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Massachusetts Makes Health Insurance Mandatory
Iron Condor writes "Massachusetts is the first state to require its residents to secure health insurance, a plan designed to get as close as practically possible to statewide universal health care. Presidential hopeful and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney originally introduced the idea in 2004. Effective July 1, 2007, the law, which uses federal and state tax dollars, is aimed at making health insurance affordable to all residents of the state, including low-income populations. Those who fall below the federal poverty line may be eligible for health care at no cost."
I'm from Australia here, and I've never understood how the US health care system worked until I saw Moore's documentary, SiCKO.
I would watch American movies and TV shows, and wouldn't understand when you guys talk about, getting a job with 'health benefits'. Here in Australia, the only thing I worry about getting a job is if it pays right.
If I go to the GP (family doctor in the US), or need to go to the hospital, paying the bills is the last thing on my mind. It's all taken care of. Medicines are also subsidised by the government. You collect virtually any prescription for $3.
Honestly, I was surprised you guys let it get that bad. Then again, I wasn't surprised the reason it went the way it did: through greed and politics.
It's worth noting here that when I worked for a Lloyds of London medical malpractice underwriter, they refused to cover anyone in the US, partly because of the ridiculous culture of litigation, but also because they had determined that the majority of US medical care just wasn't up to the standards they expected in their other markets. The excessive litigation they could have coped with through increased premiums for Americans, but they found that the excessive incompetence made it more profitable to concentrate on selling cover in India and South Africa instead.
Your argument about food is also bogus. Food *is* elastic. If the price of potatoes is too high, I can buy pasta or rice or parsnips or I can grow my own instead. But if I was in the third world and had to buy medical treatment, I would have no choice in the matter. I can't shop around for some other cure when what ails me is brain cancer, nor can I fix it myself. If you really want a food and drink analogy, then you need to compare with water. Water is the one essential (and even then I'm sure there are some crazies who fuck themselves up by only drinking orange juice, or beer). You can pick and choose everything else, but you need water. Additionally, because of the infrastructure (pipes, pumping stations etc) required to deliver water, it is a natural monopoly just like electricity, local phone service, and so on. It is therefore no surprise that the price of water is regulated. If it wasn't, people would have no choice but to pay silly prices just like you poor sods do with medicine.
'In which case I recommend mitigating the risk.'
How does one do that again? My wife worked from the age of 13 and continued for 40 years. During that last year she started becoming fatigued and feeling pain. Her attendence at her place of work suffered and so did mine because I would stay to take care of her when she hurt too badly to get out of bed. This was gradual, first it was what seemed an isolated incedent, then it became every other week. She was seeing a doctor and her diagnosis at that point was lupis.
Finally she had an incident where her leg suddenly lost feeling and she dropped on the stairs at work. She suffered no direct injuries. Wendy was already on final notice for attendance and in too much pain to return. After six months Sony stopped paying her disability benefits and claimed there was nothing wrong with her. She applied for social security disability.
Because there was now one income in the home and not two we couldn't afford to keep the house and lost it. We moved to small town IL with my family. I got a job but Wendy could not. While there I paid cash (her old insurance policy was tied to her employer and no new policy would cover her condition) for her doctors and medications. Her diagnosis became MS and then finally settled on Fibromyalgia.
Predictably the only insurance she had left, Social Security, denied her claim. They had sent her to their doctor, who agreed with her fibromyalgia diagnosis but they denied anyway. She appealed and they denied it on review. She went to a hearing, the judge decided she just had arthritis, which while disabilitating is not one of the conditions approved for disability. Oh yes, the judge also decided she smoked and therefore must be evil.
We appealed on the grounds that the judge was reaching her own medical opinions and not ruling based upon the medical opinions of those actually qualified to reach them. Social security denied the appeal upon review (our lawyer told this that they always do before we even filed it). We filed an appeal to the federal level. Wendy quit smoking. She and I moved back to Florida but kept an address in Illinois to avoid the several month delay that a change of jurisdiction would introduce in the process. She began seeing a specialist, this time the specialist actual wrote the exams the specialists take on Fibromyalgia. This doctor evaluated her independently and also diagnosed her with Fibromyalgia. The federal court has a staff that screens cases, the ruling of the Judge exhibited extreme biased and she played doctor so the federal court summarily sent the case back for retrial without seeing Wendy.
We went back to Illinois again. The judge upheld the previous judges ruling and failed to consider her new doctor, despite him being 'imminently qualified' because he hadn't been seeing her long enough (3 months). Naturally we appealed again, social security denied again, we appealed back to the federal courts, and once again the ruling was deemed bad enough that they simply sent it back for retrial. This time social security sent it back to the same judge who ran the first trial.
That saga is coming soon and we expect another cycle of rinse and repeat. We have appealed to a senator in IL and if the federal court doesn't overturn the ruling this time we will move the jurisdiction to Florida in an attempt to get a fair hearing. It is obvious that social security is biased toward rejecting claims and their judges are also biased toward rejecting them.
Wendy filed her claim six years ago. She worked for 40 years without any interruption of more than 30 days. Her diagnosis has been confirmed by 2 general practicioners and two specialists (including SS doctors). Two social security career experts have said that if the limitations specified by her doctors are correct Wendy would be unable to work any job.
Wendy had a good job, insurance, she had a retirement plan in addition to social security (already burned through paying expenses out of pocket. So you tell me, how was she supp