News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Health system sues thousands of patients, seizes pay and puts liens on homes. Parent comment

Re:Health system sues thousands of patients, seizes pay and ... by Retric on Monday September 09, 2019 @07:26PM (#20923616)
I don’t think you can reasonably include public insurance when considering if private insurance is widespread enough. Presumably the heath of the private system is based on people outside of the public one with vs without adequate insurance.

15 percent of the U.S. population get Medicare. 19 percent of the population get Medicaid. So, the government subsidies heathcare for ~34% of the population. And that’s excluding prisoners and VA which make up ~0.5% and 10% of the population, but may overlap with the above. Further the government also pays insurance for government workers and their families, or other special programs that subsidize heathcare costs like Ryan White or various rural heathcare initiatives.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Health system sues thousands of patients, seizes pay and ... by tptacek on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @10:14AM (#20928402)
So, like he said, a majority of Americans have health care, even with your contorted definitions.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Health system sues thousands of patients, seizes pay and ... by Retric on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @10:31AM (#20928629)
Two questions.

Saying the majority as in over 50.01% of the population has insurance is a very low bar. What percentage of the population without healthcare is a sign of a well functioning system to you?

Second, what suggest public funds going to heathcare is a sign of a well functioning private insurance model?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Health system sues thousands of patients, seizes pay and ... by tptacek on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @10:43AM (#20928771)
The reality is that by your own numbers you came up with a supermajority of US residents with health insurance, not 50.01%.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Health system sues thousands of patients, seizes pay and ... by Retric on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @10:58AM (#20928933)
Great punt, but that just means you don’t want to answer the question.

Also, significantly less than 50% of the population has completely non publicly funded heathcare. It’s a really odd system when you start breaking down the numbers. We have surprisingly close to a 50/50 public private system, but people get wildly different amounts of public funding.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Health system sues thousands of patients, seizes pay and ... by tptacek on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @11:07AM (#20929012)
I do not, no, because I joined this part of the thread solely to point out that your rebuttal to Rayiner refuted itself, which, of course, it did.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Health system sues thousands of patients, seizes pay and ... by Retric on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @11:15AM (#20929117)
Not really, Raynor said: 2/3 of people who don’t have Medicare

So he was excluding some but not all people who received government funded insurance. Which is why I was pointing out that was a very odd way of counting.

[ Parent | on HN ]