4 ms·

It's insane how much of this contractor vs employee debate would just be solved with universal healthcare. I don't understand why the US is obsessed with passin

It's insane how much of this contractor vs employee debate would just be solved with universal healthcare. I don't understand why the US is obsessed with passing on any cost to their citizens or employers in ways that lower productivity and clearly hurt the economy, instead of just biting the bullet and budgeting out policies to improve the economy, increase quality of life, and make the country in general stronger.

cjslep 7y ago
"If I don't do this shady thing, someone else will, and then I'll go out of business" zero-sum mentality.
lovich 7y ago
The conservative viewpoint is that the government can never do things as well as companies can, so they like to not provide services. The reason companies provide healthcare at all is an artifact from WWII when the tax rate was high enough that offering more salary was not enough to attract the limited workers left, so companies started offering other perks that were untaxed. Since the US Constitution being set up in a way as to encourage deadlock if there is not a large majority of agreement, were stuck in a deadlock on moving this forward to a government operated endeavor, and wont do anything to remove it from an employer offered benefit.
- Agustus 7y ago
  An addendum to this is that the government forced the companies to do this because the feds passed the insane 1942 Stabilization Act putting limits on wage hike capabilities of firms. The problem is that we have good economists who say: here are the facts and history of what your choices will do and bad economists who say: if you have x, y, z, and the planets of Saturn and Uranus in alignment, you may be able to affect the economy to the way you wish despite all of the historical evidence to the contrary. The bad economists are hired into administrations to justify politically expedient proposals.
  - lovich 7y ago
    I mean the US was in a fully mobilized war at that point. I don't think the government was looking at long term consequences but at winning the war and surviving
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  The market theory breaks down with healthcare, which does not operate in a free market or with adequate competition/price visibility. Furthermore the entire concept of "price" falls apart when talking about the fundamentally priceless nature of human life. The conservative viewpoint is woefully ignorant of the reality of healthcare and the success of socialized medicine almost everywhere it has been implemented, or at least superior quality and lower price to that available to the prototypical American citizen. I wish the myth that "the markets will provide the optimal solution" will die when talking about healthcare. It hasn't, it can't, and it won't.
  - chillacy 7y ago
    I wish more people understood the limitations of markets (just as I wish more people understood the power of markets). Markets only work well with with price/quality transparency, enough competition, substitutability... everything that healthcare in America lacks. As far as market mechanics in healthcare, Singapore has the closest thing to market mechanics in healthcare (albeit heavily subsidized and regulated): https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/25/15356118/singapore-health-care-system-explained https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/25/15356118/s... > What Singapore shows is that unusual fusions of conservative and liberal ideas in health care really are possible. Singapore is a place where the government acts to keep costs low and then uses those low costs to make a market-driven insurance system possible.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > The market theory breaks down with healthcare, which does not operate in a free market or with adequate competition/price visibility. This is a problem that could in principle be solved using price transparency. Most medical procedures are scheduled ahead of time. Emergency services are a small percentage of overall healthcare costs and there is no need to treat everything else the same way. > Furthermore the entire concept of "price" falls apart when talking about the fundamentally priceless nature of human life. The high value of the product doesn't break anything as long as there is adequate competition. You die without water but that doesn't mean Evian can charge a million dollars for a bottle. > The conservative viewpoint is woefully ignorant of the reality of healthcare and the success of socialized medicine almost everywhere it has been implemented, or at least superior quality and lower price to that available to the prototypical American citizen. Most socialized systems around the world are piggybacking on all the R&D done in the US and paid for by the huge US market paying high prices. We obviously can't do the same thing to ourselves to get lower prices. And outcomes in the US for people who actually have health insurance (i.e. the large majority) are better than they are almost anywhere else in the world.
zdragnar 7y ago
It could also be solved by just ending employer provided insurance. Individual / ACA markets are dysfunctional and expensive in large part due to the fact that most averaged age, healthy adults are in employer only plans. We have medicare and medicaid. They aren't perfect, but the people who are hurt most by our current setup are the working lower middle class, in particular those who contract or work for small companies that can't afford to setup healthcare benefits.

cjslep 7y ago

"If I don't do this shady thing, someone else will, and then I'll go out of business" zero-sum mentality.

lovich 7y ago

The conservative viewpoint is that the government can never do things as well as companies can, so they like to not provide services. The reason companies provide healthcare at all is an artifact from WWII when the tax rate was high enough that offering more salary was not enough to attract the limited workers left, so companies started offering other perks that were untaxed. Since the US Constitution being set up in a way as to encourage deadlock if there is not a large majority of agreement, were stuck in a deadlock on moving this forward to a government operated endeavor, and wont do anything to remove it from an employer offered benefit.

Agustus 7y ago
An addendum to this is that the government forced the companies to do this because the feds passed the insane 1942 Stabilization Act putting limits on wage hike capabilities of firms. The problem is that we have good economists who say: here are the facts and history of what your choices will do and bad economists who say: if you have x, y, z, and the planets of Saturn and Uranus in alignment, you may be able to affect the economy to the way you wish despite all of the historical evidence to the contrary. The bad economists are hired into administrations to justify politically expedient proposals.
- lovich 7y ago
  I mean the US was in a fully mobilized war at that point. I don't think the government was looking at long term consequences but at winning the war and surviving
unlinked_dll 7y ago
The market theory breaks down with healthcare, which does not operate in a free market or with adequate competition/price visibility. Furthermore the entire concept of "price" falls apart when talking about the fundamentally priceless nature of human life. The conservative viewpoint is woefully ignorant of the reality of healthcare and the success of socialized medicine almost everywhere it has been implemented, or at least superior quality and lower price to that available to the prototypical American citizen. I wish the myth that "the markets will provide the optimal solution" will die when talking about healthcare. It hasn't, it can't, and it won't.
- chillacy 7y ago
  I wish more people understood the limitations of markets (just as I wish more people understood the power of markets). Markets only work well with with price/quality transparency, enough competition, substitutability... everything that healthcare in America lacks. As far as market mechanics in healthcare, Singapore has the closest thing to market mechanics in healthcare (albeit heavily subsidized and regulated): https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/25/15356118/singapore-health-care-system-explained https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/25/15356118/s... > What Singapore shows is that unusual fusions of conservative and liberal ideas in health care really are possible. Singapore is a place where the government acts to keep costs low and then uses those low costs to make a market-driven insurance system possible.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > The market theory breaks down with healthcare, which does not operate in a free market or with adequate competition/price visibility. This is a problem that could in principle be solved using price transparency. Most medical procedures are scheduled ahead of time. Emergency services are a small percentage of overall healthcare costs and there is no need to treat everything else the same way. > Furthermore the entire concept of "price" falls apart when talking about the fundamentally priceless nature of human life. The high value of the product doesn't break anything as long as there is adequate competition. You die without water but that doesn't mean Evian can charge a million dollars for a bottle. > The conservative viewpoint is woefully ignorant of the reality of healthcare and the success of socialized medicine almost everywhere it has been implemented, or at least superior quality and lower price to that available to the prototypical American citizen. Most socialized systems around the world are piggybacking on all the R&D done in the US and paid for by the huge US market paying high prices. We obviously can't do the same thing to ourselves to get lower prices. And outcomes in the US for people who actually have health insurance (i.e. the large majority) are better than they are almost anywhere else in the world.

zdragnar 7y ago

It could also be solved by just ending employer provided insurance. Individual / ACA markets are dysfunctional and expensive in large part due to the fact that most averaged age, healthy adults are in employer only plans. We have medicare and medicaid. They aren't perfect, but the people who are hurt most by our current setup are the working lower middle class, in particular those who contract or work for small companies that can't afford to setup healthcare benefits.