I think you may have bought into the hype. As I said earlier watch for GD thread about this. I believe I can prove that socialized health costs less per capita than the system here. I can think of a couple of countries that have comparable tax rates to here and have socialized health (Aust and NZ come to mind).
Average helath costs in the US are 21% of the median income per annum. You really cannot tell me that you expect a 21% tax hike for socialized medicine (with no co-pays).
Also:
Source: NCHC.org
Yep. I can’t really see why the argument against socialised health care receives as much public support as it does in the US. Works out reasonably well in most other places. The Australian system ain’t perfect, but it’s been providing universal coverage for twenty-odd years now. You get sick, you go to the doctor. If the doctor charges more than the scheduled fee, you might end up $10 out of pocket.
The waiting lists for elective (i.e. non urgent) surgery can be a problem. But insurance for this kind of thing is available for anout $1,000 p.a. for a family.
Actually, I do. Look at the estimated costs for John Kerry’s proposed plan to cover just half of those without insurance now(20 million people). Estimates were all over the place, but the top end ones (and in my experience, when dealing with the government, top end is usually just the starting point) were somewhere around 1.5 trillion dollars. The national debt is currently 7.6 trillion dollars (cite). Adding that to the budget would be a 20% of the national debt. That money’s got to come from some place.
That’s not even my main point. From what you’ve said in this thread, you and your wife are professional people, but you’re working for not a lot of money. You said your wife brings home $800/mo, and HI would be $200/ mo, a hefty bite to be sure. Extrapolating the same for you, that would give you a combined income of about 20K. That’s not even minimum wage. ($5.15 X 40 hours X 52 weeks X 2 people = $21424 before taxes, although you should be getting them all back at that income level) Why are y’all making so little? Around here(Maryland), a full time job as a manager of a fast food joint starts at about 25K(judging only from the signs in front of the resturants), and that includes full health coverage.
I work for a non proffit agency every day trying to get people afordable health coverage. I don’t always succede, but right at this moment, I’m trying to figure out how your nubers add up.
Which is why we want to make access to education possible for everyone.
Here are some jobs I’ve found that pay $8.00…[ul]
[li]“Web Design Assistant”- must know photoshop, HTML and be comfortable writing copy[/li][li]“Real Estate Assistant”- Bilingual skills needed, Strong computer literacy and knowledge of outlook, ACT!, MS Word, MS, Real estate license a plus.[/li][li]“Computer Operator”- Computer Operator to maintain database for Fortune 100 Investment Advisor[/ul][/li]I’ve only included jobs that seemed to ask for some experience and training-- there are a lot more receptionist and typist jobs paying this. Although most office jobs do pay a bit more, it’s not unheard of to have a simple office job that pays eight bucks an hour.
Health care doesn’t have to be all that expensive. Since it is a matter of life and death, the usual laws of suppy and demand fall apart. Look around you at the richness of your nation. We can afford basic health care for our people just like we can afford Interstate highways, public parks and giant prisons.
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Agreed, and that’s something the economy willl have to remedy.[p/quote]
The economy SUCKS at remedying that. The economy SUCKS at providing health care to all working people and children. It’s not working.
I was offered a promotion to manager a while ago that would have bumped me up to a grand nine bucks an hour. Woo-hoo. I think the manager of the store got eleven, which puts him right at the “living wage” for the area.
What do you consider a frivolous subject, oh great knower-of-who-is-worth-it-and-who-is-not? I majored in an over $32.2 billion industry with a 300,000 jobs in my state- more than computer programming and services (243,000), aerospace (170,000) and electronic components (158,000) and (hopefully) wisely focused on something that would provide me with a skilled trade along with a degree.
I’m still not sure where you get the impression I don’t work, or that I expect people to cover the health expenses of employable people (like me) when they choose not to work. If you are interested in helping in my personal search for a more viable job than sitting there throwing pot shots, I’ve got a thread up critiqueing my resume that I’d love to hear your contribution in.
I’ll come back to the John Kerry cites when I have more time to read and peruse, because I think it deserves more of a look than I can give at this time of night (or morning…I’m just unable to sleep right now).
When my wife was working a job that made ~800 dollars a month (after taxes, before taxes it was about 1000-1100), she was working 30 hours a week, at that particular job. I can’t remember the exact dollar-and-cent amount of her wage, but it was below 10 dollars an hour. It was not a managerial position, though she was required to do a good deal of “managerial duties” when the manager wasn’t able to be there. Eventually they had her doing everything from cleaning the place to what she was actually hired for, and they wouldn’t hear of giving her a raise for doing things that were not in her job description, so she left.
She has since obtained a supervisory position at another place, but it is only part-time, and carries no health insurance because it is a part-time position. She makes a little over twice minimum wage here, but at far fewer hours. She is still working at another job, also part-time without insurance. This is why she is interviewing for a job that carries insurance, but she will likely keep her current supervisory position, as they seem amenable to her switching shifts.
Does that make sense? I’m sorry, I’m very tired so if I need to clarify, I will.
Oh, I meant to say that I have a friendly acquaintance who is a manager at a store. He has been for two years, and he is still making less than 20K a year. In fact, my wife and I were looking at government jobs here such as administrative assistants and police dispatchers–those two jobs, I remember, had starting wages that were below the federally-established poverty line for this state.
No kidding the budget is that big huh? How bout a cite for the 1.5 trillion dollars?
We as a nation only spend 1.4 trillion dollars on health care:
It just boggles my mind that we cut taxes despite our record level of a budget deficet. We are the richest nation in the world yet we can’t even fund our own government? Its pretty apparent why too, if a politician even thinks about increasing taxes the right won’t elect him and if he thinks about cutting benefits the left won’t elect him. Then they both hurl insults at each other as our country spirals its way down the toliet.
I had a private scholarship, merit-based. That scholarship still exists. It has nothing to do with the government, either state or federal.
Yes, I went to a state-supported school. I don’t oppose state-supported schools.
How do you figure the minimum wage was higher? (And by the way: one of my jobs was working for the university food service, which paid LESS THAN FEDERAL MMINIMUM WAGE, which it was entitled to do as a state agency offering a work program. I earned $2.77 per hour when the minimum wage was $3.35.)
I made it through our “blatantly unfair” system. Explain why I should not expect others to do so too.
I have a friend whose wife recently died. Cancer. She had insurance. Died anyway. What might I say to him?
I might say I’m sorry for your loss. I might say that things can’t always be as we wish them. Life is not fair, whether you accept it or not.
So you had help getting your education it wasn’t “Me. No one else. Just me.” Do you think you would have made it without their help or the state supported schooling?
The real minimum wage has fallen since you were in school. From that chart it seems that the real minimum wage is 85% of what it was when you went to school.
Overwhelming statisitcal evidence?
You need to stop looking at the choice of the individual and look at this problem on a societal level. Do you think its just a coincidence that those 85% at the poor school made bad choices while the same 85% at a rich school made the right choices? I don’t. I see the inequal system the rich kids have a chairleft to the top while the poor kids have to climb up a rock wall. One wrong move by the poor kid and he plummets to the bottom. Just becuase you made it to the top doesn’t mean that everyone can. If you came down with Dancing Dead’s SO’s condition and had to cut back your hours you wouldn’t have made it. Life isn’t fair is easy to say when you are on the winning side.
In other words just becuase Spud Webb made it to the NBA at 5’7" doesn’t mean that everyone who is 5’7" and didn’t make it is a lazy bum.
You can tell him that she got a reasonable level of health care as opposed to none. He can take solace in the fact that they did everything they could to save her instead of just letting her die becuase she didn’t have insurance. Life might always be fair but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to make it fairer.
Yea, because he was responsible and made sure he had coverage. Even leaving that aside, however, there isn’t a single medically necessary procedure in this country that isn’t available by law to everyone, regardless of weather ot not they have insurance, so what’s your point?
I see so Dancing Dead is just an irresponsible moron becuase he can’t afford coverage?
Are you telling me that there is no problem with the system its just that 30% of families are irresponsible?
If you mean medically necessary as in to avert immenent death or loss of limb than I agree that it is availible. If you mean medically necessary as in treatment to cure chronic conditions which are not immediately life threatening then I request a cite.
So a guy pulling a four hundred dollar paycheck (minimum wage, 30 hour weeks)every two weeks, and has a healthcare plan that costs him two hundred a month is just plain irresponsible when he doesn’t go for it? Could you set aside nearly a quarter of your paycheck for health insurance? Is it irresponsible for him not to cover his family because the difference would mean they can’t have the food and clothes they need? Do you really go about your life looking at the all the clerks and janitors and parking lot attendants and waitresses and go “there is a bunch of irresponsible people…”?
Hehehe. cute. Too be we all learned the words “de facto” and “de jure” in high shcool. The problem isn’t that people can’t get health care because the police stop them. It’s because they can’t get some health care because they can’t afford it, abd if they can pay for it they go in to debt, hurting their chances of becoming financially successful ever.
That’s a particularly stupid example. The moron isn’t even working full time. If he needs money that badly, why isn’t he working 50 or 60 hours a week? I’ve done that in the past, some weeks I do it now. However, even if 30 hours a week meets his financial needs except for health insurance, all he’d have to do is work an additional 10 hours a week at minimum wage to be able to afford that $200/month. Unless he’s disabled somehow, he’s not going to get any sympathy from me if he’s not willing to work a full 40 hours a week.
Look, I agree that Health Coverage should be freely available for low income people, ok? As a point of fact, whenever people go on and on about children without coverage, I just roll my eyes. Every state in the country makes free health insurance available for kids of low income families. (here in Md, a family of 4 making under 34K/year qualifies, and if the make more than that but less than 55K/ year, full coverage for the kids only costs $50/month. Are you trying to tell me that a family of 4 making more than $34K/yr can’t afford $50/mo to at least get their kids covered? Bullshit.) I would like to see the same type of coverage offered for poverty level adults, but all too often I see people crying that HI is “unaffordable” when in reality, they just don’t make it a priority. I don’t know how many times I’ve walked into a $200K house and been told that they “can’t afford” $4-500/month for health insurance. I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it, not with the 2005 Lincoln Navigator sitting in the driveway. You may not want to budget your money that way, and that’s fine, it’s your money and your choice, but don’t cry poverty when you get sick and have to pay $20K yourself, and don’t expect the government to step in and make you be responsible(which is exactly what they would be doing by offering universal coverage. We’d still have to pay for it through higher taxes).
If there were no oxygen in the air, I wouldn’t have made it either. But I don’t take the time to qualify that it was my efforts, PLUS the fortuitous presence of oxygen.
So, too, with the availability of private scholarships. Their presence made a difference, to be sure, but we’re not debating the wisdom of private scholarships. Like oxygen, they exist today, and like, oxygen, are available in equal measure for whoever wishes to take advantage of them.
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The real minimum wage has fallen since you were in school. From that chart it seems that the real minimum wage is 85% of what it was when you went to school.
So? I note that the wage I was making then, $2.77, is below the minimum wage today in today’s dollars. So what I was making then is less than what I’d be making today if I were in a minimum wage job.
Of course the rich kids had it easier. I agree with that.
But that’s the way it is. It’s not the proper role of government to force everyone to have absolutely equal chances.
Seriously - what about the fact that the athletic kids had better chances of getting sports scholarships? Isn’t that unfair? Shouldn’t we eliminate sports scholarships, to destroy this unfair advantage?
I would appreciate it if you would not call my wife a moron, however inadvertently. She was working a 30 hour week at that particular job because that is all they would give her. She was working about 10 hours at two other jobs. She was also going to school full-time, with a chronic, disabling condition.
I think even sven was trying to use me as an example, when it was my wife working at that job. In reality she was working three. And taking classes. And still couldn’t afford health insurance.
I know people who work well in excess of 40 hours a week and can’t afford basic health coverage for their families. They work those hours simply to house, feed, and clothe. Anything else at all is a luxury. Healthcare should not be a luxury.
Aha! But by asserting that healthcare should not be a luxury, then you are asserting that it is, as of now, a luxury. Therefore, despire your insistence otherwise, you are in fact proposing a program of providing luxury to the underpriveleged and/or undeserving.
Let’s see you squirm out of that, Mr. Smooth-talking Liberal!
Weirddave is just demonstrating how “compassionate conservatism” works in the real world.
Even though I’m neither a Republican nor a staunch conservative, that seems pretty compassionate to me. YMMV depending upon what type of words you’re trying to put in other people’s mouths at any given moment.
I apologise, I was not intending an insult against your wife. In fact, I think your wife is a good example of the problems with health insurance, Sven’s example was a healthy person working only 30 hours a week by choice. Notice too that I excluded people with disabilities in my post, certainly a person with a chronic illness would fall under that umbrella.