mykyta_p

I had a discussion recently about different types of healthcare system. Heard a very honest argument along those lines (not verbatim so I may misinterpret it but I do hope I summarize in the right way):

- Yep, the poor are screwed, but what about those who can pay? Shouldn't we care about them too? Does it make sense to prioritize that care? If we start caring about poor, others will suffer and that's bad.



Well, a couple of months ago I took part in a fundraiser. People were collecting money for a software developer (a friend of a friend of mine). Why? After all, if you work in Facebook, you get the best health insurance money can buy. If you work in Facebook - you are not poor, you belong to top 1-5% incomewise. He must have done something really wrong to screw things up so bad he needs to beg. It must be a poor decision. It will never happen to us. Right?


Well, wrong. Turns out - if you have a cancer, if you're too sick to work, you lose your job. After a certain period of time, your disability insurance stops paying - since you're "healthy" enough to be doing something (even if this something is paying 10x-20x less than your last job). You still need to make your mortgage payments (your kids need to go to a good school, right?), but you also need to travel out-of-state to a clinic that specialized in your type of cancer (and pay out-of-network copays and deductibles). And you need to rent another place to stay during your treatment. Ah, and in addition to that you need to make insurance premium payments (fortunately, due to CORBA you get to keep your insurance - but you still need to cough up several thousands dollars a month).


So if you think that a single payer system only benefits poor people - think again. When you are going to become sick (not if, when - it is a matter of time for all of us) - it is going to become about you, not about poor people. (Unless you have a few hundred thousand dollars stashed away.)


The only lucky break here is that you can be old enough to qualify for an existing single payer health coverage (Medicare, yep).