
American Healthcare system micro-aggressions, or death by a thousand cuts - AnneDev
https://medium.com/@mrannedev/american-healthcare-system-micro-aggressions-or-death-by-a-thousand-cuts-ea99bba10d02#.gy7bywv34
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rabidrat
Health "insurance" in general is a ridiculous concept. Insurance is supposed
to flatten the cost of undertaking risky endeavors. Maybe there should be
injury insurance for athletes, and STD insurance for sex workers. But the
average human who jacks into the matrix for 18 hours/day is not taking any
undue risk and should not need health insurance to get treatment for their
cancer any more than they need murder insurance to pay for the investigation
of their own death.

Capitalism is as faulty an ideology as any. Some things should not be for-
profit. Healthcare is one of them.

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trendia
Health insurance originally _was_ for managing risk -- it only covered
emergency healthcare like being in an accident or having a heart attack. But
now we want healtchcare to cover everyday costs, including routine doctor's
visits and daily medication like antidepressants or birth control.

 _Of course_ full coverage health insurance is going to be expensive -- if
people are using it every month then it no longer distributes the occassional
cost of an accident, but rather distributes the daily healthcare costs for
routine care.

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erentz
I'm really beginning to think that one potentially good catalyst for change
would be if we could get a law prohibiting companies from providing health
benefits.

Even if companies responded by increasing monetary compensation accordingly
(unlikely!), the impact of every middle and upper class American having to go
out and buy crappy health insurance, and actually hand over the cash for it
themselves, might change a few minds about how we organize healthcare in this
country.

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waqf
Without also reforming healthcare up front, that would move a lot more people
into the "y'know what, I'm better off without health insurance" bucket, which
would accelerate breakdown of the health insurance market.

But I don't see why that would create the political will for anything to get
fixed, given that it isn't being fixed already.

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mseidl
I'm a German that used to live in the USA for a while. I worked as an engineer
in the US, with what would be considered "decent" insurance, and it was still
crappy. You couldn't pay me enough to go back.

