And still tries to decline your claims.
There was that little bit of time we got some claims through. Something about an Italian plumber.
My sister had her gallbladder removed a decade or two ago. It was basically exploding or something in the er. Really disgusting amounts of pain.
Anyway, she was immediately denied as they couldn’t determine whether her gallbladder removal was elective or not. The doctor said something like “well fuck that, that’s why we have a team of lawyers.”
I think that’s a pretty succinct summary. Without one or more lawyers at your disposal we might as well all get fucked.
If you were still wondering if the NYT shills for the oligarchs…
Always have
Well the title “Medicare For All Would Abolish Private Insurance” is true though.
The big question is why should we care? Why should this be our problem? Why should our hard earned money be used for profit instead working only as an insurance pool?
Things change, and one has to adapt (just look at the LLM crazy), same with insurance companies. They can similarly adapt and do something different, for example start offering non essential insurances that would be on top of the M4A. Not replacements though. Medicare “Advantage” should be abolished as well.
But, they’re liberals!
/s
I’m starting to think they are putting in subliminal messages, making their base ask ask “hang on, why is this bad?” Much like Fox has the progressive talking points front and center.
Abolition would destroy the cotton industry! There is no precedent in American history!
My wife needs a surgery thats likely to cost 18 to 20 grand without insurance, and I have to do some really careful math to figure out if putting her on my insurance would actually save us anything.
Most likely flying to Mexico for a week to get it done would be cheaper too.
I’m here waiting on insurance to approve a medication I need, like, eight months ago and which costs over a hundred thousand dollars per year (before insurance gets the negotiated price).
First set of pills was $483 with insurance. Bought the refill as uninsured, it was $38.
Our insurance industry is so broken it’s really just unfathomable.
My grandfather needed some medication. Only 3 months, but over $400 a month. I found a Canadian pharmacy, bought 3 months of it, had the doctor fax the script there, and it was less than $300 for the 3 months. It was quite literally a lifesaver for him and their finances.
The prescription I need is somewhat new/niche, but I will look into this.
The one I used was called The Great North Pharmacy. A lot of them wouldn’t take card payments for some reason and would only accept a mailed check. It didn’t sit right with me. They called me to do the standard “pharmacist overview” of the medication, and it arrived fairly quickly. I’m not trying to shill for them, but they were really good for what we needed. Good luck.
My brother spent eight fucking weeks with a constant migraine unable to walk or even stand up without falling over, before his insurance finally approved the MRI that discovered the golf-ball-sized tumor in his brain. Muigi Langione is all I can say.
I never thought that I would see a legit folk hero in my time.
Stopping the orphan crushing machine would abolish the orphan crushing industry. There’s no precedent in American history.
Medicare for All would save a trillion dollars and 114,000 American lives, both annually. Fuck the insurance racket.
Insurance in general should be a public aervice rather than private enterprise and it should not be used for medical care at all.
The public service should provide a universal floor for citizens. There are quasi-medical services like massage that both have medical benefits and are also used more as a spa treatment, and people with pets are finding pet medical insurance more attractive these days. I think areas like that can make more sense to keep private.
Think of all the bombs the US could buy for Israel with all that money !!
As well as this being stupid for the reasons given, its also just flat out wrong. There is no reason why you couldn’t have additional healthcare insurance to act as a top-up/faster non-essential care/nicer facilities when you are in hospital. That’s how it works in the UK, even with completely nationalized, free at the point of use healthcare there is still room for private insurance, it just has to earn its place rather than being a complete leach.
Exactly this. Universal healthcare still leaves room for private facilities and insurance, it just forces a minimum standard on the market that they clearly don’t want in the US
I will say though that the presence of private healthcare in the UK does make me very uncomfortable, especially with how much the NHS is struggling for money
It kinda feels like our postal service in the U.S.
They defund it, then complain about it, then start ranting that it “Doesn’t even make a profit” even though the whole point is that it’s supposed to be an affordable and accessible mail service.
They’re even doing the same thing with schools. The entire conservo-righty playbook anymore is to get rid of our public services so they and their rich buddies have more to gain at our expense.
kinda funny with post because if it was done totally privately the more rural and remote you get the higher the cost would be.
Precisely!
It’s so weird how the “Communism is when the government gives people stuff” crowd just so happens to be concentrated in places where, were the surrounding states and federal government to stop subsidizing public services or industries or funding, they’d be almost completely destitute over night.
Like you said, it just wouldn’t be worth it to private interests to reach an already-poorer population in the middle of nowhere with services like hospitals, shipping, or telecom.
I really wish they could understand this. Not in a “See what we do for you?” kind of way, but more like “See? Things are actually better when we’re working together with government to take care of each other.” Kind of way…
If they succeed and all those benefits get pulled in favor of private parasites, they’ll be even poorer, even angrier, and still blame the Democrats.
This is how conservatives operate. The wealthy want more wealth and don’t care who gets hurt. Their bootlickers are drunk on authoritarianism, and get off on bowing to their superiors and kicking the people under them. There’s something wrong with the bootlickers brains. You’d probably be an asshole, too, if you came every time you bowed down to a rich man or hurt someone poorer than you.
The same strategy is used in France. Our social welfare, including retirement funding and medical care, is being dismantled this way.
That’s awful! :(
We’re pulling for you guys! Anyone will a brain here in the U.S looks up to and admires how fiercely the French people defend their rights. You don’t roll over and let the suits do as they please.
Please keep being that shining example to us all! The world is very dark for the working person right now. We need you!
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité! ✊🇫🇷
Thank you, but the pessimist I am cannot reassure you on this point.
Currently France and most of its population are very far from that fierce image, and that’s not new.
Our so-called “leaders” follow objectives and methods similar to their U.S. counterparts, with an apparent lag / delay. Our ten years president is a neo liberal with also some traditionalist catholic views on social norms. The asymetry in apparent power is such that those politicians don’t have too much to fear from the general population. (For now at least.) They just have to get enough people to vote for them once in a while, and manipulative communcation campaign do the job real fine.
Demonstrations and strikes don’t often work: they are generally ignored, circumvented, or smeared, criminalized, and sometimes violently repressed. (With accusations of terrorism). We even have a very violent “police” unit seemingly fully dedicated to beat up demonstrators. (The “BRAV-M”.) More powers, more tools, more weaponery and legal protections are given to the police (or similar) forces.
The fatigue and discouragement from our worsening living conditions depowered the fights for general interest causes. (against domination and exploitation systems, for example)
But !.. the same worsening living conditions are becoming bad enough that people become more afraid of being passive than of the consequences of opposing the “elites” and their goons. I sure hope the balance will tip in favor of those who fight for a better life before the faschist-style authoritarism is fully installed.
2027’s elections will be quite a battleground, but honestly we’re in need of more than some “providential” elected president with a good program. The framework of our current institutions system is rotten, focused on presidential power, and must be discarded to a framework based on equality of rights, equality of opportunities, solidarity, freedom, respect, compassion.
TL;DR:
France is currently not as much a land of rights and successful social fights as some believe or claim it is. It is also not a land of freedom anymore. (See freedom of press rankings, for example.) It’s rapidly (d)evolving into a fully fledged capitalist owned, highly repressive, police state. There are reasons for despair, but also some reasons for hope. All is not lost, but the fight will be arduous.
Yep. Same in Australia.
I think 20 years ago an American would have told you they have the freedom to choose the level of cover they want, starting from none at all.
Now things have deteriorated through collusion or corruption or price fixing or whatever.
They’ve made so much money they have too much influence to do away with them.
They’ve made so much money they have too much influence to do away with them.
That one guy on the news found a way. I imagine it wouldn’t even take a thousand of us following that lead before things began to change.
Probably wouldn’t even take 10. I say 5. Things already started shifting with the 1.
Yep. Brazil has both free healthcare and private insurance, and most of the time private is better, but only because they’re directly competing with something that costs nothing. They gotta keep their prices reasonable to be attractive.
Being a complete leech is very profitable.
Because in the corrupt US market that would devolve into you either having private insurance, or expect to wait 3 years to get anything done and expect to get mrsa when you do.
The free option would be utter trash, to the point where it would be nearly unusable.
The private sector has actually been nudging things that way for quite a few years now up in Canada.
Medical care shouldn’t be a class system. Flat out.
oh no, my private insurance, which only gave life saving measure to an astonishing number of people who are alive and thriving today because one of their CEOs got shot in the fucking face, deservedly
Had me in the first half…
The only thing that we can statistically, empirically prove from that incident is that shooting insurance CEOs in the face provide a net positive for society.
and this theorem could be extrapolated into other segments too, besides healthcare.
Which is why they are so desperate to convict luigi, and why i’m so shocked they havent arranged an “accident” for him yet.
I thought the CEO was shot in the back. If we want to be scientific about it, we’d need data about them being shot in the face, too.
Right, because shooting in the face could give even better results. Line up the CEOs because we have some experiments to conduct!
Some are clever enough to know that killing him will make him into a martyr for millions…
I suspect that they will try something more devious… he needs to be publicly humiliated somehow.
Which is why they are so desperate to convict luigi, and why i’m so shocked they havent arranged an “accident” for him yet.
What would that accomplish? They want to have the trial and conviction to make an example out of him.
We have generations of data from countries all over the world with universal healthcare. It costs the people less, undeniably; there’s zero benefit to for-profit private insurance… for people, anyway (not corporations).
I’m not positive, but I think USA is the last “western nation” without it. So… US taxpayers actually send billions to other nations all over the globe, all of which have better healthcare. Nice.
Even Mexico has universal healthcare, soon they’ll be trying to end American migration…
Oh my God, it just dawned on me. Trump was right… Mexico will pay for the wall! Trump’s lowering US citizen’s standard of living severely so that they will have flee over the border by the millions and viola! Wall.
Brilliant.
We don’t care. Bankrupt America to death.
Who is this “we” you’re talking about?
Not you, obviously.
My only qualm with it is whenever the Republicans get into office, they will weaken or destroy it. If we didn’t have scumbags in office, and scumbags voting for said scumbags, it would be amazing. Universal healthcare is absolutely the way.
viola!
Nah, some do dual payer, which is less bad than USA, but still not true universal.
It’s basically universal healthcare but with a small excess on it, usually something quite low like €100
there’s zero benefit to for-profit private insurance… for people, anyway (not corporations
In germany there are a lot of benefits through. Less waiting-time, broader choice of treatment, better service in hospitals, a room for yourself instead of a shared room, and also a wider choice of places to go. And in the end it’s even cheaper than public health. At least beyond a certain income - threshold. Highly unfair, but…
A national law against child labor was passed in 1916, but it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1918. A 1919 law was also overturned. In the 1920s, an effort to pass a constitutional amendment failed, because of opposition from the South and from Catholics. The Fair Labor Standards Act (part of the New Deal) in 1938 finally ended child labor in factories, mines, and other occupations. Child labor has always been a factor in agriculture and that continues into the 21st century. — Wikipedia
Something tells me if we did a complete archive search of NYT (and, for that matter, WSJ), circa 1910-1940, we’d find that it has, indeed, defended child labor in the US.
https://flippedtips.com/plegal/save/clin1910s.html
Under “Stunned Nation Reacts” I guess they argued it should be left up to the states… Which is a defense of it, in the context of the time.
Yeah, states rights tends to come into play when ethical protections are opposed. Slavery abolition, and abortion access come to mind. We may see it again regarding gay marriage.
Curiously, the same players who oppose all these things are not for states rights when it comes to cannabis access.
I can only imagine what voting for a president or such would have been like back then. Voting for a local congress person, okay you might have known them or know someone who might know them. But the president, you were told who they were by what… 1 newspaper? Unless your family was paying for more than one, aka if your family knew to switch somehow
Olde Thimey federal candidates, including presidential candidates, actually traveled on the campaign trail, and would go town-to-town, make stump speeches (often on literal stumps) and gladhand by the hundreds. So the people often got to hear the candidates answer questions relevant to their own districts.
These remote media-only campaigns are unique to the post-radio age.
it’s 80 or 90% owned by the same family from that time too.
It’s also a flatout lie. It wouldn’t abolish private insurance at all. Nytimes is dogshit journalism.
A blatant lie as well, plenty of countries with universal healthcare sustain a private health insurance industry.
Yes, but admittedly, the sector would plunge in terms of revenues and profit. What will be left is much smaller than what they have today.
One of the biggest and longest rip-off scheme in history would end quite abruptly.
Now from an economic standpoint, that’s as much money available to consumers that was previously going almost straight to shareholders with a limited return. That could be huge!
Unfortunately our morass of a healthcare system is deeper than insurance - medical device companies, big pharma (&PBMs), venture-capital-owned hospitals, and more all take their cut. Universal health care would not end the rip-off. But it would be an excellent first step.
More an indictment of their mediocre reform than a testament to their accommodation.
Why do you still need private insurance in a public system unless it’s two-tiered and rationing care by wealth level.
It’s not possible to approve all care. Taxpayers will, through representative lawmakers, allot a certain amount of money to healthcare, and within that budget, decisions must be made. The realistic goal is not to have every possible treatment always approved, it’s to have a moderately high floor of care that everyone has as a baseline.
The realistic goal is not to have every possible treatment always approved
If a private insurer approves it, the presumption is of medical necessity. If care is being allocated based on “affordability” rather than “necessity” or “net social benefit” then we’re still defining health care as a luxury in some capacity.
“Sorry, we didn’t allocate resources to you because your private sector salary/passive income wasn’t high enough” is an indication of policy failure in a socialist system.
The “realistic” goal is to provide maximum utility at minimal social cost. Not to provide maximum comfort to the highest status individuals.
Abolishing slavery destroyed an entire industry too. There’s your fucking precedent you piece of shit NYT blood sucker.
Pwned
I hate when things that are obviously inefficient have to be supported just because they exist.
It’s hard to defend the status quo otherwise.
Forbidding orphan-crushing-machines would destroy the orphan-crushing-machine industry! The horror!
I have investments in the orphan-crushing-machine industry! We can’t regulate it!
Oh now we care about precedents for some reason.
There is precedent for paying for healthcare with chickens.
AKA the status quo that keep the filthy rich in power, and the poors at the grindstone.
They are always bringing up precedent as if it means a damned thing.
Do what’s fucking right.
