It's About Time Astronauts Got Healthcare For Life (mashable.com) 283
Miriam Kramer, reporting for Mashable: NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria flew to space four times for the space agency between 1995 and 2007. While in space, his eyesight deteriorated, a well-documented medical issue NASA's known about for years, and one that many astronauts have experienced first-hand. For many astronauts, their eyesight readjusts once they get back to Earth. That wasn't the case for Lopez-Alegria, though. His eyesight got significantly worse during his time in orbit, and NASA isn't paying for his contacts or doctor visits today, years after his retirement from the agency. However, he still travels to Houston, Texas once per year to allow the agency to gather data about his health, without any expectation that NASA will offer treatment for any conditions that may have developed because of his time in space. In other words, while Lopez-Alegria's eyesight deteriorates, NASA benefits from the data he provides to the American space program, without medical recompense to him today. The lack of health care for former astronauts has long been a sore spot at NASA, but now it threatens the agency's future. Deep space missions beyond the moon, like a mission to Mars, require a better understanding of how extended spaceflight affects the human body.
Don't think you can be like the fat cats (Score:2, Funny)
just because you flew into space. You're one of the plebs, capisce? Now, resume your shopping and stop complaining. Everything is fine.
Re:Don't think you can be like the fat cats (Score:4, Insightful)
just because you flew into space. You're one of the plebs, capisce? Now, resume your shopping and stop complaining. Everything is fine.
"...he still travels to Houston, Texas once per year to allow the agency to gather data about his health...
Just because we few into space doesn't mean we're gonna be your guinea pig for life. You want something from us space plebs? Then fucking pay for it.
Re:Don't think you can be like the fat cats (Score:5, Informative)
The market solution is to give you a $10 off coupon on healthcare for your service in Houston.
As Paul Ryan explained, if you want cheap healthcare you should have made better life decisions, like becoming a congressman rather than an astronaut.
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And you continue to sell unfiltered access to reverse engineering your brain to Facebook every single fucking day for zero payback. So what?
This is the 21st century. You don't own your data, your body, or your mind. Get over it already.
Not that I don't think astronauts shouldn't get free health care. You just picked the wrong argument.
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And you continue to sell unfiltered access to reverse engineering your brain to Facebook every single fucking day for zero payback. So what?
This is the 21st century. You don't own your data, your body, or your mind. Get over it already.
Not that I don't think astronauts shouldn't get free health care. You just picked the wrong argument.
Did you just compare voluntary participation in the global narcissist experiment (a.k.a. social media) to a highly-trained astronaut who continues to suffer from injuries sustained while risking life and limb to further our understanding of space?
Give me a fucking break. You accuse me of picking the wrong argument when you can't even make one.
National Health System (Score:5, Insightful)
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... they would get free health care.
Well... "free" as in "tax payer funded".
Personally, I would like to see some level of tax-funded national/universal "basic" (or catastrophic) health care/insurance with additional coverage available via the private insurance market.
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I believe most places with universal coverage allow a secondary private market, if that's what you mean. I don't really care if Jobs was able to afford a private doctor (or team) at the end of his life - I care if other people cannot get cancer treatment because of we preserve that as an option.
Trumpfinger (Score:5, Funny)
Bond:
Trumpfinger:
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Bond:
Trumpfinger:
At this point, it would, technically, be "Ryanfinger", but I digress.
SNL Weekend Update offered an alternative spelling for "TrumpCare" (or "RyanCare") -> "Don't Care".
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Oh, they'd all be complicit, sure enough, including that stupid twerp Ryan. But just as the ACA, put together by congress, became "Obamacare"; so would congress's new unaffordable / unavailable lack-of-care act become "Trumpcare."
IMHO, the legislative buck stops when it gets the president's signature. The only way it would not be Trumpcare is if it made it through both houses, and then Trump vetoed it. I don't think that's likely. Do you?
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Oh, they'd all be complicit, sure enough, including that stupid twerp Ryan. But just as the ACA, put together by congress, became "Obamacare"; so would congress's new unaffordable / unavailable lack-of-care act become "Trumpcare."
IMHO, the legislative buck stops when it gets the president's signature. The only way it would not be Trumpcare is if it made it through both houses, and then Trump vetoed it. I don't think that's likely. Do you?
Nope, I'm with you on that. Just pointing out that it's basically Ryan's idea - Trump doesn't seem to have any of his own...
Please stop the hyperbole (Score:5, Interesting)
I totally agree that NASA should pay for the most top-notch healthcare for life for all astronauts. There are not many and they deserve it for the risks they take and the benefits we all gain...
However this line is absurd:
"now it threatens the agency's future"
No, no it does not. Even if NASA shot all astronauts on retirement there would still be a healthy supply of overqualified candidates for flying in space.
I wish people would stop weakening perfectly good arguments by trying to lace them with drama.
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A few people is actually a healthy supply of astronauts, considering there are never more than a handful of Americans in space at a time.
ObamaCare (Score:2, Insightful)
Wasn't the ACA supposed to fix this?
Re:ObamaCare (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It was largely an attempt to get everybody in America on a health care plan, the idea being to grow the size of the pool of people paying into health plans, and distributing the costs across all Americans.
It's had a vigorous effort to repeal it before it was passed, and the alternative is shaping up to be right out of a Christmas Carol: "If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
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It was largely an attempt to get everybody in America on a health care plan
It was only an attempt to do that if that was a likely outcome. It wasn't. The likely outcome was the working poor paying a tax penalty while still not having health insurance, which is what they are now doing.
It was predicted what would happen. The predictions came true. I guess you will say they were just "misguided" but leave out the fact that they were "misguided" by their biggest corporate donors, the insurance companies that benefited.
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Back here in the real world, the ACA resulted in tens of millions more people getting health insurance than before... because the working poor get it cheap or free and the middle class and wealthy who pretend to be poor only threaten to drop it and pay penalties, they don't actually do it in measurable numbers.
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I jest, but Lopez-Alegria is already a veteran, so he receives health care benefits. I'm not sure how Miriam Kramer is trying to spin this, because if the U.S. had a single payer system, Lopez-Alegria would still be receiving the same level of care as the general population; nothing better or worse than he already receives.
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Wasn't the ACA supposed to fix this?
Yes. His vision care should be covered by his insurance which in turn should be federally subsidized if he doesn't have enough income -- unless his income is very low, he's too young for Medicare and he lives in a state that has refused Medicaid expansion. The issue presumably isn't that he doesn't have coverage, it's that he has to pay for it.
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Yes. But in the batshit crazy American government people are too concerned about making sure someone else fails than to bring a nation forward.
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"Every person for himself"
Single payer, but not what you were told was single payer
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So you are claiming that Ayn Rand was wrong? Where exactly was she wrong? We only have literally many hundreds of failed socialist and communist examples to choose from over the last 100 years to work with. Come on now Jim Taggert, enlighten us. Dr. Ferris' opinion does not count as an argument.
I do find it interesting that you mention her. I constantly think that certain people really believe this is the "Age of the Heart" and that science and reason are foolish existence of the past. As long as you
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So you are claiming that Ayn Rand was wrong? Where exactly was she wrong?
When she fell in love with the philosophies of a murderer.
Then again, most people have not read her works.
Most people can't stomach her works.
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You missed the moral lesson completely. People will turn the other cheek for so long. Vigilantes appear all over the place in history, and generally tend to be as abusive as the people they overthrow. Is the vigilante who murders career criminals worse than the career criminals who takes everything destroying the lives of a helpless populace?
You can't stomach what you fail to understand, or even consider an alternative perspective.
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First, read what I wrote to "drinkypoo" [slashdot.org]. Sorry, they are named you are not. You missed the lesson completely.
Next, you are claiming that we don't have any failed Socialist or Communist states to determine points of failure? Venezuela didn't just recently collapse? How about Honduras? Costa Rica? Cuba? The Ukraine, Greece, East Germany, Serbia, Vietnam all can't be used as an example of why those states failed? Many of those failed multiple times for the same reasons. Nope, no examples except in your
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The best systems appear to be a mix of socialism and capitalism, although that may depend on your personal view of "good". Science cannot put value judgments on trade-offs, only make probabilistic predictions at best.
We may be able to come to an agreeable way to define the mix, but it's surely related to very limited Government and Free market (with the Government performing it's intended role in breaking up and preventing monopolization). Taxes can support Welfare programs, but bureaucracies must be limited.
Anyhow, I didn't give a value judgement in the list, unless you interpret the intended humor as ridicule, which I suppose is a legitimate possible interpretation, but it was intended as mostly humor and you are welcome to present a list of ACA names such "CommieCare", etc.
It was hard to take the line any other way since I know the works. Rand was pro capitalism. "CommieCare" would have been seen differently since it's more relative to the other members of the list.
By the way, socialism and communism are mostly different things. Socialism mostly describes an economic system while communism mostly describes a political system. But they are imperfect terms and a cleaner classification system would confuse and/or bored readers.
Socialism is Com
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I will agree but using a more general rule that ANY system tends to turn into some form of a dictatorship or similar when rocked by enough chaos and distress. A case of slippery slopes can be made for any system, with the end result of the those slippery slopes a very hierarchical political system.
The Great Depression came somewhat close to up-ending our democracy as it did in other countries, and resulted in big changes here also.
Why ar
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Don't alot of them have the VA? (Score:2)
Don't alot of them have the VA?
We just need to make it so that all astronauts get VA.
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This would be the correct course of action I would believe.
However, that might put NASA bureaucratically under the military, which looks bad (space militarization step 1).
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It's not something I would imagine them wanting whether they qualify for it or not.
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But they need more then what Congressmen and their families get need. As in the tests and other conditions. The VA does deal with stuff that astronauts may need vs someone with a deskjob.
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Universal healthcare would fix this (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just a small example of how the US healthcare system is a failure.
Every other Western democracy has universal healthcare coverage. Most alongside private coverage, and some (at least Canada) purely public.
The US system is harmful on so many levels. This includes poor outcomes, 2x to 3x higher cost per-capita than any other system, transferring the cost of healthcare to employers and consequently acting as a strong deterrent to recruiting Americans and an inducement to offshoring work, etc.
But Americans *love* their private health insurance, so it's not politically viable to discuss a real solution. Only crappy band-aids, like ACA (which the Republicans successfully rebranded "Obamacare") and - soon - a watered down version we'll be calling Trumpcare.
Americans object to mandating the purchase of health insurance, but they forget that treating people who present at a hospital is mandatory. Making health insurance mandatory is symmetrical. If it's optional, hospitals should be allowed - and perhaps required - to turn away patients without the ability to pay. Don't like that outcome? OK, drop the objection to mandatory coverage then.
OK, rant off. :-)
Re:Universal healthcare would fix this (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit, just when I thought facts about US healthcare couldn't surprise me anymore, I learn that astronauts - one of the toughest and highest profile government jobs you could have - don't have guaranteed healthcare later in life? That seems insane, especially given there's really not that many astronauts out there to begin with.
I'm from a country with public universal health care, with a private option (i.e. you can pay for private health insurance on top of the public system if you think it's worth it - it covers extras like dental, cosmetic surgery, etc.) But private insurance isn't tied to employment. You just buy it from a company like you would car insurance or home insurance. Having said that, the public system is good quality (you'll probably be treated by the same doctors either way), so there's no need to worry if you can't afford it. It's not a perfect system but it's gotta be better than what's happening in the US.
If years ago US healthcare was not tied to jobs an (Score:2)
If years ago US healthcare was not tied to jobs and was not year to year. Then it would not gotten to the point that it is at now.
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It was at this moment that it stopped being real insurance and started being the bullshit "maintenance package" that we have today.
You know, health insurance originally covered shit like hospital stays completely. Thats what it was for. You paid a small fee now because you couldn't deal with the small but real risk of running into something you couldnt afford.
Fast forward to Obama, Pe
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Well, except they don't. Most people hate their health insurance company.
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I don't know how great "it seems" but I live in Canada, and it's quite good.
World-class treatment of any major problem, with modest or no delay.
The only real downside is that if you have a non-urgent problem (nasty head cold, road rash from a bike accident, etc.) you could wait 4-5 hours for service. Similarly, if you have to schedule a non-urgent treatment, such as imaging or surgery, but there is no life-threatening condition or rapid deterioration, it could take from a few weeks to a few months to get s
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Yes, actually it is...especially compared to the US. Let's start by comparing infant mortality, then we can talk about percentage of the population covered.
Astronauts shouldn't get this special privilige (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we give everybody the privilege, instead of limiting it to Astronauts?
Or at least expand the offering to everybody who's ever wanted to be an astronaut?
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Don't be crazy this is America. Land of the free to get financially crippled due to preventable illnesses.
Champion HR676 to your Congresspeople. Now. (Score:2)
The first question is great, a right and proper way to respond to any entitlement program aimed at improving the healthcare outcomes of a subset of Americans. The second question gives up on the promise of the first and is all too typical of the weak US Left.
Right now those who were really unhappy that Donald Trump became US President are letting Pres. Trump set the agenda for how US healthcare ought to work while pointlessly going on about preserving ObamaCare. ObamaCare (nee RomneyCare) was a gift to the
Already have it (Score:3)
It is true they do not have "access to the doctor of his choice", all former military have access to VA benefits for life.
Which is more than can be said for 99% of US born citizens.
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Note that the jet hours requirement in that document is from 2004 and applied to Commanders and Pilots only, not Mission Specialists.
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Even Mission Specialists are Civil Servants though and, as such, should be covered under both federal health benefits during employment and FEHB under retirement unless they quit and go to a non-governmental job following their service and never come back. If he was disabled during service, he should be able to get disability compensation (unless he didn't elect disability, which would be silly).
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Wrong forum (Score:2)
It is almost like 32/33 developed countries... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's almost like the cognitive dissonance exists at a fundamental level such that no progress can be made.
People in jails / prsions get better at little to (Score:2)
People in jails / prisons get better then the ER at little to cost. And it's costs us a lot just to keep them locked up.
health care tied to jobs and for profit 3rd party' (Score:2)
health care tied to jobs and for profit 3rd party's are the real issues as well the pre-ex system.
In the past doctor's needed to spend alot of the time fighting junk pre-ex BS just to get paid and there way to much billing code BS that the 3rd party's try to point to say you did this wrong we are not paying.
We need to expand medicare + medicaid to all.
Australia has a system like that and doctors get paided about the same as they do here.
Re:It is almost like 32/33 developed countries... (Score:4, Interesting)
That all sounds like a great idea to me.
My guess is that it would cost a tiny fraction compared to the costs of the US having a larger military than the next several countries combined.
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You don't need a constitutional amendment. That's a crazy burden. We can just fucking do it (see: Medicaid)
Also, frankly, the ninth and fourteenth amendments ought cover health care by this point. Substandard education is already covered by the ninth and fourteenth, and that's without a new amendment.
Maybe 2 dozen? Just enlist them for life. (Score:2)
Some strange things here... (Score:3)
All sides of the politics making points. How about just focus on the realities: We're talking a few dozen people, and longitudinal study is of continued value, so how much money can we possibly be talking about?
Not only that, but it's actually rather amazing that they're not covering the treatment as part of the agreement to study his eyes. I was pretty much told to expect to have to have on the table at least partial coverage if I wanted to do this sort of research on human subjects--as part of getting permission to do it at all. (Compensation of research subjects is a standard outright requirement. You don't have it in there somewhere, even if it's just a shiny gold star sticker, and the only real question ou
It's about time all americans got healthcare (Score:2)
VA Benefits vs Military care/TRICARE (Score:2)
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For the most part, you're right. If your income is low enough, there's no copay. If you have a service-connected disability, any treatments, medications or equipment needed to treat that condition are free, regardless of your income. (My hearing loss is 0%, but my hearing aids and batteries are provided a
I have Altered the Deal. Pray I do not ... (Score:2)
I have Altered the Deal. Pray I do not .alter it further.
The health issues of space travel are well documented. He agreed to the salary and benefits in exchange for the work and risk involved. If he wants medical care, when he can give back the percentage of his salary that would of went towards that.
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> The health issues of space travel are well documented.
So are those from being sent into a warzone while in the forces, yet for whatever reason the government cover the costs of any injury incurred while doing one, but not the other.
It seems like an odd double-standard to me.
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No, both were agreed upon before hand. So they are the same standard.
Quid pro quo (Score:2)
> However, he still travels to Houston, Texas once per year to allow the agency to gather data about his health,
If it was me, I'd stop doing that and offer to resume on the condition that NASA also pay for the necessary health care.
Who knew ... ? (Score:2)
The last A in NASA is for "Assholes" ?
Flew into space on a gigantic bomb.... (Score:2)
Ask him if he would change his mind and become a desk jockey or lab jockey if he could do it all over again knowing he would have to pay for contacts and eye exams.
Personally, I'd submit myself to annual proctology exams with a not so gentle handed doctor and then pay double for them if it would get me in
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"That wasn't the case for Lopez-Alegria, though. His eyesight got significantly worse during his time in orbit, and NASA isn't paying for his contacts or doctor visits today, years after his retirement from the agency. However, he still travels to Houston, Texas once per year to allow the agency to gather data about his health, without any expectation that NASA will offer treatment for any conditions that may have developed because of his time in space. In other words, while Lopez-Alegria's eyesight deterio
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Yes, he is special, yet what should go without saying for him, should also be offered to all Americans like in the rest of the civilized world.
Then again you clearly don't fall into that category, and it's because of assholes like you that there is no public healthcare plan in place.
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Spot on. I fortunately live in Canada, but I still have friends and family in the US, and it's beyond frustrating that they suffer, because these idiot GOP voters insist on shooting themselves in the foot.
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How many occupations have health side-effects? Thousands. You are just one of many, bub. Get in line. You aren't special.
Hardly any of those occupations put someones life at risk in order to further humanity. And considering there are billions of humans and less than 1,000 of them have ever left the confines of our atmosphere, I'd say that makes them rather special.
Oh, and good luck with that bedside manner of yours. You're going to need it when caring for your loved ones who hold the occupation of aging human.
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Wait until it's your turn and we turn the cold shoulder to you when you can't afford your medications when you're 65+ and we tell you "well you should have made better business investments to cover for your retirement shouldn't you have?"
tbh I'd be fine with that, unlike a lot of people I'm capable of planning ahead and saving money. In this hypothetical, my complaints would stem from the fact that I'd spent the last 45 years paying to subsidize others who were incapable of planning ahead and was then told that as a reward for my good planning I'm ineligible for any assistance.
Re:Tough shit -- welcome to the real world (Score:5, Insightful)
this is why i cant stand liberal democrats, always thinking other people should pay for their decisions
Like the decision to get sick or have a genetic condition? Yeah, you should have picked better parents, you loser!
Seriously, dude, this is how insurance and social programs work. We all pay in.
Like when you crash your car....all those other people who aren't crashing their cars are paying for yours to be fixed.
Like when your house catches fire...other people whose houses haven't caught fire are helping to pay for yours to be rebuilt.
Like when your children go to school...all those other people who don't even have children are helping pay for the school your kids go to.
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Seriously, dude, this is how insurance ... programs work. We all pay in.
The way that real insurance programs work is that we all pay in proportion to our individual risk. Real insurance is not a charity program or a wealth-transfer scheme. It is a stable arrangement in a voluntary and competitive market precisely because the premiums are balanced with respect to each customer's actuarial risk. Coverage and premiums are negotiated before risk is realized (real insurance does not cover "pre-existing conditions"). You are not subsidizing the other customers, and they are not subsi
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this is why i cant stand liberal democrats, always thinking other people should pay for their decisions
Actually it was Ronald Reagan, not the "liberal democrats," who signed the federal law that hospital emergency rooms couldn't turn people away just because they can't pay.
This is, basically, the unfunded federal mandate that Obamacare is solving: when people with no insurance have no other way to get medical care than to go to an emergency room, and everybody else has to pay for that very expensive way of getting medical care, it makes sense to require people to have insurance.
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1. it's absolutely shit insurance, the patient would *still* wind up growing broke.
2. by still using private insurance companies, we're creating a fucky market distortion on insurance premiums that people are now forced to pay.
Case in point, on two separate occasions i've worked for a small company that didn't offer insurance, so i paid out of pocket.
first time: age 28, pre-ACA, premium was 117 out of pocket each month.
2nd time: age 33 with ACA, monthly premium: 227 each month
In both instances it was basica
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The problem in the US is we already have two giant government systems: Medicaid/Medicare ($1.1 trillion) and the VA (military - $182 billion). Medicaid/Medicare is single payer and VA is single-provider. Both systems are horrible in their own special way, and there is a huge credibility gap whenever someone advocates that the US government should provide healthcare. The last two presidents have the top two spots in the record books for Medicare/Medicaid expansion, and it still sucks.
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If you don't, you're a massive hypocrite.
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I pay for other people's bullshit wars
Obama holds the record. 26,171 dropped in 2016 alone. So many that we ran out of bombs to drop on Syria
Typical Democrat blaming the Republicans for what the Democrats did.
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Re:Tough shit -- welcome to the real world (Score:5, Informative)
Both parties murder people all around the world, but republicans are consistently the ones who want to spend more to do it -- even under Obama they were calling for bigger military spending increases than Obama wanted, and now that they have control they're pushing huge new military spending. Likewise, both parties like having the world's highest incarceration rate but republicans consistently try to spend more on militarizing the police and building more prisons and privatizing prisons to add more expensive corruption and perverse incentives.
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This is nowhere near the record. During the Vietnam war USA dropped several millions of bombs every year.
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on Laos. Vietnam received twice the amount.
Re:Tough shit -- welcome to the real world (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem here is that refusing to pay up front for medical costs leads to a whole host of social ills further down the line, that often cost much more. When someone gets a medical intervention that they cannot afford, they will inevitably become insolvent, either through bankruptcy or through simply abandoning the debt. In the end either someone else (the taxpayers) has to pay the bill or it gets written off as a bad debt, but in the meantime the person who has gone into some sort of insolvency is in a much worse state, either having lost almost everything through bankruptcy, or exists in a debt netherworld where wages are garnisheed or they end up simply working under the table. There are significant social costs to this; spousal and child abuse, mental health and suicide.
The narrow view taken by people that "I dont' want to pay for it" ignores the fact that you do end up paying for it in many other ways. Refusing to cover peoples' health just kicks the can further down the road, and costing everyone a lot more money.
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The narrow view taken by people that "I dont' want to pay for it" ignores the fact that you do end up paying for it in many other ways. Refusing to cover peoples' health just kicks the can further down the road, and costing everyone a lot more money.
And that's it in a nutshell. We all need to pay in ahead of time to avoid much, much higher costs (and worse outcomes) later.
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We can do this in a proper free market capitalist way, though. At birth, each baby should be presented with a bill for $316,600 (the average lifetime cost of health insurance). If the baby or its parents cannot promptly pay this bill in advance, it gets aborted for financial irresponsibility. This plan could get conservative support because it'd instantly solve the long-lamented probl
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Not to mention if we choose as a society to pay together, it can be a lit cheaper for everyone. Currently we collectively pay 4 times as much per person as any other country and we have a lot less to show for it.
Those of us who do have health insurance might actually pay less under a universal healthcare system than we do now even while covering other people.
Re:Tough shit -- welcome to the real world (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention if we choose as a society to pay together, it can be a lit cheaper for everyone. Currently we collectively pay 4 times as much per person as any other country and we have a lot less to show for it.
Those of us who do have health insurance might actually pay less under a universal healthcare system than we do now even while covering other people.
That only happens in other countries because other countries have come to grips with the fact that running a healthcare system for profit is not merely inefficient, but immoral. The US doesn't understand that.
Which is kind of peculiar, because the US healthcare system was largely non-profit for most people for most of the history of the country [essentialhospitals.org]. Why do you think all these hospitals all over the country have the names of saints in them? Well, today it's because of marketing. Calling them Uncle Bob's Chop Shop and Surgery Emporium just doesn't have quite the same ring. But originally it was because they were charity hospitals. Not just non-profit, but literally free to the majority of the recipients. They were founded and run by church organizations, especially the monetary behemoth that is the Catholic Church.
Other countries pay much much less because other countries have determined how much each and every drug costs to make, how much each and every procedure costs to perform, and how much each and every machine costs to make, and dictated the amount that will be paid for each of those things. And drug manufacturers, hospitals, and equipment manufacturers manage to get along just fine. They just don't get to rake in record profits every year. Oh, and they can almost completely avoid the monstrous parasitic growth that the US suffers from known as the health insurance industry: that most ridiculous organization whose sole purpose is to prevent healthcare.
Healthcare in the US started as a charity and somehow evolved into a mammoth profit-taking entity and there is no way back for us, ever, because of the first italicized word in my preceding paragraph. Because the only way out is to use government for its intended purpose, "to promote the general welfare" as it says in the Constitution, but we can't do that because "muh freedums!" And because of the root of this entire thread, still reflected in the comment subject: "Re: Tough shit -- welcome to the real world", which translates with ease as "Fuck you -- I got mine".
So Christian, these Americans... Like Jesus said in the Bible, "Fuck you, I got mine."
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Oh Christ, save us from AC's with claims that they're supersavers and anecdotal stories of people blowing their wages.
How does one save for anything with a low paying job, with rent and utilities and the need for basic nutrition? Either you're living with your parents, or your heavily distorting your income claims. But the real problem is that you're just some anonymous coward on the Internet making anecdotal claims that are wholly unrepresentative.
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Oh Christ, save us from AC's with claims that they're supersavers and anecdotal stories of people blowing their wages.
Exactly.
All you self-righteous supersavers: Try and save up for heart surgery or a cerebral aneurysm. Just try. Or try and save up for 30 days in a critical care unit. Let me know how that works out for ya.
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If you have a pre-existing condition, prior to ACA, you couldn't afford the premiums at all. That was the whole point of the personal mandate, and even the Republicans recognize this, though they're trying to incentivize buying insurance through the threat of the insurance company forcing huge premiums on you if you don't keep an insurance policy going at all times. But there are lots of reasons why one can't afford premiums that have nothing to do with being irresponsible.
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Total whoosh. You don't need to save enough to pay for the medical bill, you only need to save enough to be able to pay for the insurance. That's your 'share'. If you foist this expense onto the rest of society, you're screwing over everyone else. Nobody expects any single person to be able to come up with millions of dollars for a medical procedure. That's what insurance is for. The problem is the people who don't think they should have to carry insurance but still expect the care when the time comes.
And the Republican solution is to let those people who don't think they should "have" to carry insurance not get insurance.
That's freedom. But we as a society have made the decision that we aren't allowed to tell them "ok, you didn't buy insurance, so just die." So then we get to pay for them when they need care.
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But we as a society have made the decision that we aren't allowed to tell them "ok, you didn't buy insurance, so just die."
And herein lies the problem. You made that decision "as a society", so you should pay for it. Leave the rest of us alone. Sometimes people just have to live with the consequences of their own decisions, even if that means dying. That includes choosing not to buy insurance and subsequently being unable to afford a necessary medical procedure. If you want to interfere in that process, do so at your own expense.
Welcome to the real world, why don't you just die (Score:5, Insightful)
...Sometimes people just have to live with the consequences of their own decisions, even if that means dying. That includes choosing not to buy insurance and subsequently being unable to afford a necessary medical procedure.
That is a logical and self-consistant attitude: the solution to people not buying insurance is that they should just die.
If Republicans would just honestly state it that way, I'd be ok with it.
--they would have to stop saying that they're "pro life," of course.
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If there is literally no good reason anyone should not have insurance, why don't we skip all the bullshit paperwork and just poof that insurance into existence. We can call it universal single payer health insurance.
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How can we put more money in the hands of the rich... while shitting on the group that voted us in.
Thats what the Democrats have been doing starting with Bill Clinton.
.. then they deregulate the few things that shouldnt be at the request of corporations, over-regulate the things that shouldn't be at the request of corporations, and their finale was to give "the working class" the "opportunity" to taste pure fascism by forcing them to buy insurance from a corporation that they can't afford.
Sure, they tell platitudes like "we support the working class" and "everyone deserves an opportunity"
When was t
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There is, however, a substantial risk that someone without car insurance could financially ruin me as a result of their lack of control over their car.
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Here, let me offer you a hand getting off of that slippery slope... [cdc.gov].