Letters to the Editor
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@anonymous 12:40 p.m.
Six months' living expenses, for most people, would barely cover three days in intensive care. If your insurance company is feeling particularly generous and decides to not dick around with your coverage (the more they delay and deny, the more profit they reap) you might be able to squeeze a little more out of them, but sooner or later, a serious illness is going to pretty much decimate that little nest egg.
Then you're out of the hospital, perhaps still unable to work to rebuild your savings, unable to pay your bills - and forget credit cards, we're talking necessities like rent/mortgage, electricity, heat. What then? Are you seriously advocating for a system that would force people to sell their homes to pay down exorbitant medical debt?
You can hold yourself up as oh-so-superior to all those greedy, irresponsible yuppies who chose iPods over insurance, and maybe you are. Bully for you. But there are a hell of a lot of people out there who have gone to work, paid their bills, saved what little they could and gotten SCREWED anyway, through no fault of their own.
Bad things, terrible things, happen to people every day, things beyond their control or wildest imagination that can ruin them in a heartbeat. And no amount of planning, budgeting, or sanctimonious pontificating by internet blowhards is going to be able to stop it.