What Hurts More, Healthcare Costs or High Gas Prices?

[Dinger]

Poll question: What Hurts More, Healthcare Costs or High Gas Prices?

What impacts us and our economy more? Which one do you care more about? You get the idea.

[Mnemosyne]

1. That's a tough one in a way Dinger, because

if you have no major health crisis going on the every day living cost of gas can really hurt you badly. It's terrible for my daughter with a 40 mile commute one way to a $7.50 an hour 36 hour 6 day a week job.

OTOH, if you have one even minor health emergency it can throw you financially for many months, if not years.

It depends on your circumstances and your luck. IMO

[Dinger]

3. Good Answer vickiss (nt)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. I can choose to drive less, but a serious illness or injury can

strike at any time under circumstances beyond my control.

[flaminbats]

6. the cost of driving can limit my ability to pay medical expenses

These expenses are inseparable, the increasing cost of transportation will only add to the exploding cost of healthcare. Many middle-aged, neocon babyboomers now treat both problems only as silly, unimportant-liberal jokes. But who will be hit hardest over the next decade, by the growing demand for healthcare and shrinking supply of fossil fuels?

[pitohui]

4. health care

we're talking hundreds of thousands, such that i lose my entire past earnings & my entire future, for health care

w. gas prices we're talking maybe a few hundred to a few thousand extra per year, this is something that at least some of us can actually do something abt, such as only drive twice a week or something

as an individual you can't do anything abt the high price of cancer

[renie408]

5. I can live with one or the other

its BOTH that are killing us. We are self employed, which means we have to cover 100% of our insurance costs.

[newswolf56]

7. I cannot drive less because I live in a place with such abysmal public...

transport -- a problem many times intensified by the fact use of public transportation exposes you to street criminals at the bus stops and while walking to and from the bus stops: a real threat if you're elderly.

Because I can no longer afford to drive my car, my entire life has shrunk radically: shopping that formerly took 45 minutes or an hour now squanders an entire day with bus travel. As for activities that require automobile use -- meeting with friends and acquaintances in a saloon or restaurant, unstructured evenings in a book store, evening visits to special friends -- the price of gasoline has denied me those pleasures forever, turning me into a virtual shut-in.

My healthcare needs are taken care of for now because of my longstanding membership in the nation's best health care cooperative: Group Health. But as membership dues rise -- and Bush's policies of catering to the for-profit insurance companies are rigged to force co-op costs ever higher (this to "make them competitive with the private sector") -- I will have to continue working to pay my dues. But the cost of gasoline now radically restricts my market: I can no longer afford to drive to seek work, or to service any clients I might acquire.

And anyone who is thrown out of work by these gas prices -- which are reflections of the renewed savagery of capitalism and thus are truly forever -- will be denied health care entirely: literally abandoned to die in homelessness and starvation -- or of untreated illness. Once again, proof of how the United States by the unfettered greed and racist malevolence of its ruling oligarchy has become the most methodically cruel, deliberately murderous country on earth: the aftermath of Katrina as the future of us all.

[imperial jedi]

8. I can handle the cost of gas but health care is another matter.

n/t

[newyawker99]

12. Hi imperial jedi!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[imperial jedi]

19. hi back!

It's good to be here.:hi:

[Vinca]

9. Health care without a doubt.

I can't afford insurance and an illness would wipe me out. A serious illness probably wouldn't be treated and I'd be toast. Gas is bad, but not life threatening.

[ladylibertee]

10. healthcare

[mrcheerful]

11. Its both..........

Because of disabilities due to motorcycle vs car accidents I have problems walking very far, so public transportation is pretty much out of the question. I am on medi caid and medi care, both suck because you can't find a family doctor that wants to deal with either. So you get to spend lots of time in the emergency room or you get stuck with doctors that don't speak english.

The city I live in to drive 5 miles you have to drive 10 miles what with roads closed and detours. BTW, it takes me 15 minutes to walk 100 yards, so outside of going into stores I pretty much sit at home and only drive when I have to. And all the bus stops are 1 to 2 miles from where I live.

Yesterday I went to see the doctor, he told me to ''think'' about getting half my left foot amputated, he felt it might have a positive effect on how I walk, but because of another injury, it might make things worse. I drove motorcycles because of gas mileage, 4 gallons = 250 miles of driving.

Anyhow both health care and high gas prices are equal killers to my disability check. The next repuke that tells me that I'm living the fat life, I will punch them right in the face. BTW, you did know that all repukes are doctors? They like to tell the handi capped that theres nothing wrong with them and theres all kinds of jobs out there for them, like working at Goodwill, LMAO. (edited due to bad speeling LOL.)

[cantstandbush]

13. High gas prices will cause bad health for some people.

But you sure don't have to drive.

[LonelyLRLiberal]

14. That depends on availability of public transportation

which is nil in a lot of the country.

[Laelth]

15. LOL! That's funny.

I would, of course, say "health care," because it's astronomically expensive, but seeing as how I, my wife, and my children have no health care, the answer was easy. High gas prices all the way.

Hate the GOP.

-Laelth

[Love Bug]

16. Both.

Both the high cost of carrying health insurance for employees and the high cost of energy get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

[ProudDad]

17. Health Care by far

I'm getting to an age where it's getting critical.

Read "The United States of Europe" by T.R. Reid if you want to find out how countries that know how to take care of their citizens do it...

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. You consume fuel. Your life is dependent upon healthcare.

Don't like the cost of health care? Don't have that appendectomy. :sarcasm:

The typical employer-supplied medical insurance plan costs $10,000 per family. A car that gets 25 miles per gallon at $3 per gallon could drive 83,000 miles on the annual cost of medical insurance.

There are alternatives to consuming mass quantities of gas. There are no alternatives (except dying) to medical treatment.

The fact that the question is even being asked troubles me. Inability to afford gas is inconvenient. It is a great deal more than inconvenient to be unable to afford medical treatment.