Yes. One of the side effects of all the drugs I have to take is problems with short term memory.
This is where you went off the deep end - tornado, flood and then you wanted to add cancer or something like that right on top of the tornado/flood.
Of course. The destruction of our house would have very little effect on our finances since it is insured. And we have medical insurance. Of course, if we both ended up with some sort of high dollar medcal emergency at the same time and maxed out our medical insurance, right after our house burned down (yeah, right…), then we would probably be screwed. How is this the responsibility of the taxpayer? And how often do you think that sort of thing happens?
Their TV income didn’t start until they had had, I think, 14 children. How did they support themselves prior to that time? Their website used to say something about donations from their church and whatever organization does the seminars, but that part is gone now. I imagine due to all of the uproar over their continuing to breed.
Yes, I’ll give them that. It makes it somewhat more likely that if/when they lose their TV show and the book sales drop off, they will actually be able to live off of the rental incomes.
You are telling me you don’t see the difference between a one time big ticket item and (what is it now) 18 children?
The article indicated bad job did equal low paying. The fact he had so many jobs also indicates that he wasn’t making much money at any of them.
That one is another typo - it should say if they don’t have an income.
The majority on this (or any) Internet board are persons who can at least afford personal home Internet access. I’ve worked as a public librarian, and dealt with users seeking Internet access, and dealt with homeless and/or unemployed persons, and based on that experience I don’t think homeless and/or unemployed persons figure heavily on most Internet boards.
Yes, I did. Leaving aside the fact that people lie even when it is sworn testimony before Congress, what you cited wasn’t proof that what that doctor said he was doing was legal. I didn’t say that it wasn’t done, I said it wasn’t legal.
And I was going to let you have that last word, that so many of you children seem to think is so important. However, you are apparently too fucking stupid to realize that certain investments are considered and called “speculative”, whereas others are considered and called “safe”. Even tho, yes, they all entail a degree of speculation as to their future value and/or safety. Now, please keep your awesome retardation to yourself, eh?
Already answered - I think to you even. I simply didn’t have the time/money when I was young and then later there was no reason to spend the money, since I was at that time making about $25,000-$30,000+. If there were loans available in Washington 30+ years ago, that I would have actually qualified for, I doubt I would have done it anyway since I have always avoided debt as much as possible. Perhaps if I had lost the job that lead me to be able to make decent money, it would have come up, but at the time staying with Aetna and letting them pay to train me seemed like a much better idea.
OK, then, how much a month do folks have to pay on average, to whoever?
Well, gosh, taking the responsibility away from the parents and having the government raise and educate the poor children has done so much to lower the percentage of poor in this country! What’s that? It hasn’t? Oh… :rolleyes:
The point of parents bothering to set up a college fund for their children is so they don’t have to take out loans that they will have to pay back later. But then, we can’t have those parents be responsible for their own children, can we?
So, not a real job. You are talking about things like babysitting or teens picking berries (if they still do that), right?
So it’s okay for you to use this as an explanation about why you didn’t go to college, yet you don’t understand this is the same problem which keeps people uninsured?
That was the sum total that could be done in my situation, since I was diagnosed as a teenager. And there really was no reason to believe, in those far different times, that there should be anything more done because of the nature of my situation. It didn’t warrant anything further.
So in other words, you want more of my personal details so that you can nitpick my situation. You’re not getting them.
You’ve really got to learn how to follow a thread. I was hospitalized with a serious illness and had surgery. That hospitalization and surgery were covered by temporary medical assistance. I developed complications and was hospitalized again a month later. That was not covered by anyone but me. Nor did anyone cover the bills for the follow-up medication or care. And when I had to be hospitalized and nearly died several months after that with the same complication, once again, no one footed that bill but me, and same with the medications and follow-up care after that incident.
I only spooled out these details in the midst of the discussion about how Guin could be covered at one point and not another, to explain the way emergency Medical Assistance works in Pennsylvania. Even when subsequent treatment or hospitalizations are for the same illness or are closely linked to it (like post-surgical complications) and even when those subsequent hospitalizations occur within a very short period of time, emergency M.A. does not necessarily cover them. It did not in my case.
Which is what is already happening (to the tune of about $1,000 per person per year) and would now also include all the people who could pay premiums on the public plan. Whether it’s higher taxes or higher premiums or both, there will always be something that those with insurance and with higher incomes will have to pay to cover the medical expenses of those who have no insurance and have lower incomes. That’s what it means to live in a society where we don’t let people die just because they’re poor.
Would something for which there are credential granting organizations which use various metrics (including examinations of knowledge) count as a profession? Because in that case, birth doula is most certainly a profession.
Well, i’m not really interested (or qualified, for that matter) in spending a whole bunch of time looking at individual occupations, but a couple of things are worth noting.
For sociologists, the professionalization project requires more than simply testing and granting credentials. For a profession to really be worthy of the name, it has to be able to control access to the type of work it does, and prevent people who do not have its credentials from practicing. Often, in modern society, such authority need also be backed in some way by the state.
So, to take the older and more obvious professions, doctors and lawyers not only test knowledge and provide credentials, but they can, with the help of state authority (bar exams, board certification, etc.), actually prevent people without the appropriate qualifications from practicing at all. Being disbarred, as a lawyer, does not involve simply losing your membership in some club or association; it effectively prevents you from earning a living as a lawyer.
It’s not clear to me whether or not the doula organization in your link is a profession in the same sense. It may be a profession, but just one that is not as fully developed and secure in its authority and control.
Because the sociological definition of a profession is not an all-or-nothing categorization. Occupations can often be found with some of the characteristics of a profession, but not all, or with some characteristics not fully developed. Professionalization is a process, as the quotations in my previous post suggest, and different occupations can and do demonstrate (over time) different levels of (sociological) professionalization.
So, what you don’t understand is that it is going to cost those who can afford to pay a heck of alot more to fund insurance than it does to provide subsidized bus passes?
My point is, just because things might be working in your state, doesn’t mean it will work everywhere. California being an excellent example. We are being crushed by taxes and debt here, and a major part of it is supporting poor people, as my cites earlier showed. If something isn’t done soon, we are simply going to collapse under the burden of our debt - do you wish this on the whole country?
Ah. Nice backpedal.
No, I didn’t get it because you couldn’t be bothered to specify. All you said was he was born with spina bifida and of course his parents couldn’t have known it was going to happen (which isn’t really true, but we can ignore that). Nothing about the time frame between birth and adulthood. What, you expect that I am supposed to know all about what it takes to deal with his medical problems and how expensive it was, as well as how poor his parents were? Or was I supposed to go research all of it and then try to guess? :rolleyes:
No, that is not explaining it, that is trying to excuse it. We are not talking about just poor people here, we are talking about the whole of the US. Why is it that essentially every working family feels that it is more important to buy on credit and not save, rather than wait until they can actually afford whatever it is they want? Particularly children, since they are so expensive. Or, is this an indication that the middle class is under such a heavy tax burden already that they cannot at any time have the house, picket fence and 2.5 children without mortgaging their futures?
Snort. Being called a “dumb stain on the sidewalk of society” is a bit more than merely asking to support my assertions.
As I said earlier, they weren’t likely to do it for a female anyway, but they also had no business having four kids, since they couldn’t afford them. If there had ever been a major expense in their lives, we would have had to live with my grandparents for longer than we did. Only one of us that went to college and he paid for it himself after he was lucky enough to work for Boeings for a few years without getting laid off.
I don’t know what you are referring to any more - you’ll have to refresh my memory.
It would be if it worked that way. Many little kids grow up to healthy adulthood to become those old folks who aren’t covered by that “usually”. The drug dealers, criminals and government officials among us. Also, little kids should not be in a position where they need to be raised by the taxpayer and we should get rid of the attitude that there is nothing wrong with that.
Not the post itself, the fact that I didn’t do what you demanded. Tho damn, I’m doing it now…
Oh, I wasn’t aware you could see my phone bill all the way from Noo Hampsha. How about that.
Or they are just posting from work. Whether or not those who do have access from home can actually afford it is still up for grabs.
I wasn’t demanding that anybody pay my way on anything, which is why I didn’t have time/money to go to college. I can understand that people can decide to not have money to buy insurance, just as I decided to not take a chance on college. What I don’t get is if it is so bloody important, why they don’t make sure they can get it. The first time I had insurance was when I was 25, when I first started working for Aetna and once I found out what a good deal that is, I have never been without it. Maybe if I’d had better medical care as a child/young adult I’d be in better shape now, but that only reinforces my opinion that those that cannot afford them should not be having children.
If you honestly believe that it is legal for an insurance company (other than Medicare) to flat deny something that is covered in the policy, you are going to have to provide some sort of proof.
Keep digging, imbecile. I know with your anemic reasoning skills you have trouble with two-syllable words such as “context”, but, masochist that I am, I shall endeavor to illuminate the foggy recesses of your vacant cranium once more.
Your original shit-headed response of “I don’t invest in anything speculative.” was made in response to a question posed by Shot From Guns (“What if you’d invested it with Madoff? 0% of $90,000 is $0.”)
The point, my opposable-thumb-lacking friend, which you quite predictably missed, is that even those investments which can, to the best of appearances, appear safe and legitimate, can in fact fail spectacularly, and their doing so does not reflect any degree of moral irresponsibility on the part of their individual investors.
The Madoff scheme involved falsifying documents that purported to represent blue-chip stock holdings. Further adding to the illusion of security, Madoff also falsely claimed to have purchased put options which set firm limits to downside risk. By the standards of the stock market, this actually was a relatively safe and non-speculative investment.
One more thing.
I realize you may indeed have memory problems (amongst all your other manifest mental deficiencies). That must make following an adult conversation more challenging than it evidently already is for you. Too bad there isn’t a way to look back in the conversation, to actually see what you and others wrote… :smack:
I think Rubystreak’s point is that no matter how responsible and industrious, someone in their early 20’s is unlikely to have a six-digit pile of assets. They could be saving 90% of their income and still not have even 100,000 in assets yet. This would make recovery from any sort of high-dollar disaster much more difficult.
The point of social safety net is NOT to take care of able-bodied people in idle luxury - it’s to keep them from starving or freezing to death long enough for them to get themselves back on their feet. For example, if a family’s house burns down most human beings think that giving them a change or two of clothes and a hotel room for a couple days is preferable to them sleeping naked on the sidewalk until they can move in with friends/relatives/find alternate housing/whatever. I can not understand why you see helping people out to be such an unreasonable activity,
That is THEIR opinion. Why do you value their opinions over those of others on this board? Is it solely because they confirm your own prejudices?
The chronically poor are unlikely to be on this message board. The only reason that I am here now is because I purchased the infrastructure required for home access (computer, modem, etc.) BEFORE I lost my job. I am not chronically poor, I am temporarily poor. I was comfortably middle class for 20 or more years, and I will be again even if I am not that at the moment. The “generational welfare” people you wail about are extremely unlikely to have home internet access and, at least at my county library, free on-line access through the library is somewhat restricted and very much time-limited. This tends to discourage message board use.
That is unfortunate. I will try to keep that in mind when discussing things with you in the future.
I personally know people it has happened to, so to me it’s not a hypothetical, it’s people like my neighbor Ken (Ken’s cancer, by the way, is kidney. Haven’t seen him for a couple weeks, nor his son, so I am wondering how he is doing).
The “responsibility” of the taxpayer isn’t to make things all better - it’s to make sure you have someplace to live, even if it’s a single room, so you’re not sleeping under a bridge somewhere. That’s pretty damn minimal. How often does it happen? Not often if you look at percentages but in absolute numbers probably tens of thousands given that we have 1/3 of a billion people living in this country. As I said, I personally know people who have experience disasters on that scale so I know it really does happen.
I imagine they got by on savings, hard work, and a budget. As for “uproar” over their “continuing to breed” - there’s a movement out there called the “quiverful” who actively promote popping out kids as fast as humanly possible, of which the Duggars are a part. You don’t approve and honestly I don’t approve, but there are people out their who do approve and are happy to facilitate the Duggars in their lifestyle choice. As a result… the Duggars do NOT take any taxpayer money I am aware of. You aren’t paying for their kids, and neither am I.
Frankly, I think Octomom would be a MUCH better target of your ire, as she is not only sucking down the taxpayer money but she lives in California, which means yes, you really ARE subsidizing that travesty of a family. The Duggars, after all, are a stable married couple with personal resources who are minimally dependent on others - Octomom has been living off welfare and really IS the “have more kids” welfare bitch you find disgusting. So please, use her as an example. I would sincerely love to see you pillory that bitch.
Of course, their oldest children are now at an age where they are able to get jobs of their own, help support their parents/siblings, and otherwise contribute to the household. I’m not too worried about the Duggars needing public money.
Yes, there’s a difference, but there are people quite capable of spending a great deal of money on a sick pet who won’t do that, they’ll just have the animal put to sleep. Their money, their choice, right? And there are couples who choose not to have children and spend money on Hawaii vacations, and other couples who choose to have children and give up ever going to Hawaii. Their choice, right? Whether it’s you or the Duggars or me with my priorities as long as it’s your money, you aren’t breaking the law, and no one gets hurt it’s none of my business how you spend it. If the Duggars have arranged their lives and finances so as to pay for 18 kids without requiring government assistance I don’t see where either you or I have cause to condemn them.
Or else he was trying to find a job he did like… there are many reasons people change jobs.
Just for the record, the doctor in question is a woman, and yes, what she was doing WAS perfectly legal, and still is.
This is why I have long encouraged people to get a copy of their actual health insurance policy rather than a “summary” document so they actually know what really is and isn’t covered.
For student loans? These days, I have no idea - back when I was paying mine off it was $110 a month which I found manageable.
It also varies with what, exactly, you did in school - my sister with the MD has a quarter million dollars in debt from her medical training. Her monthly payments are significantly more than $110. Then again, on a doctor’s income she will be able to pay that back, particularly as she has a relatively frugal lifestyle. My college roommate’s medical school debt was “only” around $150,000 because she agreed to work in underserved rural areas in exchange for debt forgiveness for seven years. Last I spoke with her, she had finally taken care of the last of her student loans a couple years ago.
Clearly, there must be some risk assessment in taking on debt. For something like a medical degree where a high income is almost guaranteed it is safer to take on more debt than for, say, a teacher certificate for K-12 schooling which, although a certification in demand, has a much lower income.
We both agree that some parents are irresponsible goo-spewing assholes - why should their children suffer? If the parents can’t or won’t contribute towards their children’s education then why do you have issues with a means for the children themselves to take responsibility, educate themselves, then pay back the money, with interest so they will do better in life and not be a burden on society?
You do realize that providing student loans is one means of investing money, don’t you?
If they get paid real money it’s a real job. It may be a real low-paying job, but if you get money for it, it’s a job.
No, really, 50 years ago it was IMPOSSIBLE to know in advance of birth that a child had spina bifida. IMPOSSIBLE. It is not a genetic disease, it does not “run in the family”, there is no symptom exhibited during the pregnancy, it is not linked to the mother’s age… there was no way to know. Taking folic acid supplements prior to conception will reduce, but not eliminate, the chances of spina bifida but that was not common knowledge 50 years ago.
Yes, you could have looked up “spina bifida” on the internet, to which you do have access, that is why I used to proper name of the disorder.
Damn, I’ve been doing other stuff over the weekend and saw that curlcoat attempted to justify her taking more out of social security than she put in whilst simultaneously pouring scorn on those that need any form of social assistance.
Damn, that could have got got quite funny, but I feel I am somehow past the point of getting in to it and, let’s face it, I’d probably get a reply from her on Thursday at the earliest.
Oh well.
I guess it is best that I stop trying to discuss stuff with an obvious troll anyway.
