A doctor in public service makes around $600 in a whole month, working 8 hours a day, in my country. And the hospital usually lacks basic tools which they may have to buy themselves. My country has very good and christian people who work hard for their community, the health system is not even that bad, but seriously, if you guys can pay your doctors decently, there's just no excuse to complain about doing so. Are you really entitled to make more money than a doctor by frying burgers?

No mate, when people purposely put their health at risk because they are selfish you make them pay the consequences of their actions instead of fucking up everyone else in the country. 

If you stop forcing insurance companies of providing insurance to people with conditions, then prices across the board will fall. Also it will make people more aware of their health issues and it will make them work hard in order to be healthy (or else their package will be expensive). The result is a huge decrease in prices and healthy people. 

In Australia the minimum wage is $17.70 an hour.
Someone flipping burgers for a week in Australia gets paid more than a doctor in your country in a month.
Granted our cost of living is higher, but that gets balanced out with cheaper and superior healthcare, insurance and other bonuses.

People always stress that if the minimum wage is set at such a high-level, that people would rather flip burgers than take up a profession... When that couldn't be farther than the truth.
Other professions will still be seen as more valuable and will thus have higher wages.

It's the the masses that drive the economic wheels of an economy and the more disposable income they have, the more they can spend, the more money companies can make and profit.
The USA has actually had a minimum wage that has stagnated/gone in reverse thanks to inflation.

Besides, everyone has to eat, even doctors. But no. No one is proposing for someone flipping burgers to earn more than a doctor, that's a silly fallacy.

Then why isn't he taking your healthcare in the direction of a universal system?
I'm genuinely interested. If the media has it so wrong, then why hasn't trump contradicted it with his actions?

https://trumpcare.com/trumpcare-vs-obamacare/

More than europe combined. You guys are already being passed up by the chinese and the Indians. And yes more in warefare as well.

What conditions though? Previously rape, domestic violence, pregnancy, acne, asthma were all conditions that could get you rejected.

Before ACA

These preexisting conditions include:

AIDS/HIV, lupus, alcohol abuse/drug abuse with recent treatment, severe mental disorders such as bipolar disorder or an eating disorder, Alzheimer's/dementia, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and other inflammatory joint disease, muscular dystrophy, cancer, severe obesity, cerebral palsy, organ transplant, congestive heart failure, paraplegia, coronary artery/heart disease, bypass surgery, paralysis, Crohn's disease/ulcerative colitis, Parkinson's disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease/emphysema, pending surgery or hospitalization, diabetes mellitus, pneumocystis pneumonia, epilepsy, pregnancy or expectant parent, hemophilia, sleep apnea, hepatitis C, stroke, kidney disease, renal failure, transsexualism.

Other conditions that could make it harder to purchase a health insurance plan, according to KFF:

Acne, allergies, anxiety, asthma, basal cell skin cancer (a type of skin cancer that doesn't tend to spread), depression, ear infections, fractures, high cholesterol, hypertension, incontinence, joint injuries, kidney stones, menstrual irregularities, migraine headaches, being overweight, restless leg syndrome, tonsillitis, urinary tract infections, varicose veins, and vertigo.

Some insurance plans before the ACA also counted rape and domestic violence as preexisting conditions.
There's also talk that it could include sports injuries and workplace accidents.

Ofcourse insurance costs go down when you only insure healthy people.

Before ACA
We estimate that 27% of adult Americans under the age of 65 have health conditions that would likely leave them uninsurable if they applied for individual market coverage under pre-ACA underwriting practices that existed in nearly all states.

it's a nice popular belief that's it all those purposefully fat americans and chain smokers driving up the prices.


Btw how much money do you want to spend on, and how intrusive do you want it to be, to check if people lead a healthy lifestyle? Mandatory fitbits that phone your daily activity home?

My car insurance send us a tracking device to analyze our driving behaviour to lower insurance costs. With the idea that it would make people better drivers if they have instant feedback. Actually due to the way it measures it made me a worse driver for the duration (It penalizes braking, better to speed up for a yellow light than stop...) and actually punishes you for preventing accidents. Is that what you want for health insurance?

Or mandatory yearly doctor checkups that add to the strain on the healthcare system? I'm pretty healthy and haven't visited the doctor in 15 years, why burden doctors with checking everyone all the time. (I am visiting a chiropractor weekly for a pre-existing rsi related neck condition which isn't covered here. I can afford it, so no problem, for me...)

It might be a better solution to train more medical professionals. Bigger suply of doctors, salaries can go down. And work on competition in providing medical equipment. Why is that and medicine so expensive?

The free market can do good things. Not for my wife though. She has a rare condition which leaves her with chronic headaches 24/7. It's so rare, there's no money in researching it... (There's one npo working on it, yet they still site a Greek clinical trial from 2007 that needs to be repeated...)

How many 'anchor babies' have been born in the past 30 years? How many illegals brought 10,000 cash to pay for that delivery? Millions and Zero. There is gotta be nearly a Trillion right there to be spread out to the payers into the system. How many homeless people picked up off the streets are automatically taken to a hospital for evaluation? Billions more. How many shot up gang-bangers are rushed to the ER for free life saving 100,000k gunshot wound surgery? Billions more. Medicaid so poor people can freely breed more poor people that never pay a dollar into the system their whole lives? TrillionS more. If we would stop giving away free medical to millions upon millions of losers and non citizens, we would have the best care for a very reasonable amount.

If people buy insurance all of their lives and not when they become old then they will not have issues. You can check if people have a healthy lifestyle by a simple blood exam, it isn't hard mate. 

What insurance companies to evaluate individuals has nothing to do with the system, so does your car insurance. 

Do you really think only people risking their health suffer from a capitalistic healthcare system? And possibly even more importantly: Do you think the people are actually to blame for their condition? They sure have some responsibility for their condition, but there's always other things affecting people's choices too. I bet growing up in a bad environment results in a much higher chance of unhealthy choices, but how far can you really blame the affected people for that?

Prices fall only if the competition forces them to fall. In practice, there doesn't usually seem to be too much pressure for dropping prices, which results in prices staying high. Businesses try to maximize their profits, so they keep the prices as high as possible.

Also, I'm pretty sure I've heard similar times that those 'conditions' you mentioned include several conditions which people can do pretty much nothing about, or can do nothing about after the conditions have been diagnozed. Those people can't even do much about their situation, even if they tried. How do you take care of them? Are they not supposed to get any healthcare?

Sounds rather intrusive to me. If the government wants to track people like that everyone gets up in arms about it. Yet for insurance companies it's fine? Most people don't get private insurance until they're old since they're insured through work. Not sure what the solution is to that. Old people are or are quickly becoming the biggest burden on the system. The better healthcare gets, the bigger the drain of an ageing population.

Canada is still relatively young compared to other countries. Japan is already at 25% seniors.

At what point can insurance companies say, sorry you're too old to insure or charge over $600 a month per person 64 or older. I even found a rate for $1719 a month for age 85 (in good health, non smoking) from 2011. Isn't it the purpose of society to protect its weaker members?

Another observation. A lot of conservatives are very much against abortion. Yet taking care of children with pre-existing conditions is also a sin...

A lot of countries show universal healthcare works without the need of intrusively tracking the population. Why can't the greatest country in the world figure it out :)