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Mark's avatar

Off topic, it's really hard to type with a pretty significant tremor and it seems my double vision is coming back. I need to reach out to my neurologist and ophthalmologist on Monday. I'm worried my supposedly non-cancerous cranial tumor has started growing again...

diogenez's avatar

BEST SYSTEM IN THE WORLD - if you can afford it...

theCryptofishist's avatar

Debt will tear us apart, again.

boo radley's avatar

moving to a country with healthcare was absolutely disorienting. what do you mean that's it? no bill??? I remember seeing Seth Meyers or someone make a joke on American TV about how asking for universal healthcare was like asking for rainbows and unicorns and it made me fucking furious.

Axomamma's avatar

Insurance companies are clapping their hands. Now they can offer you a loan (if you qualify, but you won't because your credit was destroyed by outstanding medical bills and/or you don't meet income requirements because you lost your job because you're too sick or you simply earn too little) after denying your claim. Claim denials are going to skyrocket.

diogenez's avatar

This seems shockingly predicable, doesn't it?

Axomamma's avatar

Only if you think that far. These motherfuckers don't think past "we can make money out of this."

diogenez's avatar

I'm not sure they think beyond the quarterly financial report...

Hawkeye91's avatar

This is why, as a Canadian, I get screamed at so often about how my country is going to just let me die if I get really sick because wait times!!!!!!! Except I then explain that for life threatening issues there is no wait time, we are just pretty good at triage. And then I get called a liar, or an idiot, or whatever else some moron American decides is an insult. It's exhausting!

Dorothea is a Democrat's avatar

Same wait times exist in for-profit healthcare except the wait times are built into the system. For insurance companies, delay means more profit. By the time you get the MRI you need, your cancer has spread significantly.

Pexas Teat's avatar

We'll end up with an army of Luigis if this gets much worse.

Opalescent Riddles's avatar

>>A lending option offered by insurers is essentially a workaround to mitigate the high cost of A.C.A. plans, said Joel White, a health care consultant who advises Republicans.<<

Health care consultant my hirsute ass. Fucking 1980s Gordon Gecko "greed is good" cannibal necrophiliac. You COULD advise the Repubs on how to bring down the "high cost of A.C.A. plans" but instead, you talk only of how to extract maximum cash from the most vulnerable. Fuck you. Just... fuck you.

Biff52 Lost Canadian's avatar

This is just the age-old solution of paying your MasterCard bill with your Visa Card. It never works for long.

Hank Napkin's avatar

What about nipple coverage?

Nicole Koretsky's avatar

To the people who want to keep their private insurance in the event we do wise up and move to single payer, I'd point out that in the UK one is absolutely free to light their money on fire and to pay more for private coverage, if the otherwise excellent NHS doesn't help them quickly enough. I mean, don't billionaires already use concierge doctors?

But it's a silly argument anyway because we do have single payer here for people 65+ and I recall both my parents and my stepmom enjoying outstanding medical care through Medicare, without six month waits or death panels killing them even once. We not only have a proof of concept, we have a fully functional and efficient and high quality single payer system that has been tested and proved for generations. Its successful existence makes these arguments even more infuriating, frustrating, and stupid. My only conclusion from the Republican's multi-generation attacks on our health care is that between their eugenicism and their insatiable greed, their only goal is to shake us all upside down by the ankles until we go bankrupt and die, thus freeing them to worry about managing the white, wealthy, medium-sized, Protestant utopia that they hope to turn this nation into.

Eeee's avatar

I definitely think everyone claiming we all love our private insurance and are desperate to keep paying for it can get fucked (with votes, or whatever, I haven't read the posting rules in a while). IDK how it works for Medicare, but my experience helping relatives with Medicaid (the one that covers poor kids, hopefully I'm getting the terms right) is that private insurance companies administered the various plans that recipients had to choose from, and just like regular private insurance, the companies were free to pick and choose what they wanted to cover. E.g., my nephew had a life-threatening condition requiring various meds and was denied the one that worked best on one plan, then switched to another plan and was denied something else he desperately needed. So I don't know if I'm ready to categorize the current programs as equivalent to the single-payer model we all fantasize about. But I do agree, current insurance bullshit is absolutely infuriating

Nicole Koretsky's avatar

It sounds like you're talking about Medicaid, which is not always great, instead of Medicare, which is single payer, essentially, for people of retirement age. Not all providers participate in Medicare, but most do. My love to your family and all the best to your nephew xx

Wookiee Monster's avatar

I wonder which insurance lobbyist suggested this idea to the regime.

Wookiee Monster's avatar

Gather ‘round children because it’s time once again for Wookie Monster to tell the story of the knee replacement his insurance company refused to pay for.

I spent a year hobbling along with a walker while fighting with my insurance provider to pay for it. That’s a year of excruciating pain. When it finally did get approved, my orthopedist told me it was one of the worst knees he’d ever worked on and he was amazing I could walk on it at all.

But please tell me more about unacceptable wait times under socialism. It’s fascinating.

paxpax's avatar

I'm an RN that works in a hospital - one of my favorite hospitalists (physician that does internal medicine inpatient IN the hospital) - just left to join a concierge practice. Makes me sad. Another very bright (left-leaning) physician was telling me that almost EVERY peer-to-peer phone call (about denial of care) with insurance companies ends with the insurance company getting their way.

Joe Bacon's avatar

Memories of my Jesusbot sister who suffered from cancer and had her church elders anoint her with oil and lay their hands on her to heal her in the name of Jesus. She posted that her "deep christian faith" would pull her through.

it didn't...

hillary's left one's avatar

I bet everybody in her church said “She’s happy in heaven now, lucky her.” They got it covered both ways, these Christians.

Wookiee Monster's avatar

Mother Monster had breast cancer in her thirties that spread to her uterus. She turns 89 next month because she went to the hospital and got real medical treatment.

I’m sorry about your sister.

Ruththecatlady's avatar

I had a dear family friend who got cancer and was absolutely convinced that naturopathy and crystals would pull him through. It didn't. Not the same as a sister, but I can sympathize.

Suel J's avatar

Well that's a whole load of dum(b)