wat

Still trying to understand this one... makes no sense whatsoever.

Ah yes, I particularly love the arguments against universal healthcare. Let's ignore reality and pretend like we don't pay for the uninsured in the American healthcare system! Let's ignore the reality that universal healthcare is, on average, half as expensive as the American healthcare system! Let's ignore the fact that there are anywhere from 40 to 100 million Americans are un-/under-insured! In the richest country in the entire history of the human race! It's okay, they're poor and lazy, they deserve to die like Somalians from easily preventable diseases.

It seriously just blows my fucking mind that Americans are okay with letting Aetna, a massive corporation that does not answer to you, me, or the American taxpayers, decide if you live or die thanks to a "pre-existing condition" and not the government, whose very existence comes to be through our consent. Private medical care, and private medical insurance is morally abhorrent.

Private insurance should be made illegal, and the assets of private insurance companies should be given to government-owned medical facilities

OK, since none of you seem to catch the story I'm talking about, I'll attach a story. I figured I'd grab it from FoxNews as opposed to other news sites since most of you think I hang from every word O'Reilly and freinds say.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/03/13/baby-joseph-gets-second-chance-life/#

Thanks for the rant Marx...

Just covering all my bases :)

A buyer buying insurance and then making a claim against the insurance company for something arising from what the buyer knew, or should have known, was a pre-existing condition is morally abhorrent.

The really hilarious thing about your moralization, skrum, is that, firstly, a pre-existing condition should not be an issue in regards to a person receiving care. That person should receive healthcare, period.

Secondly, insurers often claim that conditions are pre-existing when they are not. For example, there have been numerous 9/11 first responders (those who dug through the rubble and building dust) who have died due to cancer caused by inhalation of carcinogenic and teratogenic materials like cadmium and rare earth elements that are in buildings and computers and such. Many of them had no health insurance, but those that did were told that their 1-in-1,000,000 stomach cancer at the age of 32 was a "pre-existing condition" by Aetna. If the very people who were called "heroes" in the media are denied healthcare, imagine how many poor people are denied care for conditions that are actually not pre-existing every year.

Basically my point is that, often, when an insurance provider tells one of its customers that their condition was pre-existing, that statement is a lie. It really speaks to me that, among all the things you choose to respond to out of my rant, you choose to put forth a witty one-liner about how evil someone is if they dupe a medical insurance company. Bullshit. The truly evil thing is the 45,000 people who die each year from lack of healthcare (Harvard). That's straight up deaths too. I couldn't even imagine the amount of people who receive inadequate, temporary care because of a lack of insurance or because they're underinsured.

Like I said before, universal healthcare is the only correct option morally, economically, and scientifically, that one can support.

By the way, I just actually read Thraxle's article and had a great laugh. "American healthcare saves 12-month-old Canadian boy from socialized death panels!" Firstly, I doubt this is even true and I'm sure there's more to the story than Fox News and the AP presents. Secondly, who gives a fuck? Where was the American healthcare system when 45,000 people died last year from easily preventable disease?

Marxism:

Nothing wrong with government providing health services to citizens, as it does many other kinds of services, as long as it doesn't infringe the right of the people to contract for the kind of health care they want in the private markets.

If the 9-11 responders didn't have health insurance, were exposed to dangerous agents that caused health problems, then purchased health insurance, it looks to me like pre-existing conditions.

In a situation where two parties have asymmetric information, the government should be on the side of the party with less information. For example, the maker of a food product knows more about what is in the product than the buyer does. In the case of health, the purchaser of health insurance knows more about his own health than the health insurance company does. So the government should be on the side of the health insurance company.