President Trump Optimism thread

First of all, even if you said you didn’t remember your name or DOB, you would have been sent to triage. That’s how the ER works.

Second, deducing your coverage from your company might be trivia in your case. Or maybe they figured it out after you were discharged, because they had to treat you anyway. But in lots of cases it’s more complicated. Where I live there are at least two competing insurance companies called Blue Cross Blue Shield. I wouldn’t expect a random patient to tell them apart if they forgot their ID card.

Both… I don’t think there is any place where they will check your insurance info before dealing with your heart attack.

MARK OF THE BEAST

I love this let’s do it. Can’t get healthcare without a 666 chip implanted in your face.

No, really. It’s not necessarily quick but it is essentially trivial to do; I used to do this all day long. All you need is the patient’s name and DOB. There are multiple clearinghouses for verifying insurance coverage. Having more information - like the subscriber’s name and DOB, carrier, etc. - is certainly easier, but not required.

I was asking about President Timex’s health care plan.

Curious what the plan is for victims that come in with no ID and are unconscious for whatever reason. Maybe a mom and kids hit by a drunk driver, ID not recovered from the wreck.

They’re going to get treatment, right?

Yeah, I think that the rule would be to err on the side of caution. You’d risk giving care to some people who didn’t have insurance, but it would be worth it.

Again, the big point is to just create a legitimate punishment for those who choose to opt out of the ACA. If we cannot fine them, then the only recourse is to force them to live with the repercussions of their decisions.

Famous B Street Band,

Not necessarily. That didn’t kick in until the last couple years, I don’t think it goes back four. And not all small employers do it only because it is mandated. My daughter works for someone small enough that California’s recent minimum wage increase doesn’t kick in but they offer health care options.

If we’re talking about semi-dystopian GOP ACA fixes, then you don’t have to necessarily deny these people treatment in “emergency” cases… you just have to give the medical providers some ironclad way of recovering their costs without taking it out of the hide of other taxpayers.

So you’re at a NASCAR event and you get whacked in the head by a flying trans-axle. Your buddies take your unconscious form to the nearest hospital, and they rifle through your pockets but can’t come up with any ID other than a questionable laminated card that simply says “#1 Dad” and a coupon for a free McFlurry. The hospital shrugs and wheels you back into surgery where they remove the automotive debris from your left eye socket.

When you wake up, you find a cheerful hospital administrator with a bill for $75,000. Since you don’t have insurance, the hospital took the liberty of invoking Article VI of the “American Medical Freedom” act, commonly known as Trumpcare. Under this clause, the hospital automatically gets to garnish your wages (up to 69%) until your debt has been repaid. Interest is set at the Fed rate +4. You may challenge this garnishment in court, but it automatically goes into effect 30 days after you leave the hospital and cannot be discharged through bankruptcy (similar to a student loan).

Hey, if you want to make an omelet sometimes you have to crush a few eggs under your hob-nailed boots until the other eggs are too terrified of the idea of foregoing insurance.

That seems to be the universal policy.

As I understand it, it would work like this: Guy has a heart attack, gets brought in to ER. He gets treated and stays at the hospital until he is deemed healthy enough to leave. They will get him out of there as quickly as possible.

The problem is follow-up care. They won’t do it for free. You have cancer and need chemo. I don’t think you will get ongoing treatment if you can’t pay your bill. You need to have a tumor removed but you can’t afford the operation? You’ll have to shop around and find someone willing to do it and accept payments over time.

So without insurance you risk not getting treatment of many kinds and you risk financial ruin if you incur an unexpected medical emergency treatment.

For things to be fixed, these sorts of people are going to have to suffer from their mistakes, so they can learn their lesson.

The key is to make sure they learn the right lesson.

We can’t change the past, but we can try to avoid repeating the same mistake.

Normally, hospital debt is treated like any other debt. A lot of it must be written off.

You are proposing that it should be privileged. That’s a great way to make medical costs rise even faster. If you are practically guaranteed to be paid, might as well charge a million bucks for an aspirin.

They already do this. Hospitals have negotiated pricing with insurance plans, so you might be charged $5 for an aspirin under and plan and $15 if you do not have insurance. It’s infuriating.

The reasons are political not Darwinian. The problem today is that a sizable portion of the electorate are dumb and they literally have to “learn their lesson” before they can understand.

Fixed that. And I was referring to Timex’ proposed solution. That would be a very Darwinian solution, one that would disproportionately effect the poor and minorities, and kill untold thousands needlessly.

No, it isn’t. It should be, but it isn’t.

I got 4 calls today about my insurance. They can’t find me in the system. I had to politely remind them that the extra space in my last name is not optional… my employer uses that, no one else does. I can’t change that for… reasons.

Why did this happen, because the administrator for my employer based plan changed on 1/1. I have no choice in the matter, and every place I receive care now has to update… assuming they remember to ask and listen when I tell them that these almost identical looking and sound plans are actually different.

This is me conscious not in the ER bleeding or dying.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/watch-turkish-president-erdogan-lauds-trump-for-putting-cnn-reporter-in-his-place/

Great.

This is how insurance worked prior to the ACA, too. In fact, it’s actually the point of the GOP plans - the reason that preexisting conditions weren’t covered was that those people chose not to get coverage and are now only trying to get it because they are already sick. People thought that system was shitty and didn’t like it, so we got the ACA. There’s really no reason to go back to the system we already proved didn’t work, except that the GOP didn’t like that Obama was going to get credit for improving things, and they have twisted themselves into such a knot about socialized medicine oooooooooo that they can’t do what will actually work.

This isn’t reality, it is libertarian fantasy. People will individually be screwed over by the system, but the general populace will still mostly be healthy and will not learn this lesson. “Let people suffer until they wise up” is simply not an effective solution.

The outrage over the ACA mandate is the same as the outrage over income taxes when they were first created, and over all the other things the government does to provide for public goods. Where is the outrage over banks forcing you to insure your home? Over the government forcing you to insure your car? Over the government forcing you to pay for the police, fire department, public schools, public highways and parks, the military? I get that there are some extreme libertarians who do in fact protest these things, but plenty of people who are up in arms of Obamacare support most of these other government services. The reality is that you not having insurance imposes a cost on everyone else, both because your life-threatening conditions must be paid for by someone, and because your refusal to pay means that everyone else has to pick up the cost of the risk that you will opt in once you get sick. It is as ridiculous as wanting to not pay for the police except when they help you personally.

The ACA’s solution is a good one. You are not, actually, forced to buy insurance under the ACA. You are simply charged a tax when you choose not to, so that those who choose to have insurance are not burdened with the cost of your risks. In fact, one of the ACA’s problems is that the penalty isn’t high enough to subsidize that risk fully and keep the cost of plans down. This is a great way to do it, though. Make people pay for their choices that harm others (or that impose externalities in general) at the time they make those choices, so that they can back out of their poor decisions, rather than making them pay irrevocably once their choices have caused irrevocable harm.