Comments on: Clarifying the big picture

By: new_direction_2010

new_direction_2010 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:37:01 +0000

Cigna refusing to pay for “travel medication”…hmmm…sounds like the result of a class action lawsuit brought on by the trial lawyers. Yet another unintended argument for tort reform. Otherwise, nicely written piece Mr. Bundy. You almost had me agreeing with you.

By: NMCPA

NMCPA — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:46:04 +0000

… Or you could just not go on your trip – no one would be required to pay for your medicine, you wouldn’t get malaria and you would have to find some other unsupportable excuse for a take over of 1/6th of the economy.

Liberal ideology – I want to do what I want to do regardless of how much it is going to cost YOU.

By: Bilbo Baggins

Bilbo Baggins — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:11:57 +0000

You had three options when “when insurance denies coverage for preventative care.” But I think there’s a fourth. I don’t buy the medication; it’s not covered; I still have to pay for it myself and NOT charge the taxpayer. That would be an incentive to buy the medication, right? If someone still doesn’t buy it then yes, I give the shoddy response, “…it serves them right if they get malaria.” (By the way, nobody would have given me malaria, the way you infer someone did in your column after the last quote.)

When I went overseas I could not afford all the shots that were recommended so I took the ones I felt were necessary. If I had gotten a disease I would not have tried to get someone else to pay for it or sobbed about the “broken health care system.” I would have thought, “Dang it! Oh well. I gambled and lost.” At least it would have been my choice and I would have faced the consequences like a man. As it turned out I won. The only thing I got was as simple cold and I beat that with a bunch of Vitamin C.

I am not nearly as interested in the economics discussion of the whole thing as I am about the moral aspects. It is right to give the individual the choice to make his or her own decisions. It is wrong to make everyone else pay for other people’s bad mistakes.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:07:50 +0000

Another nice article, Carter.

My question is not what failing to cover an item with insurance, but what covering it does. If malaria pills cost $72 when insurance ain’t paying for it, how much will the pill-maker charge if it knows insurance is going to (or has to) pick up the bill? Whenever I see the actual costs behind my $15 doctor visits or my $10 bloodwork, I’m appalled. If I had to pay $1000 for bloodwork, I’d just never get routine bloodwork, and the routine bloodwork people would never get my money. But since my insurance covers it, and the costs can be be obfuscated by passing them on to my employer, it’s supposedly okay.

I shudder to think if the small pit of money my employer has availabe to pay for health care were replaced with something larger.