Obamacare: TRWTF

mott555

@Matt Westwood said:

I know food over there is desperately unhealthy (there's even sugar in tinned carrots, for fuck's sake) but come on, live without a bag of fucking pills for ten minutes, you wussies.

Healthcare over here really isn't. I'm sure it's the "90% of everything is crap" rule rearing its ugly head again, but my experience with doctors has not been great. Usually the nurse takes your vitals, you talk to the doctor for a whopping two minutes and thirty seconds, he writes a prescription, you try it and it doesn't work, so you go back, and wash-rinse-repeat. If you're lucky they stumble into what's actually wrong, usually completely by accident.

Case study: In my early twenties my health started to decline. I was usually tired and low-energy, got sick all the time, developed poor cold tolerance, had some heart arrhythmias, coughed a lot, and slept a lot. I visited with doctors and they'd prescribe something or take some test and decide there was nothing wrong with me. I just accepted the fact that I wasn't a teenager anymore and that's probably what I'd be like from then on.

Finally, towards the beginning of this year I got really sick and just wouldn't get better. Eventually I collapsed due to severe fever and had to go to the hospital. And then they did a chest X-ray and found I had pneumonia. They put me on an antibiotic regimen and within a week I felt better than I had in years. Virtually all of the stuff I'd developed went away.

Yes, I had a walking pneumonia for years!

It seems doctors are more interested in writing prescriptions than actually finding out what's wrong with you, and their methodology is not much more sophisticated than throwing darts at a wall to select a treatment option.

locallunatic

@Matt Westwood said:

I know food over there is desperately unhealthy (there's even sugar in tinned carrots, for fuck's sake) but come on, live without a bag of fucking pills for ten minutes, you wussies.

No thanks, I'll continue grabbing my large supplies of meds as ketoacidosis is no fun.

boomzilla

@Matt Westwood said:

TRWTF is that it seems to take an inordinate amount of effort to be able to stay healthy in the US. Isn't there anyone over there who doesn't need medical attention for longer than a month at a time?

Or maybe TRWTF is that people believe what you said resembles the truth?

@Matt Westwood said:

I know food over there is desperately unhealthy (there's even sugar in tinned carrots, for fuck's sake) but come on, live without a bag of fucking pills for ten minutes, you wussies

Eh, the "problem" is that food is really cheap, and biology takes over and we eat more than we need, because it's so easy to do.

TheCPUWizard

@Matt Westwood said:

TRWTF is that it seems to take an inordinate amount of effort to be able to stay healthy in the US. Isn't there anyone over there who doesn't need medical attention for longer than a month at a time?

I know food over there is desperately unhealthy (there's even sugar in tinned carrots, for fuck's sake) but come on, live without a bag of fucking pills for ten minutes, you wussies.

"Staying Healthy" may have nothing to do with medical care... Consider that for adults, the median time between medical visits of any type is 3.7 years [based on 2011 data]

Matt_Westwood

@TheCPUWizard said:

@Matt Westwood said:
TRWTF is that it seems to take an inordinate amount of effort to be able to stay healthy in the US. Isn't there anyone over there who doesn't need medical attention for longer than a month at a time?

I know food over there is desperately unhealthy (there's even sugar in tinned carrots, for fuck's sake) but come on, live without a bag of fucking pills for ten minutes, you wussies.
"Staying Healthy" may have nothing to do with medical care... Consider that for adults, the median time between medical visits of any type is 3.7 years [based on 2011 data]

Sheesh, that is a heck of a lot. If I go once in three decades I consider myself going through a seriously unhealthy patch.

TheCPUWizard

@Matt Westwood said:

Sheesh, that is a *heck* of a lot. If I go once in three decades I consider myself going through a seriously unhealthy patch.

Actually it is quite small. Remember this is the median (not the mean), then look at:

1) People who go for general annual checkups
2) People who go for specific periodic exams (breast cancer, prostate, eye, dental)
3) People who have an existing medical condition (in this case pregnancy counts)

The data distribution is NOT a gaussian bell curve.

(I trust you are actually in good health if you have not had an eye exam, a dental visit, nor any type of doctor visit (got your flu shot?), in nearly 30 years....)

beginner_

@Mason Wheeler said:

TRWTF is the entire situation around the Affordable Care Act.
It was originally thought up by a bunch of Republicans.

Obamacare was derived from how other countries do it, namely the one I live in and we have had obligatory health care for 2 decades now.

However the main question a society must ask itself: Do we really need to spend $$$$$$ for prolonging a cancer patients life for 1 year? And all similar questions. If the answer is “Yes” then healthcare will always get more and more expensive the more such treatments are found.

dhromed

@TheCPUWizard said:

I trust you are actually in good health if you have not had an eye exam, a dental visit, nor any type of doctor visit (got your flu shot?), in nearly 30 years....)

What counts as a medical visit?

I have new glasses about every 6 years, but beyond childhood I have never talked to a doctor about any physical ailment yet. I know that's pretty exceptional.

TheCPUWizard

@dhromed said:

What counts as a medical visit?
I have new glasses about every 6 years, but beyond childhood I have never talked to a doctor about any physical ailment yet. I know that's pretty exceptional.

Multiple studies give about the same results. For a 50 year old (I dont know how old you are) who has not had a complete checkup in 5 years, there is approximately a 20% chance the have/had a medical condition that was curable/tratable/preventable which will shorted their life by AT LEAST 1 year.

Now, I acknowledge that a persons desire to live to a "ripe old age" vs. "die while there is still quality of life" is a personal choice; but I still find the statistics quite sombering.

LevB

@Mason Wheeler said:

When something as fundamental as staying healthy is so expensive that the average person can't afford to take care of it out of his own pocket, that is the problem we should be solving. Insurance does nothing to decrease the underlying costs of health care; it just sweeps the problem under the rug.

Also, having a roof over one's head is fundamental. So instead of having people buy fire insurance, we should lower the cost of new houses, so if a house burns down, its owner can just buy a new one. Insurance does nothing to decrease the underlying costs of building houses; it just sweeps the problem under the rug.

boomzilla

LOL. Just saw this. If you have questions, they say to call:

1-800-318-2596
      F U CKYO

It's a refreshing bit of governmental honesty. Or maybe they're just excited about mandatory birth control coverage.

Zemm

@levbor said:

Filed under: Someone doesn't understand insurance

Is that someone you? Claiming on insurance should be exceptional, not the norm. Insurance is paying money for something that should "never" happen, not something you expect will happen.

I've made two insurance claims in my life: once I dropped and broke my phone, got a new one; a storm damage my house, got a new roof. Both cases involved paperwork and excess. I don't consider going to the doctor or using my health "insurance" as an insurance claim. Even then I've only used it for extras like glasses and the "claim" was handled automatically without paperwork. We ask knew I was going to get glasses so it is made easy. You don't expect hail to cause a metal roof to leak, so that was a little harder.

boomzilla

@Zemm said:

@levbor said:
Filed under: Someone doesn't understand insurance

Is that someone you? Claiming on insurance should be exceptional, not the norm. Insurance is paying money for something that should "never" happen, not something you expect will happen.

It's really more of a bet. The seller is betting that you won't claim more than the buyer pays, and the buyer is betting that he'll claim more than he pays. In reality, the buyer hopes he doesn't have to make a claim, because that means that something bad has happened. Health insurance in the US is a little bit insurance mixed in with a lot of pre-paid service plan and subject to lots of retarded distortions made by various laws. Which is why all Right Thinking People know the way to fix it is to add more retarded distortions, or maybe just go whole hog and turn the whole thing into a distortion.

PJH

@Zemm said:

@levbor said:
Filed under: Someone doesn't understand insurance

Is that someone you? Claiming on insurance should be exceptional, not the norm. Insurance is paying money for something that should "never" happen, not something you expect will happen.

Would assurance be a better term? Not that, according to that link, the US uses that term.

boomzilla

@PJH said:

@Zemm said:
@levbor said:
Filed under: Someone doesn't understand insurance

Is that someone you? Claiming on insurance should be exceptional, not the norm. Insurance is paying money for something that should "never" happen, not something you expect will happen.
Would assurance be a better term? Not that, according to that link, the US uses that term.

It's more accurate, though as you say, no one in the US uses it except as a typo. A more reasonable state might be to have both as separate products, though of course, that would probably make things even more complicated.

boomzilla

Immigrants socializing industries Americans won't socialize: <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2536805>Canadian firm hired to build troubled Obamacare exchanges.

dkf

@PJH said:

Would assurance be a better term? Not that, according to that link, the US uses that term.

Would they prefer butturance?

DaveK1

@Severity One said:

@Mason Wheeler said:
We don't need 40 million less uninsured people in this country; we need about 250 million more. When something as fundamental as staying healthy is so expensive that the average person can't afford to take care of it out of his own pocket, that is the problem we should be solving. Insurance does nothing to decrease the underlying costs of health care; it just sweeps the problem under the rug.
That's one of the silliest comments I've ever read.

The problem is not in Mason's comment, but in the specious assumptions and fallacious inferences you have introduced while reading it. His post does not say what you claim it says.
@Severity One said:

Forget for a moment what kind of insurance it is

No, you can't do that. He was talking about a very specific kind of insurance in a very specific situation. By removing those qualifications on his argument, you are no longer arguing with what he said, but with something entirely other that he did not say. You have introduced an over-generalised straw-man version of his argument.
@Severity One said:

What you're saying is that having insurance is the wrong solution. So we should do away with car insurance; people should just drive more carefully. We should do away with home insurance; people should just take care that their houses don't burn down. We shouldn't test our software; developers should just not introduce bugs.

No, he didn't say any of those things; you said them, implicitly, in your straw-man. These are false inferences based solely on that.
@Severity One said:

You may argue in favour or against compulsory health insurance, and there are plenty of arguments on either side, but arguing against health insurance in general is plain daft.

And here you pull the classic straw-man bait-and-switch of returning to his actual argument and pretending that the objections you raised against your own straw-man apply to what he actually said.

But that's not all. Even ignoring the specious grounds for your argument, the claim you make here itself introduces a fallacious false dilemma. You are claiming that the only two alternatives are compulsory health insurance or voluntary health insurance. There are in fact other ways of organising health care in society, as those of us who live in Europe know perfectly well. Where I'm from, most people do not have health insurance at all, and yet our healthcare needs are perfectly adequately provided for by a system based on generalised taxation. There are perfectly reasonable arguments for this arrangement, which you may agree or disagree with, but to simply pretend they do not exist is, truly, silly.

It is not, however, anything like "one of the silliest comments I've ever read". Not even close. This is the goddam internet we're on here, there are millions of utterly gormless, moronic, imbecilic posts made every day. Your hyperbole does not help your argument.

RTapeLoadingError

@Matt Westwood said:

@TheCPUWizard said:
"Staying Healthy" may have nothing to do with medical care... Consider that for adults, the median time between medical visits of any type is 3.7 years [based on 2011 data]

Sheesh, that is a *heck* of a lot. If I go once in three decades I consider myself going through a seriously unhealthy patch.

We found having kids turned us from people who barely knew who their doctor was to regulars. Once they start going to daycare they get every bug going which means time off work with carer's leave when they get sent home. I've had more medical certificates for time off in the last 12 months than I previously had since starting working in the mid-1990's