| an hypothesis | by marasmus |
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Here is a sick thing about the American medical system:
Health insurance is not mandatory. You may choose wether you wish to pay for healthcare out of your pocket or from a beaurocratic cesspool such as an HMO. Health Care can be denied to a person if they cannot provide adequate information (medical facility's discretion on "adequate") regarding their ability to pay for medical treatment. The standard method of payment for medical treatment is by insurance. Atop the standard payment by the insurance company, there's almost always a deductible payment that must be made by the patient. Just a cute way of letting the insurance companies not pay for "small expenses", such as prescriptions, entire doctor's visits, etc... They only want to be called upon for expensive procedures and such. Of course, they have special deductions, exemptions, and other pathetic bullshit reasons to let them escape their responsibility of paying for your medical expenses. Back to my initial line of thought.... Let us hypothesize that you do not have medical insurance. Perhaps you get some whacked out dental thing that has to be fixed immediately cause it's hurting like hell. The dentist can refuse service to you based on a lack of compensation for his work. Even if you DO have the money in your bank accounts, or have it deferred in some other investment that you can access, if your credit does not meet silly creditors' requirements, they can jack you around like a blow up doll. They may suggest that you do something silly like take out a loan, or even better, contact the government's local health center to see about obtaining emergency care subszdized by government money. In either case you've got a few weeks to wait for bullshit to go through the beaurocratic systems involved. Heh, if your credit's bad enough for them to refuse service in the first place, a bank isn't going to help you any, and the government, well.. what can i say?!? So... the moral of the story is that our "entirely optional" health insurance scam in this country is much less "optional" than they like to make it seem. Remember this the next time you vote for a crackhead richy bitch going for political office. | |