[erroneousfunk]

I think it's incredible that her health insurance didn't cover electronic prosthetics.

The hook prosthetic is just a simple open/close grabber tool. Imagine trying to navigate through life with two grabbers. The modern myoelectric prosthetics offer way more functionality and freedom. You can use a computer, dress yourself, drive a car, and feed yourself (of course the author can't do all these yet, it does take time to learn). You can't do this at all with hooks.

I fractured/dislocated multiple wrist bones two years ago and it wasn't life threatening but I would have had diminished functionality without surgery -- insurance covered it no problem. My hand is great.

How the hell does it make sense to fix a wrist in order to allow someone to do the activities of daily living but it doesn't make sense to give them a common commercial prosthetic in order to do the same thing?

[TheBeardKing]

This is why the entire health insurance market doesn't make sense. Right now, as a healthy person, how am I supposed to weigh the impact of every potential health issue in my life? I'm sure she could've purchased some cadillac plan to cover it, but without experiencing that and with such a minute chance of an accident like that occurring as a teacher of all things, why should she ever buy it? Or even know to look for that kind of coverage? Who can price the repercussions of going without some medical procedure or medicine without ever having experienced that situation? I can understand car, boat, our house insurance and can easily replace those tangible items, but how should I price the risk to my health?

[adventured]

Healthcare is heavily rationed in socialized medicine systems. That's why wait times are so extreme in Canada, and doubled from ~1990 to 2015.

Rationing is the same exact thing as what you're talking about. They're choosing who gets what medical access and when. If you're 92 years old and you want an extremely expensive surgery or treatment in Canada, and it's only going to prolong your life by 18 months, you are not going to get that treatment, period. The same applies in France and Britain. Rationing is a required tenet of socialized healthcare. I'm not saying all rationing is bad, however pretending that under socialized healthcare it's just a free-for-all, is flat out wrong.

A very recent example of the rationing squeeze:

"N.H.S. Overwhelmed in Britain, Leaving Patients to Wait"

"Cuts to the National Health Service budget in Britain have left hospitals stretched over the winter for years, but this time a flu outbreak, colder weather and high levels of respiratory illnesses have put the N.H.S. under the highest strain in decades. The situation has become so dire that the head of the health service is warning that the system is overwhelmed."

"Some doctors took to Twitter to vent their frustrations publicly. One complained of having to practice “battlefield medicine,” while another apologized for the “3rd world conditions” caused by overcrowding."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/world/europe/uk-national-...

[kmm]

Canadian wait times are a bit of an aberration according to a recent survey[0]. According to the same survey, which also includes other developed countries, the US isn't doing better at all on other fields, and significantly worse on things like cost barriers.

The existence of socialized healthcare doesn't preclude privatized healthcare. That 92 year old can get their treatment in the private sector in any developed country, and hope their insurance will cover it.

I'm not sure what that anecdotal evidence means. Just today I drove my mother to the ED after a fall that left the bone peeking through the skin, and we were in and out in an hour. The fact that the NHS has problems now doesn't prove anything.

0: https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/commonwealt...

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> "N.H.S. Overwhelmed in Britain, Leaving Patients to Wait"

The next line in your comment explains why this is the case: "Cuts to the National Health Service budget". The NHS was a unique jewel of a public health system (from which I myself and members of my family have benefited, as well as contributed to btw). This was until successive Tory governments took a knife to its budget and started making plans to sell it all off.

The fact that the NHS is ailing supports the exact opposite of what you are trying to say: a health system supported by public funds takes good care of its citizens. One that is privatised and whose budget is slashed, does not.

[trhway]

>That's why wait times are so extreme in Canada, and doubled from ~1990 to 2015.

what are wait times for 30M uninsured in the US? Infinity? Or even for underinsured :

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/20...

"Half (51%) of underinsured adults reported problems with medical bills or debt and more than two of five (44%) reported not getting needed care because of cost. "

[adventured]

Who said the US system was better? You're attempting to stand up a strawman counter.

I said socialized medicine requires heavy rationing of care. The comment I replied to was implying that somehow the selection of and or limitation of care is wrong (eg under the US health insurance system): all socialized systems depend on that exact approach, aka rationing. They limit access, they restrict types of therapies based on age or expected outcomes due to cost, they extend wait times dramatically based on what they decide is more or less important, and so on. Socialized medicine would collapse instantly without such aggressive rationing.

And nowhere in the above paragraph did I say the current US system is superior to alternatives in the developed world.

[logfromblammo]

The US is better, and it's worse.

Poster anecdote describes vet who has more leg prostheses than he is able to use. Article anecdote describes cost-cutting to the point that prostheses which adequately replace the function of hands for a quadruple amputee are considered a luxury. Compassion is a cost; cut it.

That makes a pretty wide range of outcomes. We even have a dolphin that has a state-of-the-art tail fluke prosthetic. I doubt it had insurance. If it did, I doubt it would pay out without a 3 tuna deductible, a 40 sardine co-pay, and a 15 sailfish lifetime maximum.

Do these insurance companies think we're paying just for our own sakes? Do they think we should breathe a sign of relief for not having to pay that $260k in increased premiums? Every one of us that's not a sociopath can empathize with the woman who got shot twice in the chest and as a result woke up one day not even able to pick her nose by herself. That could have been me! I, for one, love picking my nose by myself. And I am super pissed that the sole reasonable outcome to this story was achieved only through the wish-granting generosity of a passing fairy godparent.

Good for that guy in private life, but his day job is actually making more difficult several of the more reasonable paths to that outcome. What about all the people who will never get a fairy wish?

Nobody is ever going to take $260k worth of pity on people like me. I really need all this to be a matter of enforceable contracts or laws, rather than what charity may grow in the human heart. Any safety net based on that sort of goodwill simply has me-sized holes in it everywhere.

[trhway]

you must be kidding. You brought up the socialized medicine as a strawman counter in your first comment in this thread.

[adventured]

I didn't do that in any manner. I brought up the fact that socialized medicine depends on restrictive filtering systems - rationing - to strictly control for costs. It can't function otherwise.

The argument in favor of socialized medicine isn't that it enables any care you need at any time you need it. It's that it's supposed to be a morally superior distribution of resources.

[tyingq]

Agreed, especially for a person that needs two. You could perhaps rationalize the insurance position in the case of only one hand.

I fail to see how it's a luxury for someone that needs two.