Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[JoelR]

^ I am not particularly familiar with the Healthcare in the US. But no insurance does seem very difficult as it is, let alone in a pandemic. So...they are not covered at all? So this is horrible of course. You will obviously choose to go into debt to pay for healthcare bills or if you can't even do that...probably die. Inhumain!

But what you describe there when people have no insurance is just out of this world.

I wanted to take a moment to address the issue of insurance in the US.  

This is going to be an unpopular and potentially contentious argument, so please bear with me. 

It's nice to say that we should offer healthcare insurance for all.  It's nice to say that every life matters.  But the fact of the matter is that medical insurance, doctor visits, medical diagnoses, prescription medication, therapy, drugs, and even the front-office desk assistant who answers phones while painting her nails all cost money.  Real money.  

Who will pay for everyone's insurance?  Will you?  Will you pay for the neighbor down the street who fills her shopping cart with sugary drinks, fatty snacks, and whose idea of exercise is pressing buttons on her Netflix??  When does insurance cease being a stopgap and start shifting the moral, personal, and ethical burdens of taking care of yourself onto the rest of society?  Why is it my personal responsibility to pay for everyone's else insurance and poor lifestyle choices?     

I truly do believe in the underlying premise of healthcare insurance, where a group of healthy people pay into a pool to cover the one unhealthy person, so the cost is not exorbitantly high on the one person.  But I also believe that insurance is a benefit that is above and beyond normal living, and a voluntary paid benefit to protect what is arguably the most important component of your life: your health.  But I want to emphasize that insurance is not a God-given right, nor a constitutional right, nor any other right or privilege afforded to a US citizen.    

At the end of the day, my concern over 'healthcare for all' is the economic expense of all, which will end up rolling onto taxpaying citizens like myself. If you genuinely believe in healthcare for all, there is nothing - and I want to emphasize that point - stopping you from buying insurance for others.  Please, open up your wallets.  Buy insurance for others.  Cover all of the doctor visits for every US citizen.  That would be your choice and I would applaud your generosity for doing so.  But until you do that yourself, then I don't think it's fair to force me to open my wallet.

[Insertnamehere]

^ Ok, I get this is a general opinion you are giving but you quoted me so humor me if I respond. I will, of course, only talk about what is the reality for me, living in a country outside the US.

Who will pay for everyone's insurance?  Will you?

I do in fact pay a part for everyone else's healthcare. Like I said in the post you quoted, we get a 7% retention on our wages that goes into a national healthcare fund. And given I've seldom needed healthcare since I started working, I remain a net contributor. 

At the end of the day, my concern over 'healthcare for all' is the economic expense of all, which will end up rolling onto taxpaying citizens like myself. 

Again, I already do. My taxes, the one I pay from my wage bracket and especially the added value tax for everything I buy, which remains a large part of this country's tax revenue, is used to fund treatments a program (Explicit Health Guarantees, in English) that covers many chronic ailments, to build hospitals. 

And you know what? I have no problem with that. Because, in this head of mine, universal access to things such education, health and pensions, should be one of the purposes behind taxation.

Where do I have a problem about my taxes being used? Funding an increasingly unnecessary military. Funding crazy high wages for government and congress officials.

It would also serve if this state institutions were not so lenient when corporations or individuals evade taxes. Or when its police force and military personnel commit millions worth of fraud.

There is much that can be done here to secure a proper tax base to fund a social safety net.

But, this is what most (obviously not all) people think here, at least as of 2020. I can't say much about the US.


Small edit: In any case, denying healthcare in the context of a pandemic, shouldn't be acceptable.

[Chase]

[InbetweenDreams]

Well @"JoelR" other countries seem to handle it. Is universal healthcare perfect? No. Of course not. Neither is our healthcare system which basically is a bridge too far unless you're a millionaire. Even with insurance care is too expensive outside of a routine doctor's visit.

So your argument against universal healthcare is you think that all the sick people in the US are sick because they're fat and lazy? Really? The healthcare problem is WAY beyond eating crap and not exercising, that should be very apparent.

The problem is the insurance companies. They add so much red tape and bureaucracy to everything getting a heath issue dealt with is more expensive and takes longer, even if you follow all the rules. People with cancer spend their last days buried in paperwork, arguing with people who could give a shit less over their insurance claims. Life savings gone. House, gone. What was once a happy family. Destroyed. All because Americans have ZERO compassion for anyone else. This is very evident by what we see with the pandemic, our politics. We're a bunch of selfish twats.

If the UK can have universal healthcare, we certainly can. Just some sough estimates... The UK has about 66 million people, they spend about £150 billion a year, comes to about £2,250 per person per year. Might not be the best offering, as they still have the option to purchase health insurance as we do here, but it would prevent a lot of the problems we have. There a lot of people who don't even get basic preventative care. Until I started working I didn't have a physical until I was in 8th grade and before that I was 5 when I last seen a doctor. Until I started working for my current employer the health insurance we got was an absolute JOKE. We had a maximum annual benefit of $2,000, tell me, where in this country does a hospital stay only cost $2,000? Yeah, it's nowhere.

What about dental care? You know how many people out there that don't bother going to the dentist walking around with gum disease and abscessed teeth? You know how much improvement in overall health if everyone in the US had basic dental coverage to help reverse and prevent this sort of stuff? I'm not talking about braces and implants and whitenings and all that junk.

The only reason why healthcare only costs £2,250 per person per year in the UK and in the US the average health insurance premium is over $10,000 per year is because the rich pricks who runs these insurance companies only want to get richer. So you damn well better believe they will do anything to prevent universal care coming to the US and they will convince you that your precious tax dollars are going to be wasted on fat fucks who don't exercise and that is far far from the truth.

There is no doubt that there is a epidemic of obesity in developed nations, the US is not stranger to that. You're probably well aware that sugar consumption is way up since the 1960's...and it's no surprise that with the advance of technology in the last 120 year we do work less. So if you want the solution to the problem, take the sugar out of the food. Everything has sugar added to it and it not a shocking fact that it is a huge driver of diabetes, driver of heart disease and obesity. Furthermore, someone's size, shape, life choices shouldn't be reasons to deny them healthcare, or dignity for that matter.

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I would also reccomend on how the NHS in the UK works, as an example. I don't know how healthcare works in Chile but the insurance companies are pretty well kept out of it. It's not just getting everyone health insurance is about getting everyone healthcare. This is a very broad article about the NHS and how it compares to the US.

http://content.time.com/time/health/arti...70,00.html

Perhaps someone in the UK or in a country with universal healthcare can elaborate more on the limits and the level of care they get. I would assume they're not doing boob jobs and cosmetic plastic surgery.

[JoelR]

Whoa, that escalated quickly

It's important to recognize that universal healthcare that works in other countries is not an easy transplant into the United States, which contains a very different, complex, and significantly more dynamic healthcare system.

Universal healthcare needs to be paid for. The trillions on US covid stimulus needs to be paid for. The social security system (that's projected to be underfunded in less than fifteen years, and rapidly accelerating due to the virus) needs to be paid for. Free college for all needs to be paid for. Universal pre-k needs to be paid for. All these are worthy, virtuous, and worthwhile goals to explore. It's easy to wish for things like universal healthcare, peace on earth, and goodwill towards men, but someone - somewhere - needs to fund these important initiatives. There comes a time when our prioritization as citizens exceeds our national budget, and we need to make tough decisions.

I want to reiterate that I know I staked out a contentious point. I'm genuinely not trying to be unkind. But it's important - from a third-party, objective stance - that there comes a point when economic realities will force us to make decisions on how much healthcare we provide and when.

[Chase]

I'm moving to Mars.

[InbetweenDreams]

So basically you're saying we can't have it here because it's too hard. Too expensive. You know how long the UK has had the NHS? 1948. We can have it here if we want it, but as long as the insurance companies and the greedy executives the run the hospitals can convince you it is impossible and it is doomed we won't get it.

Insurance companies won't have it in this country. That I agree with that, they'll sue, hell they'll probably try to assassinate a president who tries to shove the insurance companies out. As long as we believe we can't have it, we won't. Remember when the Affordable Care Act was passed and Fox News was saying there will be death panels? They used that, successfully, to convince their audience which is an older audience that "Obamacare" was bad. Likewise, the websites that failed didn't help either.

Since I have to go to work, here's the thing. Out problem is our politicians are bought out. Our elected officials are corrupt.

Blaming people as if their lifestyle choices are the problem is absolute nonsense. A lot of otherwise healthy people get sick with all sorts of issues, more so than the fat people. My mom for instance, has a brain tumor, was found in 1992. Surely you don't think one too many twinkies caused that? I don't imagine the UK being tremendously different than the US when it comes to people overall, so if they can do it, we can do it. Having universal healthcare would fix a lot of the problems that are bankrupting hospitals and people when they get their medical bills, the current system doesn't work.

[CellarDweller]

'The Batman' halts production again after Robert Pattinson reportedly tests positive for COVID-19

Ethan Alter - Senior Writer, Yahoo Entertainment

Batman has previously fought and defeated the Joker (several of them), Mr. Freeze and Bane on the big screen. But the coronavirus pandemic is proving a more wily foe. Production on The Batman ”” Matt Reeves’s highly-anticipated reboot of the feature film franchise starring Robert Pattinson as a younger, more inexperienced Dark Knight ”” has shut down for a second time after the Twilight star reportedly tested positive for the virus.

“A member of The Batman production has tested positive for COVID-19 and is isolating in accordance with established protocols,”Â a Warner Bros. spokesperson said in a statement provided to Variety.  “Filming is temporarily paused.”Â Â 

Vanity Fair subsequently identified Pattinson, who was spotted walking mask-less in London in July,  as the crew member in question.  Warner Bros. and the actor’s representatives have yet to respond to the outlet’s reporting.

Production on The Batman, which is filming in the United Kingdom, originally shut down in March when the pandemic’s first wave swept across the globe. The halt in shooting forced Warner Bros. to adjust the film’s release date: originally scheduled to hit theaters on June 25, 2021, the movie was pushed back to October 1, 2021.   

Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment in August,  Reeves’s co-writer, Mattson Tomlin, said that safety was upmost in mind as The Batman crew reassembled. “The whole goal is to make it safe,”Â Tomlin said. “It’s a really scary time out there, so not putting peoples’ lives in jeopardy has to be the first goal, and I know they’re doing that in spades.”Â 

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/the-...04554.html

[artyboy]

[marshlander]

... Perhaps someone in the UK or in a country with universal healthcare can elaborate more on the limits and the level of care they get. I would assume they're not doing boob jobs and cosmetic plastic surgery.

Happy to answer this one as best I can.

The NHS certainly is no longer the completely free at the point of use service with which I grew up. I remember visits to the GP, hospital, dentist, optician and prescriptions were all free to the patient. Decades ago a small charge was a introduced for prescription medicines, then a standard charge for checkups at the optician and the dentist. Of course those charges have increased. I discovered recently, though, that now I am sixty-five I no longer have to pay for prescriptions, GP and hospital visits remain free to me. Any UK citizen who needs medical assistance can still use most of the health service without charge.

Two or three decades ago our governments started devising ways of outsourcing some of the costs of running the health service; the public sector finance initiative was born and the rot began. The National Health Service has been broken up into local health authorities, which have had their funding devolved to them and they can enter into agreements borrow from the private sector to share the costs (and massively inflated repayments) of new capital projects. Over the past thirty years this initiative, under pressure from any number of think tanks and pressure groups working in the private healthcare and insurance sectors, has expanded to the point where the NHS now has to buy into private healthcare if its own resources cannot provide within reasonable time. Naturally, private healthcare has creamed off the profitable parts of the health service (for example, it is extremely difficult to find an NHS dentist in my area), but the NHS still carries out all functions, especially the less profitable ones. It is also the NHS that picks up the cost of care when a privately funded operation goes wrong. For example when poor quality breast implants burst. The NHS also carries some of the expensive equipment in which the private sector has no wish to invest. This political decision is designed to make the NHS look as though it is no longer paying its way and is opening up the arguments in favour of the vastly profitable private sector.

Our treacherous government has admitted it is moving towards the kind of insurance-based system you have in the States since many functions of the NHS have been sold off to profit-making greedy private organisations. At the end of the year when the Brexit shit really hits the fan we are being led to believe that our only way forward is to enter formal agreements with the USA for medicines and care and that the insurance companies will insist that we find ways to dismantle the NHS altogether. I am glad I am so old I may not have to endure this betrayal for many decades, but I fear greatly for my grandchildren.

I do recommend the John Pilger film I am proud to have helped fund, called "The Dirty War On The NHS". Here is John Pilger talking about the film: