I’d love to see insurance companies get taken down a notch, but what you’re saying isn’t nearly as simple as you think. People regularly get tens of thousands of dollars into debt for lifesaving care, even with insurance. Those without it can go hundreds of thousands or even millions in the hole - I’ve personally known people in that situation. I certainly agree that hospitals are partly to blame, but the whole healthcare system is built around insurance paying most of the cost. This never would have happened if insurance didn’t exist. It’s a captive market. The only way doctors, hospitals, and pharmacists would unite in not accepting insurance was if all insurance companies disappeared. There’s just too much money on the table otherwise.

Very true. There’s some benefit where the business can get a “package deal” of sorts which makes it cheaper than buying individual policies, but it’s still a shell game.

Insurance companies make money by indirectly extorting customers, be they individuals or businesses, through pricing schemes with healthcare providers. The American healthcare system is designed and priced around people having insurance, as you’ve noticed. This leads to insanely high bills for what should be simple things. An ambulance ride often costs over $1,000 without insurance, for example. In a nutshell, they’ve created a system where they are both the problem and the solution. Why don’t they start behaving more ethically? Well, from a money standpoint, why would you become less corrupt when you can collect more money by being corrupt?

Changing insurance providers, or even just certain coverage choices, isn’t easy. We have what are called “enrollment periods” in the US when you can do this, and the only other times are under major life changes such as marriage or having a child. As another user noted, most people get insurance through their employer. The company (usually) pays the lion’s share of the premiums; otherwise, the plans would be completely out of reach to employees. My plan would be four times as expensive to me if I was paying for it out of pocket.

As a result, starting something like what you want on a national level would be extraordinarily expensive, hard to compete with established players, and likely legally troublesome. Don’t get me wrong, we need reform pretty badly, but those reasons are why it hasn’t really taken off.

From a mod of /r/medicine:

People - Please don’t make the life of your mods a living hell.

Anything that is celebrating violence is going to get taken down - if not from us, then from reddit. I think all the mods understand that there is a high level of frustration and antipathy towards insurance and insurance execs, but we also understand that murdering people in the streets is not good.

We are a public group of medical professionals, we still need to act like that.

And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.

If the problem is churches taking too much money from people, how is taxing them going to change that? Won’t that just encourage them to take more?

Talking like that could get you arrested, your friends and family detained, and your online communities shut down. Don’t do that to the people you care about.

Are you advocating for political violence? If so, Mr. Fed, why don’t you keep this discussion where people can’t take screenshots to make people on your side look unhinged?

I did. Here’s how I replied:

That threat was because she could have sought a C-section. If I’m understanding this page correctly, one’s fertility is reduced by about 13% after a C-section. If I’m not, feel free to show me how I got it wrong. Did that guy ever end up prosecuting anyone involved, though? Why would a judge side with the prosecution after a court literally gave her an order permitting her to do that?

Elaborating further, though the odds of the baby surviving past the first year are only 5-10%, its life should still be preserved if possible. People can and do elect to have surgery despite a low chance of survival.

Please see my reply to your other comment. I don’t see how this has anything to do with science and doctors rather than some idiot giving fatally bad legal advice.

That threat was because she could have sought a C-section. If I’m understanding this page correctly, one’s fertility is reduced by about 13% after a C-section. If I’m not, feel free to show me how I got it wrong. Did that guy ever end up prosecuting anyone involved, though? Why would a judge side with the prosecution after a court literally gave her an order permitting her to do that?

I hope the lawyers who gave the doctor this horrible advice get fired.

The 2017 law allowed abortions in emergencies as defined in Section 171.002, Health and Safety Code. This is what it says:

Medical emergency" means a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that, as certified by a physician, places the woman in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.

“As certified by a physician” means the physician can decide whether this is a life-threatening emergency.

“Life-threatening condition” is a fairly wide umbrella. Given the number of people who die of sepsis every year, that sounds like a life-threatening condition to me. A substantial impairment is defined under federal law. Sepsis would likely also count there, too - it messes you up real badly, after all.

I think the text of the law is quite plain. It’s not a huge reach to imagine that this is yet another terrible instance of a medial error. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of them. If you want to talk about enforcement, then we have at least one case of a doctor having a lawsuit against him dismissed after he was accused of providing an abortion. Also, as of 2023, nobody had been arrested for providing an abortion.

I appreciate you trying to see things from my perspective, but the facts of the case seem pretty clear to me. Arguing that this is because of the abortion law doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If the law says “you can shoot someone if they invade your home,” much the same as this law does, it’s not the legislators’ fault if I freeze up when my home is invaded and die. Medical error, either because of bad legal advice or a poor understanding of medicine, is more reasonable as an explanation.

The article says what would have saved her life, so I didn’t think that was at issue here. But alright. It was good talking to you, and I hope you have a good day.

Yes. If someone is going to die soon after the problem is discovered, it’s an emergency. I don’t think this is a controversial claim. If someone gets hit by a car or has a stroke and has days to live, that doesn’t mean we hold off on providing healthcare so they survive the incident.

The lawyers/judges would want to throw physicians in prison? And as of 2023, no doctors had actually been arrested for doing this. Actually, at least one got a case dismissed after the fact.

But we have “over a dozen” medical experts who say it would have been the correct decision, and the law explicitly allows it. If it’s so obvious that over a dozen experts who never spoke to the patient could know it was the right decision, then how does a competent doctor actually interacting with the patient not know that?

From the article:

At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.

This would mean it was legal to perform an abortion. They should have known about this risk.

Alright, since you want me to say what it was, it sounds like a medical error to me.