Medicare only covers people 65 and older.
"Pre-existing condition" and "disabled" are two different things.
Here is the overview from Medicare's website.
I don't qualify.
Why blame Medicare for not covering people it was not designed to cover? It covers people 65 and older.
So you say. By the way, Social Security is not bankrupt. Of course it would be if the Bush administration had succeeded in putting it all into the stock market a few years ago. Phew! Close call. And yes--BECAUSE Social Security is so well endowed and so successful-- the government does borrow against it--particularly the spendthrift Republicans, but that's another issue.
Yeah. If I had been getting paid $5 million a year for 10 years, I wouldn't expect a pension either, although I expect they have stock options and other little perks even after they are gone.
I kind of doubt it's this easy. Given your general lack of knowledge about basic rules of Medicare eligibility, I'm going to assume you have this wrong too unless you can cite an authoritative source. I do not think that government jobs allow you to retire at 45 with a full salary. In all our dreams!
So, Wolverine, what was your job? I assume you have some kind of good health insurance that you are happy with. Who is your insurer and how much is your premium? I feel like you should be willing to share the good news with those of us who haven't found such a good deal. I also assume you don't get anything from the federal government. Is that correct?
This all sounds like propaganda (astroturf) from the Insurance industry. How can it possibly be cheaper to pay an executive $38 million a year than to pay some poor schmuck to push paper in a badly lit government office somewhere. Even if he was GS-15, he'd have to live to be 327 years old. Plus there the lack of a Bigelow on the floor.
More mythology. We already have rationing. Some people get covered for things that other people can't get. It's just rationed differently in other countries.
Anyway, lots of tests and procedures doesn't mean good care. I've had two MRIs and countless X rays and most of them were of little use to me. They are way over used in this country, because it's a way for physicians to rack up extra charges to pay for (a) their liability insurance (b) their staff for doing all the medical billing to insurance companies*, and (c) a boat or bigger house. So if you rip up your knee at work, they x ray it and tell you it's not broken.
One day, two nurses were struggling to hold down my 2 and a half year old son so they could X ray his leg, which may or may not have been broken in a fall. He was terrified, so I asked, "What will you do if it's broken?" "Nothing" they said. He wouldn't need a cast. So I told them to stop and saved the insurer another pointless charge and my poor son a few minutes of terror.
I have seen the textbooks used to teach people how to do medical billing. They are full sized textbooks. You have to take a whole course (or two?) just to learn how to get the insurance company to pay. The doctors and insurers are locked in a pitched bureaucratic battle. And the patients are just ammo. There is no way government payment could be worse. And in Canada it's much, much simpler than dealing with a PRIVATE insurance company here.
Well, sure, Wolverine. We could go back to 19th-century medicine and let quacks sell patent medicines (no FDA). Let's get rid of the National Institutes of Health while we are at it. No more medical research, no more expensive cancer treatments or cutting-edge surgical techniques (joke). No more new vaccines for new viruses. And I'm tired of paying taxes for building roads. I'll just buy a Hummer and romp over the potholes in dirt roads. We don't need pavement, or road signs, or cops to enforce all those pesky government mandated highway safety rules. Breathalizer, schemzalizer. We certainly don't need any regulations to prevent people from practicing medicine without a license. We don't need the government to tell doctors that ulcers aren't caused by stress but instead are caused by a bacterial infection, or that the correct treatment isn't a heavy diet of cream and cereal (which is what doctors used to prescribe for ulcers), but a two-week course of antibiotics. And let's dismantle Social Security, Medicare, and the Veteran's Administration. If those systems worked, people would be clamoring for something like that for themselves.
Oh, whoops. I forgot. They are!
Did you mean this?
This is why we need single payer, so everyone can be covered, not just the wealthy and the petrified upper middle class. The current plan is a compromise solution that leaves all the private insurers in place, collecting their 20 to 30% overhead, while the government pays for the folks that aren't as lucrative to "cover"--the disabled, the sick, and the old.
Oh, gosh! You are right. Let's not count them. We don't care about them. They just work here, often for 12 hours a day. Why would we want THEM to have health care? Let them go unvaccinated and die of tuberculosis and whooping cough whilst picking our lettuces and peaches or making our milk shakes and fries in the backs of greasy kitchens.
Right, like I'm about to CHOOSE not to pay $1400/month instead of eating and having a house. They choose not to because it's a significant expense or they unwisely choose to go uninsured. That is a bad thing, not something to crow about. They should be covered.
Um. That's not what the U.S. Census bureau says.
Health Insurance Coverage: 2007 - Highlights
You do not have to be disabled to not have coverage. If you do not have group coverage, you just have to have some kind of condition that makes the insurer believe you will cost them money sooner or later. For example, if you had cancer, you are likely to get it again, so that'll do it. If you had serious injury that required surgery or trips to a pain clinic, that can make you uninsurable. Something like lupus or MS, where you can still work but you need regular medical care will do it. They can't legally drop you, but they can raise your rates so high that you can't afford it, and no other insurer has to take you. Is that clear?
Here is a list of roughly 75 conditions that can make you uninsurable if you don't have group coverage.
Uninsurable Health Risks
Addison's Disease
AIDS (HIV Positive)
ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease)
Alzheimers Disease
Amyotrophis Lateral Sclerosis
Angioplasty
Ankylosing Spondylitis
Aunria
ARC ( AIDS Related Complex)
Arteriosclerosis
ASD (Atrial Septal Defect)
Banti's Disease
Bi-Polar Disorder (Manic Depressive)
Bypass Surgery
Cancer
Chronic Fatigue Syndrone (Usually within 5 years)
Colitis
COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)
Conjestive Heart Failure
Cirrosis of the Liver
Collagen Diseases
Crohn's Disease
Cystic Fibrosis
Cushing's Disease
Delirium Tremors (DT's)
Dementia
Depression (Major)
Diabetes
Eating Disorders
Emphysema
Fanconi's Syndrome
Heart Attack
Hemophilia
Hemochromatosis
Hepatitis (Type B, C, Chronic)
Hodgkins Disease
Heart Murmur
Heart Valve Disease or Replacement
Huntington's Disease
Hydocephaly
Infertility Treatment (Recent)
Ischemia
Kaposi's Sarcoma
Left Bundle Branch Block
Leukemia
Lupus
Lymphedema
MS (Multiple Sclerosis)
Muscular Distrophy
Myasthenia Gravis
Narcolepsy
Organ Transplants
Pacemaker
Paralysis / Parapelegia
Parkinson's Disease
Peripheral Vascular Disease
Porhyria
Portal or Renal Hypertension
Pregnancy (Exisiting)
Psoriatic Arthritis
Psychoses
Raynaud's Phenomenon
Renal Insufficiency
Schizophrenia
Scleroderma
Silicosis (Black Lung Disease)
Stroke (TIA, Transient Ischemic Attack)
Substance Abuse / Dependance
Suicide Attempt
Ulcerative Colitis
Very few of these would be recognized by social security as fully disabling and SS doesn't insure against partial disability--or at least that's what they told me.
Just as an aside, I personally think it's useless to make a law telling insurers that they MUST insure everyone. You can make them do that, but they'll just charge so much that the "uninsurables" will not be able to afford it and we are back to the government having to pay for the sick while private insurers "cover" those who are not. And if the government is going to be in the health insurance business, the only rational answer is to pool EVERYONE together and average our risk, just as we do for fire protection, education, national defense, military medical care, and medicare, to name a few. There is no point in having the government subsidize private insurers (with their overpaid executives) by letting them pretend to insure those who don't need much health care while the government takes care of the actually sick and injured.
asking
