vespergirl
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2007
- Messages
- 5,497
I''m not sure that the above statement is true (about us getting less). I was under the impression that the finest health care in the world is available in our country. Is that not true? I''m talking about for people who have insurance.Date: 3/12/2009 7:16:42 PM
Author: trillionaire
Date: 3/12/2009 7:11:22 PM
Author: cara
Date: 3/12/2009 5:44:33 PM
Author: vespergirl
As far as children''s healthcare goes, a current statistic listed that over 2 million uninsured children have at least one insured parent. Which means that the parents are buying themselves insurance, without insuring their children. It is not my responsibility to buy their children healthcare - if you have the capacity to insure them through your employer, then you should be obligated to do it.
Just because the parents can get insurance through their employer does not mean that the parent is able to insure their kid on that policy, or do so for a reasonable price. Two examples:
There is a reasonable student health insurance policy available from my university; students are required to be covered and the school usually covers half the cost of the insurance. But those pesky grad students kept having babies, and babies are expensive so they banned dependent coverage. You can not pay more to add your child on this policy - no kids are allowed period. And yes, they even emailed that out as the reason - too many knocked up people. One of my friends had a healthy baby and was able to purchase insurance on the open market for a reasonable amount of money. One of my friends was likely to have a premature baby, and was simply not going to be able to purchase ANY insurance at any price if that had happened. The kid actually went full term but had some minor, minor issue that needed to be watched (and did not end up costing anything) but that was enough that they couldn''t buy any coverage on the market until the kid was 7 months and this issue was officially done. So they got superlucky, but really had no method of insuring their brand-new, completely healthy baby that needed monitoring for a minor, preexisting condition.
Another case. Prior to grad school, I worked at a cheap school that would cover your health insurance but no dependents. In that case, they would allow you to add a dependent but you had to pay ALL the cost yourself and the employer would not subsidize any of the extra cost. The secretary was a single mom and she had insurance for herself, but to add her disabled son was an additional $900 per month. This job did not pay a lot, and she simply couldn''t buy food, rent and her son''s health insurance. Nor could she qualify for state help with insuring her son cause her income was too high and because *she* had insurance, they assumed she could add her son and her employer would pay. She went round and round trying to show that she couldn''t afford to insure her son on the school policy so she could qualify for help but it didn''t work. She was stuck in a no-man''s land and was actually advised to quit her job so her son would be eligible for state aid.
Excellent examples of our broken system, Cara!
''Americans spend $2.4 trillion a year on health care. The Business Roundtable report says Americans in 2006 spent $1,928 per capita on health care, at least two-and-a-half times more per person than any other advanced country.'' we pay more, and get less. Source
Safety net health care centers strain under increased demand.
The hidden costs of health care