Health Care Thread

What about your mental health issues.?

Great you have used lifestyle choices to lower your risk. But you're not risk-free you could develop brain cancer or get hit by a bus tomorrow. You're chalking this "i haven't seen a doctor in 8 year because I'm awesome" shit as if it reflects well on your character. It's mostly luck.

And really, you aren't minimizing your risk if you aren't seeing a doctor annually to get a checkup for issues that may not be apparent. I don't care enough to actually dig up numbers, but I'll bet that increases your risk and does so more for every year you avoid the doctor because you think you're awesome.

I'm not educated enough beyond the dumb shit talking heads say on tv or in articles to make a determination about what is ruining our health care system, if it is even being ruined. I doubt either of us are. I'm not really commenting on that so much as the "never go to the doctor" thing. Whenever I go to work I am truck by how lucky I am that these thousand morons surrounding me don't just plow into me and kill or cripple me, it is totally out of my control. Going to the doctor for preventative measures or treatment isn't a societal ill, it's what you are supposed to do.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Yes, everything is luck. I'm lucky I don't smoke, don't do drugs, don't drink, don't participate in dangerous activities, stay active and eat fairly healthy.

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And for people like me that do the same and got fucked by luck?

Myopic piece of shit.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

You know maybe I should get that looked at. Ptsd is 50% disability to the va. That would be around $1500!

And come on, the random people hit by buses aren't what's destroying our healthcare, it's the retards going to the er every weekend for the cold or the mongoloids who refuse to vaccinate their kids.

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Yea, $50 in services frequently going unpaid is the source of the issue not the $60k+ uncommon ones...

Something I read a while back had actually covered that - something like 2 in 3 major procedures on the uninsured are defaulted on - while for small routine stuff its like 1 in 5.

But you love to blame common cases vs major ones - its a theme with you.

#1 problem with health care in the US is that Americans are chronically incapable of saving any money, so they require several extra layers of bureaucracy to make decisions for them.

Why are routine doctor visits something insurance needs to cover? It's beyond stupid and is equivalent to wasting money buying a protection plan for your cell phone. Health insurance should be like every other insurance and cover rare, high expenses.

Xequecal_sl said:

#1 problem with health care in the US is that Americans are chronically incapable of saving any money, so they require several extra layers of bureaucracy to make decisions for them.

Why are routine doctor visits something insurance needs to cover? It's beyond stupid and is equivalent to wasting money buying a protection plan for your cell phone. Health insurance should be like every other insurance and cover rare, high expenses.

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I require 3+ MRIs a year in addition to other treatment. You think a normal person earning $45k with a couple kids is affording that with proper budgeting?

I'm lucky in that I could afford it if I needed to but that's just luck of who my families are - I planned well before I got sick - but $200kish by 32 while great for 32 wouldn't have been enough without inheritance.

And funny thing in general terms my health case isn't that rare. And I planned better than most, and I still would've been fucked if not for family wealth. (And later, insurance had to go without for 2 yrs)

Xequecal_sl said:

#1 problem with health care in the US is that Americans are chronically incapable of saving any money, so they require several extra layers of bureaucracy to make decisions for them.

Why are routine doctor visits something insurance needs to cover? It's beyond stupid and is equivalent to wasting money buying a protection plan for your cell phone. Health insurance should be like every other insurance and cover rare, high expenses.

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This is the rub with Obamacare. It was suppose to give access to the poor and working class, but unless you qualify for Medicaid you are getting fucked. Most of the people on bronze level plans are in the poverty level-30k range. These are the people that the news is talking about when they report 63% of people don't have $500 in savings. They are now forced under penalty to buy insurance with a ~5k deductible. They're now paying for health insurance they can't afford to actually use and if something catastrophic does happen they don't have the saving or a line of credit to ever meet the deductible.

Zitar_sl said:

This is the rub with Obamacare...

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It's a regressive tax, and it's a subsidy. It sucks for everyone in the first 3 or 4 income brackets. It's as bad as, or worse than, student loans.

Xequecal_sl said:

#1 problem with health care in the US is that Americans are chronically incapable of saving any money, so they require several extra layers of bureaucracy to make decisions for them.

Why are routine doctor visits something insurance needs to cover? It's beyond stupid and is equivalent to wasting money buying a protection plan for your cell phone. Health insurance should be like every other insurance and cover rare, high expenses.

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Right, so obviously the solution then is to force these "non-savers" into the emergency room, where you and I have to cover their costs in the form of $50 band-aids and sky-high property taxes. Unless you can make the case that sick people without cash or insurance should be refused service and be allowed to die in the street, your philosophy of personal responsibility is a moot point, because there will ALWAYS be a segment of the population that won't save money for your scenario.

Everybody gets sick, everybody dies, and everybody should shoulder the burden. Getting sick isn't really a choice-- everybody will get sick at some point. Healthcare is NOT the same as car/home insurance, which is a choice. There should be extra taxes for fat people and smokers, but outside that everybody should shoulder the burden. Everybody dies.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Heart disease: 611,105
Cancer: 584,881
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
Alzheimer's disease: 84,767
Diabetes: 75,578
Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149

Leading cause of death, pretty much are all heavily influenced by lifestyle.

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Lol, a ton of that shit is influenced by genetics, and Cancer has been proven to be mostly bad luck/genes as well as the thing you inevitably risk getting the older you get, with the exception of smoking/lung cancer. Saying sickness is mostly the "sick person's" fault is just gross, because trust me one day you'll in all likelihood be suffering from one of those exact things you listed.

Zitar_sl said:

This is the rub with Obamacare. It was suppose to give access to the poor and working class, but unless you qualify for Medicaid you are getting fucked.

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Do you have any idea how hard it is to qualify for medicaid?

You a can't even have 4k to your name man in any form.

Kedwyn_sl said:

Do you have any idea how hard it is to qualify for medicaid?

You a can't even have 4k to your name man in any form.

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It's tough in states that adopted expanded coverage and you have to be pretty much destitute in the states that didn't. As a single able bodied male it's just about impossible.

Xequecal_sl said:

There is absolutely no health difference between HFCS and regular sugar. The only reason we even use HFCS is because massive tariffs on sugar are making it cheaper than sugar. Now we should pass another tax to cancel out the previous tax?

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I had read differently, but I googled it just now, and I see what you're saying. My bad. Sugar, in general, should have a sin tax. In the amounts that it's available it's pretty much poison, and a drag on our economy.

The previous info I had was that fructose doesn't register in your brain the same way glucose does, so fructose bad. But HFCS is 55/45 fru/glu and sugar is like 50/50. They're not separated by the same width a the study (pure fructose vs. pure glucose).

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Have you seen what the biggest contributing factors to heart disease is?

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Yeah, smoking and eating shitty food. You also have plenty of people that have shitty genetics, like my stepdad that needed a bypass at 60 despite being in shape and not eating any red meat in over 15 years.

Everybody dies from something bro. Whether you keel over from a heart attack at 45 because you're a fat fuck, at 65 because of bad genes, or 75 because your heart just decided to give up.

My mom died of Ovarian cancer at 60 after a nine year fight, and she was a lifelong vegetarian. My aunt died last year at 55 from lung cancer, despite not smoking since 1985. My dad died from a burst arterial venus malformation at 69 that kept him in a Canadian ICU (thank god) for four days before he died, and that was a 1/1000000 genetic anomaly he was born with.

Whether you're paying for someone's cancer treatment at 45 because he was a 2 pack a day smoker, or you're paying for the 64 year old guy that had bad luck, either way you're paying. There should be an extra tax of some sort for people that are obese and/or smoke, but outside of that this personal responsibility angle makes no sense. It makes no sense logically, no sense financially, and certainly no sense morally. Sorry.

I've adopted quite a few conservative values since moving to the US, but sorry your health care system is not only atrociously run, it's morally repugnant.