I had a neat idea last night, it is a free-market capitalist solution to getting health care into the hands of the poor, and it doesn't rely on anyone's good will. Dudedude got me pretty good with this (it wasn't directed at me, but still): But in all honesty it is Dudedude's logic that is flawed. No one said he should die, they said he should earn his health care, which amounts to a death sentence for him. This is not anyone's fault, and in no way should people be forced to provide health care for him, although it is quite undesirable for him to die simply because he can't afford the care. This is where the solution I thought of could do some good, without violating anyone's rights (because it's voluntary in nature). Hospitals could provide health care to those who can't afford it by letting them pay at a later date. There would be some specifics to this contract that would protect the hospital from losses. It is possible for a hospital to determine, through statistical analysis, the amount of indebted people that will exist at any given time (roughly). Because they can do this, they can also work to provide these indebted people with a means by which to repay their debt to the hospital: An industry created by the hospital for the indebted to work in. The specifics of the contract would work like this: You must pay your bill at a later date. If you can prove that you are employed and can make payments on your debt, then you're golden. If you don't have a job, you would be legally required to work for the hospital in the industry created for indebted people. The possibilities are endless. Hospitals definitely need labor, and many of the positions could be performed by people with little training. Janitors, cooks, even nurses. Yes, nurses; With the proper forms for collecting info to guide the barely trained, it would be possible. This could reduce the cost of health care for everyone, although the people who are "indebted" should be payed a wage that they can survive on as well as pay back their debt, I think it would possible for hospitals to cut costs in this way, all the while providing health care for those who don't have the money. Before you say, "This amounts to slavery." think about the big picture. If you don't have the money to afford health care, but want to receive it anyway then there is an option for you. If the doctor saves your life, do you not owe him your life? Well, no, but you do owe him, so I think it's reasonable. If a hospital had the means by which to be sure that it would be re-payed, then it would be the best decision, profit wise, for them to give health care to anyone and everyone it can. What do you think?
They already have loans and credit cards. How is this different except for your worker program. Why would a hospital take on crap untrained labor that they would have to then spend more money on to train. Banks and creditors already do this and they give you the freedom to keep working however you decide, they also give you a limit to spend that money on whatever you want. dislike
The only different part is the idea that hospitals could employ people to give them a means to pay their debt. Some poor people don't have much of a means to make money, so I thought at the very least that it was a "neat" idea lol. If hospitals got people to enter into a contract that legally requires them to work off their debt if it is shown that they have no other way to pay, then it's like they're protected from any losses. A person could just rack up the debt and then just not pay back... then the hospital wouldn't make it long. Poor people can't get very big loans or much credit, correct?
I think that would lower the level of care. I don't need some mother of 10 who's working at the hospital inbetween her other two jobs running my blood work. I like that you think outside the box though.
I understand, but I honestly think the lower level of care could be considered a good thing, since it would be cheaper and more people would have access. I don't think some untrained person should run your blood work lol, I think there are plenty of things for them to do. Do nurses have to get info on the patients? That could be easily accomplished by a completely untrained person, by giving them a form that guides them through the process and tells them exactly what question to ask.
hey OP, I like that your thinking of solutions but a single player health care system is the only possible way. Does anyone know how much it costs for a doctor to save your life? probably more then most people make in a year and thats not including house, car, family, food, school, taxes. And chances are that once you have that tumor removed or heart recharged..your not gonna jump right back into the work force..let alone working to pay off 30,000 in hospital bills. I'd rather be dead then in debt.
Are you the same guy that called my argument childish in that other thread? It's admirable that you want to give the poor access to Health Care, but I don't even know where to begin explaining why this is a horribly unrealistic solution. Don't tip toe around the issue. If you want to give the lower class health care, the only realistic answer is to go universal. My suggestion to you is either vote democrat or suck it up, drop the conscience and start acting like a conservative is supposed to. Don't you know that those peasants don't have health care, because they didn't work hard enough? It's not your fault that they're too stupid and incompetent to pay for there own health insurance.
Lol. I don't want to give them health care. I want to give them an opportunity to receive it. You're oh so realistic Jimi And another childish argument...
Let's say the average ER visit is $1,000 (I'm being generous here) without insurance. Minimum wage is 8$/hr. That means that if your ridiculous plan was put into action, these people would have to work 125 hours for to pay off the bill. There are 50,000,000 people uninsured and about 6,000 hospitals. Do I even have to finish or do you see why this is one of the dumbest ideas of all time? Not to mention the fact that these hospitals would have to lay off the employees that currently hold the positions, creating an even larger number of people unemployed and without health insurance...
The "poor" already get health care, through government services including welfare and other programs. The tens of millions of working, tax paying citizens who do not receive health benefits at their job do not have time to work at a hospital to "earn" health care. That is one of the most ridiculous idea I've heard yet. We need a system that allows people of moderate income to be able to buy heath care without ending up in the street because they couldn't afford their rent or mortgage on top of the costs of health care.
I really don't understand why America doesn't just have a fucking National Health Service funded by the taxpayer. It works great in Britain, one of the only things here that does work. And no, contrary to any belief Fox News might try and perpetrate, we are not socialists
It's not slavery. It's indentured servitude. Sure, it might be soft indentured servitude, no corporal punishment, no rules on what you can do with your spare time, but it's still indentured servitude. And someone that has a $250,000 hospital bill to pay for, they can clean toilets in a hospital 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 20 years on top of working another job to pay the light and grocery bill? No thanks, I'll go home and die. If Health Care is subject to the same rules of supply/demand and cost/benefit as the everything else, then we need to change the way we deal with sick people. It's really quite simple. Some people are not worth saving. Oh sure, it feels good to say "Every life is sacred, every life is worth saving." But that's just bleeding heart, touchy feely bullshit. Every life is worth saving when it's someone else's money that's paying for it. But not a lot of people are actually lining up to with the wallets in their hands. So, it's simple. Someone gets sick, a financial officer from the hospital or from the doctor's office looks at their financial history and comes up with a number of what they are likely to make over a given amount of time. And then they look at a chart that shows how much it costs to keep a person with that sickness alive for the same amount of time, and then they factor in cost of living for that amount of time, and the question is answered. So for example, someone who is 25 years old presents with some form of cancer. They've been working for 8 years, in that 8 years they've made $160,000. They have no savings, in fact maybe they are already $10,000 in debt. Someone that's 25 that's made $20,000 a year is only likely to ever make $220,000 over the next 10 years. The cancer treatment is going to cost $170,000. That only leaves them $50,000 to live on for the next 10 years. They are not a good candidate for treatment. Advise them as such. Tell them that it's going to cost their family $10,000 a year to supplement their income for the next decade while they pay off their bills. Are their parents planning to retire soon? Do they want to be the reason their parents work an extra 20 years? And someone who presents with Cancer has a XX% chance of having a recurrence in the next ten years anyway, so in all likelihood, they are going to be on the negative end of the curve again before they even get this instance paid off. We do this all the time in other areas. They don't sell a Ferrari to a 25 year old kid who only makes $20,000 a year. Why not? Because they are unlikely to be able to pay for it. So why is healthcare different? Because people NEED it? Bah! Sorry you didn't think about this when you were 18 and decided to skip college kid. Decisions have consequences. If someone has a benefactor that is willing to sign a contract to pay for it, then fine. If there is a charity hospital that will treat them, then fine. But if they show up at a for-profit hospital with an unprofitable disease, then too bad. Oh sure, there are those people who get sick and somehow come through it to live a more prosperous life than before they got sick, but they are the exception, the outliers, they are not the norm. And we don't run society based on exceptions and outliers. It might sound cold and heartless, but the real cold and heartlessness is telling someone "Everything is going to be OK. We're going to take care of you." when they just aren't. Looking back at when I got sick 15 years ago, if someone had shown me where I'd be today, been honest about it, and made me look at it realistically, I wouldn't have taken treatment. Oh yeah, I'd have been sad for a week or two, then I'd be dead. My family would have been sad for a few months - maybe - and then they'd move on. And today my parents would be retired, their house paid for, and spending time with my sister's kid. Not working full time jobs into their 70s to rebuild savings they've blown through keeping me alive. And we can't expect an insurance company to take a loss to keep someone alive. They are in business to make money for their shareholders, not to provide a charity for people in dire situations. And someone who costs more per month to keep alive than what they can possibly pay is a guaranteed loser for insurance companies. Insurance companies don't take $600 from a transplant patient and pay out $2000 for their meds, and somehow magically make a profit out of that. And they'd be stupid to get themselves into a contract that they can't bail out of when they start losing money. Why would they do that? Who does that benefit other than some deadbeat sickie?
The most unfair thing about it is that we already are taxed for health services, for other people: Politicians, government workers, welfare and disability cases, prisoners, and more totaling in the many millions are all covered. Working, uninsured taxpayers are among those funding these programs, yet they can't afford to buy their own individual insurance policies because of greed and stupidity. If working people do not receive health care from their job, or a government program, then maybe they should not have to pay taxes to cover health insurance for the above named groups.
Ummm...just because you went to college doesn't mean you have a job that provides health care. 60% of US bankruptcies are due to medical bills, Europe 0. We need universal health care in this country before it happens to you and your family.
Did you read the whole thing? It HAS happened to me and my family. And despite the fact that other people are "taxed to death" to pay for the healthcare of deadbeats like me, I'm still broke, I'm still unemployable because my credit history is trashed, I need a couple of sick days a month because I have no immune system, and I can't work a construction job or garbage collector because I am permanently weakened. My parents are working way past their retirement age because their savings was demolished in 6 months of me being sick. And the bills are still, 15 years later, piling up faster than I will ever be able to pay for them. Yeah, in Europe for some reason it works. But you'll never get the 50% of Americans who refuse to see that reality to go for it. So IF in America Supply/Demand and Cost/Benefit apply to healthcare - which it does - then we need to be honest about it with ourselves and with sick people and accept that some people are never going to earn what it costs to keep them alive and the onus is on the sick person to figure out how to pay for it. Sure, a college degree doesn't = a job that provides healthcare. But no college degree 90% of the time does = not able to pay for a serious illness. And if you can't earn enough to pay for it, and it's not right to redistribute the cost to other people, then saying "It's going to be OK. You're going to get past this illness and have a better life in the future" is a bald faced lie. Why do people want to lie to sick people? Nobody WANTS to be a burden on their family. Most sick people don't even want to be a burden on society. But when you cost more to keep alive than what you earn, you are just that. A burden on someone. They may not see it going in to the illness, that they will become a burden. So we need to show them that they are, that they will be. They are welcome to go get a second opinion. But you know what, when I got sick, they told me I'd be on dialysis for about 4 years waiting for a transplant. They were right. They told me I'd be too sick to work while on dialysis. They were right. They told me that I'd have certain complication on dialysis and after the transplant. They were right. They were right on all counts. They could have gone a little further and said "You are going to be a burden on people for the rest of your life" and they'd have been right. But they didn't. Because that's not politically correct to tell someone. But I really wish that they HAD told me that. It kills me that I am such a burden on my family. I would never chose to be this kind of burden. I have no intentions if this kidney fails to go back on dialysis. I don't even think I'd seek treatment for something else. But those out there that have never been sick, that have never known anybody that's been sick - really sick - will never go for any kind of socialized medicine. Maybe if the tea partiers get their way and in 5 years 1/2 of the population can't afford their healthcare, then Americas will see it. But your wasting your time trying to convince the healthy that they should pay for the sick. I used to try to convince people of that. Now I just try to convince people that if they don't want to pay for other people, then they should thank their God every night that they aren't sick themselves.
51% of health care costs in the US are publicly funded. This, along with all the barriers to entry, is why costs are so much higher here than everywhere else in the world. We would be better off being 100% public or 100% private, preferrably private because that's the morally acceptable path. Just because we don't support violence doesn't mean we don't have consciences. I care about the poor just as much as you do, that's why I put my money where my mouth is.
morally acceptable path... thats subjective i think 100% public is the morally acceptable path unless ur cool with people dying just because they don't have as much money as other people then i guess its morally acceptable
Voluntarism > Theft. I view death as natural, but If they can be helped then it is the people's duty to help them. It isn't right to use force to do it though, that's not a chill society. America can do better than lame ass Europe.
It's funny, I don't view unnecessary deaths caused by a non-public health care system as "chill". And considering we're so 'lame', us Europeans are doing pretty fuckin well for health care. But then I guess we're just not free, right?
voluntarism is voluntary so its obviously not theft. i like europe its a pretty cool place. i view death as natural too but that doesn't mean we shouldn't help people live if its possible.