How did society function before there was health insurance?

Up until the 80s when you went to the doctor the doctor sent you a bill and you paid it out of pocket.

You had to pay each time you saw a doctor and you had to pay for the OB/GYN out of pocket after you had a baby.

It cost about $700 for the doctor bill which included all of your pre-natal appointments and the delivery.

Health insurance covered in-patient hospital bills.

You paid for routine appointments.


Doctors were way nicer, more thorough, more seemingly caring when they knew that you were the one paying them.


Much preferred that system, and in the long run it was way cheaper because almost all employers covered health care.
It just wasn't all that expensive, like it is now.

Modern day extortion by lawyers and criminals. Hospitals raise their prices while agreeing with health insurance scumbags to accept only 30% of what is charged meanwhile forcing uninsured patients to pay the full price. Guess what? Owe any rare self-employed doctor a medical bill? Some asshole passed a law where that doctor can't write off your unpaid bill as a tax-deduction. Now why would the assholes do that?

Doctors were 'affordable', and if you still couldn't afford it, you could pay with a chicken or a pig or some preserves.

Greed has destroyed and continues to destroy everything. Its all about money. The United States needs to get out of the stone age of task masters and slaves and have universal health care like just about every other country in the world.

Pretty much my experience, too. In the 70's and early 80's, my mom would take me and/or my 2 siblings to the doctor for various issues and she'd write a check for $25.00 (for each kid) and maybe an additional $6.00 for a strep test or whatnot. Lab work was very inexpensive back then compared to now.

In the event of a major illness, we had... Health Insurance! Never used it much, except for when my brother got a pitchfork planted in the top of his foot by a friend while they were hunting rats in the barn. But then the ER visit and treatment only came to about $60.00 out of pocket. The remaining $300.00 or so was paid by the insurance. This was in 1980.

We also didn't have the legions of scroungers and illegals filling up the ER's back then as we do today, so costs were much lower and health care wasn't such a racket as it is now.

My mom was a stay at home mom, and my dad was an electrician. We had a comfortable middle-class life on his salary, plenty of food and clothing and necessities. We had everything we needed, and some of what we wanted. We took a family vacation once a year from our savings, and maybe another one at Spring break (Easter). At the risk of sounding like a broken record (memba them?) I MISS THE 80's!;)

No joke !! The "blood letting" worked because it caused the body to dive into DEFENSE mode. Bacteria need IRON to do their dirty work, and "bleeding" reduces the iron in a patient's body - thus reducing the threat of infection.

Look it up !! LOL

Yeah, your body dived alright, right into death

Chickens, eggs, money, or any other thing the doctor would take. Now doctors visits used to be a whole lot lower.

Lawyers messed up the insurance industry...

...and anti business elected political trash put the wooden stake in it's heart.

New Research !!

[link to www.cbsnews.com]

Sorry, but the problem with they way they did it is by bleeding when they first saw signs of fever the body is already fighting it on its own at that point, draining of white blood cells antibodies, and you are just making the patient weaker and ushering them to a quicker demise

They tried the same thing on George Washington, and guess what? He was dead the next morning after they drained close to half his blood, so stop with this nonsense...

I AM the eternal smart ass.

You're welcome.

It was a lot like that in the 1960's. That was before lawyers and the chemical pushers took over the entire system. What we have now is laughably called "health care." Hint--it isn't. It's more like "sick care."

The model then involved a visit to the doctor when an ailment was more than could be managed at home. As a matter of fact, the doctor often traced the history of the ailment and gave advice on how to spot the onset and stop it before it became a big problem the next time. Doctors actually addressed things like diet, self-care, exercise and the like; part of their "job" was to educate their patients.

The ER was for situations in which one was about to bleed to death, unconscious, vomiting blood, etc. I can even remember broken arms and fingers being x-rayed and set in the doctor's office! A bad cut requiring sutures was handled in the doc's office. And it was all done on a cash basis. Medical insurance was for major medical like surgery and life-threatening illness.

Oh, and by the way--my great-grandparents and grandparents all lived at least into their 80's, with several topping 100 years of age. They weren't sucked into the "health care" scam which stuffs the elderly full of pills, potions, and other high-profit chemicals, and they lived longer, healthier lives for it.

I will confess that over the past decade, I have been nearly killed by a major infection, and I would not have survived without a regional teaching hospital and heroic surgical and medical measures. Since recovery, I have avoided doctors like the plague. The whole notion of "health maintenance" is a chemical-pushing scam, and I want nothing to do with it. In my opinion, the first time a doctor tells you that you should go onto a prescription medicine and continue it for life is the time to say, "thanks, but no thanks" and move on. I have encountered far too many people over 70 who are taking 10 different pills a day, each one intended to compensate for the symptoms caused by the last. This is insanity, pure and simple.

Same with mandated auto insurance

There was zero reason to mandate it.

Things were fine before

Bullshit. Apparently you never got in an accident with an uninsured driver.

AG,

You rock but, wtf with this...meh. :/ (on board, but this is depressing.)

So your argument against life saving medical care is that it was better to have dead bodies in the gutters of cities then have doctors be available because daddy government is forcing us to want to buy insurance?

Your obviously retarded

Most people WANT to have insurance and get insurance through their jobs at a discounted rate.

You should never go to a hospital, get insurance, see a doctor, take a prescription medicine, or seek treatment of any kind!

Good luck in the gutter trash man

Mesicaid literally destroyed American healthcare.

Many moons ago, hospitals used to reserve the top floors for the rich. The rooms looked more like penthouse suites than hospital rooms, but they charged a literal fortune for them. Meanwhile, the rich did not dare go for a more moderately-pricex room because, what would the other rich people think when they came to call/visit? People might whisper that, in addition to being I'll, you were also broke. So the rich shelled out the dough.

This money was enough to pay for ALL of the others who visited the hospital on the lower floors, and who could not afford to pay for medical care.

The introduction of Medicaid utterly destroyed this system and turned "modern" hospitals into slums.

it has only to do with more food which tech has had a hand in...the flip side is you will get cancer for the priviledge.

More people died young.

Childbirth was the number one killer of young women.

But a lot of that had to do with not understanding hygiene and anabiotic's not with health insurance.

People took care of each other home people. People lived close to their aunts and uncles and grandparentsand they would take it care of the person who is sick.

But a lot more people died. A lot of people died young and to this day we don't know what they died of.

Last Edited by Ontheverge on 05/08/2017 09:48 PM

My man. I keep saying similar.

Life expectancy 100 years ago was about 50 years old.

A kid got leukemia he died you got any kind of cancer you died.

Lots of babies died from things that don't even exist anymore. Are used to be something called blue babies. My great grandmother had two kids that died of it. It doesn't even exist anymore.

If you were depressed you drank, if you got syphilis your penis fell off and you went crazy

If you broke your arm they would set a crooked. Or you would get gangrene and die

We didn't have all these machines that's for sure CAT scans MRIs scans and x-rays all this fancy stuff

The vast majority of medical expense is spent keeping someone alive the last two years of their life.

You went blind, deaf crippled and then you die...

It "functioned" by calling all "insurance" by

it's real name...

Extortion.

seems better than cancer....I would prefer random airplane crash.

In addition to refrigeration, indoor plumbing and showering every day.

I agree - but only as long as it is "well-supervised" doctors in training, who aren't relegated to using only cheap, out-of-patent medicines and denied using state of the art scanners and other equipment on the poor.

A longer period of time in medical school, where they aren't expected to memorize 8 yrs worth of stuff in 4 and get by on 2-3 hrs sleep a day (if any) would also improve the quality of medical practitioners we have, IMHO. If they take another 5 yr's supervised 'apprenticeship' after graduation doing charity work and learning how to really help people who need it instead of focusing only on 'enriching specialty practices', then all of society would be better off. Doctors and nurses didn't used to go into the profession solely to make money. They used to actually care about helping people. A lot still do, but the 'industry' makes them put it on the back burner just so they can survive in a 'practice'. Medicine should not be an 'industry'.

That's right. I I imagine those that helped a lot in the community got treatment no matters if they had money or not.

That used to be called the "free market". As soon as other people start paying your bill, you no longer give a shit about the cost. You want the most expensive treatments even though they may be unnecessary.

Better than now in that department, doctors back then CARED about their patients...not their wallet.