Quote:
Originally Posted by pocketkangaroo
But if you come down with serious cancer tomorrow, you're looking at upwards of a million dollars in medical bills. While that might not be a lot to you, that is a lot to most Americans.
I think one of the big issues people are missing here is that the problem isn't just about not getting health insurance, it's the rules in place that fuck people like us. Health insurance companies can bend rules and basically fuck you out of anything they want. They can cancel you when you get sick and can simply refuse to pay the bills you have. They can determine that their medical diagnosis is better than your doctors and refuse to pay for specific procedures.
At the same time, pharmaceutical companies bend the rules too. They pay for vacations for doctors so they prescribe their more expensive drugs that are not needed. They lobby for rules so that patients can't get their drugs from other countries at a discount.
Then you have doctors who will milk good insurance companies. They'll overbills, run unnecessary tests, and prescribe unnecessary treatments.
In the end you have a circle jerk of those 3 fucking over the patient. Put some rules in place and actually punish the criminals and you reduce health insurance dramatically. Right now our government represents doctors, big pharma and the insurance companies, not the people.
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To address your first point, if I had cancer, I would reapply for Blue Cross Blue Shield and in 6 months they would be back to picking up the tab for a pre-existing condition. I would pay the same rate I did before for my age, as that is what it is based on, regardless of my condition. They take everyone, and are the only company out there (to my knowledge, and the insurance agent) who will. So for 6 months I would have to foot the bill, second mortgage, whatever. Then I would be covered again with major medical for that shit.
On to your second point, I completely agree with you. There is a lot of corruption and greed in the healthcare system. It was started back in the Reagan era when he allowed HMO's to switch from the non-profit model, to what we have today. Starting this thing rolling into for profit healthcare.