Want a real set of personal health care positions?

[Tyler Durden]

1. People who smoke should be required to pay a differential in health care coverage to offset their cancer risk.

2. People who participate in hazardous passtimes (motorcycle riding with OR without helmets, sky diving, extreme skiing/snowboarding, skateboarding/bmxing) should be in their own healthcare/insurance actuarial group.

(ooo boy, is THIS one gonna get flamed)

3. anyone not taking vaccination for HPV on infection with the one of the cervical cancer implicated strains should be in their own healthcare/insurance actuarial group.

And you can expand this one out to ANY healthcare endangering activity, unless there is nationalized healthcare, and then we can spread these risks over the whole country.

Flame away, but ask yourself this: why should you or I have to pay for someone else's bad health/life related choice?

Disclaimer: of course anyone who DID take all the precautions and still came down with cervical cancer is blameless in this.

[deadmessengers]

1. didn't you hear?

Women with cervical cancer got it because they were whores. I read it on NewsMax, it must be true! :sarcasm:

[China_cat]

10. Gee, I read that right here on DU

[papau]

2. germs only hit the bad people -and bad people genes are not my problem - and

I determine what you are doing as "sport" is something I should insure with my dollars -

Talk about a ME generation - granted the ideas are popular at FreeRepublic where those that live off of the grand-dad's trust fund want folks to be responsible productive taking care of themselves citizens.

[pinto]

3. I favor Medicare for all, cradle to grave.

[Cerridwen]

4. Why DO we pay for someone else's health at all?

Why have we let insurance companies get away with categorizing us and charging us based on arbitrary groups and health "risks".

Why does the insurance industry insist on creating the myth that they "lose" money if they have to pay out, yet conveniently forget the money they make on investments?

Why does the insurance industry get to make decisions about our health care?

How many insurance companies have filed bankruptcy in the past 40 years? Out of those, how many did so because they couldn't make enough money from policies?

Why are they now starting to use credit scores to determine "risk"?

There are many questions I'd rather see answered about the industry itself before we start punishing those who make "choices" which we deem to be "inappropriate" as judged from our ivory towers.

You want to see health care costs drop - remove the freaking insurance industry.

[Tyler Durden]

13. This is a dicussion that logically leads to Nationalized healthcare.

[AnOhioan]

14. Exactly....with Single Payer the risk is spread out

No-one needs to branded with any scarlet letters.

[Cerridwen]

16. Precisely.

As long as we let the insurance industry run the debate and make the rules, we all lose.

I get so frustrated with people who have accepted the industry's explanation for why we're grouped and charged and approved and denied as though there is anything other than a profit motive behind it; with people who accept it as the unvarnished truth; who accept that my health care decisions should impact yours and yours mine; that insurance companies will go bankrupt if they do what they are in business to do. Imagine any other business who takes your money for a product and then responds with, but I can't give you that product because if I do I won't have it to sell to someone else and how will I make any money?

Argh! Question everything! - especially those things that result in someone else making a profit at your expense.

[area51]

15. Great post.

Wish I could nominate it for the "greatest" page. :thumbsup:

[Cerridwen]

17. Thank you!

:hi:

[yella_dawg]

5. Poor diet / lack of exercise is the #2 killer

according to NIH. A quarter pounder and two episodes of your favorite cop drama are as bad as a pack a day. How you gonna feed that info to the actuaries?

[The Straight Story]

6. Let's all bow to the money and healthcare god and control others for sinning

For that is what this has all become - your body, our choice.

[uppityperson]

7. You do know that more people die in car accidents than skydiving, right?

[Tyler Durden]

12. Not by percentage.

I doubt very much that the deaths per participant are remotely similar.

[Warpy]

8. How about single payer, universal healthcare?

We can't outlaw stupid by taxing it to death, which is what those higher premiums amount to. You cited various perfectly legal activities you consider dangerous, but I doubt your own lifestyle bears close scrutiny.

Life, by its very nature, is dangerous. Nobody gets out healthy and alive.

Insurance works by spreading the pool of covered people as far as possible, realizing that enough will stay healthy/alive/housed/accident free to compensate for the people whose luck runs out.

Insurance companies are already following your lines of greed, refusing to cover anyone with a chronic illness, and that includes allergies and other chronic conditions that can be managed chemically.

Naked greed that eliminates the chronically ill and the people in late middle age and often drags its feet on paying up for the people it covers is what has brought our health care system to the brink of catastrophe.

We desperately need a change in this country. We are the last industrialized country to provide health insurance as a basic right. Even Mexico has instituted a national health insurance program. This is not only embarrassing as hell, it's starting to kill us.

I'll leave the moralizing to the young and healthy, thanks. They're the only ones who think they can afford it.

[Cleita]

9. Every time you get in a car or airplane you take a risk.

Are we going to raise the premiums for those activities? I know the insurance companies would love it but should we?

[Tyler Durden]

11. There is a world of difference here...

...between taking a form of transport that is used in the billions of passenger/miles and jumping out of a perfectly good airplane or flying down the freeway at speed for all practical intents naked to the world.

Solution? Nationalized Healthcare.

[Cleita]

18. If you are talking about single payer universal health care, you

are preaching to the choir.

[ItNerd4life]

19. Um, this is exactly what a nationalized healthcare system does!

People don't want to believe that nationalized healthcare rations healthcare, but it does.

In Canada you can't have a double knee replacement if you are a male and weigh over 185 pounds.
I know, my dad couldn't get his knees replaced. It took years of negotiations and doctor visits before he was given an exception.

Nationalized healthcare leads to rationing, just in a different sub-text.

I'm not saying nationalized healthcare isn't better than what we have now, but don't believe it takes care of all the problems. It just creates many new ones.