quote: Actually, my parents pay for a policy for me, an excellent one, for about $200 a month. I'm a healthy white male, mid-30s, non-smoker, drink very little, no drugs, eat healthy, height/weight proportionate...and my parents STILL have to pay $200 a month for me.
So you do have excellent health care so I am not sure what your why you have a complaint? You could find a cheaper plan if you looked around though.
quote: The company policy is more expensive because it has to average in the cost of 400-pound black women who smoke 2 packs a day and eat junk food.
And we are done... Wow. Was that necessary? Really?
Hey guess what! You just made the troll list.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by steven: ... cost of 400-pound black women who smoke 2 packs a day and eat junk food.
Seriously not cool.
I don't love saying things like that, but it most definitely is factual. Black people do have higher incidences of heart disease, etc.. Do you deny this?
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
If you were actually interested in that conversation you would not have started it the way you did.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I have a good and cheap health plan. This is because I'm a young male in good health. The availability is subjective to the individual. Some of my friends are in the same health boat but are just too poor right now to have continued coverage. Some of my friends are financially able to get coverage but have conditions that they cannot get covered. So I can't approve of the system just because it works well for me in the short-term. Nor can I expect the system to cover me if my insurer really needs to screw me.
Nor, for that matter, does it mean I escape having to cover other people. We do. We all do.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by steven: ... cost of 400-pound black women who smoke 2 packs a day and eat junk food.
Seriously not cool.
I don't love saying things like that, but it most definitely is factual. Black people do have higher incidences of heart disease, etc.. Do you deny this?
I see steven's point here. I mean, why is "black women" offensive necessarily? If black women really do cost more to insure, then it's the same thing as mentioning "400-pound." It's not weight discrimination or weightism if it's true that they cost more to insure.
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2009
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posted
Statistics are selectively applied in insurance situations. It's perfectly acceptable to charge a 16 year old female less than a 16 year old male for car insurance. It's understandable to charge a 25 year old asian with good credit less than a 25 year old white with bad credit. Why does insurance diverge when it comes to other categories? Sex and age are fine discriminatory factors, but race is out of the question. Strange when genetics plays a huge part in ones susceptibility to certain diseases and life expectancy. African Americans have a much higher level of heart disease, cholesterol problems, high blood pressure, cycle cell anemia, and a lower life expectancy. If males can be charged more for car insurance, blacks should be charged more for health insurance and asians charged the least. Women should be charged more for health insurance as they are susceptible to pregnancy and a whole host of additional illnesses. For that matter, blacks should be able to collect social security benefits at a lower age....they are being screwed out of benefits since they do not live as long on average. It's only acceptable to charge white males more....mirroring the other social policies of protected classes....even when the females and minorities cost more.
By the by, I suspect that lower life expectancies for black males, and for that matter, minorities in general, has far less to do with genetics than it does with lifestyle factors. Minorities as a whole are far poorer than whites as a whole. The state of the health of the poor is far worse than that of the middle and upper classes. Poor access to adequate health care, or adequate nutrition, is one of the less talked about (but still mentioned) negative aspects of the crushing cycle of poverty that many inner city (and outside the inner city) minorities find themselves in.
I find myself fascinated by how interconnected all our problems are. It seems like most of our biggest problems are really just the accumulation of the negative effects of seven or eight smaller problems. Generally we don't tackle things one by one though. We wait for them to get so bad that they require a massive plan of attack to cover the problem as a whole.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I'm just utterly appalled at the selfishness that crops up immediately in these debates, especially given how much having a healthier population helps people here and now.
Sickness isn't always one of those things that people bring upon themselves. Our country was founded on the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
People talk about how Thomas Jefferson wanted small government, but do we really know what he would have thought if he was alive today? In his time anesthesia was getting drunk before surgery, no one knew what bacteria and viruses were at all, and leeches were considered good medical practice. People died young more often than now, more diseases were not curable, and bad accidents happened in the course of most people's work.
Would Jefferson approve of using tax money to make sure everyone could get to the doctors? Well, according to this site (which is pretty cool, if accurate), he didn't trust them, and I don't blame him. Would he have felt different today? Probably.
posted
You know, it's a little known fact that, in New England anyway, people regularly lived into their 60s, and even 70s. Life expectancy as a whole was lower because you had to make it into your 20s, which was comparatively difficult with the high degree of adolescent deaths. But someone who survived into their 20s could expect to live for decades longer.
And seriously, who could blame Jefferson? Doctors were basically guessing back then. Medical "science" then, and medical science now, barely compare. I think the problem with small government of the 1780s in general, especially with guys like Jefferson, is two-fold. One, life in the early 1800s was NOTHING like life was in the Gilded Age, or especially now. Philosophies constructed in an age where every one was a farmer and could live miles and miles away from other people without needing anything, let alone a helping hand from government, have almost nothing to do with the way our country works today. Clinging to those ideas ideologically, without realizing the changes that have occurred from the time they were created to now, continues to amaze me.
Secondly, Jefferson was often either an idiot, or a hypocrite. He went from attacking government power, especially that of the executive branch, to being the architect of the Louisiana Purchase, which many at the time questioned the constitutionality of. Furthermore, when he made his oft-quoted 'refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of martyrs' quote, he was living comfortably in France, with no real appreciation of what was happening in America. I've always kind of wanted to punch him in the mouth for making such a flippant statement.
I agree with a certain level of respecting the Founder's intentions, but our world is not their world, and trying to apply their ideas of government and life to a world so different as if they fit, lock and key, is I think very dangerous. When ideology gets in the way of facts and reason, we have a problem.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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