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Originally posted by: pjstrohQuote
Originally posted by: DonDiego
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Originally posted by: alanleroy
How's this for an individual mandate? If you choose to not have health insurance and then can't afford to pay for medical services you need, you don't get medical services...unless you come up with cash or credit card to pay for it.
Ahh, . . . the Good Old Days.
Little DonDiego was alive in those times, . . . the family doctor made house calls carrying a little black bag, . . . and he treated emergencies right in his office; DonDiego has the stitches-scars to prove it.
Times were good, . . . dare DonDiego say "better", . . . then. [He knows he can say it, but he expects the scolds online to admonish him.]
There was no Medicare then, right? Honestly I wasn't around so I can't name the private insurance company that provided coverage to senior citizens whose health risks on everything from heart disease to cancer were many multiples higher than younger people. Perhaps DonDiego can fill me in on the entity that provided that service. Or were the elderly just out of luck when it came to costly healthcare expenses?
Perhaps some history is in order.
From the time of the rise of the Cro-Magnon in Europe into the Middle Ages the primary medical practice was to leave dying members of the tribe behind, so that Nature, through the activity of wild beasts, could keep the environment free of biological debris.
By the Middle Ages sufficiently skilled, educated individuals actually practiced the Art of Medicine, the results of which typically led to the physical condition of the afflicted patient worsening and to a more painful and unpleasant death than the otherwise natural course of events would have provided. These services were provided on a fee-for-service basis.
But, perhaps, poor old DonDiego should skip forward a few centuries to address health insurance in the time of young DonDiego.
Into almost the middle of the 20th Century in the United States medical insurance was pretty-well limited to the wealthier citizenry; the Common-Folk engaged in a "fee-for-service" system; i.e. they paid for any medical care they got.
Then World War II arose and the Federal Government imposed wage-controls on US employers. However, these controls did not apply to benefit packages, such as health insurance. And so Employer-paid group heath insurance rapidly took hold, . . . as a benefit offered to attract workers in a tight labor-market.
Anyway, back in little DonDiego's time his father received family group health insurance coverage as a condition of employment with The Bethlehem Steel Company. [note i.]
DonDiego likewise found employment which provided him health insurance, . . . to which he was required to contribute a portion of the premium and to which he continues to provide a portion of the premium even in his well-earned retirement. [note ii.]
The "entity" which provided insurance to DonDiego's father, then, and to DonDiego, now, as senior citizens is the same insurer which insured them during their employment.
He recommends others arrange their lives similarly.
Oh, and as a condition of employment poor DonDiego had also been required to contribute to Medicare for his entire working life. The medical practitioners who attend poor old DonDiego are reimbursed first by Medicare, and then by his group health insurer. DonDiego thanks the Federal Government and all citizen-taxpayers for paying first to, thereby, reduce the payments required from his private health insurer.
note i.: DonDiego is not inclined to name the private health insurer; let it suffice that it is a major health insurer, the name of which the reader would likely recognize.
note ii.: [See note i. Co-incidentally the private health insurer is the same national company which insured DonDiego's father.]
