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This situation doesn't seem cruel to you?

gruez 5y ago
It's cruel because nearly everyone can be hit with a $2.5M expense, not because it's means tested. It's the fact that it's random and impossible to prepare for that makes it cruel. I don't have any issues with means-testing insurance subsides, food stamps, or rent vouchers, because those are payments that are predicable and won't wipe people out.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  OK, you'd like to consider means testing separately from the situation described in TFA, which makes rhetorical sense because apparently the family's income disqualified them from assistance with ruinous medical costs. Clearly this is not an example of how great means testing is. To speak more generally about means testing, you seem to think that reasonable people oppose means testing because it affects the well-to-do. That isn't the case. The well-to-do have little problem filling out forms or hiring experts in form-filling. Reasonable people oppose means testing because those who can't complete the various clerical tasks entailed are precisely those who need the benefits. And of course the administration of means testing is complicated enough that its costs usually rival those of the benefit programs themselves. To give an example, some years ago my father helped my grandmother apply to EEOICP, because my grandfather had died with cancer and he had been involved with unsafe incidents while in the employ of the Atomic Energy Commission. We would have been challenged to do it ourselves, but my father located an agent who specialized in such applications. Previously my grandmother didn't know that the program existed, and certainly didn't know the first thing about applying to it. That means that many other AEC widows, who didn't have people around who could help, did not receive the benefits supposedly designated for them. USA has lots of means-tested benefits that serve small fractions of the populations they are marketed to serve. This is by design. The concept of means testing is a story told to make benefit programs less effective.

It's cruel because nearly everyone can be hit with a $2.5M expense, not because it's means tested. It's the fact that it's random and impossible to prepare for that makes it cruel. I don't have any issues with means-testing insurance subsides, food stamps, or rent vouchers, because those are payments that are predicable and won't wipe people out.

jessaustin 5y ago
OK, you'd like to consider means testing separately from the situation described in TFA, which makes rhetorical sense because apparently the family's income disqualified them from assistance with ruinous medical costs. Clearly this is not an example of how great means testing is. To speak more generally about means testing, you seem to think that reasonable people oppose means testing because it affects the well-to-do. That isn't the case. The well-to-do have little problem filling out forms or hiring experts in form-filling. Reasonable people oppose means testing because those who can't complete the various clerical tasks entailed are precisely those who need the benefits. And of course the administration of means testing is complicated enough that its costs usually rival those of the benefit programs themselves. To give an example, some years ago my father helped my grandmother apply to EEOICP, because my grandfather had died with cancer and he had been involved with unsafe incidents while in the employ of the Atomic Energy Commission. We would have been challenged to do it ourselves, but my father located an agent who specialized in such applications. Previously my grandmother didn't know that the program existed, and certainly didn't know the first thing about applying to it. That means that many other AEC widows, who didn't have people around who could help, did not receive the benefits supposedly designated for them. USA has lots of means-tested benefits that serve small fractions of the populations they are marketed to serve. This is by design. The concept of means testing is a story told to make benefit programs less effective.