The hospital reduced the payment after learning he was uninsured? Is that like how itemized receipts make it cheaper because it’s all designed to shaft insurance companies who then just shaft their clients to not lose any money?
Also fuck the people who actually enforced that rule on the boat and anyone who would threaten their jobs if they didn’t.
Just another reason to avoid cruises, I guess.
The insurance companies want it that way, though. That’s the sneaky bit.
Insurance companies are legally required to pay out 85% of all money they take in back to their insured. That leaves them with 15% to cover payroll and rent and profit and all the other shit.
So by having medical expenditures stupidly expensive, they get to charge higher premiums, which means the 15% they get to keep every year is a much larger amount of money. Why have 15% of $1,000,000 when you can have 15% of $100,000,000?
Well that’s fucked up. Jesus.
This is America.
Most hospitals will remove the cost entirely if you are uninsured and make under a certain amount.
Example. My husband recently (…okay, 2 years ago, but the passage of time hurts) had to go to the hospital, and be admitted for, an infected insect bite. No cost on admittance. Had to stay a few days to be on ivs.
Over the course of the next few months we get the bills. Which we can’t pay. But we have the number for the part of the hospital that can lower the costs.
We give them all the information, then wait.
One day a lady drives up to our place, hands my husband a piece of paper saying he owes the hospital nothing, then leaves. It was surreal.
The lady that day: “You know, I rarely ever get to completely forgive someone’s debt. I’m gonna deliver it personally to see their reaction.”
We certainly weren’t expecting it to be delivered in person! Amazingly the letter also covered the next year if he had had to go back to the hospital (I think in case there were complications, which insect bites generally don’t have, but this was meant to cover a lot in case)
Vincent Wasney was told that after having three seizures aboard the Independence of the Seas liner and receiving a blood test and medication, he owed more than $2,500, which had to be paid before he could disembark.
There’s all kinds of what the fuck in this story, but this is the part that really gets me. How can they hold a person hostage like that? How does the cruise line management sleep at night knowing Florida man might be out there looking for revenge?
You know, Capitalism is a choice.
We can have capitalism and still have single payer healthcare. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Not with half of the country supporting whackadoo oligarchists, we can’t.
1/2 the country doesn’t though. We just have voter apathy because of our 2 party system
The first-past-the-post system created the two-party system. In order to fix the two-party problem, a start would be ranked-choice voting. Otherwise voting third party is literally dangerous because the worst people might get into office and fuck things up more.
RCV is what we need badly to help start fixing our problems in politics.
Personally I’m more of a fan of Approval Voting since it’s effective and the easiest to explain/implement.
Otherwise STAR voting is really good. Lastly I would take RCV since that is at least better than what we currently have.
Vote 3rd parties!
Yeah we should just let it ruin everything else.
People just use the word capitalism to refer to any economic practice they don’t like.
No, detaining someone on a ship until they pay you is not capitalism. Capitalism is based on free markets. Being imprisoned on a ship isn’t a free market.
This is however, a practice that results from the government being effectively corporate controlled. Which is the end result of allowing your free markets to run wild and allowing corporations to acquire that much power, money, and influence.
A pure capitalist system actively selects for this kind of bullshit. The most ruthless and unethical companies end up winning in the end. And those same companies are buying our politicians.
People blame capitalism when the system clearly favours the rich over the poor to such a dystopian extent that a man is allowed to be held hostage by a corporation
Yes. Free markets eventually degrade into centrally-planned systems.
That does not mean that centrally-planned systems are an aspect of capitalism, any more than a pile of decaying bones is an aspect of a family pet.
Free markets degrade over time. That does not invalidate their utility; it just means they are like all other phenomena in being temporary.
centrally-planned systems are an aspect of capitalism
Isn’t that the end goal of capitalism? Winning is having control of all the capital right? How can you divorce the implied, if not explicit, end goal of a system from the system itself?
pile of decaying bones is an aspect of a family pet.
How is this not an aspect? It’s the inevitable end of any living thing, much like capitalism and the heartless exploitation of literally everything
Isn’t the goal of a soccer tournament to score goals?
No, the goal of each team, in a game, is to score goals.
The goal of the soccer tournament is to create a space in which teams of players can play soccer.
This is to answer your first question.
No the goal of capitalism is not to control the government. Even for the individual players, the goal is more like “whatever goal you want”, which is why it’s called a free market: you get to act according to your own values.
And for capitalism per se, if it has any goals, the goal is to enable people to pursue their own goals. “Capitalism” though doesn’t really have goals. It’s like “sunny weather”. Capitalism is a set of circumstances.
A government who is working to maintain a free market, which is the closest I can find to what you’re asking, has the goal of enabling success for its citizens.
Basic idea is the goal of the player is not the same as the goal of those administering the game. Dungeon Master’s goal is not to complete the quest; it’s to enable the quest.
And as an individual, my personal goal is not to control government. My goal is to provide value, and if I ruin the consent component of my business dealings, by forcing people into trades with me, then I fail at my goal because I stop getting feedback about what’s valuable.
How is this not an aspect?
I didn’t say it’s not an aspect. I said it’s no more an aspect than the bones are an aspect.
If you want to argue that a family pet is basically the same as a rock, because its final state behaves the same way as a rock, you can, but it’s a waste of energy and yields no understanding.
All I’m getting from this is two things:
-
Free Markets need to be regulated
-
Capitalism is the process not the outcome, and you can’t blame the sausage factory for making a sausage. The factory is just a set of circumstances that happens to produce sausages
If we’re using a factory and sausages as the analogy,
- Capitalism is a factory that makes sausages
- It eventually degrades into an abandoned building that produces wildlife
So yes capitalism is a process. I mean, it’s a situation where a process can take place. A free market is a situation in which free trade can take place.
Capitalism is also an outcome, of an upstream process which is establishing the free market.
Markets are naturally free when there isn’t much power differential between people, ie when coercion is difficult, expensive, and dangerous.
As civilization gets more and more advanced, the amount of power an individual or group can have over others grows, and more government input is necessary to maintain the free market.
This government activity to maintain the free market (ie prevent market domination) includes:
- trust busting
- truth in advertising laws
- preventing individuals from coercing other individuals
- punishing theft
So yes. Capitalism takes energy to maintain — again, like all things — and is a process more than an outcome. But it’s also the outcome of other processes.
-
FTA:
"Under the cruise operator’s terms and conditions, guests are required to pay in full the expenses they incurred on their trip, and Royal Caribbean doesn’t accept “land-based health insurance plans.” The company advises guests to consider travel insurance before setting sail.
Mr Wasney and Ms Eberlein had neither health insurance nor travel insurance before they boarded their Caribbean cruise."
land-based health insurance plans.
How do I get a sea-based health insurance plan?
shorely you cant be searious
Take my upvote and get the hell out.
It has a gold fringe
I think it’s called flood insurance.
He also had a history of seizures as far as 10 years ago.
Shit I guess that means he should never be allowed to travel again…
No, it means you already know that you have a chronic medical condition and it shouldn’t be surprising you might need medical care on vacation and plan appropriately including buying travel medical insurance. This is just part of adulting.
US problems… Nobody else needs to worry about whether or not they have health insurance, do they?
You tell me, does European or other national health care extend to the country of Panama where the ships are frequently flagged?
You’d have to have your priorities seriously out of touch with reality to pay thousands of dollars to go on a cruise instead of buying health insurance.
Even if he HAD health insurance, it sounds like the cruise would have rejected it. They needed supplemental travel insurance, which I don’t think most people would consider for health related costs, more like “If I get sick and have to cancel…”
I don’t like travel insurance because those fuckers weaseled out on Covid on me. No idea how that didn’t qualify, but our travel insurance told us to get bent when there was a strong travel advisory. I guess it wasn’t strictly banned, but we weren’t taking the chance.
The people from the article got the cruise as a gift.
My (dutch) health insurance covers healthcare everywhere, except in areas with negative travel advisory, international waters, or the USA. So this seems pretty common.
You can practically get on a cruise for free if you live near the port and find special off season offers or subject yourself to half a day going through a timeshare sales pitch. Me and my SO did the timeshare pitch for two tickets to Disney world (all 4 parks) about 8 years ago plus a nughts stay at a hotel. Would cost us like $500 otherwise. A room for two on a cruise ship can go for peanuts. If the room is empty, it can’t make money. Even if you went on a cruise and never tried to spend a dime you didn’t have to, you’re still going to end up spending cash one way or another.
Not necessarily if you live in the US.
Sure, it’s really bad and risky not to have health insurance here, but also even if you have it, you’re mostly paying a premium to be denied care and coverage when you’re at your most vulnerable. It’s a truly cruel system and I don’t judge anyone who refuses to pay for health insurance here.
Cruises are absolutely not thousands of dollars for standard rooms, except for the ones that are like a month long.
I wonder if ferries are the same or if it’s in cruise ships.
I don’t think ferries have their own medical facilities? Not sure, never been on a ferry…
Gotta pay to play even if you hit the medical incident square in the game. That’s how it works. That’s exactly how all of this works!
