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Fat Ogre posted:Good luck with that. States are able to charge residents and nonresidents different tuition amounts and that seems pretty uncontroversial
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Apr 26, 2014 21:33
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asdf32 posted:This has taken a stupid turn. Whether it's smart for an individual to ski with no insurence is utterly unrelated to whether the nation should have nationized healthcare or not. At this moment it doesn't, so people making choices have to make them based on that reality. Right but this is a thread about a proposed UHC policy, not Helpful Advice for the Adventurous Uninsured. Unless a statewide "Don't Go Skiing" ad campaign is being proposed as an alternative policy to UHC, then musings on whether the poor are worthy of adventure sports are at best irrelevant and at worst victim-blaming.
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May 6, 2014 08:08
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Really, if an 18-year-old can't predict the job market and economic condictions 4-6 years out with better accuracy than any professional economist, then he's got no business getting a degree. It's not asking much really. If teenagers in 2004 had been just this practical, then there wouldn't have been all these unemployable lawyers graduating in 2009 with no income or health insurance.
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May 6, 2014 15:00
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Conservatives don't want to debate the issues. It's all about distracting from issues by offering "common-sense" individual solutions to systemic problems. "If you can't get a job in the recession and are suffering from the high unemployment rate, you should have picked a different major. It's obvious an individual who plans better and works harder will get a job, so everyone just needs to plan better and work harder and we'll all have good jobs with health insurance!"
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May 8, 2014 06:31
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Fat Ogre posted:I know you think your quote is a joke but it isn't that far from the truth of what needs to be done. I've seen it work enough times to know it isn't bullshit.  So you're actually going to doubledown on your composition fallacy, deny the recession, and assert it only takes a little gumption and planning to land a good job, so with a little more gumption from the poor we'd have full employment? Oh hey, what caused the sudden and apparently inexplicable attack of national laziness and stupidity in 2008? Bootstrap shortage? Shrinking radio audiences mean that fewer young people are getting a gumption-boost from right-wing blowhards telling it like it is? I really want to know the cause of this national epidemic in 2008. Fat Ogre posted:People just get tied up with "I sunk thousands into this degree I need to try to find work tied to it." Instead of just giving up on that tactic and switching to something different or even going back to school for something different. It sure is strange how a pile of debt seems to make people too lazy and stupid to shell out a bunch more money going back to school for a STEM degree. I just don't understand why a lifetime of debt makes it hard to afford a brand-new education: why not just call up Dad and ask for $80k?
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May 8, 2014 15:28
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Yeah, but if we're discussing state or national policy initiatives, personal advice to "get off your rear end and learn a trade" is a useless distraction. Hey that's maybe good advice for your son, because he can't unilaterally change national policy so he has to control the things that are in his direct power. But what the gently caress does it have to do with national policy? If we're discussing what the government should do, we should likewise talk about the things government can actually affect. Unemployment is 8%. Maybe with some hard work and gumption I can beat out the other guy and get one of those jobs, but that's obviously not applicable to everyone. "If you run faster you'll win the race; thus if everyone runs faster, they'll all win the race" is a basic logical error.
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May 8, 2014 16:06
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Fat Ogre posted:There are poo poo tons of jobs out there. 4.2 million of them. You just have to be better suited for that job than 60% of other people in this hypothetical situation. Yes, yes if you run faster you'll win the race. It's not a problem that most people lose, because if they all just run faster they'll win! We're talking about policy here. How to arrange society so hard work actually pays off and so many people aren't left without insurance, a living wage, or even a job. I'm sure there's some Ask/Tell threads out there where people would appreciate your brilliant degree plan and debt insights in their individual cases, but we're talking about how to change the system as a whole so more people have a chance to live a decent life. Saying "well you just have to be better than the 60% of people who are losers" misses the point, because no matter how hard everyone works, 60% will be SOL regardless of talent and ability and that is bad. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 01:57 on May 9, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 01:55
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Fat Ogre posted:You're saying that if the hospital one block over was 30% cheaper across the board you wouldn't make that request to go there? He's saying that you don't have time to comparison shop when you have a life-threatening condition and time is of the essence. Or if, say, you were unconscious when the paramedics found you. Even if it were possible to find out the rates for every procedure from every local hospital in advance (hospitals often straight up refuse to give quotes if you call them), what do you do with that information? Have a flow chart tattooed on your back so the paramedics can follow the decision tree and get you to your hospital of choice for every condition? I mean, this is the reason we have universal firefighting, because when your house is burning down there's no time to request bids and hope someone offers you a better deal than Crassus' bid to buy your home-inferno.
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May 10, 2014 05:18
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Fat Ogre posted:I have a wife and three kids and have had to call an ambulance ZERO times in my life. Oh well okay then problem solved.
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May 10, 2014 18:19
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Fat Ogre posted:Keep dodging what is being said because you're angry. I literally brought up a common example of where it would do nothing, and you handwaved it away with "I've never needed an ambulance, why can't everyone be a good planner like me?" Seriously I want to know what happens when I'm found unconscious, do the paramedics check out the decision tree tattooed on my back (maybe in henna so it can be updated constantly)? I'd bring up expensive conditions like cancer treatment as another argument for UHC, because comparison shopping is not going to help you choose between one bill you can't afford and another bill you can't afford...but a person in that situation should take responsibility and avoid cancer like you have right? Are you Rob Portman? You are, aren't you. 
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May 10, 2014 18:53
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asdf32 posted:But it's actually not comparatively common. Medical bills are the largest cause of bankruptcies in the United States, so I'm going to have to ask you to show your work and tell me where there's all this affordable health care out there that nobody knows about because hospitals don't post price lists. Plumbing and car repair aren't life-or-death situations where you get the work done or you die. You can get an estimate for a car repair and decline it if you can't afford it. One of my friends whose minimum wage job doesn't give him insurance was up all night with a stomach ache, and it was so bad in the morning that he went to the ER and got moved up to the front of the line when he was eventually writhing on the floor of the ER--turned out he had a serious infection and was in hospital for a weak with an IV of antibiotics, serious painkillers, and emerged with an $80k bill that he will never be able to pay and will trash his credit. There was literally no way to know what care he needed when he walked in the door, but it's a good thing he didn't wait another day because the doctors told him that he may well have died had he done so. But no, I'm sure while doubled over in pain, once he got his diagnosis he should have called around to other hospitals in the area, maybe driven around and paid several doctors to each diagnose him and give him an estimate. This "personal responsibility" nonsense is a crap feel-good measure that will do nothing to help those most hosed over by our health care system, but give Just World bullshitters cover to wag their fingers at the poor and lecture them for not being good conscientious shoppers like them. "I've never needed an ambulance"  Indeed. It's crap like all his suggestions are crap. "High unemployment in a recession. Pound pavements, get your resume out there, and we'll have it licked in no time!" "The law field crashed while you were in school? All those graduates should get another $40k in loans and get an engineering degree, problem solved!" "Medical bills bankrupting people: shop smarter!" "Not enough chairs in musical chairs? Play harder, losers!" These are systemic problems, but conservatives like you and Fat Ogre prefer to imagine that if the poor can just be a little thriftier and get some morals the issues will disappear.
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May 10, 2014 19:19
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Ditocoaf posted:In an emergency, you usually don't know what you need until you're already in the hospital getting diagnosed. Exactly. Medicine is a highly specialized professional industry, and comparison shopping is asking laymen to make medical decisions. There was one really good post from a goon in a previous health-care thread (that I wish I had saved) telling a story where he took his wife to the ER in the middle of the night. She was in excruciating pain, and the doctor told him that to know if she required surgery she needed an MRI, but if it turned out to be nothing then his insurance would likely refuse to pay. He ended up doing it and it turned out she her fallopian tube was wrapped around an ovary or something (I forget what), but she needed surgery right then because every minute risked some kind of internal rupture and hemorrhage. Here he was, a layman with no medical training, being asked to wager a huge sum against the life of his wife with no way to know beforehand what the outcome would be. In a sensible world, that decision would be up to the doctor's medical judgment, not the poker hand of some dude. But hey,  free markets. What does that rube expect for trying to get an MRI in the middle of the night? A savvy consumer like me would have told his wife to shut the gently caress up about her stomach for the rest of the night so in the morning I can use my finely-honed bargain-hunting skills to shop around for MRI's during normal business hours and let the hospitals compete for my business!
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May 10, 2014 20:21
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Fat Ogre posted:What cracks me up most is not posting the cash prices up front actually hurts the poor. The ones who need to get the best price, who need hospitals to compete. Oooh oooh! I have a question! Me! If market forces can make hospitals compete for my business, and obviously I would prefer to patronize a hospital with published prices than one without, why haven't these market forces already compelled hospitals to post their prices?
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May 10, 2014 20:27
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Fat Ogre posted:They aren't forced to post prices before hand so they don't have to compete for your business. You literally cannot comparison shop so there is no competition. But if competition worked on hospitals then market demand should be compelling them to post prices already! You are contradicting yourself. What incentive does that hospital have to lower prices? You need to get this care somewhere, and there's no hospital glut. When the cheaper hospital has its MRI booked for the next month or is not open at 2am when you need it, you're not going to turn it down. The hospital does not need your business as much as you need it, full stop. Assuming you can even afford the somewhat cheaper hospital, which likewise has no particular need or incentive to individually bargain with you. That's why only large organizations like insurance companies or the government with a huge pool of customers can bargain with hospitals on even terms. Fat Ogre posted:Also insurance isn't allowed to be nationalized. Which keeps external competition low. If the insurance groups only have the population of your state to drawn from they can raise their costs because it isn't defrayed among a bigger pool. The solution to the problems with our health insurance industry is to let insurance companies race to incorporate in the state that has the slackest regulations, and then contribute huge sums of cash to Delaware (we all know it will be Delaware) legislators to slacken them even more! Please never stop posting. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 20:49 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 20:45
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Pope Guilty posted:Behind every use of the phrase "personal responsibility" is the terror of a world in which bad things happen regardless of whether you're a "good person" or not. It is a talisman, an incantation, which can be repeated as a ward against having to acknowledge the reality of that world. Yeah, I think you've hit it on the head. Like everyone else who aren't the ultra-rich, he's a couple of bad breaks away from losing his comfortable middle-class lifestyle to something like a one-two combo of another economic crisis and an ill-timed family medical emergency, which is a pretty scary thing to contemplate when you have kids...but if you can think "I got where I am because I made Good Decisions, and as long as I keep making Good Decisions then nothing bad will happen" then you don't have to consider the possibility. It's sympathetic in and of itself, except that part of the justification requires seeing people in bad situations as having made bad decisions and thus unworthy of help. It's just sad that this fear leads them to gently caress over others, and ultimately works against their own interests as well. Nessus posted:The reason why people are not warmly embracing solutions such as that or "let me give you some pro career advice (become a coder)" etc. is, I think, a lot more because these are general discussion threads. If this was a medical discussion on the virology of the common cold, someone popping in to say "Just have some chicken soup! OK, some veggie broth if you're a vegetarian. What's wrong with that? Everyone can get chicken soup, what harm does it do? It's quick and easy so what's wrong with bringing it up?" etc. etc. would get told "gently caress off." What? How can you be against chicken soup? Good nutrition helps your immune system and it sure wouldn't hurt! Stop telling people not to eat chicken soup, that's insane. You just hate chicken soup because gently caress people with colds, right? 
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May 10, 2014 20:58
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Fat Ogre posted:They don't have to compete at all. So how on earth does competition work on them? The very fact that hospitals don't have to compete on things like whether they post prices or not should tell you why they won't be required to compete on price even if you do make them publish their prices. You are actually pointing to blatant, undeniable evidence that your elementary-school economics are wrong, can't you think about the implications of that for two seconds? Fat Ogre posted:As to your idea of the cheaper one being booked for 2 months that means the other places aren't being used. Have fun explaining to the board of directors why you let the other place steal your MRI business. I won't have to do that because there is not a glut of health care, and health care is not always delayable. The people who can wait two months can go to the cheaper hospital. The people who need it this week or right now can take my price or suffer. And of course, you ignore that many, many procedures are unaffordable regardless. Let's take my friend Chad who now owes the cost of a cheap house in medical bills. Hooray, as he writhed in pain on the floor, his boyfriend applied his savvy bargain-hunting skills and was able to find a hospital in the next town that would treat him for $40k all-inclusive. Luckily, Chad didn't get septic and die during a few hours of shopping and another couple-hour drive, and he now owes a $40k bill he can never repay rather than an $80k bill he can never repay. Progress! Or maybe as a savvy consumer he realized his credit score was too important to blow on some silly infection, told the hospital to come back when they had a better offer, and died at home while waiting for them to crumble. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 21:14 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 21:10
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Shakugan posted:Driving is something I do all the time yet is considerably more dangerous than skiing? LALALALALA *puts fingers in ears and continues to use the same fallacious reasoning when discussing healthcare in general.  Excuse me, he has a job and health insurance, so he's proven he has the Personal Responsibility required to take the family on a road trip to visit grandma for Thanksgiving.I can't imagine why people without insurance are so irresponsible that they drive to places they don't strictly have to be. Driving to work or the store, that makes sense, but if you're going to take needless risks like visiting the family, don't bitch and moan when you get in an accident that exhausts the personal injury coverage in your auto insurance policy. You were asking for it with all that superfluous pleasure driving.
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May 10, 2014 21:44
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Ahahaha I missed this post the first time aroundFat Ogre posted:Yeah or maybe figure out which place had the best price rating before an emergency. The goon in question did not know his wife would need an MRI before he took her in in the middle of the night. Even if you assume that there are plenty places to get an MRI in the middle of the night like it's loving Jack In The Box or something, and he's a walking dictionary of the various prices of every medical test at every hospital, how is he supposed to know which one to go to to get that sweet MRI deal that you claim is out there, if he doesn't know what she needs until a doctor looks at her? I mean, what an idiot that guy is, right? Not being able to diagnose that his wife may need an MRI that insurance may not pay for if nothing turns up, so he could pick the hospital with the best 1am MRI rates, because as a spherical frictionless consumer in a vacuum he has precompiled a list of price comparisons of all medical tests and hospitals depending on time of day. This is just more "This person was in a bad situation that I don't want to believe can happen to me, so there must be some way that it's really all his fault." You don't have to run out and get car repairs or a lawyer in the middle of the night. You can wait until business hours and then start comparison shopping, and if you can't afford the prices you have alternatives other than just lying down in the street and dying and...wait, did you just call people who don't pre-shop for lawyers stupid and irresponsible? A lawyer is like the definition of a service that you have time to shop for when needed. You don't get a court summons at 2am ordering you to appear immediately or have a judgment entered against you. Okay Mister Well-Prepared Consumer, your wife just got fired for "bad conduct" a month after she refused to sleep with her boss. Quick, who is the best employment lawyer in your area, what are his billable hours, and what will it cost you to take this to trial? Who is the best accident lawyer, what does he charge to sue an uninsured motorist who did a hit-and-run on one of your kids as he walked to school? Who's the best traffic lawyer if you have to fight a bogus ticket? If you don't have a lawyer picked out and an estimate of the costs ready for every common legal eventuality, you're obviously too irresponsible to be trusted with anything. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 23:36 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 23:31
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You're the one framing medical costs in this country as a problem of personal responsibility. Anecdotes are perfectly valid ways of providing counterexamples to a blanket claim. It's in fact extremely common for people to not know what procedures they need or how bad a condition is until they are already in the emergency room. That is, you know, one of the reasons we have doctors. Emergency room visits in the middle of the night are a common thing. So common in fact, that it's why we have 24-hour emergency centers. And even if emergencies are less than 10% of medical complaints, people live a long time and have multiple multiple medical issues throughout their lives so the rare person who gets through life without ever himself or a close family member having a medical emergency is actually quite the outlier! And if you're uninsured, it just takes one to wreck your finances! Not, of course, that it makes any difference to someone without insurance whether a week of hospitalization or a surgery can cost them $40k instead of $80k if we let the  free market reward their bargain-hunting responsibility, when they still can't afford either price.Medical bankruptcies are the largest cause of bankruptcy in the United States. How many medical bankruptcies would be prevented by requiring public prices, and by letting all insurance companies incorporate in Delaware and buy the legislature to write slack regulations? Show your work. I know Republicans hate that, but please do, for me? I really want to see the proof that medical bankruptcies happen because people don't bargain hard enough. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 00:24 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 00:18
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Because we're talking about policy. "Do what you can to avoid a bad situation" is great advice for your kid or whatever, but millions of people are in those bad situations, and "try harder so you're not unemployed" or "don't go skiing and you won't hit your head while skiing" or "you shouldn't have gotten that degree" are standard right-wing tactics to preserve the status quo by casting anyone who gets hosed over as losers who deserve it. At best it's just white noise (people aren't going to stop skiing, that is literally a less achievable goal than UHC. Getting people to stop doing anything fun because of the risk will never happen, ever. UHC actually has happened), and sometimes it crosses over into being ridiculous like: The unemployment rate is what it is. No matter how much resume-pounding people do, the unemployment rate will remain the same because the problem is there are not enough jobs. No one is opposed to posting prices. Sure, do that, if the Republicans offer to do it tomorrow, take them up on it, can't hurt. I'm objecting that it won't help those most hosed over by our health care system, because it doesn't address any of the underlying problems that make a health care market unworkable in the first place. Your case that it would make sense to divert resources and time from campaigns to expand the ACA or implement UHC would be a lot better received if you just stopped blaming people for getting injured or sick. If we could wave a wand, sure. But should we campaign on, essentially, the Republican Health Care Reform proposal (you only need tort reform for the trifecta)? How does that advance the goal of UHC? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 01:45 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 01:41
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That's why I only go to my naturopath; institutional "doctors" and "medical science" make  by keeping you sick. They don't want you to know the real secret to staying healthy.
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May 12, 2014 02:29
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GomJabbar posted:Good luck trying to find out how much something will cost to treat even if it is not an emergency. Hospitals and clinics are some of the most opaque when it comes to prices, with some exceptions. To be fair here, he knows that opacity is the status quo, and his proposal is that hospitals be legally required to post one-size-fit-all prices. I don't know how the proposal is supposed to work if there are complications (say in a pregnancy). ... I'm just gonna quote all of this Slobjob Zizek posted:Toning down the weird, eugenicist overtones, here's the crux of my argument: we spend most of our healthcare dollars on the chronically ill and the elderly. These people are not flukes, they do not suffer from freak genetic diseases or barely survive horrible car accidents. Quality-adjusted-life-years are a thing when evaluating the cost-effectiveness of a treatment, as is cost-saving with preventative measures. I mean, yeah it would obviously be better if we had nutrition programs and so on to help people live a healthy lifestyle, but it's pretty bizarre to make that an argument against universal health care. If you're worried about the budget, let's talk about how we undertax the rich and blow trillions on wars before we start worrying if caring for old people is bankrupting the country. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:36 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 03:28
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