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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (130134)	2/5/2010 3:02:24 AM
From: Cogito	Respond to of 542009

>>If you get Social Security Disability, you are eligible for Medicare, but it doesn't actually include it, two different programs.<< There can be a two year lag between qualifying for Social Security Disability and qualifying for Medicare. I know that isn't true in all cases, but it is in some.

To: TimF who wrote (130134)	2/5/2010 3:23:00 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542009

but it doesn't actually include it, two different programs. Yes, they're two different programs the way they're written. So what? You're being pretty technical. I'm talking general philosophy. What do we want to do with the problem of uninsurability and what to offer as assistance? Currently we have programs that seem to me to be about helping those who hit the wrong lottery. We know that really bad stuff can happen to anyone. It doesn't happen to all that many but we're all potential targets. So we all chip in and set up programs to relieve such catastrophic problems, ones that would ruin the average family. I would put illnesses so draining that no reasonable insurance pool could be expected to cover them. Presumably short term. If it goes long term and the person qualifies as disabled, then we already have a mechanism for that. As a stop-gap, seems to me that something Medicare-like, whether public or subsidized private, would be appropriate, more so than a catastrophic policy. Catastrophic policies are a vehicle for healthy people--low probability, high risk. It's real insurance in the classic sense of the term. Our cohort is has a probability of 1. These folks need health care. I say give it to them. After a year or so, they may be back on their feet and out of the program. Or they will be officially disabled and in the disability/Medicare program. Or they will be dead. Seems to me.