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Thread: Oral Arguments
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04-03-2012, 04:25 PM #32
Re: Oral Arguments
What makes the health system in this country tick is insurance. Which means you often get the following relationship:
Employee provides services to the employer.
Employer, as part of employee's compensation, pays for insurance coverage for employee.
Insurance company, paid (in part) by employer, provides insurance coverage to employee. Which means...
Insurance company pays doctor's office for health care provided by doctor but...
Health care is received by employee.
It's not obvious that it *should* be that complicated, and it may be that that way is not ideal. But in the real world this is often how it works. And that, to my mind, is why it's less like broccoli and more like civil rights or the Great Depression or other systemic problems: It's just too complicated for a simple solution.
I don't have to like broccoli but I also don't have to eat it. But eventually I *will* need medical care, and somebody will have to pick up the tab.
As to whether it's really a problem, well, I didn't know people weren't aware of this, but the cost of medical care has been rising disproportionately for some time:
Health_costs_USA_GDP.jpg
I'm not going to debate about whether this was the ideal formulation for addressing the health care crisis in this country. Like almost every bit of legislation involving something controversial, compromises were made along the way and I doubt you would find a single person who would call it ideal.
We're in crisis. If the Supreme Court throws out the law, no matter how artfully the opinion is worded, no matter how ironclad the legal reasoning, I fear it will be twenty or more years before we can take another swing at this issue.
One of the dumbest things about contemporary health care in this country is that people will end up not being insured and then needing health care anyway, which leads to money coming out of my pocket to pay for them. And it leads to people not getting preventative care, and it leads to long lines at the ER, as others have recently pointed out in this thread.
Frustrating, too, because some of those people are too proud or too foolish to realize that's inevitable, and here I am taking care of myself and my family as best I can with proper insurance.
I don't care about the moron riding around on a motorcycle with no helmet, but we all pay for the ambulance and hospital stay when it turns out he's uninsured. If that moron was required to have health insurance then it would mean he was paying into the system, and the burden would not be on me to, metaphorically, drive him to the hospital and perform the surgery on his smooth brain.
I also don't care much to hang out in this subforum; these debates often get sour quickly. Thank you to you guys for responding positively to my post but as soon as possible I'm going to forget (again) that this forum is here.
I'm all about the .
Last edited by festivus; 04-03-2012 at 04:29 PM. Reason: formatting issues
Festivus
His definitions and arguments were so clear in his own mind that he was unable to understand how any reasonable person could honestly differ with him.
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