dittybopper_05H t1_is6lghf wrote on October 13, 2022 at 5:54 PM

Reply to comment by CW1DR5H5I64A in Pensioner with broken hip left lying on cold street for nine hours due to no ambulances by turbo_chuffa

Wow. You pay more than I do, for everything. Annual checkups are $0. Other visits are $25. My son's visits are $0, regardless.

I pay $0 for Tier 1 and Tier 2 drugs, and $30 for Tier 3.

For the last 28 years, I've been without health insurance just twice, totaling just a few months, the last two times I was laid off (2000, and 2001). Oh, and for a couple of weeks when I changed jobs almost 2 years ago, because I left in the middle of the month, so the insurance from my old employer lasted to the end of the month and coverage at my new one didn't start until I had been there a month.

CW1DR5H5I64A t1_is6x95o wrote on October 13, 2022 at 7:10 PM

I feel like most people from outside of the US assume we are all drowning in medical debt and never get to use our healthcare because it’s cost prohibitive. Reality is most people with stable employment have easy access to medical care.

As most things in the US, there is little to no safety net. If you are successful you can thrive, but if you fall on hard times and loose coverage than there is nothing to help you out.

dittybopper_05H t1_isa9tgd wrote on October 14, 2022 at 1:16 PM

You're only partially right.

You are correct in that yeah, if you've got stable employment you've almost certainly got relatively easy access to healthcare. For some, like myself, it's built into my compensation along with my salary and the like.

For the elderly and disabled, we have Medicare. My father is retired, on a fixed income, and he's got Medicare. That's what paid for his ambulance ride and surgery. He paid very little out of pocket.

The distaffbopper is disabled, and is eligible for Medicare, but she hasn't bothered to sign up because she's covered under my insurance, along with the lifterbopper*. If I were to die right now, she could easily switch over to Medicare.

Back before we adopted the lifterbopper, he was a ward of the county, and I couldn't put him on my insurance back then because he was only our foster child. He was covered by Medicaid, which is like Medicare but it's for people with very low or no incomes. It paid for his medications, and even to have tubes put into his ears because he was getting constant ear infections.

Funny story about that, though: Because he was a foundling left under New York's Safe Haven law, he didn't have a name or social security number. Officially, until the adoption, he was known as "Boy Doe". That's who his Medicare card was made out to. But to the doctor's office, he was known by the name that we called him, but that wasn't made official until the adoption and issuance of a foundling birth certificate.

One day I'm at work and the distaffbopper calls me crying because the pharmacist accused her of trying to commit Medicare fraud, because the name on the antibiotic prescription didn't match the name on the Medicare card. He was new, and didn't know about our unique situation. A call to the head pharmacist at his home ended up clearing that one up, and the new guy apologized, but I could see where he was coming from.

Anyhoo, once we adopted him he went on my health insurance.

Oh, and we also lost WIC (I made too much), and Social Services no longer paid for daycare, nor did we get the monthly checks or clothing allowance.

And it was worth every penny that we lost.

*Formerly the littlebopper, he's gotten into weight training. And he's in college, so "littlebopper" doesn't seem to apply anymore. Teenybopper doesn't seem right also.