7 ms·
Health insurance really needs to be disconnected from employment. The fact alone that this article was written is already ridiculous.
by Ididntdothis 7y ago
Health insurance really needs to be disconnected from employment. The fact alone that this article was written is already ridiculous.
- jumbopapa 7y agoStarted back in WW2 when the government restricted the ability for employers to offer higher salaries, so employers offered additional compensation to employees outside of salary. That coupled with today's tax incentives have made it stick.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI know that history. But it’s time to change something that made sense a long time ago but now is distorting the whole employment market, costs a lot of money and causes a lot of suffering.
- curiousgal 7y ago> But it’s time to change something that made sense a long time ago... Gun ownership, electoral college, for profit prisons (slavery), etc. Those are all things that made some sense back in the past but still exist.
- robohoe 7y agoGun ownership still makes sense.
- curiousgal 7y agoIt makes sense to form an armed militia in order to fight the government?
- artificial 7y agoHow’s it going in Hong Kong?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mikeash 7y agoHow do you think it would be going if Hong Kong has gun ownership at the level of the US?
- mc32 7y agoOr Venezuela. As part of consolidating power, often authoritarian governments implement an arms buyback or confiscation program to minimize armed uprising later on.
- artificial 7y agoI like the Orwellian term “buy back” as if you purchased arms from them in the first place, and secondly they’re using your money to deprive you. For the small arms nay sayers (against a well equipped military) case in point is Afghanistan, guerrillas wore down the Soviets.
- cheeseomlit 7y agoIt certainly did in 1765. Do you really think the government should have a monopoly on force? Might = power, you disarm the population and they are rendered powerless. I just don't understand putting that much trust in the government
- wDcBKgt66V8WDs 7y agoHistorical and logistical context aside, 1765 vs modern weaponry and war waging abilities, are you joking? The ability for militias with small arms to fight our own military has been a joke for several decades.
- TheRealSteel 7y agoIt absolutely does not.
- jimktrains2 7y agoHow does gun ownership not make sense to farmers, hunters, and most people living in truly rural areas, e.g. Appalachia? Look, I'm all for stricter gun laws, but at the same time not everyone lives in a (sub)(ex)urban area and a blanket ban simply will not work.
- Grakel 7y agoAnyone who believes that the US Government is committing terrible acts, but also wants them to take away firearms is in a really indefensible rational position.
- minikites 7y agoDo you think successful armed rebellion with small arms is realistic these days? How well did that work out for the people at Waco or the Cliven Bundy standoff?
- Grakel 7y agoIt worked great for Bundy, I doubt the government would have backed down without the threat of violence. It works great in Afghanistan, and it worked great in Vietnam. It didn't work out great in Waco.
- microcolonel 7y agoCue the barrage of comments from people who live in condos and apartment buildings surrounded by competent police forces a couple minutes away.
- krisroadruck 7y agoThe rebuttal for this argument is so often used that it's been turned into a nice bite-sized repeatable phrase: "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away"
- homonculus1 7y agoI think you and the person you responded to (and me too) are in agreement.
- berbec 7y agoCue the barrage of comments from people protecting their children from 30-50 feral hogs.
- swebs 7y agoWhich part of the electoral college do you have a problem with? I'm a fan of the fact that it gives smaller states a voice, but don't like the fact that it's winner-take-all in every state except Maine. Also faithless electors is complete bullshit that needs to go.
- Dobbs 7y agoThat is called the senate. There is no reason that a person in Wyoming's vote is worth four times as much as a person in California. You can sorta maybe make the argument that the elctoral college should be to make sure someone unfit shouldn't be put in, by using their sense of judgement. Well that obviously failed, and you are advocating getting rid of that potential benefit. Why not get rid of the entire anti-democratic idea and just vote for the president.
- Grakel 7y agoIn a direct democracy the President could be chosen by a handful of highly populated states. There would be no reason for Wyoming to continue participating in the Union without a meaningful stake in representation. The direct vote concept sees this country as homogeneous, and it's too large and diverse for that.
- jrockway 7y agoThe meaningful stake in representation is their two Senate seats, the exact same number that states large enough to be world powers if they were their own countries get. Remember, this body of representatives was the one that managed to stall Obama's Supreme Court nominee until a new President was elected. That is a lot of power. There will never be a President that everyone wants. The way to make the most people happy is to put into power the one that the most people voted for.
- minikites 7y agoHow many campaign stops are in Wyoming? How often do Republican presidential candidates campaign in California? How often do Democratic presidential candidates campaign in Alabama? The Electoral College doesn't actually address any of the issues raised in its defense.
- IanDrake 7y agoI see your list contains the electoral college but not the Senate. Can you explain why?
- mac01021 7y agoThey're different things. The senate gives equal representation to each state. The electoral college gives each state a degree of representation approximately proportional to its population, but the approximation is somewhat poor.
- IanDrake 7y agoYes, they are different things. Yes, the Senate gives states equal representation. However, the Senate isn't "like" the Electoral College. The Senate is what makes Congress like the EC...or vice versa. So if you believe the US isn't a collection of united states, which is why the senate exists and why the EC exists, then it is only rational to argue against both intuitions.
- mac01021 7y agoYou could believe that the Senate is a fine implementation of it's goals (to protect inhabitants of smaller states from the tyranny of the majority, or whatever) while also believing that the electoral college is a failure that just adds noise to the popular vote. Not saying that's precisely my position...
- lghh 7y agoWhy are for profit prisons any different than state owned prisons? The guard unions and other employees that are contracted out to work in the state owned ones are making just as much money and rely on that slavery in the same way as they do in for profit ones. I see no difference, demolish them all.
- criley2 7y agoBecause state owned prisons do not sign contracts with the state requiring % full or penalties. Only private prisons sign contracts with governments requiring 90%+ capacity or penalties. Thus only private prisons truly incentivize local governments to incarcerate more people to avoid extra costs, while if that facility is run by the taxpayer, they enjoy the savings of hiring less guards and incarcerating less people.
- rndgermandude 7y agoSame reason s private corporate run police force or fire department are a bad idea. With all the flaws current system have, governments are at least accountable (on paper) to the citizens. Corporations are not. Private prisons are a clusterfuck where they take their "involuntary customers" for all the money they and their extended family got while still underpaying their staff and overcharging the tax payers. They often signed contracts with governments that included guaranteed minimal occupancy clauses. Now imagine applying the same nice principles to other areas where currently the People (represented by their governments) are in charge. "Thank you for calling 911, a service of Police Corp, a Comcast company. I see you got home intruders. We'll dispatch one of our associate Crime Fight Technicians to your location shortly. Please make sure you're home next Monday between 9m and 5pm to let them in. Would you like to sign up for our premium Home Intruder Plus coverage? Oh wait, I just saw you're located in an area we currently do not serve." And the Industry Association of Fire Fighting Corporations would be lobbying government right now to change building codes to require more flammable materials in houses.
- fredthomsen 7y agoThis is covered very well in the book "America's Bitter Pill"
- RankingMember 7y agoAgree 100%, if just to stop that element of job anxiety alone. Lose your job, lose your coverage (unless you want to get plowed on COBRA) is a high-risk way to operate.
- drchewbacca 7y agoIn the UK we have the NHS and it is so great. There's waiting lists but basically you never worry about healthcare, it's always there when you need it and it's all (pretty much) free at the point of use. It's almost certainly the best thing we've got.
- IanDrake 7y agoWe should probably have something like the an optional "free" government run facility for nose bleeds, sprained ankles, and Viagra prescriptions in the US, but I'll keep my privately funded health care for real problems, thanks. I don't even see the UK on these lists. CT Scanners: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266539/distribution-of-equipment-for-computer-tomography/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266539/distribution-of-e... MRI Machines: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnetic-resonance-imaging-units-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnet... Perhaps the UK should be on the list, but somewhere near the bottom: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2672902/Deadly-shortage-cancer-scanners-shames-UK-Britain-fewer-MRI-machines-Western-country.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2672902/Deadly-shor...
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoI wouldn't recommend quoting the dailymail for anything of any use beyond a laugh. They have a deadly shortage of journalism.
- IanDrake 7y agoHaha, seriously, that's your argument? Granted it's from 2014, but are you disputing the following facts as reported then? "The report shows the UK has only 5.9 MRI units per million people, less than half the OECD average of 13.3." "On CT scanners we are 30th out of 32 countries, in front of only Hungary and Mexico. The numbers concern only NHS scanners." The source is irrelevant.
- Frost1x 7y agoThis is the core problem in the United States. The second is increased housing costs in many locations leading to renting vs ownership in many cases (this is easier fought currently by moving). The two attributes together tie most people into some degree of modern indentured servitude for the very wealthy--there just happen to be many layers in between people and the extremely wealthy trying to obscure that fact. Yes, there is a degree of freedom of choice but employment policies converge to benefit employers across industry so the choice is between an red and yellow apple.
- drchewbacca 7y agoAs an outsider I think other core problems of the US are corporate capture of the legislative process and gerrymandering pushing candidates to extreme positions.
- jrockway 7y agoExtreme positions are just the reality of 2019 culture. I was reading a Twitter war about whether or not a professional Hearthstone player was paying enough attention to the game during one of his matches. It was a sea of hate-filled vitriol from both sides. Reading it, I was honestly a little sick to my stomach seeing what social media has become. If we're going to get that upset over a children's card game, it follows that we're going to get upset over things that actually matter.
- drchewbacca 7y agoI think how systems are setup does matter though. For example if you are running for a congressional seat which is 50% republican voters and 50% democrats I would imagine that being a moderate centrist is probably a relatively good strategy. If the seat is 80% one side then probably you want to be much more extreme in that direction because what the other 20% thinks doesn't matter so much. However I agree, the internet was meant to make us all open minded and tolerant and yet has had the opposite impact.
- IanDrake 7y ago
- mc32 7y agoIt should be disconnected from _employer_. Whether it’s disconnected from _employment_ is a different question. Some countries cover everyone regardless of employment status, others depend on employment status but isn’t tied to a particular employer. Obviously one is preferred over the other but both are better than health tied to a particular employer.
- tboyd47 7y agoI agree with you, but how do you address the counterargument that financing health care requires pooling funds at some level, and a company is a logical place to do that seeing as how they have an interest in having everyone come to work on time?
- swiley 7y agoThey don’t offer car insurance even though they’re interested in having employees come to work on time.
- tboyd47 7y agoThis should be the top reply.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoHow about “a country is a logical place to do that seeing as how they have an interest in having everyone access to health care and a dignified life” If you had to design a system from scratch now there is no way you would come up with employer based health insurance. It’s a stupid system. Bad for citizens and bad for employers.
- eropple 7y agoBy replying with "workers are human beings and there is no moral reason to allow paperclip-maximizers to have that literally-death grip on the means of their production," generally. Tying health care to employment is a formative cause of wage slavery. It should not stand--and that's before you even get to the economic inefficiency of the health care market itself.
- gerbilly 7y ago> and a company is a logical place to do that This has several unintended consequences: 1) People stay in jobs they hate just for the insurance. This harms both the company and the individual. 2) It reduces entrepreneurship. In Canada if I want to start my own company, I don't have to worry about losing health insurance. 3) Children don't work (yet I guess) and old people don't work, so you need other systems to cover them, or just not cover them at all.
- papito 7y agoReally just an excuse to not have any insurance. "Oh, but what about the stress on employers" copout. We all pay for someone if they have a medical emergency, it's a matter of being a citizen, and you know, alive.
- cmrdporcupine 7y agoAs a Canadian, this aspect of the United States health care "system" (if you can call it that) has always baffled me: for a country that blasts its love of capitalism to the whole world, and emphasizes its past revolutionary actions against the old world of aristocrats and monarchs -- this is a glaringly _feudal_ model of health care delivery. Having employees depend on their lord^H^H^H^Hemployer for their very physical existence... how medieval.
- RonaldSchleifer 7y agoI totally agree, but unfortunately, the very origins of that issue lies squarely in the very cause for why these types of things cannot be solved, because the authoritarian paternalistic types who think they helping just keep making the Gordian Knot bigger and more convoluted instead. You are looking at it wrong (to be direct). You can get all the health insurance disconnected from employment you want just like any other self-employed and independently affluent people get. It's there, freely available to you. No one is stopping you. Ironically, you can even get that insurance when you are employed, even though you will literally pay a massive penalty for being employed by doing so in the form of the unrealized and hidden cost of the un-utilized employer contribution to the health care cost, which you would then have to pay out of pocket on top of that. (tip, if you want to decouple health insurance from employers, go for the tax advantages of providing health insurance plans ... which touches on the origins of this damn mess caused by the do-gooders fools that demanded employers provide health care in the past). The real problem is a perception issue that people do not understand the true nature and cost of health insurance/care which also leads them to not understand that their employer puts up many times more in health insurance costs than the premiums the employee pays every month. The problem is a perception problem, and a health care cost problem at its core, and the employment dependency issue is really just a secondary issue that is utterly meaningless. What does it matter whether you could sever and ban employers from even offering health insurance under a glorious socialist authoritarian regime while racing towards communist demise? Does it matter whether you pay $200 and your employer pays another $700 every month in premiums, or instead your employer simply just adds another $700 to your paycheck per month and you pay the full $900 for health insurance every month out of pocket? All other things being equal, I argue it's the same thing, because math. Reality is that it's a cost issue that directly is derived from a corruption issue. For example, before the government committed fraud, aka, stole, and handed the health sector (insurance and care) trillions of dollars in profits through the ACA, aka Obamacare, (do not believe me, confirm it yourself if it makes you uncomfortable that I am questioning your messiah Obama, just look at the health sector stock market pre and post ACA [1]), which is one of the sources of corruption that has driven the cost of health care up from (single person example) ~$100/$500 employee/employer split cost for health insurance before ACA to ~$200/$700 post ACA. The other corruption that has been driving up health care costs and therefore defrauding people is (which his true, regardless of whether one is able to accept it or not) due to the millions of "immigrants" both "legal" and illegal, that have been transported into the USA to defraud the American citizens that are part of the 99%, which put massive amounts of load on the health system with ailments, diseases, and conditions; many of which were essentially unknown and/or eradicated in the whole of the western world before just a few years ago.[2 (which is not quite the full extent but a thread that can be pulled on if one wants] When citizens who are being financially enslaved to pay for the health care of millions of "immigrants" from the third world with degenerative diseases and conditions, it is going to cost and that cost will always be and it is going to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions per individual. And no, that is not an exaggeration. The information can be relatively easily uncovered even though I do not have the ability to pull it up right now for citation. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/07/28/overwhelming-evidence-that-obamacare-caused-premiums-to-increase-substantially/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/07/28/overwh... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2018/02/26/how-american-citizens-finance-health-care-for-undocumented-immigrants/#40b5968612c4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2018/02/26/how-am...