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Re:10% of Covid patients in intensive care unit by eric-hu on Thursday March 05, 2020 @10:50PM (#22500855)
I think Italy is particularly worth paying attention to as a bad case approximation of what can happen in the US. About a week ago, Korea had tested 90k people while the US had 400 tests available and fewer tested.
Re:10% of Covid patients in intensive care unit by dpau on Friday March 06, 2020 @07:27AM (#22503042)
Besides lack of testing, the US could turn out even worse than Italy given that many lack insurance and/or cannot afford to call in sick.
Re:10% of Covid patients in intensive care unit by counterpoint1 on Friday March 06, 2020 @08:39AM (#22503422)
I'm growing tired of this meme.

Everybody in the US has insurance, that was literally a major point of contention to Obamacare - the left didn't like that the solution still used private insurers and the right didn't like that they were forced to buy something. If you have a low income, you get subsidized premiums.

For sick pay, it's just a lack of budgeting and planning. If you have a job that pays you $12/hr with no paid leave time or a job that pays you $10/hr with an accumulation of leave hours, it's still the same in the end if you work X days and are sick Y days and get a monthly income of $ZZZ, just in one case your employer is holding back your leave pay and in the other case you're paid full value up front and save for your leave period yourself.

Re:10% of Covid patients in intensive care unit by lm28469 on Friday March 06, 2020 @10:02AM (#22504065)
> Everybody in the US has insurance

Isn't that factually wrong ?https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/number-americ...

> it's just a lack of budgeting and planning.

Which people living paycheck to paycheck can't do. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nearly-half-american...

Re:10% of Covid patients in intensive care unit by klmadfejno on Friday March 06, 2020 @10:34AM (#22504332)
It is factually wrong. The correct way to phrase it would be that anyone can commit moral hazard and sign up for a public plan in response to a sudden need for medical treatment. So insurance can be available in a way that defeats the purpose of insurance systems.

However:

1) This is not free

2) This is not likely to save you from enormous medical costs

3) This is about on par with filing taxes. Probably easy to do if you understand the basics of whats going on, but few people do.