Scrapping Welfare

  • Thread starter Thread starter IWantGod
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
NO, for the deserving. I broke my neck and have mental issues as well. I live in poverty even with a disability check and food stamps which aren’t enough. For the people getting it and can work, yes for those people. But, for me who wishes with all my heart that I could work, absolutely not. There are others like me that live like I do.

I worked for many years until my accident. Started at age 14. Then went to college…The taxes the Government took from me were hefty and I still can’t get my SS until I’m 66. I’m 63.

You tell me if you can live on 755.00 a month. And rent is 657.00, plus have to pay utilities. There are no places to live that I can afford. Nothing…

I’ve set up two go fund me programs and no one gave. I’m sorry but I have rich relatives and friends. They will not donate. Me, I give food away if I have it to people who have nothing. People who are poor are the ones that help the most. Statistically speaking. Yes, it’s true. Because they know how it is.
 
To be blunt, if your friends won’t help you then you need new friends. Invest your time with other people.
We are stuck with our relatives though.
 
Thorolfr said:
And you say that “Catholic teaching is that all should have ‘access’ to health care”. What do you mean by “access”? Does that mean that if someone doesn’t have any insurance but still needs medical care that will cost $100,000, they can certainly have “access” to such care if they have $100,000 but if they don’t have $100,000, well tough luck?
Click to expand...
It should go without saying that it is inaccessible if the person needing it can’t afford it.
 
blackforest said:
40.png
Thorolfr:
And you say that “Catholic teaching is that all should have ‘access’ to health care”. What do you mean by “access”? Does that mean that if someone doesn’t have any insurance but still needs medical care that will cost $100,000, they can certainly have “access” to such care if they have $100,000 but if they don’t have $100,000, well tough luck?
Click to expand...
It should go without saying that it is inaccessible if the person needing it can’t afford it.
Click to expand...
That’s why we need government programs like Medicaid to pay for medical care for poor people who otherwise couldn’t afford to pay for it themselves.

Republicans in Congress keep saying that they’re all for a healthcare system that guarantees “access” to healthcare, but they won’t say that everyone will necessarily get any healthcare if they can’t afford it. Of course, their promise of “access” is an empty promise since, as you say, it would be “inaccessible” if the person needing it couldn’t afford to pay for it and the government or someone else didn’t offer to help.
 
Last edited:
Yea, I think the Republicans and the Catholic Church have different definitions of “access.” Medicaid expansion is a start but not nearly enough to overhaul the grand behemoth of a nightmare that is U.S. health “care.”
 
The thing people forget here is those who are both employable and long-term unemployed are a fairly small fraction of those on welfare. So there’s going to be limited utility to focusing on that portion.

A good percentage of households on welfare are those considered not able to work - the elderly, the disabled, and those engaged in full-time care work. It’s probably not going to be possible to shift much of this population off of welfare. Unfortunately, if someone simply lacks the physical or mental capacities to work, there’s not much to do other than support them as best we can. Similarly, given the cost of paid care, many who are serving as full-time caretakers would actually lose money by going back to work, even without welfare.

Another major percentage is either those who are working and not meeting their needs, or those who are temporarily out of work and don’t have the savings to tide themselves over. Both of those aren’t going to be fixed just by pushing people back to work.
 
There are things that those in government can do that private charity cannot–or at least, that private charity never has done in the history of the world.

If we had relied on faith-based support of the poor as our response to the Depression, for instance, there is a very real chance we would have had to endure an experiment with full-on Communism. We are wealthy enough as a nation to do right by those who we know very well have needs that are beyond the demonstrated capacity of private compassion to meet.

We also should not pretend that faith-based charity in the old days was a perfect system. It wasn’t. They did the best they could, but human beings will still be human beings, both on the end of giving and on the end of receiving.
 
You are nuts if you think we can provide all the ‘healthcare’ that people want to consume.
One way or another access is restricted and costs are controlled.
 
The question is how we could limit it in a way that doesn’t mean people go without healthcare they need.

For a long time that’s meant we provide emergency medicine only to those who can’t afford to pay. The problem is this leaves people in a position where they’re often not well able to take care of themselves, or even where they’re likely to end up back in the hospital later.

Even from a financial standpoint that’s not smart. Generally treating emergencies is more expensive than preventing them. It also means people end up using other forms of welfare or charity who could be working with treatment.

So the counterpoint is that we end up losing money on sick people who aren’t getting regular care because they can’t afford it.
 
Theo520 said:
There is no agreement on the above, on what people need vs want.

I think we should provide primary care but have caps on specialist care.
Click to expand...
That’s going to hit pretty hard on anyone with a chronic condition. Many are managed almost enby specialists.

For an easy example, minimal care for any sort of mental health condition involves seeing a psychiatrist once a month until a stable medication regimen can be found. If you go below that they basically say they can’t help you at all, it’s too dangerous because they can’t monitor you regularly enough. And even that’s well below what every doctor I’ve talked to says is going to really help most people get better.

The trouble with hard caps is they don’t differentiate between people who have abnormal medical needs and people who are just overusing services.
 
Last edited:
Theo520 said:
You are nuts if you think we can provide all the ‘healthcare’ that people want to consume.
One way or another access is restricted and costs are controlled.
Click to expand...
Who ever said anything about providing “all the ‘healthcare’ that people want to consume”? The words “all” and “want” are the problems with your statement. If someone wants to have a nose job, but can’t afford it, they can probably live without one. Nevertheless, some kind of basic healthcare should be provided to everyone whether they can afford it or not.
 
DarkLight said:
Even from a financial standpoint that’s not smart. Generally treating emergencies is more expensive than preventing them. It also means people end up using other forms of welfare or charity who could be working with treatment.
Click to expand...
I agree. Treating people who have no regular health care in the emergency room after their health has completely deteriorated is far more expensive than providing basic healthcare beforehand. Paying so that people can have regular visits with a primary care physician and have access to relatively inexpensive mediations for high cholesterol, or high blood pressure, or insulin for diabetes would be less expensive than waiting to treat someone who comes to the emergency room with a heart attack or a stroke or kidney failure which would require dialysis three times a week. Just controlling high blood pressure can prevent many other serious and much more expensive health problems.
 
Last edited:
Theo520 said:
You are nuts if you think we can provide all the ‘healthcare’ that people want to consume.
One way or another access is restricted and costs are controlled.
Click to expand...
Are not doctors capable of prescribing what people need for a basic standard of health, rather than what people decide they want to consume?

Isn’t it a problem when health is treated as a commodity for consumption?
 
Last edited:
Theo520 said:
40.png
DarkLight:
people go without healthcare they need.
Click to expand...
There is no agreement on the above, on what people need vs want.

I think we should provide primary care but have caps on specialist care.
Click to expand...
So if a poor person has glaucoma and needs to see an ophthalmologist, they should just be allowed to go blind instead? Or what about someone who has serious acid reflux disease and needs to see a gastroenterologist? If they’re not treated, they’re likely to get cancer in their throat.
 
Yup.

With mental health care at least, in my own experience it also means you can get people off other welfare sometimes. For me, getting regular healthcare that wasn’t just trying to patch things up meant I could actually get back to where I could go to work and expect to make it through a workday and still be able to basically take care of myself. And then not need food stamps and such because I had a job.
 
Treating chronic conditions is killing the cost of healthcare.
One way or another it needs to be contained.
 
The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 was an important advance in health care in the US because it requires that mental health conditions and substance use disorders be given equal treatment with medical/surgical care. Before that, mental health problems usually didn’t receive adequate treatment. I have ADHD and would have a difficult time working if I didn’t have access to a doctor or medication to treat it.
 
How do you contain it in a way that doesn’t leave numerous people unable to care for themselves or dying early?
 
Theo520 said:
Treating chronic conditions is killing the cost of healthcare.
One way or another it needs to be contained.
Click to expand...
Of course, one of the reasons that people get more serious and expensive chronic conditions is because they didn’t get regular health care beforehand which prevented them from catching serious health problems early. If someone regularly sees a primary care physician and learns at an early stage, for example, that they have high glucose, they could control this with changes in their diet. Otherwise, they’ll likely end up with diabetes and eventually need to take insulin and their condition will become more expensive to treat. The medications used to treat high blood pressure are quite cheap, as low as $15 per month. But left untreated, high blood pressure can lead to heart disease and kidney disease or even result in a heart attack or a stroke which will be much more expensive to treat. Catching things early would save a lot of money.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top