Uninsured People Are Immoral and Irresponsible!

Our president told us that irresponsible, uninsured people are visiting ERs and leaving their bills to be paid by others. He called it a hidden tax and said that each of us are paying an estimated $1,000 for these immoral bastards. But, are we really? Get out your calculator and lets find out.

http://home.comcast.net/~zthustra/articles/unaffordable_health_choices.html

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• uninsured
• national
• health
• care
• reform
• insurance
• obama
• ER

[walmartramen]

People here in my town, many are not insured. They still go to the hospital , knowing their bill will be more than they make in a year. They will put in $20 in for there bill to show an effort. I seen this so much here. I worked at walmart for 3 years & other places, its there.

Un employment is running out. Who can pay their COBRA payment? 2 million are losing their benefits. Can the insurance firms take much of them un insured hitting them?  $10,000 deductible?

[zthustra]

@walmartramen

Some people where surprized that WalMart supported the reform ... I wasn't.

Once this kicks in, it will be cheaper for almost all of WalMart's low paid employees to be insured by the government than by WalMart.. I am thinking WalMart will opt to provide insurance for ifs best paid employees and let the rest go get Medicaid.

[MotionFur]

I'm such an uninsured asshole :[

[zthustra]

Your sins will be forgiven upon the payment of a special tax assessed only upon those who are not insured.

[kstompaint]

You claim that people who pay with cash out-of-pocket are covering the additional cost? Ridiculous. Do they pay more? Yes. Should they? No.

You dispute the $1000 per person claim. So do I (most things he says are lies). If it's only $1 is it acceptable? Why should anybody forcibly pay for a service rendered by somebody else, to ANY degree?

[zthustra]

Let's see. Medicaid has a fixed maximum fee they will pay clinics and hospitals, so they do not pay more when a private bill goes unpaid.

Medicare also has fixed maximums, so they don't pay more either.

And, guess what, insurance companies also have fixed maximums.

Who does that leave that doesn't have a fixed maximum price they will pay for health care services?

Oh, that's right, the out-of-pocket, private pay patient. Just like I said!

[zthustra]

I think I hit a bad note in my video when I divided the $60 billion dollar by the total population of almost 307 million. I do a better job with this on my web page. The link is in the description.

[zthustra]

The president said:

And it's why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it, about $1,000 per year that pays for somebody else's emergency room and charitable care.

Later he said:

The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still don't sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for these people's expensive emergency room visits.

[RaminHAL9001]

When I heard the president speak, I got the sense that he was saying that the number of uninsured people who use the emergency room cost us $1000 each.

Per year, 60 billion on uncovered emergency room bills, 40 million uninsured Americans, this figures to $1500 per year per uninsured person that the taxpayers need to cover.

So I was a bit confused when I first heard your video, because you seemed to take a different meaning from the speech than what I heard.

[zthustra]

On review, what he said was, *And it's why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it, about $1,000 per year that pays for somebody else's emergency room and charitable care.*

How is that? Hospitals don't send the unpaid bills from uninsured people to insurance companies or insured people!

Most of the unpaid bills, ER, hospital or clinic, are insured people who don't pay their out of pocket.

Medicare/Medicaid are the big nonpayers!