No. I haven’t suggested that.
Price should be something on people’s mind when they choose a procedure of care. Not the only thing.
They, like most people, probably didn’t understand compound interest and how much money that SS fund would have been worth if it was invested in stocks rather than government IOUs.
The pill - at its lowest cost through Planned Parenthood - is $15 a month - up to $50 a month depending on the formulary - and not every woman does well on the $15 a month pills - there are reasons you’d have a more expensive pill prescribed. As someone who paid out of pocket for birth control as a young adult working a part time minimum wage job while going to college full time, it doesn’t sound like a lot of money - but it really was (it was long ago, but the price hasn’t changed much). $15 isn’t much to me today, but back then, I could feed myself for a week for that.
And why worry - because having children when you are really poor or young is one of the way people get mired in poverty. Because those children are the ones that will cost the taxpayer in free lunch, school subsidy programs, food subsidy programs, subsidized medical care, etc. - not to mention less positive outcomes for kids growing up in poverty. Because while the burden is generally less on young men, we’ve made child support a much harder thing to get out of and eighteen years of having your wages garnished for support because you were young and stupid sucks. We need to get reliable birth control to young women like candy at Halloween - and ANY hurdle we put in front of a woman who WANTS reliable birth control is not good.
Any one leaving a group health care plan can not be denied insurance due to a previously existing condition. This has been the law since 1996, 12 years before Obama’s election. I think I will hold off on the email.
I’m with you on this. Young unmarried women having kids they can’t afford is the second biggest problem this country has. Birth control is relatively cheap, we should be encouraging everyone to be on it.
But you do realize that many people have religious beliefs and don’t agree, right?
Why do we need to make them pay for it? That’s the problem with universal, government provided insurance. Social conservatives come to power in government and birth control is taken away. Progressive liberal comes to power in government and birth control is handed out like candy.
Let people choose.
I really wish there were an organization like planned parenthood that would work on providing birth control without using government money. A non partisan group, free from government funds would be a great way to do this in a cost effective way without firing up the 40% or so of the population who has religious objections.
I wish Bill and Melinda would take this on. Probably too political for them to want to touch it in the US. They’re just doing it everywhere else.
No, it doesn’t.
Regards,
Shodan
Let’s please not digress into a conversation about why having imaginary friends should absolve them of social responsibility.
I have a religious belief against war (really, I’m a Unitarian - when I teach Sunday School we keep very detailed records of kids attendance to be able to support conscientious objectors), but I’m not allowed to opt out of supporting it with my money. I have an ethical problem subsidizing oil companies, but here I am doing it.
Here is the thing - employers are not obligated to provide health insurance. If they don’t want to provide health insurance because they’d have to cover birth control or blood transfusions they can opt out. The employees they leave stranded can buy insurance on the exchange - and in a lot of cases would come out ahead - the company isn’t subsidizing insurance as much as the government would for low wage employees. But, the company looses some nice tax incentives if they do so. And yes, then some people would support birth control with their tax dollars (which they do already). When we ALL get to pick and choose where our tax dollars go so those of us that don’t believe in military spending can not see our money go there, you’ll have a point. But we don’t.
CBS News, in January: "“Overall, do you think the benefits from Social Security are worth the cost of the program for taxpayers, or are they not worth the cost?”
73% say it’s worth it.
This isn’t a question about whether Social Security works, it’s a question about the future of the program. I’m not surprised a lot of people expect the benefit to go away since Republicans regularly say Social Security is going broke It’s not going broke, but why bring the truth into it?
I was going to argue with this, but I’ll just assume it’s a religious belief and thus not in the realm of facts.
Preventative care saves money if non-useful things like annual physicals are phased out.
So smart preventative care can and will save money.
Where those comparisons fail is that they are truly fringe beliefs. Only a tiny minority of people are against war and oil.
The vast majority (95%+ at least) are in favor of at least some wars and are in favor of using oil to power our cars and toys.
Yes, catering to every lunatic fringe belief isn’t a good idea. But religious people are hardly that. I don’t believe in religion myself. But the idea that we can just handwave all of them away as QuickSilver suggests just because we disagree is shortsighted.
It sounds like you should have chosen your words more carefully, since it’s clear you can’t find a cite to prove your initial claim.
My cite shows clearly that 15-20% of people don’t think SS will be there at all for them in retirement. These are probably the people that are paying attention.
It shows that about 75% of people (it varies year to year) either worry a “great deal” or a “fair amount” personally about the social security system. Only 6% not at all. Those people all post here I think.
Finally, only 6-12% of people are “very satisfied” with SS. 25-35% are “very dissatisfied” with an equal number “somewhat dissatisfied”. Those are the people who are good at math.
Your claim that a “vast majority” of Americans feel social security “works” is clearly not true.
[/Social Security hijack]
So you believe an overwhelming majority of Americans support Social Security even though they don’t believe it works? And that if they disagree with you their opinions don’t count anyway? What a fascinating viewpoint - and such an effective arguing style!
Regardless of whether you call it “dictated by their employers”, if men were in the analogous situation, are you saying you genuinely aren’t sure Democrats would object?
Say there were a widely used medication that prevented men from getting their partners pregnant, are you seriously saying Democrats might well be cool with that not being covered by insurance, because they just don’t give a damn about men?
Given the high cost of health insurance MOST people simply can not afford to buy private insurance. They just don’t have sufficient income. Also keep in mind that, historically, private insurance for women was typically 2-3 times the cost of private insurance for men.
The last time my spouse and I looked for private insurance the lowest premium quoted to use was $1,200 per month. Per MONTH. $14,400 per year. You have to be pretty far up the wage ladder before that becomes feasible.
So – either we took the employer’s insurance or we went without, and when I was laid off we simply couldn’t afford coverage.
Right, but they can jack up the premiums to the point you literally can’t afford it – as I mentioned, last time my household was in the market for private coverage we were quoted $1,200 per month as a premium. We weren’t grossing $1,200 a month a that point due to being laid off. Oh, we weren’t denied, it’s just that the cost was literally more than our income.
Buh? I’ve never seen a health insurance policy that covered just reproductive health, which is what you’re talking about.
Condoms and spermicide are available OTC, but the most effective forms of birth control, the hormone pills, IUDS, and implants, are only available if you go through a doctor. They require exams, which also cost money.
If there is no realistic means for the employee to obtain coverage outside of the employer yes, it does in fact constitute making a decision for an employee. When the Catholic Church or Hobby Lobby refuses contraception coverage the clear intent is to affect the private, personal behavior of their employees.
Just because your healthcare offers birth control or abortion or anything else your religion might disapprove of doesn’t mean you have to use it. You are free to refuse any medical care you object to, even if it result in your death. Jehovah’s witnesses are free to refuse any and all blood products even if it kills them, but society would never tolerate a Jehovah’s Witness employer refusing to include blood transfusions in medical coverage provided to employees.
The reason this is allowed for birth control is because SEX! It scares some people, apparently, this notion of women having sex without fear of pregnancy or being forced to birth and raise children they don’t want, or having control over their reproduction. Failure to allow birth control is religious interference in health care. Why would that be more acceptable than government “interference”?
If you sincerely believe birth control is evil you are free to exercise your religious beliefs and refuse to use it. No one is forced to use birth control in this country. All the argument is, is an excuse for the employer to force religious beliefs on other people
Untrue. Providing contraception cuts down the pregnancy rate. Pregnancy, whether ending in abortion or a live birth is a couple orders of magnitude more expensive than contraception. The rationale for restricting contraception and reproductive options is religious, not fiscal.
You can not get hormonal birth control without a doctor’s prescription and that requires an exam, which starts at $100 and goes up steeply from there. Gynecologists are usually the gatekeepers for that an being specialists their fees are more like $200 and up. If a woman has to take time off work for that exam add in a lost day’s wages. No, the pill is not just $10 a month, you’re ignoring the costs in getting the script in the first place.
They are also less effective and too many men flat-out refuse to use them.
Poor women have less access because they have less money. Do you complain about those poor women having all those babies and costing taxpayers money? Well, make it easier for them to get effective birth control maybe they’d be having fewer kids.
My religious beliefs find proselytizing extremely offensive, yet the law and the First Amendment says I can’t stop the church down the road from “offering” to tell me about Jesus whether I have told them no before or not. Living in a civilization means you have to make compromises, yes, even to your religious practice. Your right to practice your religion stops where it infringes on the rights of others to practice their religion, or no religion at all.
If you can pass a law telling employers that there is a minimum amount of money they have to provide to their employees, how is it different to dictate a minimum threshhold of healthcare that you have to provide to your employees?
The government puts itself in the middle of the employer employee relationship all the time because the bargaining power of employers and employees is nothing close to parity for the overwhelming majority of human beings.
This is untrue.
First, you have communities were employment is dominated by one employer and “choosing” not to go there essentially means you are consigning yourself to lifelong struggle and poverty. OK, I suppose such people could move but if you have no money moving to a new location can be much more difficult than for a higher income person with more resources.
Second, anyone who is on certain government programs HAS TO accept the first offer of employment they receive, if they do not, they loose all their benefits. If they voluntarially quit that job they lose all their benefits (unless the reason they quit is a higher paying job). Loosing such benefits can mean hunger or homelessness so saying there is no element of coercion there is ridiculous. Granted, these are the poorest of the working adults, but they do not have the choices of someone more wealthy to purchase additional anything. Why should we have freedom and options for one segment of working adults and none for another segment?
Where does that quit?
Should the employer dictate what you eat, what religion you are, and how you spend your free time as well?
The notion that companies should have carte blanche to create those influences is also nonsense. That’s why we have anti-discrimination laws, worker safety laws, and other worker protections, because in the past some employers have taken advantage of the vulnerable and overstepped the bounds of reason.
Here’s the difference between having the government control healthcare and having private entities control healthcare:
Ultimately, Congress and the President answer to the population at large via a process called “election”. Private citizens, collectively, have some input into what is and isn’t covered and can lobby for changes to be made. We also have constitutional provisions that control the government, so it’s highly unlikely the government-run healthcare will have religion based crap in them. In other words, the government is less likely to ban contraception than the Catholic Church would.
Corporations, whether private, secular, openly traded, or “closely held” are controlled but one or a few individuals. That individual will make decisions and is in no way required to consider what the employees want, need, or desire. The employees have no recourse other than to quit and go elsewhere, and as already mentioned, this is not as easily done as you have implied. The reality is that employees in the US have no choice in what healthcare the employer offers.
Sure – IF you can afford the premiums for private care.
One quarter of US households are making $25,000 a year or less. If they get quoted the same $1,200 premium my household did that would leave them $883/month for which to pay for housing, food, gas, utilities, and everything else the household needs. That is, effectively, shutting them out of the market even if they aren’t explicitly denied. That’s really no choice at all, and why so many American families were (and some still are) going without any insurance at all.
I’d say half the companies I’ve worked for over the past 30 years have NOT offered health insurance.
Yes, I did take a job at one point specifically because it had health insurance – but I got laid off in 2007 along with everyone else in my job category because we were deemed obsolete. Bye-bye health insurance.
After about a year I did get into a state government subsidized program (despite my state being thoroughly red yes, we did have such a program). It’s not perfect, either, but we are satisfied – we get the coverage we need to stay healthy and deal with illness and accident at a price that doesn’t bankrupt us. I now have the freedom to seek employment without worrying about whether or not I have health coverage which has given me a different sort of freedom I would not otherwise enjoy. My spouse’s long term health problems have stabilized. My own health has actually improved these past 5 years despite poverty (a risk factor for all sorts of disease) and getting older.
MY experience is that “government interference” in healthcare is nothing to fear. It’s certainly no worse than employer interference, which is what the current default system is, and at times better.
Sometimes what you think is true isn’t – welcome to adulthood.
Probably not, but they WILL want you to sign a butt-load of documents stating you aren’t taking their coverage, you will find other coverage, and other cover-your-ass legal stuff. I suspect that most businesses would be happy to get out of the insurance coverage business.
INCORRECT.
There is a flaw in that statement I see over and over. The consumer is NOT the patient/employee. The “consumer” is the EMPLOYER. The employees have zero choice is what insurance plan is chosen, whether or not that same coverage is maintained from year or year or a different policy is chosen, or what percentage the employee must contribute towards premiums. Zero. The employer makes all those decisions.
I can’t fathom why people who crow about freedom and choice don’t see this. Instead of the government choosing and controlling their health coverage their employers are choosing and controlling their healthcare. The employee has no choice at all in the vast majority of situations. They are present with what their employer has chosen and told to either take it or leave it.
Good luck with that.
In 2007-2008 when I went “bare” I had to do exactly that. Let me tell you a LOT of doctors simply won’t give you the time of day if you don’t have insurance. Virtually every healthcare provider is set up so that having and insurance number is such an integral part of record-keeping that NOT having one means a constant headache for everything – difficulty in scheduling an appointment (system will not schedule without policy number, for example), difficulty in billing (system wants insurance information and returns an error if there is none), presumptions that you won’t pay at all if you don’t have insurance, pressure to accept usurious payment plans even if you are literally holding sufficient cash in your hand to pay for what’s needed, on and on.
A very, very few doctors genuinely are set up for direct payment from patients. I had a dermatologist for several years who told you up front he had nothing to do with insurance. If you went to him you paid him then asked your insurance company for reimbursement. Which, since I had employer-provided insurance at the time I did. I actually found it easier than a lot of other offices where they “handled the billing for you”. More like mangled the billing for you. However, that only works for relatively inexpensive care. Some things would be quite difficult for a patient to pay for up front, like in-patient care after a major accident, or cancer treatment.
That made more sense in WWII when this nonsense got started – back then salary increases were sharply curtailed due to the war, so offering health insurance was a way to increase compensation to employees without running afoul of wage controls. The fact that there was such a shortage of workers that they were recruiting housewives to learn to do heavy industrial work meant retaining workers was a major, major problem for employers.
It’s very different today, with a high unemployment rate and multiple qualified workers for every available job slot. You don’t need extras to attract employees these days, and retaining them is simply reminding them that they’re easily replaced.
We could eliminate a lot of “fluff” by simply eliminating the private-party middle man and going to a single-payer universal coverage system like every other civilized nation already has.
That’s why we should get rid of health care insurance and move to a single-payer, universal health care coverage. That way it would be a lot easier for people to get the routine and regular health care that helps prevent expensive occurrences.
The irony in that statement, of course, is that France also has a government-run system so you’d still be subjected to one.
That only works if you’re wealthy. Actually, even most of the 1% couldn’t afford cancer treatment or a major traumatic accident without being beggared by the costs. Only the upper 1% of the 1% would actually have full access to modern healthcare.
Yes, and it sucks so badly that even the US is desperate to change this.
As a counter claim I offer up every other First World industrialized nation – the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, et al make this work just fine. Of course, the fact that the government bureaucrats also are in those national systems gives them incentive to make sure they work. If we did move to single-payer universal coverage the FIRST requirement would be that Congress has to be in the system and not some private coverage. If they have to use it they’ll make sure it works. That’s why the VA has a lot of the problems it does – Congress doesn’t use it, so Congress doesn’t really give a flip.
People who can’t afford healthcare often go without when they shouldn’t. Untreated heart disease, untreated diabetes, untreated respiratory disease, untreated mental illness… these all imposes costs on all of society and wind up much more expensive than if they were properly treated. Quite a few people have chronic conditions that should be regularly monitored and treated to improve their health. Years of diabetic medications and glucose testing is FAR cheaper than a single amputation, yet you would have a system where people who can’t afford the regular maintenance would simply be left in the cold. Well, I suppose we could just let the poor die, but laws are in place that don’t let hospitals do that. If someone comes in with a crisis brought on by long-neglected chronic condition hospitals have to treat them and then eat the cost… leading to hospitals having all sorts of financial problems and people wondering why. Well, when you force someone to provide services for free that happens.
Or else they’ll decide to forgo treatment even if they can afford it to spend the money on something else then get into a real health crisis.
Seriously, who takes medical tests for fun? It’s not like going to an ice cream parlor. At best medical testing is inconvenient. Blood draws hurt – not a lot, but it’s not fun. MRI’s and CAT scans often involve drinking foul stuff that makes you feel like you’re pissing yourself (really – I’ve had that test) or IV’s with “contrast” that can burn like the dickens going into your arm, not to mention all holding still, sliding in and out of a big, noisy, claustrophobia inducing machine. X-rays are fun! They position on a table, then everyone slips into heavy lead clothing and runs into another room to trigger the machine remotely, leaving you to wonder what sort of deadly death-ray you’re being subject to. There are multiple threats on this forum about colonoscopy prep, many of which list such preparations as “put a roll of toilet paper in the freezer, the cold will help numb your sore asshole three hours into the purge”.
Who the hell would go through that, even for free, if they didn’t have to?
Have you actually tried to do that? I have. You can’t. NO ONE will tell how much something will actually cost. It’s all a big secret. It’s a big secret because all the insurance companies want the best deal and if they hear someone else is getting something better they’ll pitch a fit. Also, you will NEVER get an all-inclusive price. Sure, you might get a doctor to tell you the cost of his services… then a month later you’re getting bills from a lab or some other doctor you never knew about and never met “analyzing” a test result in addition to the doctor you thought you had, or a facilities fee, or something.
The internet is full of people talking about these sorts of things if you make any effort to look for such accounts at all. Most people don’t of course. They’re blissfully unaware of it all until they themselves have to access medical care under such a system.
And then you get cut-rate butchers doing it for rock-bottom prices and having high complication rates, and when the victims complain they’re told it’s their fault for choosing wrong or having an elective procedure they didn’t really need.
Free market doesn’t work well with medical care because the average person is stupid when it comes to medicine. Doctors study more than a decade for even the most basic forms of doctoring, yet conservatives seem to think the average person can be an “educated consumer” in such a field. How? A few google searches don’t make for a medical education. NO lay person really has the knowledge base to make major medical decisions, the notion is ludicrous.
You missed a third category – people with chronic but controllable conditions that, if they get regular medical care, are far, far cheaper than if you wait for a crisis. Basically, all the people who used to be routinely denied coverage due to “per-existing conditions”.
A few problems with that:
Actually, more and more Americans are going to places like India and Thailand for medical care because that works out cheaper for them than the US system. And plenty of wealthy people around the world choose to go to places other than the US.
The US does not have a monopoly on quality healthcare, competence, or cutting edge technology.
What is “disastrous” about SS at the moment? Don’t people get their monthly checks? What’s disastrous is Congress dipping into the SS bucket and leaving behind IOU’s then then refuse to make good on.
Only if the correct stocks had been chosen would you have had that positive an outcome. Would have been downright terrible if the SS fund had crashed when the economy did back in the '07-'08 period.
Also, you’d have the fund managers siphoning off money from the SS fund for “administrative costs” - why do we need these middle men again? What utility to they offer?
And finally – if Congress had had the balls to tell people that if they want X, Y or Z they would have to pay higher taxes to cover the cost the cookie jar wouldn’t be full of IOU’s.
No. I don’t believe that or anything like that, or I would have said something resembling it.
However, since this is as close a thing as you’re probably able to do resembling conceding defeat: I’ll take it.
Now the SS hijack really is over.
I would join you in objecting if those religious people that we both disagree with were trying to prevent people from getting birth control. If they were banning it. If they were blocking access to it.
But they’re not. That’s why their right to practice their religion isn’t interfering with anything. They just don’t want to pay for it.
This is entirely reasonable.
Then you should figure out what you’re saying. I said a vast majority of Americans believe Social Security works, and showed that about 75% of people support the program. What’s the alternative position? That people support the program but don’t think it actually works? Here’s a poll (PDF) - and given the source it may be biased - where about 80% of people support the program and believe but a similar number also believe the benefits should be increased. That would also seem to be an endorsement of the program and the concept behind it.
If you want to say everybody who disagrees with you is an ignoramus and their opinions don’t count, just do that. You’re pretty much doing it anyway, so why shy away from that implication while saying people don’t really like the program? They plainly do. There’s a reason ‘they want to cut Social Security’ is used as an attack on politicians.