Living Poor and Uninsured in a Red State

[Beet]

I'm not sure if anyone here will find this surprising, but-

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/living-poor-and-uninsured-in-a-red-state/282881/

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[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Yes, the GOP is very good at attaining it's goals.  To a right-winger, being a poor is WRONG and this is the just reward. 

[Cassius]

Yes, the GOP is very good at attaining it's goals.  To a right-winger, being a poor is WRONG and this is the just reward. 

Don't be a silly billy. Business always needs a workforce, and that tends to work best when the workers are alive.

[opebo]

Yes, the GOP is very good at attaining it's goals.  To a right-winger, being a poor is WRONG and this is the just reward. 

Don't be a silly billy. Business always needs a workforce, and that tends to work best when the workers are alive.

No need for them to live very long, though.  Most of the American work force is redundant to their owners now anyway, as they own fresh populations in Asia.

[Mordecai]

Yes, the GOP is very good at attaining it's goals.  To a right-winger, being a poor is WRONG and this is the just reward. 

Don't be a silly billy. Business always needs a workforce, and that tends to work best when the workers are alive desperate.

[pbrower2a]

To be poor in a political order that honors only wealth and class privilege is to be doomed to agony most of one's life.

[Redalgo]

All systems of healthcare ration resources. With pay-as-you-go, those who cannot afford to buy good insurance are the ones who most often get their requests for assistance denied. In this we see that the problem of rationing doesn't go away - it simply becomes a business decision made quietly out of the public spotlight while capitalists in politics meanwhile get away with implying people only die in significant numbers from the shortcomings of healthcare and health insurance schemes when it is the state calling the shots. The amount of money one has ends up deciding whether ones access to treatments in the U.S. is excellent, poor, or between those extremes by broadly Western standards.

[anvi]

Redalgo makes what has always seemed to me a crucially important point about health care coverage systems.  They do indeed all ration, they all have to--there is no way around that.  The fundamental moral problem with the American system is that, instead of having everyone in the coverage system and then rationing on the basis of relative need, the U.S. rations tens of millions of people almost entirely out of the coverage system.  In a country that indisputably has the resources and capacity to do far better than that, this arrangement is truly awful, and people shouldn't want to maintain it.

[pbrower2a]

There will always be some rationing of scarce medical resources. If you had the choice between giving a liver transplant to some compliant young person with a faulty metabolism who would obey post-operative instructions or some 58-year-old who boozed his way into need of a new liver and showed no sign of willingness to obey those instructions, which would you choose? Do you replace the knee of an 86-year-old or of a 48-year-old?

Some medical procedures are futile and pointlessly dangerous to the patient. Some are necessary and dangerous to the patient.

We Americans have the world's most expensive medical-care system, and it rations some activities by cold choices in which the person with the funds or excellent insurance gets the treatment and others may be priced into the grave. Some of us consider that cruel.     

[Bandit3 the Worker]

I'm not sure if anyone here will find this surprising, but-

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/living-poor-and-uninsured-in-a-red-state/282881/

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Has anyone considered putting the Republicans on trial for crimes against humanity?

[PJ]

Disgusting. The GOP is doing great at reaching their goals.

[Indy Texas]

This is the Texas Medical Center in Houston. It's comprised of a number of medical schools, research institutes, teaching hospitals and private medical practices. Its component hospitals are regularly ranked among the top in the nation in their specialties; the artificial heart was developed at the Baylor College of Medicine; and after Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head, she completed physical therapy at Memorial Hermann Hospital's TIRR center.



Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein once said that American-style capitalism is excellent at producing wealth and poor at distributing it. Texas, in that vein, is far better at producing high-quality health research and providing high-quality care than it is at ensuring widespread access to it. That's why whenever Rick Perry was confronted about his state's embarrassingly high lack of insurance during his presidential campaign, he immediately changed the subject to happier things like the lives of insured people being saved at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

[opebo]

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein once said that American-style capitalism is excellent at producing wealth and poor at distributing it.

Actually the reason capitalism appears to be 'excellent at producing wealth' is that it is consuming people.  Its net result is in reality not positive or productive at all.

[So rightwing that I broke the Political Compass!]

Nonsense. If that were true, they immigrate to a nearby blue state(ie. New Mexico) to acquire healthcare their. Nobody is both so poor and so lacking in social connections that they can't manage a brief trip from Texas to NM.

But of course they don't need to do that, because the OP's premise is false.

[opebo]

Nobody is both so poor and so lacking in social connections that they can't manage a brief trip from Texas to NM.

You're quite wrong there, lots of people can't afford a meal or shelter much less a trip from state to state.

[So rightwing that I broke the Political Compass!]

Nobody is both so poor and so lacking in social connections that they can't manage a brief trip from Texas to NM.

You're quite wrong there, lots of people can't afford a meal or shelter much less a trip from state to state.

Even then, most would at least know someone who could afford to transport them. + You would have private charities transporting them to states that would treat them if they were being refused by Texas. So I'm right no matter what.

[Beet]

Great idea man. I think Texas Republicans should urge poor Texans to travel to New Mexico for health care.

[So rightwing that I broke the Political Compass!]

Great idea man. I think Texas Republicans should urge poor Texans to travel to New Mexico for health care.

Well, why not? If the bleeding hearts wan't to pay for poor people to take advantage of them, then surely the more the merrier?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Nonsense. If that were true, they immigrate to a nearby blue state(ie. New Mexico) to acquire healthcare their. Nobody is both so poor and so lacking in social connections that they can't manage a brief trip from Texas to NM.

Obviously you've never tried to rent an apartment without any job or money.  And public housing has waiting lists years long.  Indeed, South Carolina recently stopped taking applications to be put on their list since it's expected to take more than five years for the eligible people already on it to get a place.

[Kushahontas]

yeah man that 13 hour trip from eastern Texas to NM for health care seems like such a great idea tbh obvs my fault for being born here

[krazen1211]

Standard protocol is to self deport of course.

[Badger]

Standard protocol for human beings is to self deport help those less fortunate of course.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Standard protocol is to self deport of course.

Trolling is frowned upon here, krazen.

[Mr. Illini]

Great idea man. I think Texas Republicans should urge poor Texans to travel to New Mexico for health care.

Well, why not? If the bleeding hearts wan't to pay for poor people to take advantage of them, then surely the more the merrier?

Perhaps Greg Abbott will include this in his platform this year?

[Mr. Illini]

Anyway, a powerful read. 9,000 each year in Texas alone, and that never gets reported. It's time for public healthcare.