Among a few things, that's why I'm happy to live in France where with a medium wage (35,000$ / year) I'm sure that my wife will get the house ( the loan insurance will pay that) and the hospitalization would be nearly free...
Be in a welfare state is somewhat a good thing even if you pay more taxes.
That is the most fucked up thing I've read for a long time. For a "health" system to be designed to suck everything out of a person of someone who's already dying is vile.
that's what it means to have a "free market" capitalist system. The demand for health is essentially infinite - the person dying of thirst in a desert will pay their entire fortune for just one cup of water.
Re:What Dreams May Come
by adventured on Thursday March 13, 2014 @06:32AM
(#7390967)
America hasn't had anything even remotely resembling a free market Capitalist health system in over 40 years. Starting in the mid 1960s, the US Government + states, with Medicare and Medicaid, began to take over a massive portion of the healthcare system, and directly began dictating regulation and costs, while conspiring with insurance companies, big pharma and lobbyists to restrict competition and raise costs. The US healthcare system became a giant political toy, played for votes and milked for crony cash by politicians, lobbyists and corporations in tandem.
Although I'm open to a demonstration as to how I'm wrong about that. Last time I checked, health insurance typically can't even cross state borders due to hyper regulation. I don't think you can get further away from Capitalism than the US health system.
For serious cancer, terminal or not, the system seems designed for the cost to be "everything you have" whatever that happens to be.
For some people this may be true. My mother died of breast cancer at 59 and it really didn't cost her anything thanks to the fact she had health insurance through my father's work. My parents were probably lower-middle-class but the fact that my dad worked the same job for 39 years and had steady health insurance throughout kept them from this fate.
From the limited sample size I've gathered with sadness thus far: For serious cancer, terminal or not, the system seems designed for the cost to be "everything you have" whatever that happens to be.