[ExI] health insurance: was RE: AI 2027: A Realistic Scenario of AI Takeover

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
…

 

>…If you examine that Yakkity Yak and Bla Bla a little more closely you will find that it involves 16 million Americans citizens losing their health insurance, and in many cases that is equivalent to sentencing them to death… John K Clark

 

 

I have recent relevant experience with that.

 

Less than two months ago I spent a few days in the hospital (nothing life-threatening thx.)  They brought in a heroin addict as my temporary roommate, who was being drawn off of the dope because the (unnamed central California county) chief constable wished to have him as a guest in the Iron Bar Hotel for half a year, where such recreational pharmaceuticals are not available.  

 

My hospital roommate was given three days to come down off of the addiction, so the schedule was very aggressive and very painful.  They gave him something which I think is like heroin once every four hours, so for about half an hour he was nearly indistinguishable from a normal human.  We would talk.  I had nothing else to do, and I learned a lot from this 31 year old wreck of a human being on the other side of the curtain, in those half hour intervals, until he started hurting again, and later when he would be whimpering and weeping, calling out for his mama, etc.  Just from listening to it, I would guess that coming down off of a bad heroin addiction is worse than you can imagine.

 

He told me about his life: college scholarship baseball player (kinda the baseball version of a semi-pro one might suppose.)  Injury, prescription pain pills which opium in it, steroids, lotsa opium, heroin, no more scholarship, no more college education, from the pinnacle of success to a wrecked life, all in a span of nine years.  Owwww damn.

 

While in there, I talked and I listened (I do stuff like that (I learn so much that way.))  

 

What has this to do with people losing health insurance?  I am getting to that.  Read on please.

 

My college buddy and long time social connection has a daughter who is now a biggie in the health insurance world, a rising star.  She was home recently and I told her about the whole thing.  She offered some interesting insights from a health insurance insider’s perspective.  

 

I offered that I was under the impression that the USA had solved the whole health insurance problem by setting up a system where poor people can get health insurance free.  She agreed that such a system is in place, but hospitals are struggling now nearly as much now as they were before, because of all those people who are eligible to get free health insurance… most of them never do.  They only need to sign up for this, sign that, go here, do that, and it’s MAGIC!  The US government GIVES them free health insurance.  But most penniless people don’t ever do it.

 

Consequence: if they have an emergency, or the medics find them near death from accident or some kind of overdose, they scoop them up, pour them into an ambulance, haul them to some very advanced modern expensive hospital such as Stanford, treat them anyway.

 

OK then, who picks up the tab for that?  I was next to this penniless addict, where I do pay for my insurance, he pays for nothing, he is making my stay there miserable (ok not nearly as miserable as his was) with his screaming in pain, crying for mama, complaining about everything etc.  He pays nothing, I pay double, and still I must share a room for several days with this self-destructive yahoo?  Does that seem right?

 

My point: that idea of government-supplied health insurance was flawed from the start.  Those who opposed it at the time were telling the truth.  They foresaw this problem from the start and very clearly stated it, but they had the disadvantage of a more complicated slogan, filled with nuance.  The opponents had a very simple slogan “Health care is a human right!”

 

But notice something: that whole notion conflates two different things.  It subtly equates health care (something you get at the hospital) with health insurance (something you get from an insurance agent or company.)  By calling health insurance health care, the team selling that idea had the accumulating advantage of a simpler slogan: health care is a human right.  Well, it already was: USians could always go to the hospital and get health care, since always.  But from that simple slogan, they had a springboard into: Health insurance is a human right.

 

That equating health insurance with health care caused far too many to believe that health care is free.  Well, it isn’t.  It is expensive as all hell, and someone still hasta pay for all of it.

 

>From our perspective today, I would argue that the way it was implemented, that whole notion of universal health insurance was an expensive failure.  Hospitals are still struggling financially, still being required legally to treat everyone, with or without insurance, which they could have gotten free but never bothered to do since health care is a human right so why bother signing papers etc.  Health insurance companies made out just fine, for their product is mandated, and that company doesn’t pay for the indigent who didn’t buy their “free” “health care” policy, the hospital does.

 

All this has me pondering that long-march bet on US government continues to pretend to be shut down for the long haul.  The Open Now crowd has the long-term accumulating advantage of the shorter simpler slogan, so they know they can just hold and wait.  Even at 38 cents, that bet is compelling.

 

spike

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

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