I imagine it's good enough to keep you healthy but expensive enough to keep you working for your parent corporation. According to the source materials I've read most Shadowrun hospitals in the UCAS are private charities or corporate run and specifically for policy holders or corp employees (like DocWagon clinics). The government run hospitals like Seattle General seem to be overworked and corrupt. Augmentation has a good chapter on this.

Actually, if someone is not insured and in an accident, at least in my state, the govt looks at all the insurance providers allowed to work in the state and makes one of them pick up the bill based on a rotation. I'm guessing other states have systems that are similar.

Although, I will agree fully that health care costs are totally out of control, even with all the resources, skill, liability, research, constant scrutiny, insane levels of constant work just to stay up to date, long hours, too little support, etc. The system needs to be looked at and fixed.

It's your right to feel that way, and it's my right to want to keep what's mine. I don't ask random strangers for help, and I feel no innate obligation to give help to random strangers. If and when I feel I'm "strong" enough to help out the "weak," it should be my choice to spend my money on people I feel deserve the help.

Mandatory wealth redistribution is nothing but a punishment for being sucessfull, and a reward for being a failure.

Yeah, god knows I was a failure. I had a 150,000 home that I paid 92% of the mortgage on in just eleven years, two cars, one just three years old, the other five, both paid for, a 35,000 bass boat, you guessed it, paid for, various and sundry other properties and hard assets worth almost another 100,000 and a touch under 100,000 in long term investments as well about 5,000 in liquid cash, credit cards worth more than 300,000 all totaled that were empty (mainly because I hate credit and just never used them) and an insurance policy with a 1.1 million dollar cap that was supposed to be one of the best available at the time and in a little under three years I was flat broke, living in a damned saltine box and contemplating stepping out in front of a truck at night, all through the wonders of medical expenses for my then wife.

That's over 420,000 in total assets that were went through, after medical insurance and what passes for governmental assistance at a decent level of care. After that it was the fifth rate excuse for governmental assistance for medical care given to all those failures, all the while watching her health steadily decline and really discovering in the process how well our system works.

Yep, a complete and total failure.


Isshia

Silly rabbit! Only "failures" have medical problems! If only we all exhibited hard work and elbow grease nobody would ever be unlucky and we'd all join hands and dance in a circle in the libertarian dawn!

Uhh, yeah. Actually, it sounds like -- by definition -- you were a failure. Your post very dramatically explains just how you failed, the heights you'd risen to, and then the depths to which you sunk. *shrugs* Sorry. I know after unclenching your rage-tightened fists and wiping away your tears, you were going for sarcasm or something...but...uhh...yeah. That's a failure story, right there.

EDIT -- To clarify, I have nothing innately against the idea of things like health care safety nets and social security. What I'm against is everyone automatically being "volunteered" into them. If a friend or family member or coworker is in trouble, I'll do what I can to help out. I've done so for significant amounts of money, a significant number of times. But it's up to me to do so. I disapprove of the government forcing every citizen to be a good samaritan against their will. It cheapens the idea of aiding your neighbor, it throws the money at the government (a less than efficient beast) instead of leaving you your own money to make decisions your own way, and it encourages everyone to look to the Nanny State to answer their problems when life throws them a curveball. It discourages self reliance and it discourages individual acts of generosity (if I'm losing 1/3 of my paycheck every two weeks, I have a lot less to give when I'm feeling generous).

Look at what happens when the government tells people it will handle things, and then the government drops the ball (Katrina, for instance). Compare that to what happened when the same storm hit other areas, and how other communities handled things for themselves when they weren't expected, and counting on, gov't assistance. I know it's not quite the same as the health care thing, but it's the similar principle (to me).

I'm a strong individualist. I'd rather stand or fall or stumble on my own, and have no one to blame but myself. There are times it drives my wife crazy. When we were moving, I wanted to carry every heavy and fragile thing all by myself, simply so it wouldn't be anyone's fault but mine if something broke (instead of holding a grudge against my friends for an accident). I want things to be my fault if they go bad, instead of pointing the finger at others every chance I get. I want to stand on my own two feet.

If I were able to stop making payments to social security in exchange for voluntarily giving up my rights to draw on social security later, I would do so in a heartbeat. I trust myself to take care of myself, up to and including investing my own money for retirement, choosing my own healthcare providers and healthcare plans, etc, etc. The idea of a community (of any size, from a family to a nation) drawing together in times of crisis and supporting one another is a beautiful thing -- the idea of forced cooperation is not.

So, failure is often as simple as bad luck? Or not being so cold damned hearted and self centered as to walk out on or let a spouse die without doing anything and everything in your power to save them? Yep, THAT really WAS a failure. I utterly failed to be a completely self centered asshole.

Hey, all cock blockery aside; You pay taxes for a reason C. That reason isn't so that they can become pork for pork barrel politicians and kick backs to the people who helped them get where they are, which is where we really are in to damned many ways.

I did all of that...and sometimes it just doesn't matter. Sometimes, because of the way the system itself is structured, unless you abandon your supposed loved ones to their own cruel fate, things happen that are beyond your control.

Control, really making it impossible to be short shrifted, is an impossibility. You can then climb back up afterwards...and I did, I was still young enough to manage it. I was lucky. Others aren't so lucky.

Besides, the only way in which what you describe is standing on your own two feet also includes having a very fat assed monkey sitting on your back who has more money and more of everything else than YOU will ever have and smiling happily while he craps down your shirt collar.

Personally, I'm for getting rid of the monkey, not ignoring him.

Again, the example of Austria. Complete health care, almost zero homeless. You literally have to go out of your way to be homeless in Vienna, there aren't any cracks to fall through. The vioelnt crime rate in Vienna is better than any US city of more than one tenth it's size. And the taxes are comparable to New York, while the standard of living is MUCH higher on average and slums, poverty of the crushing sort and hopelessness are all but unheard of.

Why here and not in any US state?

The only real difference between there and here as that here they got rid of the monkey...and as a result crime, homelessness and hopelessness dropped through the floor.


Isshia

Yes. Unarguably. Undeniably. It always has been, and always will be. Anyone that tells you anything else is trying to sell you something (or is, themselves, remarkably naive). It's a bummer you had to learn it the hard way (like so many others, because our parents optimistically lie to us and tell us there's no such thing as luck), but failure is very often as simple as bad luck.

You can eat right, work out, pay your taxes on time, love your wife, raise your kids, volunteer at church, be kind to strangers, pet your puppy, be a wonderful lover, never lie, give blood regularly, vote like a good citizen, read wonderful books...and get hit by a truck crossing the street one day. No matter how good you are, IRL as in any RPG, sometimes you roll a 1 and the GM rolls a 20 (or you roll all 1s, or you draw a bad hand and the table gets a blackjack, or whatever you want to call it).

All you can do is work hard, do your best, and try to stack the odds in your favor before the dice get rolled.

You had a pretty crappy experience, obviously. It's a very personal, rather than political, issue for you (just like gun rights, abortion, and quite a few other issues are to quite a few other people). I can't blame you for that, and I don't begrudge you your opinion -- I just disagree with it on principle. But that's why we're both allowed to vote.

We seem to have a difference of definition. To me failure isn't what happens to you, but how you handle it. The only failure, as I see it, is giving up. Anything else is just a set back.



Oh, absolutely. It is more than JUST a personal issue for me as well though. Because I still AM part of the US voting community and still exercise my vote too though, I feel that it's important to ask the nasty questions like: Why is our system so utterly broken? And that asked, the next follows suit with: How can we fix it?

My thoughts and ramblings on those topics are often pointed, because I HAVE been on the receiving end of them, but be assured, I don't take any of it personally, agree or disagree. No rage, no tears. Maybe a moments annoyance when I think the point is being missed, or skirted, but never more than that.


Isshia

In the US, you can just stack the deck. In other countries, you can make sure you'll not fall that far, no matter what happens. Strangely, we've got lower taxes here in Switzerland. If I would be living in the US I'd be asking myself why I have to pay more for medical treatments, and still pay more taxes as well.

Because our government is a horribly bloated, inefficient, beast. That's exactly why I don't trust it to take care of my health care, too.

I'll readily admit that socialized health care isn't as much of a hot-button topic for me as some, and that it's primarily a knee jerk reaction of mine to want to kick it away. The only example we've got (here in America) of the government running anyone's health care is the treatment our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines get from Uncle Sam. I don't know if my own admittedly brief time in the Army was an aberration, or if all the servicemen (and women, and servicefamilies) I know are just unlucky -- but I've got some real horror stories from that system, and I don't like the idea of it spreading to umbrella the whole country.

Combine that with my usual "screw you, I'd rather take care of things my way, no more taxes, thanks" mentality, along with the "well, look how wisely the government spends the money I give it right now" stance...and...just, well, no thank you.

This is an administrative post.

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