Should the US expand Medicaid to 400% of the Federal Poverty Level

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RCIAGraduate said:
What solutions is there for the desperate people who through no fault of their own are unable to get insured or have a difficult time getting good coverage?
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As suggested earlier by someone else…start a GoFundMe so you can have medical care. LOLOLOLOL. NOT!!! (In case you can’t tell, I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. It is all I need to know about the person who made the suggestion. LOL)
 
Again, I suggest that if we don’t address costs, devising new ways to pay for more of them is not going to be feasible or desirable.

If you go to the doctor today for some routine thing, chances are you’re really going to be seeing an NP or a PA. But all of the clinic expenses are built into the fee you pay, even though the NP would charge you much less if he/she had his/her own clinic.
 
UltimateChikorita said:
health care is a product not a right
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Healthcare most certainly is human right. From Pacem in Terris:
But first We must speak of man’s rights. Man has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services.
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PACEM IN TERRIS
 
I said no

I’m sorry, but I do not trust the govt with this. There are plenty of stories about nations with socialized medicine, like Denmark, where once you reach 70 or 75 years old, they will not pay for a surgery to extend you life… like heart surgery.

My grandmother had open heart surgery at 81 years old, Today she is 88. If she lived in Denmark, the surgery would have never happened unless she paid cash.

The US system isn’t perfect, but I would much rather have insurance companies competing against each other for customers than having the govt control everything without any options.

Govts are only as good as the the people in charge, and we all know that corrupt people seek positions of power.

Personally, I’m much more in favor of Medical Sharing programs like “Solidarity HealthShare” or “CMF Curo” vs some federal governmental plan.

And IF government is the only option, I would rather see 50 different plans for each state, that way if I don’t like the one my state has, at least I can move to another state with a better plan.

I’m sorry, but I don’t trust programs ran at the federal level, and never will. Far too much waist, and far too much power for a small group of people.

We Americans hate monopolies for a reason, having socialized medicine is essentially making one big monopoly

God Bless
 
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If health care is a right, then physicians must be government employees, civil servants. And government should own the medical schools. Is that the way we want to go?
 
phil19034 said:
And IF government is the only option, I would rather see 50 different plans for each state, that way if I don’t like the one my state has, at least I can move to another state with a better plan.
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One of the reasons for the Tenth Amendment was subsidiarity, allowing states to so what best suited them in most cases. It had the added benefit of having multiple solutions. With time, the worst can be discarded and those state with successful programs could be emulated.
 
Sometime back, the team of Dimon, Buffett, and Bezos announced they would come up with the ideal medical solution. Has anyone followed its progress?
 
That is not the only solution, but healthcare is a right, at least to some degree.
The demands of the common good are dependent on the social conditions of each historical period and are strictly connected to respect for and the integral promotion of the person and his fundamental rights[349]. These demands concern above all the commitment to peace, the organization of the State’s powers, a sound juridical system, the protection of the environment, and the provision of essential services to all, some of which are at the same time human rights: food, housing, work, education and access to culture, transportation, basic health care, the freedom of communication and expression, and the protection of religious freedom[350].
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COMPENDIUM OF THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH
 
pnewton said:
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phil19034:
And IF government is the only option, I would rather see 50 different plans for each state, that way if I don’t like the one my state has, at least I can move to another state with a better plan.
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One of the reasons for the Tenth Amendment was subsidiarity, allowing states to so what best suited them in most cases. It had the added benefit of having multiple solutions. With time, the worst can be discarded and those state with successful programs could be emulated.
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Exactly!!!
 
I don’t understand – when posters on here say that health Care is a right, do they mean free health care? Because cost is the main thing preventing people from getting health care, right? It’s not like someone is saying “no healthcare for people of German descent!” Or “no healthcare for car salesmen”. I’m pretty sure everyone in the US can get healthcare, the question is cost, it seems to me. Is that what you mean – Free healthcare?
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
I don’t understand – when posters on here say that health Care is a right,
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Posters here? Pope John XXIII is not a poster, nor is St. John Paul. I just posted Church doctrine. And no, it need not be free. Availability (that is, affordability), not price, is what is a human right.
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
I don’t understand – when posters on here say that health Care is a right, do they mean free health care? Because cost is the main thing preventing people from getting health care, right? It’s not like someone is saying “no healthcare for people of German descent!” Or “no healthcare for car salesmen”. I’m pretty sure everyone in the US can get healthcare, the question is cost, it seems to me. Is that what you mean – Free healthcare?
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Healthcare isn’t ever free. It costs money. Sometimes it is free to the patient.

You are mistaken about everyone in the US having access to health care. If you are wealthy, you either have insurance and/or are able to pay out of pocket. If you are dirt poor, you usually have Medicaid. If you are over retirement age, you have Medicare. It is the working poor who have no insurance and no personal funds to cover costs that go without care. It is also middle-class people who have no insurance (or crappy insurance) and not enough funds to pay out of pocket who also go without. Unfortunately, it is the people working the hardest who don’t have access. In my opinion, it is a travesty.

If you show up in an emergency room, the ER is required by law to treat you. They will bill you, and of course if you don’t have the funds to pay the outrageous fees then you don’t pay. Your credit tanks, and your financial future spirals downward from there. Unfortunately, this is a way of life for many. It is vicious cycle.

To give you an example, someone on a middle class income, but with insurance with an $8,000 deductible has strep throat. Here is what they can expect to pay in my area: Dr. office visit: $170 plus strep test $ 80 plus antibiotic $ 55. Total: $ 305. Multiply that by maybe 3 other people in the family who catch the strep and you are up to $ 1,220 for what is a very common illness, with a very simple remedy. Quite a hit for someone making $ 50,000 a year and supporting a family of four
 
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RCIAGraduate said:
Could another solution be building up Community Health Centers, Free Clinics and Charitable Hospitals
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Back in the mid-70’s, I worked at St. Vincent Charity Hospital, run by the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine. Their goal was to provide medical care to all who needed it, and that far back, the government was already interfering. The older nuns complained a lot about being forced to take government money for their services.
I worked in the Indigent Medical Ward, a ward for people who couldn’t pay for services. They had the best care imaginable…the most dedicated nurses I’ve ever seen. The biggest problem was what happened after they left the hospital. They’d return to shoddy nursing homes, and be back with us in a few weeks…or they’d return home and start drinking again…or they’d return home and stop taking the meds we provided…
These services are still available, and those wonderful nuns are still more than happy to provide them…they’d be happier if the government would just leave them alone…
 
I have read many US-dominated threads on health care. I am always astounded that people do not compared the US health outcomes (worse), the cost (massively higher) and the deprivation of service to poor people (vastly higher) with what is achieved in other democratic and semi-democratic developed nations. I’m also amazed that after well over a century of multiple types of state-funded and delivered health care in dozens of developed country people can think there is something inherently wrong with what they think is ‘socialised medicine and death panels’. And I’m stunned that Catholics debate this without (well hardly ever) referencing the extensive Church teaching on the subject.
 
You know what else should be a human right? (Free) heat and AC. Free food. Free water. Free transportation. Free shelter!
Why aren’t all of these human rights? Because we can’t live without them, right? Pope Francis is falling down on the job by not proclaiming these all to be (free) human rights!
 
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Right – you are talking about the cost of health care. So Pope Francis needs to say that free/ low-cost healthcare is a human right. Or, government-subsidized healthcare is a human right. That’s really what he means, I believe.
 
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