Women Who Do Housework Should be Paid For It.

[Seth]

The thread is about Houseworking women. The debate between Coito and I that you stuck your ignorant head into was about FREE HEALTHCARE.

Nope. I was responding to what YOU posted, which was, and I quote, "So why do you have the phenomenon of "medical bankruptcy" there??"

I have been explaining it to you ever since, but you're evidently to ignorant to understand that fact.

Do put down the bong and pay attention.

[pErvinalia]

It was a direct question to Coito based on what he just wrote. You ignored the context of the question, which was for the 50th time: ABOUT FREE HEALTHCARE! Read the fucking thread before adding your non-sequiturs.

[Seth]

It was a direct question to Coito based on what he just wrote. You ignored the context of the question, which was for the 50th time: ABOUT FREE HEALTHCARE! Read the fucking thread before adding your non-sequiturs.

I do read the thread, and I respond to what it pleases me to respond to, which in this case was your rhetorical question. That you don't like being challenged and cannot formulate a cogent response and decide to resort to ad hom instead is your problem, not mine.

Remember, you are not the audience, you are merely the useful...person...who provides me with the statement upon which I choose to build my argument.

[pErvinalia]

It was a direct question to Coito based on what he just wrote. You ignored the context of the question, which was for the 50th time: ABOUT FREE HEALTHCARE! Read the fucking thread before adding your non-sequiturs.

I do read the thread, and I respond to what it pleases me to respond to, which in this case was your rhetorical question.

It was a real question.

That you don't like being challenged and cannot formulate a cogent response and decide to resort to ad hom instead is your problem, not mine.

Remember, you are not the audience, you are merely the useful...person...who provides me with the statement upon which I choose to build my argument.

Which is why I and others mostly ignore you.

[Seth]

It was a direct question to Coito based on what he just wrote. You ignored the context of the question, which was for the 50th time: ABOUT FREE HEALTHCARE! Read the fucking thread before adding your non-sequiturs.

I do read the thread, and I respond to what it pleases me to respond to, which in this case was your rhetorical question.

It was a real question.

Which I answered carefully and in excruciating detail by explaining how it is that one can get "free" health care and still have to declare bankruptcy. It's because there is no such thing as "free" anything, certainly not healthcare.

Remember, you are not the audience, you are merely the useful...person...who provides me with the statement upon which I choose to build my argument.

Which is why I and others mostly ignore you.

For a guy who ignores me you spend an inordinate amount of time not ignoring me and at the same time providing me with ample rhetorical ammunition with which to blow your arguments clean out of the water.

[Forty Two]

Non-sequitur. Coito was claiming that everyone can get free care in the US. That's obviously not the case if you have medical bankruptcies.

If you're referring to me, Forty Two, I never claimed that "everyone" can get free care in the US. Why in the world would "everyone" get free care?

Everyone can't get free food in Australia, can you? Barbaric! How can food not be free to EVERYONE!

In the US everyone is legally required to have health insurance. Period. That's the law. If you don't have health insurance, you are in violation of federal law.

People generally get health insurance with their jobs in the US -- like 80 something percent of the population is covered through employer provided health plans. Of those who are not covered that way, they have to buy a health plan. Instead of taxing people for it, and then providing it by the government, people have to figure out an insurance policy by buying one. The law says, however, that depending on your income you can get subsidized health insurance.

People with little or no income can get Medicaid, and people with lower incomes who don't qualify for Medicaid can get dirt cheap insurance -- but, they have incomes, so they pay SOMETHING toward their insurance. Those with zero income or very low incomes, however, are eligible for free insurance and/or Medicaid.

Children are always entitled to free health insurance under SCHIP.

God, you are tiresome and dishonest.

Don't be disingenuous. I didn't mean literally everyone gets it free (although, everyone can get free care here in Australia and the UK (and probably most of the other Western countries) if they want), and my point to Seth wasn't premised on that assertion. I meant everyone can get it for free if they need it (i.e they are too poor to pay for it themselves, which is what you claimed in your post). That was the point about medical bankruptcies. How can they happen if it's possible for people to get free care if they are unable to afford it?!?

Because many people who could afford the insurance - like 20-somethings who made $50,000 per year and up -- chose not to get insurance (when it was voluntary). Since 2010, having insurance is mandatory. Every American must be covered. If you can't afford it, then you get it free or heavily subsidized. However, if you're like me, you have to buy it and you don't get any subsidy. Naturally, if I violate the law and save my money instead of buying the required insurance, I can't expect to get it for free. Then I might have medical expenses that could turn me belly up. But, that ain't because I "can't afford it."

So before 2010 you couldn't get free healthcare? Well, at least you've corrected that since then. Now, what about preventative GP care? Can poor people get free GP visits?

Me? I can't get "free" healthcare now, because my income is too high. So, I have to either pay for the care or buy insurance. However, since 2010 it has been mandatory that I buy insurance.

I haven't corrected anything. Before 2010 it was not "mandatory" to have health insurance. However, people who could not afford to buy health insurance were able to get coverage for free through Medicaid. So, if by "you" you mean "people" - well, many people did receive free health care through Medicaid.

Poor people have gotten Medicaid, which includes annual visits and preventative care since the Medicaid plan started. Is this something you're told didn't exist in the US? You thought people in the US who were "poor" did not receive health care? What strange ideas you have.

[pErvinalia]

I knew you get ER hospital care for free. But I was under the impression you couldn't visit a GP for free preventative care. And there's still the issue of medical bankruptcy. If there is a health care safety net, how come we hear stories of people going bankrupt due to medical costs? Are these largely rich people who didn't buy their own health insurance?

[pErvinalia]

.....

[Forty Two]

I knew you get ER hospital care for free.

That's the law that says if someone goes to the emergency room, they must be treated. That's not Medicaid. That's anybody.

But I was under the impression you couldn't visit a GP for free preventative care.

A poor person could.

And there's still the issue of medical bankruptcy.

That's only an "issue" in my view for those who are needy or poor. If a middle-class twenty-something stock trader opts to not have insurance (when he was legally allowed to do so, or now illegally) in order to save money, and he incurs medical bills, well, I don't feel he deserves much sympathy.

Bankruptcy is a debtor's remedy, by the way. It means that if you owe bunches of money, you don't have to pay it, and the debt can get reduced or discharged. Saying personal bankruptcy is a problem in need of solution is not much different than saying Trump's corporate bankruptcies are a problem in need of a solution. The bankruptcy helped Trumps businesses, and a personal bankruptcy helps a debtor. Sure, it give a hit on personal credit, but frankly, it's minimal. If you play it straight after bankruptcy, you can have good enough credit to buy a house at like 4% interest after about a year or so after your debts are discharged.

If there is a health care safety net, how come we hear stories of people going bankrupt due to medical costs? Are these largely rich people who didn't buy their own health insurance?

Because most of the people who were "uninsured" were folks making more than $50,000 a year. They could afford insurance, but chose not to.

Yes, these are almost exclusively people who didn't buy insurance. There is a percentage of people who are entitled to government benefits but don't apply, but that's a small percentage.

Now, it's 2016, and everyone MUST have health insurance. Subsidies are means tested and increase as income decreases. It winds up being a tax of about 10-15% on annual income to pay for it, less of a percentage for lower income earners, down to $0 cost insurance for millions of people. I'm paying for some other people's insurance, with my rates of over $1200 per month, which is almost $15,000 per year. But, you know, i'm not actually all that irate about the cost. Shit costs money. If you go to a doctor's office for a test, maybe like an ultrasound or x-ray, the doctor costs money, the support staff costs money, rent, power, water, etc., and then the cost of all the equipment is staggering.

[Seth]

I knew you get ER hospital care for free. But I was under the impression you couldn't visit a GP for free preventative care. And there's still the issue of medical bankruptcy. If there is a health care safety net, how come we hear stories of people going bankrupt due to medical costs? Are these largely rich people who didn't buy their own health insurance?

Generally it's people who spend inordinate amounts of money demanding heroic and ultimately useless medical care for people (particularly children) who are pretty much doomed to die anyway. They usually demand the care without regard to the cost and threaten to sue doctors who advise against such expensive and pointless treatments in order to get the care and then when the bill comes they bail through bankruptcy.

I've seen stories about parents who freely acknowledge that they cannot afford such care but don't care and have every intention of declaring bankruptcy before they even get the care. And then they get the care anyway, the child usually ends up dead anyway after consuming millions of dollars in wasted treatments, and ultimately the taxpayers get stuck with the bill because the bankruptcy wipes out the FAMILY'S debt, but the medical system still has to absorb those costs, which either results in higher costs for everyone else or in many cases the hospitals get direct monetary reimbursement for bad debts from the federal government.

So the end result is that the kid gets "free" medical care...and dies anyway.

This is very sad and I don't blame parents for wanting to try to keep their child alive another week or month by demanding experimental "hail Mary" treatments, but the sad fact is that everybody dies sometime and that simple fact of life needs to be factored in to whether or not it's rational to spend enormous sums of taxpayer money trying to extend someone's life for a short period.

The same rationale applies to the elderly as well.

If YOU can pay for unlimited high-cost medical care in your dotage out of your own money, fine with me. But it's an egregious fraud on the public for relatives to spend someone else's (taxpayer) money struggling to keep their Alzheimer's afflicted brain-dead elderly relative alive another month or year.

People should have the honor, morality, grace, charity and good sense to end their lives BEFORE they become a financially-crippling burden on either their relatives or the taxpayers. And they should have the right to do so peacefully and painlessly whenever the hell they choose to do so. Anti-suicide laws are just another form of government-sanctioned slavery of the most heinous and evil sort. Such laws enslave people in pain and despair and allow them no legal, safe and painless way out. Horrifyingly evil and nobody should be compelled to go on living if they don't want to do so and they should have an unalienable natural right to kill themselves.

That's my plan, and it's the only ethical and honest way for anyone to live. Nobody has a "right" to go on living at other people's expense, particularly when they are doomed to die soon anyway.

Unless, of course, the people who are paying for the medical care are doing so voluntarily and of their own free will, like through a "GoFundMe" account that solicits funds from those who are willing and able to donate. All of Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare should be funded by GoFundMe pages rather than taxes. They'd probably collect more that way than they do now.

[pErvinalia]

Now, it's 2016, and everyone MUST have health insurance. Subsidies are means tested and increase as income decreases. It winds up being a tax of about 10-15% on annual income to pay for it, less of a percentage for lower income earners, down to $0 cost insurance for millions of people. I'm paying for some other people's insurance, with my rates of over $1200 per month, which is almost $15,000 per year. But, you know, i'm not actually all that irate about the cost. Shit costs money. If you go to a doctor's office for a test, maybe like an ultrasound or x-ray, the doctor costs money, the support staff costs money, rent, power, water, etc., and then the cost of all the equipment is staggering.

$15,000... holy fuckballs that's expensive!

[Seth]

Now, it's 2016, and everyone MUST have health insurance. Subsidies are means tested and increase as income decreases. It winds up being a tax of about 10-15% on annual income to pay for it, less of a percentage for lower income earners, down to $0 cost insurance for millions of people. I'm paying for some other people's insurance, with my rates of over $1200 per month, which is almost $15,000 per year. But, you know, i'm not actually all that irate about the cost. Shit costs money. If you go to a doctor's office for a test, maybe like an ultrasound or x-ray, the doctor costs money, the support staff costs money, rent, power, water, etc., and then the cost of all the equipment is staggering.

$15,000... holy fuckballs that's expensive!

Yeah, it is, isn't it? And that's why I scoff at Obamacare and don't have insurance.

[laklak]

$15,000... holy fuckballs that's expensive!

Yep, and it's a direct, completely predictable result of the fucking abortion of half-baked bullshit we call "Obamacare". It's the single stupidest Federal program I've seen in my entire life, and that's fucking saying something.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, it was a sell out to the insurance industry. That's what you get when you have a government run by corporations and big money.

[laklak]

Yeah but no but Change! Hope!

Actually, it's what you get when you allow idiots to vote.