7 ms·

The whole article starts off with bs: First, non-competes are rarely so airtight that a person can't work in their field for another employer. Second, the who

The whole article starts off with bs: First, non-competes are rarely so airtight that a person can't work in their field for another employer. Second, the whole FUD about healthcare is total bs as well--the ACA is screwed up and Americans badly need any replacement that might control costs better. The whole "pre-existing" condition FUD is crap, too, since the new healthcare bill doesn't do away with that "protection". I should add that I don't think it is fair that un-insurable people push their problems onto the rest of us because all that does is bring everyone down! It's nice to think we can look out for our nation's most vulnerable people, but what if we can't do that and maintain viable economic growth? What then? I didn't even read the rest--the NY Times needs to go out of business if they can't do honest journalism without injecting their anti-Trump agenda into Every. Single. Article.

Jgrubb 9y ago
> I should add that I don't think it is fair that un-insurable people push their problems onto the rest of us because all that does is bring everyone down! May you and your extended family continue to enjoy the perfect health with which you have all been blessed. > It's nice to think we can look out for our nation's most vulnerable people, but what if we can't do that and maintain viable economic growth? What then? I dunno, take down the statue of liberty I guess?
yzz 9y ago
When you talk about un-insured people pushing their problems onto the rest of us, well that would happen without the laws anyway. Those problems generally reverberate throughout a society, so why not just treat them with laws? Also, non-competes may not be airtight, but how many people do you expect to even attempt to legally challenge the non-compete clauses enforced by these multi-billion dollar corporations?
cr1895 9y ago
>honest journalism It's quite clearly an opinion piece.
- fivestar 9y ago
  The NY Times editors chose to print that versus something else. They only ever print items related to their agenda.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    That's just a dumb tautology though. Imagine their agenda is to post the perfectly ideal set of articles. Success of that agenda would be the perfect outcome for their readers and your statement would still be true.
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
Can you name a country you would like the US to be more like that doesn't have socialized medicine? It seems to work for the whole, entirety of the rest of the developed (and most of the developing) world, because the truth is socialized medicine is cheaper and more efficient. Further, even if it wasn't cheaper, the value gained from a more efficient allocation of labor (due to the reduced friction from healthcare concerns) more than repays the costs of the healthcare. I'm getting sick of people advocating inefficient capitalism as a good economic policy -- and that's all you're doing with your weird, social darwinist approach.
- fivestar 9y ago
  I'm not cool with it no matter how many countries do it and the reason why is that it takes your very freedom right out of your own hands and puts it into the hands of bureaucrats. The US isn't perfect, and we have allowed oligarchs to run free and do terrible things to us, but the answer is not "more government"--we can't deal with the huge government we have now! So the argument "well, everyone else is doing it" overlooks how bad healthcare is around the world and how nations whitewash their mortality rates to hide the truth.
  - somecallitblues 9y ago
    You can just look at UK and you can see that things can be done better. Or Canada...
    - Chris2048 9y ago
      The NHS is constantly on the verge of collapse.
      - tim333 9y ago
        But never actually collapses.
        Chris2048 9y ago
spamizbad 9y ago
First: This is an editorial, not an article. Assuming you sign a non-compete, whether or not you can work the field for another employer may require you to consult a lawyer which costs you $$$. Your previous employer may try to bully you, or your future employer into terminating your arrangement. While it's true several state have largely neutered non-competes for "Low-wage employees", higher paid professionals still have less freedom. The ACA is missing a public option and is suffering from insurance markets being actively sabotaged by politicians who want to replace it with their own flavor. The AHCA only protects you for your pre-existing conditions if you maintain continuous coverage (No gap greater than 63 days in the prior year), something that millions of people experience every year. This also means, during any significant recession, millions will lose insurance.
- valuearb 9y ago
  The ACA is great. Sure as a self employed person i can't afford the maszive premiums, ($22,000 a year for a $5,000 deductible) but I simply don't pay premiums. If I, or anyone in my family, gets seriously ill one year, we can sign up for ACA coverage at year end and they can't refuse us because it doesn't restrict pre-existing conditions. And until that happens, I let the suckers pay premiums. Edit: Corrected my misuse of AHCA.
  - Jtsummers 9y ago
    I believe you mean the ACA. With the AHCA your plan won't work out so well. But here's the flaw in your premise, sure your new condition will be covered. But I had gall stones, needed surgery, it couldn't wait long. I had two weeks to get insurance using your strategy, feasible. Then I had a toe torn off. Surgery that night. There's no opportunity to get insurance, and the cost was (without insurance) probably $10-15k (the hospital, the surgeon, the ambulance). Unless you're calling and getting insurance on the ride in, you're on the hook for a large portion of that, unless you don't value your credit score or lie to them about your name and social.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      You are right, I meant ACA. I actually have whats called "short term insurance". It's only allowed for 6 months, but because of that and because it can set pricing based on pre-existing conditions I get roughly the same benefits of the $1800 ACA package for only $200 a month. The negative is I have to reapply every 6 months, so there if I get gallstones or my toe torn off, it's fine unless it falls right on the end of the 6 months. Since all of these policies have $5K deductibles per person, and $10k per family, I"m paying for most of those situations out of pocket anyways. The benefit of the insurance is for really serous expensive problems, which will tend to last until I can get ACA. And that the insurance company will knock down the hospital bill to what they deem acceptable, saving me lots of money there.
karmajunkie 9y ago
> First, non-competes are rarely so airtight that a person can't work in their field for another employer. I assume you've based this conclusion on your extensive experience reading noncompetes from many different verticals in many different markets, and not just what the average tech worker sees. > The whole "pre-existing" condition FUD is crap, too, since the new healthcare bill doesn't do away with that "protection". No, it simply makes it impossible to take advantage of any protections by allowing insurance companies to charge any price they deem fit to the most vulnerable patients. > Americans badly need any replacement that might control costs better. I don't disagree with you here, but neither does the AHCA. And its glaringly obvious to anyone that knows healthcare policy well that the ACA has plenty of room to be adjusted to correct inadequacies. The "Repeal and Replace" mantra on the far right is just political gamesmanship. If Republicans really cared about free markets, they would have brought to the table measures that helped create an educated market, like pricing transparency and enforcing laws against anticompetitive behavior. > I should add that I don't think it is fair that un-insurable people push their problems onto the rest of us because all that does is bring everyone down! It's nice to think we can look out for our nation's most vulnerable people, but what if we can't do that and maintain viable economic growth? What then? Man, I gotta hand it to you, this is some Grade A supertrolling here. In the span of just a few sentences you've managed to combine fear, a begrudged sympathy, and a false dichotomy into what passes for an argument, flimsy though it is. Maybe read up on the idea of the veil of ignorance[1] for that first point. Had you put it a different way I might agree with you in principle—we should stop talking about healthcare as insurance and start talking about how to provision healthcare for everyone. Its not insurance when everyone is guaranteed to need it at some point in their lives. There's nothing in doing so that demands we limit economic growth—the US is for all intents and purposes the only developed country in the world that fails achieve this. [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Veil_of_ignorance https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Veil_of_ignorance
- valuearb 9y ago
  Yes, it's not like the ACA isn't stunningly badly designed. I used to insure my family for $400 a month until it banned the use of pre-existing conditions for determining rates, and now the cheapest available insurance is $1800 a month, which my family can't afford. Remember when Obama said we could keep our existing plans? Edit: corrected my misuse of AHCA.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> The whole "pre-existing" condition FUD is crap, too, since the new healthcare bill doesn't do away with that "protection". Yes, it does, because it allows states to get waivers of that protection.

Jgrubb 9y ago

> I should add that I don't think it is fair that un-insurable people push their problems onto the rest of us because all that does is bring everyone down! May you and your extended family continue to enjoy the perfect health with which you have all been blessed. > It's nice to think we can look out for our nation's most vulnerable people, but what if we can't do that and maintain viable economic growth? What then? I dunno, take down the statue of liberty I guess?

yzz 9y ago

When you talk about un-insured people pushing their problems onto the rest of us, well that would happen without the laws anyway. Those problems generally reverberate throughout a society, so why not just treat them with laws? Also, non-competes may not be airtight, but how many people do you expect to even attempt to legally challenge the non-compete clauses enforced by these multi-billion dollar corporations?

cr1895 9y ago

>honest journalism It's quite clearly an opinion piece.

fivestar 9y ago
The NY Times editors chose to print that versus something else. They only ever print items related to their agenda.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  That's just a dumb tautology though. Imagine their agenda is to post the perfectly ideal set of articles. Success of that agenda would be the perfect outcome for their readers and your statement would still be true.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago

Can you name a country you would like the US to be more like that doesn't have socialized medicine? It seems to work for the whole, entirety of the rest of the developed (and most of the developing) world, because the truth is socialized medicine is cheaper and more efficient. Further, even if it wasn't cheaper, the value gained from a more efficient allocation of labor (due to the reduced friction from healthcare concerns) more than repays the costs of the healthcare. I'm getting sick of people advocating inefficient capitalism as a good economic policy -- and that's all you're doing with your weird, social darwinist approach.

fivestar 9y ago
I'm not cool with it no matter how many countries do it and the reason why is that it takes your very freedom right out of your own hands and puts it into the hands of bureaucrats. The US isn't perfect, and we have allowed oligarchs to run free and do terrible things to us, but the answer is not "more government"--we can't deal with the huge government we have now! So the argument "well, everyone else is doing it" overlooks how bad healthcare is around the world and how nations whitewash their mortality rates to hide the truth.
- somecallitblues 9y ago
  You can just look at UK and you can see that things can be done better. Or Canada...
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    The NHS is constantly on the verge of collapse.
    - tim333 9y ago
      But never actually collapses.
      - Chris2048 9y ago

spamizbad 9y ago

First: This is an editorial, not an article. Assuming you sign a non-compete, whether or not you can work the field for another employer may require you to consult a lawyer which costs you $$$. Your previous employer may try to bully you, or your future employer into terminating your arrangement. While it's true several state have largely neutered non-competes for "Low-wage employees", higher paid professionals still have less freedom. The ACA is missing a public option and is suffering from insurance markets being actively sabotaged by politicians who want to replace it with their own flavor. The AHCA only protects you for your pre-existing conditions if you maintain continuous coverage (No gap greater than 63 days in the prior year), something that millions of people experience every year. This also means, during any significant recession, millions will lose insurance.

valuearb 9y ago
The ACA is great. Sure as a self employed person i can't afford the maszive premiums, ($22,000 a year for a $5,000 deductible) but I simply don't pay premiums. If I, or anyone in my family, gets seriously ill one year, we can sign up for ACA coverage at year end and they can't refuse us because it doesn't restrict pre-existing conditions. And until that happens, I let the suckers pay premiums. Edit: Corrected my misuse of AHCA.
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  I believe you mean the ACA. With the AHCA your plan won't work out so well. But here's the flaw in your premise, sure your new condition will be covered. But I had gall stones, needed surgery, it couldn't wait long. I had two weeks to get insurance using your strategy, feasible. Then I had a toe torn off. Surgery that night. There's no opportunity to get insurance, and the cost was (without insurance) probably $10-15k (the hospital, the surgeon, the ambulance). Unless you're calling and getting insurance on the ride in, you're on the hook for a large portion of that, unless you don't value your credit score or lie to them about your name and social.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    You are right, I meant ACA. I actually have whats called "short term insurance". It's only allowed for 6 months, but because of that and because it can set pricing based on pre-existing conditions I get roughly the same benefits of the $1800 ACA package for only $200 a month. The negative is I have to reapply every 6 months, so there if I get gallstones or my toe torn off, it's fine unless it falls right on the end of the 6 months. Since all of these policies have $5K deductibles per person, and $10k per family, I"m paying for most of those situations out of pocket anyways. The benefit of the insurance is for really serous expensive problems, which will tend to last until I can get ACA. And that the insurance company will knock down the hospital bill to what they deem acceptable, saving me lots of money there.

karmajunkie 9y ago

> First, non-competes are rarely so airtight that a person can't work in their field for another employer. I assume you've based this conclusion on your extensive experience reading noncompetes from many different verticals in many different markets, and not just what the average tech worker sees. > The whole "pre-existing" condition FUD is crap, too, since the new healthcare bill doesn't do away with that "protection". No, it simply makes it impossible to take advantage of any protections by allowing insurance companies to charge any price they deem fit to the most vulnerable patients. > Americans badly need any replacement that might control costs better. I don't disagree with you here, but neither does the AHCA. And its glaringly obvious to anyone that knows healthcare policy well that the ACA has plenty of room to be adjusted to correct inadequacies. The "Repeal and Replace" mantra on the far right is just political gamesmanship. If Republicans really cared about free markets, they would have brought to the table measures that helped create an educated market, like pricing transparency and enforcing laws against anticompetitive behavior. > I should add that I don't think it is fair that un-insurable people push their problems onto the rest of us because all that does is bring everyone down! It's nice to think we can look out for our nation's most vulnerable people, but what if we can't do that and maintain viable economic growth? What then? Man, I gotta hand it to you, this is some Grade A supertrolling here. In the span of just a few sentences you've managed to combine fear, a begrudged sympathy, and a false dichotomy into what passes for an argument, flimsy though it is. Maybe read up on the idea of the veil of ignorance[1] for that first point. Had you put it a different way I might agree with you in principle—we should stop talking about healthcare as insurance and start talking about how to provision healthcare for everyone. Its not insurance when everyone is guaranteed to need it at some point in their lives. There's nothing in doing so that demands we limit economic growth—the US is for all intents and purposes the only developed country in the world that fails achieve this. [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Veil_of_ignorance https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Veil_of_ignorance

valuearb 9y ago
Yes, it's not like the ACA isn't stunningly badly designed. I used to insure my family for $400 a month until it banned the use of pre-existing conditions for determining rates, and now the cheapest available insurance is $1800 a month, which my family can't afford. Remember when Obama said we could keep our existing plans? Edit: corrected my misuse of AHCA.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> The whole "pre-existing" condition FUD is crap, too, since the new healthcare bill doesn't do away with that "protection". Yes, it does, because it allows states to get waivers of that protection.