The origin was in employers competing for labor during a time of wage controls.
The continuation is driven more by people who have good health coverage not wanting to lose that and the fear that their doctors visits will feel like DMV visits. That’s a powerful force.
The best thing that could happen to people who currently have private health insurance and wish to keep it is that a public health system appears, forcing the private health insurance oligopoly to actually be competitive.
I pay (employer plus employee amounts) just under $20K/year for a family of four. I doubt anyone in the “vast majority” is paying over $50K/yr. Three orders of magnitude less than that is $50/yr. How can anyone, anywhere provide meaningful private health insurance for an individual (let alone a family of four) for $50/yr?!
A regular no-frills, some-copay insurance plan would probably cost around one to two hundred euros a year. So, yeah, two-ish orders of magnitude.
The likely amounts owed below your out of pocket maximum also have to be incorporated.
Also, my gold metal level BCBS network PPO plan is near $30k per year for a family of 4, so $20k seems like it might be sacrificing quantity/quality of in network providers.
Also, while anecdotal, I've never met anyone who is actually opposed to changing the healthcare system. I understand that the main talking point on one side is the fear of lower quality medical care, but I've honestly never seen this brought up as a genuine point. I've seen it used as a straw man because it is a weak argument though.
The origin of the current system was in the AMA and insurance companies lobbying to make everything except health insurance illegal, trampling all over the system put in place by employers, unions, and mutual aid societies.
I've lived all over VA - Richmond, Fairfax, Alexandria. All felt like DMV. In Michigan now. Feels like DMV.
Thing is, too - by all accounts I can tell - people are largely satisfied with their State Healthcare, in those places that have it (Whichever form it takes). Sure people have critiques. But some people saying something can be an issue is not the same thing as the entire system being broken + in the other system everyone gets good instead of just a few + no reason to try + instead keep this system with the same problems but also costs more.
My regular doctor’s office schedules appointments easily online, keeps to the schedule, communicates well and answers questions online within 24 hours, will follow simple instructions to help me get a script or something else basic, and clearly explains my situation and makes relevant recommendations based on test results. The DMV is (and most government services I’ve had to interact with are) pretty much whatever the relevant opposite of that list is.
We switched doctors in part because the previous didn’t have their shit together in terms of these basic interactions. The new one (4+ years now) is great.
Merely being able to fire your doctor and find another is reason enough for me to want to keep a significant private aspect.
GROSS income.
So basically I had to choose between healthcare for MS and the other basics in my life.
But alas, this seems to be the equilibrium we're satisfied with (or insist upon) for now.
Strangely, it seems to be almost an unassailable phenomenon, like there is an intuition in people to defend the perspective. Granted, there is substantial propaganda in play, but one would think that at least some people would be able to transcend it.
I wonder if holding conversations haphazardly across various social media platforms with essentially zero coordination or teaching/enforcement of skilful thinking and speech is an optimal way to run a planet. I've never encountered it in a corporation (at least not to the same degree), which suggests that it is not optimal.
Oh well, I guess we will never know!
There are myriad social safety nets out there for people if they'd only take advantage of them. Yet there are people roaming the streets and picking out of trash cans. Why? Because they've lost their families, they've lost their minds, they struggle with addictions and mental health, so they don't really fit in anywhere.
So you really only manage to be poor by becoming an utter social outcast first. If you can hold down the fort and navigate a bureaucracy, you can get on SNAP, Section 8, Voc. Rehab. and all sorts of programs that will get you back on your feet, courtesy of Uncle Sam, and that's not even counting the faith-based charities you could avail yourself of.
A friend of me recommended to me on this subject the book: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom).
You have a lot to learn. Start by reading the article, and understand that the effects of growing up that way are hard to overcome - psychologically. The author has a Ph.D and still suffers from it.
You may also want to look around at low cost of subsidized housing. It's often closer and more common than we think.
I know a person living it, and I can look at the situation and think about how I might handle things better. But that ignores a huge part of the reality of what it's like to be that person, or live that life.
The author grew up poor and has a Phd? Sounds like all the arguments here about how it is impossible to escape poverty are at odds with that fact.
-- someone who grew up poor
Disability! If you grow up poor, you can make it out as long as nothing goes wrong. You have no grace. The clock's ticking.
Oh, and you'd best be prepared to leave your family, friends, and anyone who has helped you to drown.
Hyperbole. As long as nothing major goes wrong. Lot's of things go wrong. As long as:
1. There is shelter,
2. There is rice and beans,
3. There is school,
The outcome looks good.
> Oh, and you'd best be prepared to leave your family, friends, and anyone who has helped you to drown.
Of course - if your family and friends cannot come with you to university, you should immediately give back the scholarship money and reject the acceptance letter! /s
Honestly, you come off slightly illogical (Is your MS in the humanities by any chance?). Your argument, taken to its logical conclusion, i.e. that you must not go to university unless all your family and friends can do so to, is frankly stupid.
'Leaving your loved ones to drown' wasn't about not going to school. It's about the economic feasibility of dragging oneself into the middle class/PMC and how often the most economically 'responsible' actions mean watching your loved ones suffer. For example, my financial situation is terrible in part because I'm responsible for my mentally ill sister, who can't work. Or I have a friend whose mother has Parkinson's right after her father had early onset Alzheimer's. THAT'S what I meant by 'leaving your loved ones to drown': Having to make the choice between being economically stable/ensuring your future and helping your loved ones. Which is a pretty common poverty problem.
I was flippant, not illogical, and I don't have an MS. Different Master's degree.
0.000x%? 0.x%? 1%?
It raises bar
Those of use that have escaped it know that you have to work harder for the same result, but this constant argument about poverty being inescapable is now tired and worn.
It's patently clear to any of us who have experienced poverty that Eleison23 hasn't actually looked into any of this. Ignore that part for now, and instead ask:
Why does he need to believe & say these things? What fear does this false view assuage? What feelings, what thoughts, are throttled?
It's really hard being alive during a collapse.
I had to learn adulting under duress. Many poor people don't know (or they fear) basic things like how to prepare meals, wash clothes, pay bills, clean the house. Many people choose the freedom of homelessness over the burdens of operating a household.
SNAP is a supplement, of course, and totally unnecessary even if you're dirt-poor. You can get by on food boxes and other donated food, free meals in parks and at churches, etc. SNAP does have a lot of hurdles in place.
Once again, there's no poverty in these United States for those who are determined and not overly impaired. Perhaps we're into "No True Scotsman" territory but I wouldn't even label as poverty someone's life in a shelter, where they can access 3 squares a day and comfortable hygienic bathroom facilities and usually a spot to try and land a job and increase their opportunity.
I've seen poor people living in garbage, like literally they scour garbage pits and they live among them. Poor people with children who have distended bellies and they're stretching bowls full of rice with dirty water because there's just nothing else to be had. Abject poverty such as that is just unheard of in our borders, because there's too much subsidy and programs and infrastructure that exists.
And elderly poverty is also a thing.
Then, I got a job at a big tech company and got to see how the other half lived.
I had a very different experience than you describe, and I think that your definitions of poverty are still doing work for you -- perhaps different work than I suspected, at first, but you are still rationalizing the horror.
There are many degrees of poverty -- by minimizing all but the most abject cases, you're moving the goalposts.
I also strongly suspect you're still in your twenties, but that's another matter.
Our town has clothes available for people who need it and (in some circumstances) housing. When people go to clean out the houses afterwards they find lots of dirty clothing. Instead of washing the clothes (in a machine or by hand), they go back and get more clothes.
On one hand we could say they should know better, but really they probably don't. All of us have blind spots and people in poverty in the US typically have lots of blind spots about how they could live differently.
raises an eyebrow in disabled
Engineers and other techy people that peruse HN probably don't spend a lot of time around less-than-average folks on a routine basis, I figure.