any economic system should in its essence be geared to serve the needs of its people. Now I believe that in a lot of sectors (as Juliano put it, iphones, toothbrushes and cars), indeed the majority if you were to quantify it, the mechanisms of the free market do quite a good job in general. Not a perfect job by any means, but a better job than any other system I know (e.g. central planning). But in some sectors, the free market simply fails (at times spectacularly) to really achieve that goal, and one of them is healthcare.
Or in another way, it is very much possible to provide healthcare to virtually the entirety of a first world society at a price that's absolutely affordable for society, and in reality has been shown to be actually cheaper per capita than partial private healthcare. And not worrying about healthcare is an incredible relief for the average guy.
Well, let me put it this way: Healthcare to me isn't necessarily a human right on the same level as say freedom of expression or personal liberty, but it is an essential human need. And any economic system should in its essence be geared to serve the needs of its people. Now I believe that in a lot of sectors (as Juliano put it, iphones, toothbrushes and cars), indeed the majority if you were to quantify it, the mechanisms of the free market do quite a good job in general. Not a perfect job by any means, but a better job than any other system I know (e.g. central planning). But in some sectors, the free market simply fails (at times spectacularly) to really achieve that goal, and one of them is healthcare.
Or in another way, it is very much possible to provide healthcare to virtually the entirety of a first world society at a price that's absolutely affordable for society, and in reality has been shown to be actually cheaper per capita than partial private healthcare. And not worrying about healthcare is an incredible relief for the average guy.
There is debate about whether or not it is a human right, but I think it's fairly obvious that, in so far it is not today, it will be very soon.
And like I will keep explaining to people, private health insurance will not work for society as a whole. You will get entire segments of the population who are either virtually not able to get insurance (high premiums) or are literally not able to get insurance (uninsurable). With insurances being corporations, the prices will go up. I know people will say that the insurances will try to one up each other and that premiums will go down. I know the theory. It is not what happens in the real world. In the real world you get price fixing. I know it's illegal and I know it shouldn't happen. Well, guess what? It does. And it's incredibly hard to prove it does.
Other than that they will refuse to pay. You could sue them, yes. But chances are you signed off on an insurance policy without reading the fine print. And if you did read it, you probably didn't really understand what it meant anyway. So you might lose the lawsuit. Now you not only have your medical bills to worry about, you also get to pay your own lawyer and the lawyer fees of the insurance company. Good luck ever recovering from that setback. What if you win the lawsuit? Well, congratulations, now the insurance company will have to pay for whatever ailment you have. This time. They will also choose to not insure you in the future. In fact, not only will they not insure you, other insurance companies won't take you either. Because not only have you now demonstrated that you will need health care and are thus uninsurable, you've also shown that you are willing to sue and potentially cost thousands if not millions in damages. So yeah, they're going to take their business elsewhere.
Basically if you go down the route of private health insurance only, you're going to get fucked bigtime as a society.
But Juliano13 and Andy live in capitalist la la land, so I guess all these practical real world concerns are of no importance.
