I've always had either Military or employer-provided insurance, except I was growing up; back in the 1960's, we had the "pay up front or make arrangements for installment payments" health care plan, because my parents made too much for assistance, but not enough to afford Health Insurance that was available to average citizens on the open market.
Which meant the year when both my brother was born (a difficult pregnancy) and I nearly tore my right hand off in a freak household accident nearly bankrupted the family. Lucky for us, my dad was a full-time student at UC system at the time, we were able to get into the University teaching hospital for both on a "charity" student discount...that's the type of health care that was available, and the type of health care the GOP wants to return everyone to. As for dental and vision insurance - pfft. That was all pretty much out of pocket for everyone. You saved for braces, or a root canal, or for glasses.
The only time I didn't experience out of pocket expenses accessing medical services was when I was on active duty.
And even after I got off active duty, for 12 years (1989 - 2001), my various employers - supposedly good "big corporate employers", at that either did not provide Dental and Vision or provided them at a high cost. The typical provision was an additional $60 - $75 a month premium for both, with a $2K deductible on the dental per person - basically the same as my health care premium on average.
Up until the double digit health care premium rate hikes of the early 2K's, adding Dental and Vision basically doubled the cost for my benefits at the time.
At the time, I looked into programs like "Smile Savers" or "Delta Dental", along with Davis Vision, J.C. Penney's, VSP and all the other vision plans - plans for people who didn't have dental and vision covered with their health insurance.
I would have saved about $20 a month, but I still would have had that $2K deductible per person costs.
Since I was still a reservist, I was lucky that I had the choice to either take the dental and vision supplemental, pay out of pocket, or take orders for a 1 month Reservist tour of duty every year just to get any work done on me teeth and get an eye exam, then go out and get my own glasses out of pocket afterwards.
And I know I'm not the only person back then with employee-provided health care that did not automatically get dental and vision in the benefits package.
Medicare has it's faults, but then - all insurance does. People on single payer in Canada, or in Europe have to pay for prescriptions, professional services, dental, vision, all that.
The only people who don't have to pay for health care are the small groups of people whose health care is subsidized by the governments who either depend on them for protection and governance, or whose governments want to ensure these people won't cause a major public health crisis because they have nothing, and there's not enough churches or charities willing to cover their health care.
Not a lot of organizations want to admit it, but the poor are particularly vulnerable everywhere. Especially in countries that depend on religious institutions to provide charity care.
As it is here in the U.S., the majority of people eligible for Medicare - especially people on fixed income or living below the poverty level currently on Medicare - already have to deal with everything you complained about above. And badmouthing the system isn't going to help the tens of million people or so who had problems getting health insurance or paying for health care for themselves and their families before the ACA.
Pre-ACA, lot of people just "went without" and it caused a lot of unnecessary health issues and cost the U.S. economy *billions* annually in lost productivity and health care bankruptcy, not to mention high public health/ER costs.
Medicare makes it a lot more affordable for them to get quality health care - even if they do have to get a managed supplemental.
Haele
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