The spread of America’s obesity epidemic in just 14 years, in an excellent article on the true cost of unwalkable streets from The Atlantic.
(via sunfoundation)
And it’s shit like this that I don’t really think people understand. While you’re supporting the gutting of food stamps, medicaid, and other social programs, you’re legitimately committing people to die.
(Source: wearethe99percent, via stfuconservatives)
Quit asking for handouts you lazy hippie scum! Get a job!
Anyone who makes any sort of claim against the need for Health Care Reform has never been caught in the awful and very literal dead zone between making not enough money to afford care and making too much money to be covered by the state.
-Joe
As the Miami Herald recently reported, insurers deny coverage for patients with “diabetes, hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, quadriplegia, Parkinson’s disease and AIDS/HIV.” Moreover, “some insurers will automatically reject applicants who are using certain prescription drugs. Wellpoint denies anyone who within the past year has takenAbilify and Zyprexa for mental disorders as well as Neupogen, which is used to treat the side effects of chemotherapy. Vista lists the anticoagulant Warfarin and the pain medication Oxycontin. Both companies list insulin.”
And why not? Competition without meaningful regulations incentivizes companies to only offer insurance to the healthiest Americans. How else could they beat the insurer across the street? Offering coverage to sicker Americans would attract a sicker pool of enrollees and serve as a competitive disadvantage. In fact, free market health care fits the definition of a failed market. A market fails if:
1. Monopoly — occurs if a single buyer or seller can exert significant influence over prices or output: In health care, “insurer and hospital markets areincreasingly dominated by large insurers and provider systems.” “The increased concentration has made it difficult for the nation to reap the benefits usually associated with competitive markets.”
2. Negative Externalities — occur if the market does not take into account the impact of an economic activity on outsiders: In the ‘wild west’ environment of the individual health market place, companies leave the sickest patients without coverage. Health care costs increase for everyone when patients are forced to forgo early and appropriate care or visit the emergency room once a condition becomes unbearable.
3. Asymmetric Information — occurs when one party has more or better information than the other party: Americans looking for coverage in the individual market have no way of comparing different policies or rarely know what the plans actually cover.
may have reblogged this already, but i care not.
(via greenstate)
