So I am just to go off and die? Who would give a 70 year old man with chronic illnesses insurance in a free enterprise system? Certainly no company that wants to stay in business. When Medicare was passed, health care was affordable for most people. Now, Even with healthy savings, one hospital stay and surgery would wipe me out
Medicare did that. In my wife’s country of birth, a total hip replacement costs $12,000 US at the best orthopedic hospital in Bangkok. Here, the same procedure costs $120,000 at best when you add all the associated costs. No one who is not rich can handle that. Conservatives and Progressives are not going to do anything with that.
The option most young conservatives suggest is “let the old farts pay their own bills”. Of course the compassionate progressives have death panels.
Time for us to pack up and move. No realistic choice. Obamacore will end up like the NHS in the UK and I know several UK citizens who moved to Chiang Mai for decent health care which is not available in the UK.
We should thoroughly reform the healthcare system.
Of course our elders should be taken care of, but we won’t get anywhere in reform if we continue with the fiction that Medicare as it is is funded by recipients past payments. It is a government entitlement that is unsustainable and only to a small degree funded by the previous payments of beneficiaries.
We need to radically remove third- and fourth-party payment mechanisms and get free market pricing back into healthcare delivery. Also, we need to recognize that the level of healthcare we all want, which was largely unavailable in past times, is very expensive. It is only because we are a wealthy society that we can afford it, and we need to put mechanisms in place to get people to be paying for themselves again.
But no, don’t go away and die—please!
As our premium has increased so greatly, I have considered going without many times.
I have come to the conclusion that facing the cost/benefit of medical care to ones life has been a part of human life since the beginning of time. There will come a day in most of our lives when we must consider the cost of care vs what money we have, and make a choice. Most people in the history of life, have also had to make it. Why should I be exempt?
I am not facing this situation currently, but I will in the future. I will face it with as much courage as I can muster, just like so many other people have had to in this world.
Please don't get me wrong, I am not criticizing you, but the Medicare and SS programs are over, given the debt we have, and we will all have to face that situation.