General Discussion

I'll give you an example. Before Obamacare, I was in the hospital for depression. I met a young man who was also in for depression. Why was he depressed? He lost his leg in a construction accident. His employer didn't provide health insurance and in the bad old days it was next to impossible to buy insurance yourself. So he did not have insurance. Of course, they treated him in the ER, but without insurance all they are obligated to do is to stop the bleeding and save his life. Reattachment surgery and physical therapy might have been an option with insurance, but it's not the kind of things hospitals do for free. So they amputated his leg.

So without his insurance, he was then a depressed ex-construction worker in a wheelchair. Sure he can try suing his employer, but that wouldn't get his leg back. So I guess he was going to file for disability and try to get some state funded job training for something he could do from a wheel chair. And after being on disability for 18 months, I guess he would be eligible for Medicare and could get an artificial leg.

The thing is, if the health insurance, pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers hadn't gotten so greedy, they could have stayed in business. But fuck 'em. We deserve single payer healthcare and the insurance companies deserve to go out of business.