this is definitely true (bistizas comment about the 10-20 extra years at such high cost). we all **** and moan about how ****** things are today - and i agree i mean, people have to have jobs. but lets just think for a minute how the "greatest generation" had it. you had 5 kids sleep in a room - if you were lucky enough not to have 3 families with 6 kids each sharing a 1 room cabin. today its like, man this is so horrible my 2 girls have to share a room. if only they could be so lucky! your kid had polio? they lived or they died, often without much medical care at all. we have it *SO MUCH BETTER*, even people on welfare and food stamps live at a lot higher standard than people 100 years ago.
and health care is another thing. in the olden days, if you got really sick, and there was a procedure, and you didnt have mass money - you died. now health care has like 10 MILLION dollar maximum policies. im sorry, but if we want to take 100 really sick people and spend a billion dollars keeping them alive - we are going to haev to pay for it somewhere. you could save tens or hundreds of thousands of poor kids in africa for a billion dollars easy. but we now have this sense of entitlement - "im so important, i need a 1 million dollar treatment, which i couldnt repay in the next 30 years - but i deserve it". back then, you died, plain and simple. the standard of living has gone up SO MUCH its insane. and then of course we just get ridiculous, its over 20 grand AVERAGE now to have a fricken baby. JUST TO GIVE BIRTH, im not talking raising the little bastards!
i heard a stat like, americans spend 3x the money on care for a single birth than all the developed western nations, and we have the WORST infant and mother mortality rates. we are just ridiculously entitled. my wife had to go to the dr TWICE a week for the last two months, just to monitor the baby's heart rate. thats fine, its free, and the doc said to come and there was a legit concern, so we did it. but it probably cost the insurance company (and thus, all us paying) a couple extra grand. and everything was fine, well, until we decided magically 1 week before the scheduled C section that we had to go in a week early. and you know what it cost us extra? nothing. not one red cent. it just shouldn't be that way.
we just can't have it both ways. im not really referencing any post just saying in general. if we want to spend an extra 10 grand on preventative care, it should cost us. set up a payment plan. it gets to the point after our 3500 deductible, which we knew we'd hit anyway, that we could spend an extra MILLION and not pay a penny more. thats just retarded. the whole free market system breaks down. you are supposed to make tradeoffs based on cost. if it cost me an extra 5 grand to be very slightly safer with the baby, with all the insane amounts of checkups and **** (that we didnt do 30 years ago and see NO benefit from in terms of mortality rates), then i should have to make that decision with my money. but if its free, why not?
my cousin had a hernia. so did i. they were similar. his doc gave him the choice to do the scoped version, at a 10 grand higher price tag. my doc didn't. in the end, same results. in the end, he paid 0 extra for his 10 grand higher price tag. ITS NOT SUPPOSED TO WORK THAT WAY. as a culture, we are so entitled, it makes me sick. if you have the 10 grand to blow on a procedure like that special hernia, *that medically there really is no basis establishing it as a superior or safer procedure*, fine, thats your choice. but you shouldnt get to chose at a 0 dollar price tag, EVER. some board of smart *** doctors needs to come in, its a tough call, and decide between NECESSARY and cost effective proceedures and "luxury" proceedures. i mean god forbid we only have 5x better health care than people 100 years ago, not 10x at an addition 5x the cost. it just doesn't add up. american greed is uninhibited and no politicans are willing to stand up and say, enough already - or at least, if they do (see: ron paul), they just don't get listened to! we need to man up already and make the tough decision about what is a realistic standard of living and what is not. its really just that simple, if you ask me (of course, the details are tough, but i can't see at a high level, i cant see it any other way). if you have an illness and can spend 5 million to add 5 years to your life, unless you have the 5 million - i think its just tough luck. nobody likes to say it and we are always like "you cant put a price on life" - but we do it every day (you can save a kid in africa for like a buck a day, and we send troops out for oil wars - whats the cost/benefit there? there is a price on life, and we make those decisions all the time). as i said - we just need to man up already and finally put a price on life. maybe its a million bucks (of money that isnt yours). maybe its 500K. maybe its 100K per year of life we expect to extend you by. but at some point, its just too much. if you are bill gates fine, do what you want. but for us normal folks who never could pay 5 million to keep us alive 10 extra years, sorry, we just need to suck it up and die for the good of man kind.
10/23/2012 5:36 PM (edited)