Posts by lysistrata

Depends on what you mean by "comfortable" and what kind of job you have the skills for.  I graduated from law school in SoCal and couldn't get a job that would pay enough for me to live there without being up to my eyeballs in debt.

What's fair is whatever all the roommates are able to negotiate.  That's how the pricing mechanism works.  You obviously think they should pay more, they obviously think you should pay more.  So you negotiate, and either you're able to agree, or you find new roommates (or a new place to live).

Interesting idea.  I think it's entirely possible ... it would be a calculated risk for employers, but could very possibly pay off.  Especially if the "cadillac tax" in the house bill makes it through - it would be too expensive for most people to buy into an employer's plan that has all the bells and whistles.

Original Post by melkor:

Original Post by lysistrata:

Original Post by melkor:

Yes, by getting the people who stand to gain from it out of the legislative process.

So is it the legislators willing to be bought and sold or the boot-licking industry that we're kicking out of bed? 

My personal preference is to put the legislators in the pillory and the lobbyists in the cemetery along with the industry they're lobbying for ;)

I'll get my pitchfork!

Original Post by melkor:

Yes, by getting the people who stand to gain from it out of the legislative process.

So is it the legislators willing to be bought and sold or the boot-licking industry that we're kicking out of bed? 

I like that test.  Puts me squarely on the Milton Friedman side of center - right on!

OP - the two-party system can be way to simplistic for many of us to fit neatly in one party or the other.  For example, there are many different kinds of Republicans (neocons, reagan republicans, ron paul republicans, religious right, etc.).  Much of the difference has to do with the values that this graph charts out.  Do you value individual liberty more than strong central authority?  If so, you're closer to a Ron Paul republican.  If not, you're closer to religious right or neocon.  Do you believe in taxing the public to achieve social or military aims?  If yes, you're probably a neocon.  If not, you're probably a Reagan republican or a Ron Paul republican.  There are all kinds of ways of dividing people up based on different values.

If the graph puts you close to Thatcher, read up on some of her views and see how close they are to yours.  Might give you a starting point. 

Why are so many CC-ers stark raving socialists?

Original Post by simwaves1:

or just go to a single-payer system and eliminate the middle-man all together.

I'm not sure why you think the government makes a better middleman.

Check out Dave Ramsey for some good tips on getting out of debt.

Credit card companies and the collection agencies they work with are scum-sucking bottom dwellers.  Send them whatever you can afford to pay and ignore their nonsense that you have to pay it off in full.  What are they going to do, sue you after you've sent them payments?  Good luck with that.

If they refuse your payment, ignore them.  Let them sue you.  Then find yourself a bankruptcy attorney.

Original Post by melkor:

Your health care system is insane, designed by insane people.

 People who talk about public health care as a business should remember why the those socialists in the British Parliament in 1848 institituted the public health act- contagion is a word to concentrate the mind wonderfully on the consequences of your next-door neighbor not being able to afford treatment for his tuberculosis or cholera and thus spreading it to you.

Electives like facelifts and boob jobs aren't covered on a public plan; but a country that has a word like "medical bankruptcy" where 60% of all personal bankruptcies are due to medical costs and of those, 78% had health insurance when they incurred the medical expenses that bankrupted them anyway is not a country that has any business calling itself "modern" and "civilized".

Alive and bankrupt is better than dying on the waiting list.

Ok, but see, now you're limiting the discussion to emergency health care.  And I'll probably agree with you that there are unique circumstances affecting emergency health care that require some additional protection.  Of course a person can't shop for an open-heart surgeon in the middle of a heart attack.  But that doesn't mean they can't shop for the open-heart surgeon before they have the heart attack, and it doesn't mean that introducing a system where consumers shop for good health care prices when possible wouldn't lower the costs.

kathy, the way health care is administered is a factor of the way it is paid for.  The reason health care administration does not give you much voice in the process is precisely because you are not the "payor."  Doctors, hospitals, governments, and insurance companies all engage in this little dance to decide what can be done and what it should cost, because they're the ones engaging in the money exchange.  You don't pay, so you don't participate.

I'm sure we can at least agree that a big improvement in the system would be increasing peoples' participation in their health care decisions.  We just don't agree on how to get there.  I think that requiring people to be financially invested in their health care is a good way to put them back in the driver's seat, and helps increase the efficiencies of the system. 

Original Post by kathygator:

That's my point. Healthcare is a different beast. It's not well-suited to private sector business practices because people might die.

People might die when they fly in planes.  Or drive in cars.  Or eat in restaurants.  Or go swimming.

Eliminating the private sector will not eliminate the risk of dying.

Original Post by kathygator:

But that's exactly how food production differs from healthcare. In healthcare the consumer has no power to effect supply and demand. The consumer has no power to choose retailers. The consumer has no power to choose how much to buy from those retailers.

Certainly in the case of non-elective and emergency treatments, anyway, which is what I'm talking about, of course.

Obviously we can all pick and choose who sucks the fat out of our asses.

 

See, this is absurd.  The only reason health care is ridiculously expensive is because there is ridiculous demand for it.  And the only reason there is ridiculous demand for some ridiculous procedures is the fact that somebody else is paying for them. 

Certainly neither you or I feels entitled to the fastest, biggest, smartest computer that comes on the market as soon as it's available.  We consider the advantages it would bring us, weigh the advantages against the costs, and decide if it's worth it.  That's called rational decision-making, and it works efficiently.

When it comes to health care, however, as soon as a new technology is available everybody is "entitled" to it, regardless of the costs.  Presumably since nobody actually has to put their hand in their pocket and decide if they want to pay for it or not.

Of course health care is, and should be, a for-profit business.  For a few simple reasons:  (1) It's a service industry, and since people are not slaves and deserve to be rewarded for their work, they are entitled to make a profit; (2) I want to attract the best and brightest to be our health care providers, not doctors who are willing to eke by on the government dole a la public school teachers (sorry, public school teachers, but I know you know what I'm talking about); and (3) technological innovation requires incentives to invest in development, and nothing motivates inventors like the profit motive.

But I suspect we'll just continue to disagree about that.

Original Post by dnrothx:

Original Post by kathygator:

As if the price tag is not already titanic, colossal and monstrous. We're already paying.  It's not as if we were fine, just fine, and then decided to add healthcare coverage on a whim.

Right when I thought I was going to leave this thread...

This is true...a true price tag would compare the current costs of the system to the costs of the new.

Then again, benefit-cost analysis has been disgraced (thank you, Army Corps of Engineers) since it is so easily biased...

Bureau of Reclamation didn't help either ...

But the problem of cost is different from the problem of coverage.  The bill is one option for addressing the second problem. 

The bill does nothing to address the cost problem.  It doesn't even appear to acknowledge that one of the biggest drivers in rising health care costs is the cost of regulatory compliance.  So, we're going to add 111 new administrative agencies to look over the health care system and really think that's going to make health care cheaper for everybody?

I'm all for making health care affordable for everybody.  Mandating insurance coverage of a certain type, and increasing the regulatory burdens on health care providers, is not going to get us there. 

Original Post by dnrothx:

Original Post by lysistrata:

Original Post by dnrothx:

Original Post by lysistrata:

Original Post by tortoisewins:

My insurance and copays were going up a few years ago.  It doesn't have anything to do with the legislation.  It's just how insurance companies roll.  They have rediculous profit margins and they like to keep it that way.

Fact check, please.  Health insurance companies have extremely low margins. 

 I find this statement inconsistent with the article, which is not a statement of fact, but reads like an editorial.  In my book, an industrial sector that ranks 35th out of 500 -- the top 7% -- in terms of profits does not have "extremely low margins."

Wow, that would be a good point if the list actually ranked 500 industries.  Except it doesn't.  It includes 53 industries, putting health insurance solidly in the bottom half of ranked industries.  Well behind pharmaceuticals and medical device companies, who reported profit margins of 19% and 16% respectively.  Which is, of course, the real point about the rising cost of health care.

Fine, I admit that it's not 500, but it's not really 53, either.  Look at the title of the list.  These are the 53 top-performing industrial sectors.  Gee.  Being in the bottom half of that list is like being in the bottom half of Fortune's list of richest people in the world.  Darn.  Isn't it sad that they aren't as rich as the next person on the list?

There are 74 industries that they ranked (look at the "full list").  This means that health insurance falls solidly in the upper half of the list, not the bottom.

You're also talking about percentages, though, lysistrata.  Percentages of gargantuan amounts.

Wow, and the performance fell into the negatives before we even got through the forties.  I guess we should force more companies into the bottom half with the industries that are losing 10% per year, because we'd all be better off that way. 

dnrothx, I'm perfectly aware of the amount of money we're talking about.  I'm glad to see that you consider amounts in the tens of billions to constitute "gargantuan amounts," because Democrats sure are acting flip about the trillion dollar price tag on the health care reform bill.  If insurance company profits are "gargantuan amounts," the price tag that Congress wants to hang on the American taxpayer (aka honest hardworking citizen) is ... what?  Titanic?  Colossal?  Monstrous?