Skipjack wrote:Here is a story about the flaws of this system. A friend of my wife is 30 weeks pregnant but still working at a nursing home in order to have health insurance for herself and her two other children. She has had two premature births before already and just had to go to the hospital because she started having contractions. They are giving her medication now to ensure the baby stays "in" for a bit longer. She will be released tomorrow after a 3 pretty scary days. She is of course going back to work right away.
Now her bosses want to fire her because she is a "liability" as they are affraid that she will loose the baby at work and then sue them. What then? She will be without health insurance and wont have the medication that she needs to prevent a premature birth. Something like this is completely unheard of in Austria. If your doctor says that you stay home, you stay home and your are protected by several savety nets.
That is the way it should be.
Anyway, since this is the US, I suggested to her that if she got fired to sue her bosses anyway for discrimination. I will get her a good lawyer. Its worth that to me. Just because I am fracking annoyed with this!
Sorry for your friends trouble. Hope she and the baby do well.
1) If this story is true, then her employers are dicks and she will have a great case if fired.
2) The part about her losing her baby because she loses coverage because she got fired makes no sense. One word - COBRA.
OBamaCare has administrative panels that decide what level of care people receive and they are still going to go without the most expensive treatments.
Oh, the so called death panels. Give me a break! I live in a country with public healthcare and we have the most excellent treatment here and noone ever goes broke over it. It also means a lot less lawsuits and other nonsense.
Aha! Here is one infrastructure that desparately needs fixing, the medical malpractice infrastructure.
Three simple law changes could improve our ability to obtain our own private pre-paid health care (it after all isn't really insurance).
1: Limit compensatory damages to actual demonstrable dmages, no "pain and suffering". If you have pain, have it delt with until you are satisfied and the cost thereof is the actual damages.
2: Punitive damages shall not be insurable. If I can't legally pay someone to go to jail for me, why should a doctor be able to have an insurance company pay his fine?
Neither will actually work unless we also...
3: Eliminate profit margins on insurance companies. If a company decides it needs X dollars to satisfy its stock holders it first looks to REDUCING its costs. But a compay that has restrictions on their MARGIN most RAISE their costs. This is the situation for medical insurance companies.
seedload wrote:Now her bosses want to fire her because she is a "liability" as they are affraid that she will loose the baby at work and then sue them.
You'd need to be pretty dopey to believe such a story. How could anyone know this is true? It reminds of the famous quip that the pirates of the Black Pearl leave none alive, and one then needs to wonder how one knows they leave none alive. Her bosses announced they want to fire her for horrid, illegal reasons without firing her?
And obviously the crackpot who made up this story is not familiar with COBRA, the US laws about maternity leave, job protection, etc. It's just another example of Skippy's ignorance and imagination run amuck. And telling someone to sue their employer for wrongful termination, before there's been a termination. . .now that's flat out crazy.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
Skipjack wrote:But you have equally not provided any arguments why it would go away. And it is NOT socialism. The development of treatments and devices is still done by private companies that do get paid good money (at or close to the market value).
What market are you talking about? What is "close to market value" if there is no market anymore? This IS my point. Eliminate the market and government must decide the price without a market to compare to. When Pfizer decides not to develop something for that price, then what? Force 'em?
And obviously the crackpot who made up this story is not familiar with COBRA, the US laws about maternity leave, job protection, etc. It's just another example of Skippy's ignorance and imagination run amuck. And telling someone to sue their employer for wrongful termination, before there's been a termination. . .now that's flat out crazy.
She is a friend of mine, you asshole! And the story is true!
And obviously the crackpot who made up this story is not familiar with COBRA, the US laws about maternity leave, job protection, etc. It's just another example of Skippy's ignorance and imagination run amuck. And telling someone to sue their employer for wrongful termination, before there's been a termination. . .now that's flat out crazy.
She is a friend of mine, you asshole! And the story is true!
Skip,
The part about her potentially losing the baby because she loses coverage can't possibly be true. Please suggest to her to learn about COBRA.
The part about her potentially losing the baby because she loses coverage can't possibly be true. Please suggest to her to learn about COBRA.
I dont quite know how her health insurance setup is working exactly. I have to ask her for details of that.
Either way, COBRA does not protect her from getting fired, from what I understand, which is the main problem anyway.
The part about her potentially losing the baby because she loses coverage can't possibly be true. Please suggest to her to learn about COBRA.
I dont quite know how her health insurance setup is working exactly. I have to ask her for details of that.
Either way, COBRA does not protect her from getting fired, from what I understand, which is the main problem anyway.
Oh, sorry, I thought this was a health insurance discussion.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Family Medical Leave Act do.
Oh, sorry, I thought this was a health insurance discussion.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Family Medical Leave Act do.
Yes it is, but all this is the result of the whole health insurance mess and the resulting law suits and other unnecessary crap that happens. That was the point I was trying to make.
Skip,
I know you are a 3D artist. Are you independently employed or do you work for a company? Just curious.
It is a bit more complicated than that
I am a 3d specialist with background as a visual effects and visualization artist and as a 3D- software developer with emphasis on volume rendering and medical imaging. I own a company in Austria that does both of the above and I am currently living in the US, working as an employee for a US company where I am using this experience for writing volume renderers for medical imaging.
Skippy, you asserted her bosses were planning to fire her for illegal reasons. You have no way to know such a thing is true. I have no doubt you know someone in this sort of position, but I also have no doubt you and/or she concocted this paranoid delusion, attributing actions and motives to others with no evidence for such, because you're batty. Rational human beings don't do these sorts of things.
If you have evidence her bosses are planning to fire her for the reasons you stated, lets see it. Otherwise, I'm calling bullshit.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
I have no doubt you know someone in this sort of position, but I also have no doubt you and/or she concocted this paranoid delusion, attributing actions and motives to others with no evidence for such, because you're batty.
Her direct superior told her that his superiors were planing to do that and that he was fighting it right now. I know that the medical part of the story is 100% true. I know that her bosses dont allow her to go back to work unless she gets the go ahead from the doctor in the hospital (which is unfortunately not her regular doctor). She is struggling getting that right now. The story is pretty coherent. It is not my or her fault that her bosses are obviously oblivious to the legal situation. This is why I suggested to her to go to court, if they really fire her. The fact that they are even considering it though is already quite angering to me and symptomatic for what is wrong with this system.
Skip,
I know you are a 3D artist. Are you independently employed or do you work for a company? Just curious.
It is a bit more complicated than that
I am a 3d specialist with background as a visual effects and visualization artist and as a 3D- software developer with emphasis on volume rendering and medical imaging. I own a company in Austria that does both of the above and I am currently living in the US, working as an employee for a US company where I am using this experience for writing volume renderers for medical imaging.
Ah, very cool but totally different then I had assumed before. I don't know why, but I had the impression that you did 3D art, possibly for games. I have been dabbling in games for a bit as a hobby while I do real work full time. For a second, I thought we had some common ground:)
