461–470 of 540 posts
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isn't that illegal now?
The incident happened before the ACA, though insurers have found clever ways around it: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/27/obamac...
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Wouldn't it also be possible to see that as rural residents putting on a brave face? The general trend has been towards urbanization globally for the past century or more, and relatively few young people growing up in rural communities seem to be interested in staying in them in the US[1]. 1: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-20/rural-ame...
That's not true. Almost every person I know in my generation is working hard to buy a piece of land in a rural community.
> The three companies said they plan to set up a new independent company "that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints." I wonder if they will be setting it up as a health insurance cooperative, an organizational structure in which the primary goal is to serve its members, rather than to generate value for external shareholders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_cooperative It's not at all…
> distributism Thank you for giving a name to something I have been pondering a lot. I have come to this conclusion by thinking about automation and technological unemployment. If people own land, or productive tools, they can be self reliant and exist without jobs from corporations, or help from the state. Naturally people would organise as a cooperative or a market of services, exchanging services for services, bec…
- People who can not work because they simply can't hold down a job, period.
- Externalities such as neighboring (or even distant) communes dumping wastewater into rivers etc., or polluting the ground, or air... you get the idea. What about natural calamities, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and such?
- Conflicts over scarce resources. Water, for example. Communes that rely on a common source of water will likely have conflicts. How are they resolved?
- Any commune is exceedingly unlikely to be good at producing all the things it needs. Trade will need to develop. Does 'self-reliance' exclude the possibility of trade?
- How large should a commune be, to enable innovation? Without innovation, there will be stagnation that will harm the commune in the long run.
- How would a commune handle people that are 'different'? How about criminals within and without?
I strongly feel that what needs to be changed is employer-based healthcare itself. It is really kind of crazy, if you think about it, how closely the quality of our healthcare and the healthcare of our dependents is tied to the company we choose to be working for at the moment. If you or a dependent take a very specific expensive medication that isn't covered by a plan a new employer might offer, then you pretty much…
I have a choice of exactly two health insurance companies because that's who my employer selected for me. Both are for profit companies, with Aetna just posting record profits, and we see our premiums rise year upon year. But beyond me, the fact that someone working minimum wage, unemployed, or at a startup using the Obamacare exchange pays more than an executive at a fortune 500 makes no rational sense. That's becau…
If you take health care has a right (art. 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does), then there is a simple solution for the above, known as single payer. Of course, it won't work in the US, because it isn't as biased against the poor as the "free market" health care.
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This is something I've been thinking about for a while - what would insurance companies (and even other companies in every vertical) look like with some incentive other than profit? Paying good salaries is one thing, but doing it for the sake of external shareholders is a different case. Newman's Own is one interesting (and successful) example I can think of that's an otherwise for-profit company acting effectively a…
From ehealthinsurance.com: Kaiser Permanente is composed of Kaiser Foundation Health Plans (nonprofit, public-benefit corporations), Kaiser Foundation Hospitals (a nonprofit, public-benefit corporation), and the Permanente Medical Groups (for-profit professional organizations). Our family have been members for over 20 years. I'd rate their health care as "good", but the real benefit is that we have NEVER had a billin…
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> distributism Thank you for giving a name to something I have been pondering a lot. I have come to this conclusion by thinking about automation and technological unemployment. If people own land, or productive tools, they can be self reliant and exist without jobs from corporations, or help from the state. Naturally people would organise as a cooperative or a market of services, exchanging services for services, bec…
> Distributism (also known as distributionism or distributivism) is an economic ideology that developed in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century based upon the principles of Catholic social teaching, especially the teachings of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno. > According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right, and the means of producti…
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> distributism Thank you for giving a name to something I have been pondering a lot. I have come to this conclusion by thinking about automation and technological unemployment. If people own land, or productive tools, they can be self reliant and exist without jobs from corporations, or help from the state. Naturally people would organise as a cooperative or a market of services, exchanging services for services, bec…
> Distributism (also known as distributionism or distributivism) is an economic ideology that developed in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century based upon the principles of Catholic social teaching, especially the teachings of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno. > According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right, and the means of producti…
The assertions of Distributism are that:
* Everyone has a right to private property (ad contra of Marxism) * That right to private property is not absolute (ad contra of laissez faire capitalism) * Laws should aim for the maximum distribution of the means of production, rather than the optimal throughput of productivity possible with those means (ad contra of if-it-is-not-100%-it-is-not-a-monopoly capitalism)
This is inspired by Catholic principles and promoted by Catholic thinkers, but it is certainly something one can come to without being Catholic.
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I wish you were able to get the opportunity to die from undertreated diabetes complications (probably attributable to lack of health insurance coverage) in your 40s instead of my buddy. I mean, I'd rather you both have had coverage and lived long healthy lives, but if one had to go I wish it was the one that supported the cause.
I'm sorry about your buddy, but please don't channel that grief into personal attacks on Hacker News.
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> distributism Thank you for giving a name to something I have been pondering a lot. I have come to this conclusion by thinking about automation and technological unemployment. If people own land, or productive tools, they can be self reliant and exist without jobs from corporations, or help from the state. Naturally people would organise as a cooperative or a market of services, exchanging services for services, bec…
This is a type of utopia that many of us yearn for, but never appears to have worked at the level of large nation-states. I mean, here are some things that are not taken into account: - People who can not work because they simply can't hold down a job, period. - Externalities such as neighboring (or even distant) communes dumping wastewater into rivers etc., or polluting the ground, or air... you get the idea. What a…
We live in a world where (to quote GKC [1]):
> Lancashire merchants whenever they like > Can water the beer of a man in Klondike > Or poison the meat of a man in Bombay; > And that is the meaning of Empire Day.
The advantage of centralization is that we can stop the poisoning all at once (because there is only one place doing the poisoning). However, when the meat is poisoned many more people suffer food poisoning than would if the food packaging were distributed.
[1]: http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/Songs_of_Education125.htmlEarlier quoted context omitted.
> Fulfillment centers are large enough that shipping them in individual boxes may actually be the cost-effective method at times. You missed half of what I wrote, "instead of in 20 oversized but mostly empty boxes." The context was in a single order from a single supplier, whose product was already at the warehouse, shipping on the same date, to the same address, for the same delivery date, using the same delivery ca…
Hard to say without knowing the supplier's volume, the nature of the products, etc., but it's entirely possible given the nature of Amazon's warehouses that those "almost identical items" could be scattered all over. They could have arrived from the supplier in small batches (or even one-by-one) over time if it's a low-volume sort of thing. Amazon might intentionally spread them throughout the fulfillment center in s…