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Comment by vertex-four | Hacker News Reader

Try getting healthcare in the US without health insurance, and try affording health insurance when you don't have good enough work. Yeah... thought so.

You edited your post to add a line about emergency healthcare being a legal obligation of hospitals - we both know that emergency healthcare (i.e. "I am literally dying right this second") is not the total of necessary healthcare for many people. I invite you to try surviving very long as a diabetic when the only treatment option is to go to A&E when you are literally dying.

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I understand your point but you’re also attempting to portray that low income folks have no chance at obtaining health insurance. Thankfully Medicare and Medicaid coverage gives health insurance to millions of people. 63 million to be exact were enrolled through some form of Medicaid in October 2019 (Center for Medicare, 2019)[1]. Another 10 million or so people are eligible for Medicare (prior to age 65) due to a disability.

[1] https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medica...

The problem is there's a gap between having low enough income (and being able to jump through enough hoops) to qualify for Medicaid and having a good enough job to be able to afford adequate health insurance to receive healthcare in anything but an emergency.

> Try getting healthcare in the US without health insurance, and try affording health insurance when you don't have good enough work.

I'm not offering an opinion here. I just think the distinction between health care and insurance is important.

The original post I was responding to implies to some that you need a job to receive treatment. It also conversely implies that having a job means you can get treatment. I've actually talked to people outside the US who think that because of how our discussions are often worded.

> You edited your post to add a line about emergency healthcare being a legal obligation of hospitals

I'm sorry. I often think of things to add to my post right after submitting. I was editing it before I saw your response.

> we both know that emergency healthcare (i.e. "I am literally dying right this second") is not the total of necessary healthcare for many people.

I agree, which is why I specified that the right only extends to life-threatening emergencies.

Emergency care means they stabilize you so you won’t die right away and then kick you out. Many of the things that you will die from will never even qualify for it, e.g. treatment for cancer. You need money, insurance, or real charity to get care for that.

If you're not offering an opinion through the kind of hair-splitting that elides the immediate and generally permanently life-wrecking consequences of not having health insurance, then that hair-splitting serves very little purpose. On the other hand, if your opinion is that the status quo is acceptable, it allows you to rhetorically minimize those consequences because, hey, at least they're not dead, even if the best way out of that debt can seem to be suicide[0].

If you believe that, you've bilged a test of basic humanity. If you don't, perhaps re-think what drives your well-actuallies in the future?

[0] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elderly-couple-found-dead-in-ap...

I gave a reason for my "splitting hairs" and you conveniently ignored it.

Stop projecting opinions that are not mine onto my post. I believe the health care and insurance industries in the US is broken and does not adequately serve a huge portion of citizens with low incomes. I have never suggested the current system is okay.

If your opinion is reliant on misinformation, you should reevaluate it. Otherwise, you should not be concerned with someone like me "splitting hairs".

In the US, the distinction between having health insurance and being able to receive necessary healthcare is not a huge distinction. Fairly sure you know this.

I would consider a distinction between financial ruin and death to be fairly significant. That doesn't mean I think a system that so frequently results in financial ruin is acceptable.

My intention is not to say "you're just broke, you're not dead". Quite the opposite. My intention is to say that health care access is not limited by whether you have a job - it's whether you have money. Plenty of people have money but no job and even more have jobs but no money.

Emergency healthcare prevents some causes of death - generally, those which can be fixed in an ER and allow the person to continue living a mostly normal life after. Take the example of a diabetic person, or a suicidally depressed person, as counter-examples which cannot be fixed in an A&E environment and will lead to death.

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