Intuit asked Mailchimp employees to pay medical costs out of pocket

Re:Intuit asked Mailchimp employees to pay medical costs out... by munk-a on Monday April 11, 2022 @04:43PM (#30994710)

Well, whatever we call it we as a society need to choose whether we want to keep people with expensive preexisting conditions alive. I don't think it's really necessary to debate the point since almost every western country has decided that their ethics fall in the camp of "Yes, we support those people and give them the best life possible" whenever they're actually pressed on the matter. For a while the US skated by on budgetary excuses but all the while I think society still idealistically held on to that standard - I think this point is fairly debatable though.

I think it's more a question of whether we'd be willing to install and maintain a roof on a building that had been designed without a roof in mind or whether we'd tear down the building to make room for a new one. You'd probably rationally lean in the second direction for a house - but when we're talking about a human life the math changes for a lot of people.

Either way, a return to an insurance-less situation would leave people with preexisting situations out in the cold, unless your definition of insuranceless involves government subsidies for all preexisting conditions and at that point you're basically talking about medicare for all.

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Re:Intuit asked Mailchimp employees to pay medical costs out... by notch656a on Monday April 11, 2022 @07:03PM (#30996281)

I think as a society if we can't discuss this in an honest manner without deceptive terminology, we're doomed to be stuck in a bad spot. Perhaps phrasing it as charity of the healthy towards the less healthy would lead towards a more productive and honest starting point. It's something many, including myself, would be much more supportive of than feeling like I'm deceived by misrepresentation of a product. I'd feel like I'm taking part of a noble charity rather than this sort of deceptive 'insurance' product.

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Re:Intuit asked Mailchimp employees to pay medical costs out... by RHSeeger on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @01:10AM (#30998858)

I don't see it as a charity so much as we, as a group, are pooling our money so that those that need health care get health care. That can be people with pre-existing conditions, people with a new condition, people that are in an accident, preventative maintenance, or even just normal life situations (pregnancy, etc).

In my mind, it's not charity because it's

- For everyone. Maybe not for you today, but maybe tomorrow

- For the benefit of society as a whole. If we let everyone who got sick just die, our society would be worse for it.

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Re:Intuit asked Mailchimp employees to pay medical costs out... by notch656a on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @05:02AM (#31000211)

Characterizing insurance products in the US as a 'benefit of society as a whole' is a charity in and of itself. A large component of the insane costs billed for procedures has to do with an unhealthy symbiosis of the medical industry with 'insurance' companies. This massive black hole, much a result of poorly designed regulation, leads to reduced benefit to society as a whole and a system that is not for everyone not today nor tomorrow.

If you are thinking of something that is for literally anyone, you are most likely thinking of universal healthcare or some other like system.

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Re:Intuit asked Mailchimp employees to pay medical costs out... by munk-a on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @02:49PM (#31006789)

I personally would avoid characterizing it as charity since charity tends to be an inherently voluntary action and charitable givers have some expectations on the usages of their charity. US charitable giving in a lot of areas of Africa continues to contribute to the illegality of abortions in many countries since the church groups offering aid condition their aid on moral stances they hold.

We've seen how the judgement of those receiving aid has affected US policy in the past - a handful of people are marked out as undeserving of the aid (maybe someone with a long term physical disability commits murder or something else) and then the full category of people are painted with suspicion (ala "welfare queens") and that suspicion is used as a justification to cut spending drastically under the guise of oversight. There are a fair number of people clamoring today for UBI for the reason, in my view at least, that it's the only way to undo all the complicated conditions on various forms of governmental aid.

I'd personally be quite in favor of keeping it dry, cold and governmental - healthcare is, IMO, an important enough topic that we can't let emotions override treatment. If we're going to put a bunch of money into a big pot we should have some very deliberate rules about how that money comes out and what it gets used for and posing it as a charity is going to get all sorts of rules applied to it (i.e. it can't be used for anything Planned Parenthood related, it can't be used for contraception, it can't be used by trans identifying individuals, you need to have a full time job to access it, it is unavailable to felons, etc...) - some of those rules might make sense, others might not. At the end of the day I think posing it as a charity will make it a lot harder to come up with a fair set of restrictions on it.

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