There is a big difference between bare minimum basic care designed to stabilize and quality care. You can call it rhetoric or whatever you want but when people are being denied life saving procedures or being dropped from their insurance when they become ill or go bankrupt even when they DO have insurance...that tells you the system is broken. Your argument that requiring people to buy health insurance is setting some sort of dangerous precedent is ridiculous. The danger is now, we are living it and not doing anything will cause WAY more harm then anything you could possibly be scared of that *might* come one day down the road.
Do you have health insurance? Would you go without it if given the choice?
Again, rhetoric. If you go to a county hospital without insurance, you will get the same life saving techniques used as the person in the next room with insurance.
Do I have insurance? Yes, I currently do have insurance. Have I always had insurance? Absolutely not. And it was my choice at the time. Could I have afforded it? Not always, but I didn't think it was the problem of anyone else to provide it for me.
And yes, when I was without insurance I had health problems.
Guess what? I found out that even if you don't go to a county hospital, if you go to a regular hospital without health insurance, they will still treat you. And I got a bill. Do you know what I did? I didn't go crying to anyone else about how it's so unfair that I got a bill from a hospital. I contacted the hospital and said "I can't pay this bill right now, but to show you that I have every intention of paying it I'll send you $50 a month until either it is paid off or until I can afford to pay more." They told me thanks for letting them know and they let me pay off my bill as slowly as I needed to pay it off.
I'd be willing to bet that if you did the same thing at most health facilities they would give the same reaction. Hospitals don't like sending customers to collectors, but when customers don't contact them in good faith what choice do they have? If I'd just not made a payment and not contacted the hospital, my bill would have gone to collections. But, since I made a reasonable attempt to pay off what I owed, it didn't.
Rick
And what if when you had no insurance you suffered a heart attack, or found out you had cancer? Still going to pay that off at $50 a month? How long will that take? There is no way you would be able to afford those bills, but does that mean you should be denied the care you need? Of course not. Hospitals may 'work' with you, but that doesn't mean they just eat that cost. That money that you can't pay gets passed on to the rest of us through higher costs for our care. It's a vicious cycle that has nothing to do with rhetoric and everything to do with what faces millions and millions of americans every year.
You're making an incorrect assumption that what I went through when I was without insurance was minor. It wasn't, unless of course you consider going blind to be minor. I had major eye surgery. Do you have any idea how much that costs? Probably not. And yes, it was a huge bill. And yes, the hospital was glad to have whatever I could afford to pay towards paying off my bill. Eventually it got paid off.
Needless to say, the hospital got what it was owed. Again, you have no idea what you're talking about if you haven't been there, and I have. I know from experience that without insurance you won't be denied health care. I also know from experience that if you can't afford to pay your whole bill immediately that most hospitals will work with you as long as you make a good faith effort and pay even a small amount toward your bill.
Guess what, it didn't even effect my credit rating, because the hospital didn't turn it in to collections because I paid what I could. And for a time what I could afford to pay was as little as $10 a month.
Rick