Quote:
Originally Posted by Sausage
Um some of you miss the point that if you have health cover over there your insurance company is still going to try their hardest to get out of having to pay your expenses. The US has the most corrupt and poorly run 'health' system in the developed world, and you pay infinitely more per person for healtcare than the rest of the world too.
Sure our free health system may not be perfect but I would sure as hell take it over the disaster you guys seem to enjoy.
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The real problem with the US health care system isn't that there are a lot of people uninsured. If you don't have insurance you can walk into any public hospital or urgent care center and they will take care of you no questions asked. You may never pay for it and if not they pass the cost on to those that do pay or have insurance.
The real problem comes when people have insurance and that insurance ends up denying the claim. You then have two choices. Pay a lot to get a lawyer and fight them, or just take it. If you don't have much money you have limited options when it comes to fighting.
A friend of mine has a 6 year old that had to have some surgery done on her teeth. The total bill was $8,000. The insurance only paid $1500. They claim that since the problem she had came from a cavity which is a preventable thing that they (the insurance company) don't have to pay for it.
So now he can either pay the other $6500 or spend who knows how much to get a lawyer and hope to successfully fight it. He didn't know it wouldn't be covered until they refused the claim. There are tons and tons of these stories where people get sick only to find out their insurance doesn't cover them or the insurance companies are flat out refusing to pay.
If you are fine and healthy and everything is good and you just go to the doctor 1-2 times a year for checkups and get an occasional prescription here and there insurance is not a problem. If you actually get sick or hurt, it could be a very surprising day to find out exactly what is covered and not.
I feel the two things this country needs to do in order to survive is deal with our energy problem and curb the cost of health care. The cost of health care is rising faster than the average wage and more and more people every year are driven into bankruptcy/poverty because they got sick or hurt. I'm not saying we have to have socialized medicine, but if we don't do something about the cost of this we will find ourselves in an ugly way.