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It's About Time Astronauts Got Healthcare For Life (mashable.com)
Miriam Kramer, reporting for Mashable: NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria flew to space four times for the space agency between 1995 and 2007. While in space, his eyesight deteriorated, a well-documented medical issue NASA's known about for years, and one that many astronauts have experienced first-hand. For many astronauts, their eyesight readjusts once they get back to Earth. That wasn't the case for Lopez-Alegria, though. His eyesight got significantly worse during his time in orbit, and NASA isn't paying for his contacts or doctor visits today, years after his retirement from the agency. However, he still travels to Houston, Texas once per year to allow the agency to gather data about his health, without any expectation that NASA will offer treatment for any conditions that may have developed because of his time in space. In other words, while Lopez-Alegria's eyesight deteriorates, NASA benefits from the data he provides to the American space program, without medical recompense to him today. The lack of health care for former astronauts has long been a sore spot at NASA, but now it threatens the agency's future. Deep space missions beyond the moon, like a mission to Mars, require a better understanding of how extended spaceflight affects the human body.
I totally agree that NASA should pay for the most top-notch healthcare for life for all astronauts. There are not many and they deserve it for the risks they take and the benefits we all gain...
However this line is absurd:
"now it threatens the agency's future"
No, no it does not. Even if NASA shot all astronauts on retirement there would still be a healthy supply of overqualified candidates for flying in space.
I wish people would stop weakening perfectly good arguments by trying to lace them with drama.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is just a small example of how the US healthcare system is a failure.
Every other Western democracy has universal healthcare coverage. Most alongside private coverage, and some (at least Canada) purely public.
The US system is harmful on so many levels. This includes poor outcomes, 2x to 3x higher cost per-capita than any other system, transferring the cost of healthcare to employers and consequently acting as a strong deterrent to recruiting Americans and an inducement to offshoring work, etc.
But Americans *love* their private health insurance, so it's not politically viable to discuss a real solution. Only crappy band-aids, like ACA (which the Republicans successfully rebranded "Obamacare") and - soon - a watered down version we'll be calling Trumpcare.
Americans object to mandating the purchase of health insurance, but they forget that treating people who present at a hospital is mandatory. Making health insurance mandatory is symmetrical. If it's optional, hospitals should be allowed - and perhaps required - to turn away patients without the ability to pay. Don't like that outcome? OK, drop the objection to mandatory coverage then.
OK, rant off. :-)
How about we give everybody the privilege, instead of limiting it to Astronauts?
Or at least expand the offering to everybody who's ever wanted to be an astronaut?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
It's weird that 32 out of the 33 developed countries in the world consider healthcare to be an important right of citizenship. But that 33rd country, they don't even believe in it for national heroes, soldiers, or public servants.
It's almost like the cognitive dissonance exists at a fundamental level such that no progress can be made.
The market solution is to give you a $10 off coupon on healthcare for your service in Houston.
As Paul Ryan explained, if you want cheap healthcare you should have made better life decisions, like becoming a congressman rather than an astronaut.
The real problem here is that refusing to pay up front for medical costs leads to a whole host of social ills further down the line, that often cost much more. When someone gets a medical intervention that they cannot afford, they will inevitably become insolvent, either through bankruptcy or through simply abandoning the debt. In the end either someone else (the taxpayers) has to pay the bill or it gets written off as a bad debt, but in the meantime the person who has gone into some sort of insolvency is in a much worse state, either having lost almost everything through bankruptcy, or exists in a debt netherworld where wages are garnisheed or they end up simply working under the table. There are significant social costs to this; spousal and child abuse, mental health and suicide.
The narrow view taken by people that "I dont' want to pay for it" ignores the fact that you do end up paying for it in many other ways. Refusing to cover peoples' health just kicks the can further down the road, and costing everyone a lot more money.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
this is why i cant stand liberal democrats, always thinking other people should pay for their decisions
Like the decision to get sick or have a genetic condition? Yeah, you should have picked better parents, you loser!
Seriously, dude, this is how insurance and social programs work. We all pay in.
Like when you crash your car....all those other people who aren't crashing their cars are paying for yours to be fixed.
Like when your house catches fire...other people whose houses haven't caught fire are helping to pay for yours to be rebuilt.
Like when your children go to school...all those other people who don't even have children are helping pay for the school your kids go to.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Actually if you had a national health system like just about every other developed nation on the planet you would not need any special treatment for astronauts because just like everyone else they would get free health care. The statement should not be that it's about time astronauts get healthcare for life it should be that it's about time everyone gets healthcare for life.
Bond:
Trumpfinger:
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Not to mention if we choose as a society to pay together, it can be a lit cheaper for everyone. Currently we collectively pay 4 times as much per person as any other country and we have a lot less to show for it.
Those of us who do have health insurance might actually pay less under a universal healthcare system than we do now even while covering other people.
That only happens in other countries because other countries have come to grips with the fact that running a healthcare system for profit is not merely inefficient, but immoral. The US doesn't understand that.
Which is kind of peculiar, because the US healthcare system was largely non-profit for most people for most of the history of the country. Why do you think all these hospitals all over the country have the names of saints in them? Well, today it's because of marketing. Calling them Uncle Bob's Chop Shop and Surgery Emporium just doesn't have quite the same ring. But originally it was because they were charity hospitals. Not just non-profit, but literally free to the majority of the recipients. They were founded and run by church organizations, especially the monetary behemoth that is the Catholic Church.
Other countries pay much much less because other countries have determined how much each and every drug costs to make, how much each and every procedure costs to perform, and how much each and every machine costs to make, and dictated the amount that will be paid for each of those things. And drug manufacturers, hospitals, and equipment manufacturers manage to get along just fine. They just don't get to rake in record profits every year. Oh, and they can almost completely avoid the monstrous parasitic growth that the US suffers from known as the health insurance industry: that most ridiculous organization whose sole purpose is to prevent healthcare.
Healthcare in the US started as a charity and somehow evolved into a mammoth profit-taking entity and there is no way back for us, ever, because of the first italicized word in my preceding paragraph. Because the only way out is to use government for its intended purpose, "to promote the general welfare" as it says in the Constitution, but we can't do that because "muh freedums!" And because of the root of this entire thread, still reflected in the comment subject: "Re: Tough shit -- welcome to the real world", which translates with ease as "Fuck you -- I got mine".
So Christian, these Americans... Like Jesus said in the Bible, "Fuck you, I got mine."