Bible_Belt said:
My girlfriend's birth control is the "nuva ring." Holy fvcking sh!t is this thing expensive. Without insurance, they are $125-150, and that's every month. Even with insurance, they are still like $80-90. The best price I can find is $40, ordered illegally from Canada.
The idea of birth control being too expensive to afford is just retarded. I'm not a huge fan of social welfare, but I still think we all win when everyone has affordable birth control. Unwanted kids grow up on welfare and end up in jail. Preventing just one of those lives would save enough money to buy birth control for thousands of women.
That's the thing. birth control, pregnancy, vision care, dental care, these are things we ASSUME should be included with insurance, but they're not really "insurable" events.
From a purely technical standpoint, you only buy insurance to protect you against something you DON'T WANT to happen. And it's only cheap if it RARELY DOES happen.
As soon as insurance starts to cover things people PLAN TO HAPPEN, that's when it starts getting expensive, especially when everybody is pooled into the same plan.
The way health care is today (it's not even called health insurance), if CAR INSURANCE were the same, we'd be expecting car insurance to cover oil changes, new tires, etc.
You may argue that since health is an issue to everybody (not everybody drives, for example) it should be paid for by everybody.
After all, we're all human, we're all going to get sick, and we're all going to die, and it's going to cost some serious cash.
The ONLY REASON any kind of socialized health plan (or call it whatever you want) can exist is that
EVERYBODY somehow believes they'll get more out of the system than they put in.
Which is mathematically impossible.
The BEST CASE scenario is that everybody gets out EXACTLY what they put in.
In which case there should be ZERO SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE, as everybody can just pay for their own.
HERE'S THE HUGE PARADOX FEW UNDERSTAND
If there was NO health care, and everybody had to pay everything out of pocket, it would also be mathematically impossible for things to be too expensive.
If anybody sold anything that was too expensive, they would go out of business, since nobody could afford what they were selling.
Competition between providers would drive costs down, just like they do with things that are NOT covered by any insurance.
Like eye surgery for example. Out of pocket, and it's WAY cheaper than it was ten years ago.
Open Heart Surgery, on the other hand, covered by insurance, and WAY more expensive than it was ten years ago.
AND eye surgery has gotten more technically advanced, moreso than open heart surgery.
HEALTH COVERAGE at its core, is political issue, and is just another things that politicians promise to idiot voters (that they can never deliver), who believe it, while huge corporations make out like bandits. (like they always do.)
The Entire Affordable Care Act Was Driven By The Medical Industrial Complex. Designed Only To Squeeze More Money Out Of Gullible Voters.