521–530 of 534 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you drop those who start costing too much, private insurance could totally be cheaper. :)
The Nazis had that realization :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, and that's about what you pay for a single person health insurance in the US that isn't very high deductible. I think my employer pays about $6K/yr for me and another $6K/yr for my partner, (I know this 'cause I've gotta pay taxes on hers, as we're not married) but it's a reasonably good plan. Same provider, but more expensive/better coverage when I was buying through my own company. When I see the doctor, they…
Just because they don't go to the doctor doesn't mean the have to come into the office, unless you have a terrible employer... I hate policies that require a doctors note. Yeah, I have the flu, going to the doctor is just going to spread it, unless I have some sort of complication.
When you are sick, don't go to work. If there is any question of if the doctor can help, talk to the doctor. (Via phone or video chat, if necessary)
I moved to the US from a country with socialised medicine. When you include premiums then taxes in both were roughly similar if not a little higher in the US (ignoring cost of living differences). But even that doesn't include the real sting on the tail of US medicine. You pay a fairly high health insurance premium, but if you actually need health services you then pay again through the nose even with insurance "disc…
I agree. I think in US you pay a lot of taxes to get pretty much nothing in return. You have no universal healthcare, students have to make huge debts to be able to study, there is no maternity leave, no support for childcare, seriously there is basically no welfare whatsoever. Not to mention property taxes (at least in California) that are outrageous. And if you get seriously ill and lose your job you are pretty muc…
If you do you can disregard this message. I hate to see legitimate new users being turned away because they feel like they’re shouting into an anti-spam void.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason for this is that if one state has better social programs then another and higher taxes the poorest are going to move there, and the high earners are going to move away.
This doesn't seem to be a major problem for the EU, which has unrestricted internal migration but social programs are administered by the individual member states. The idea that the poor will mass migrate to California and the rich will mass migrate to South Dakota is pretty unrealistic. The poor can't afford to live in California even with social assistance, and the rich don't want to live in South Dakota no matter…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure it can, when the "simple transfers" have qualifiers that induce unfunded inefficiency and other externalized costs. If you have to spend five hours a month to prove that you qualify for a program that pays $80/month when your labor is worth $10/hour, you're not receiving net $80/month, you're receiving net $30/month and then getting paid to labor for five hours, the second of which you could have done for any ot…
I know in theory you can spend money that destroys value. You don't even need to rely on weird supply/demand curves, you could just pay for bomber jets to literally firebomb a city. But realistically how could Montana get an 80% increase in efficiency while providing similar services to the federal government? And according to normal economics textbooks increasing market rent isn't destroying value. If more people mo…
By removing all the strings. The problem with the existing federal programs is that they're numerous, complex and individually small, which is the recipe for inefficiency. That results in high administrative costs -- not only for the government but also for the recipients, and only the first cost is actually accounted for in the government budget, even though the second is much larger. Because government agencies do their tasks as a full time job but the recipients are novices who have to amortize the cost of learning and using the system over only their individual use of it. Again, suppose someone has to spend five hours a month to navigate a program that pays $80/month. Then if their labor is worth $10/hour, just their side of the transaction contains $50/month worth of inefficiency.
Even the fact that housing grants have to be spent on housing is inefficient, because it distorts the market for the thing being subsidized:
> And according to normal economics textbooks increasing market rent isn't destroying value. If more people move to a city which drives up demand and rent. Economists don't think of that as value destruction. In classic economics textbooks the value destruction caused by subsidized rent is that some people will spend $1000 on rent that they would never rent without the subsidy because they only get $800 of value from it + the dead weight loss of the taxes that funded that subsidy.
But this isn't caused by more people moving to the city, it's caused by the people who already live there getting a bunch of money they're only allowed to spend on rent. Then some of them would prefer to have fewer roommates or a bigger apartment, so they try to use the money for that, which requires the people who would otherwise live in those other apartments to have to outbid them, causing everyone to have to pay higher rents on the same apartments.
Meanwhile the rent increase goes to landlords who typically remove it from the local economy, either because the building isn't owned by a local to begin with, or because the owner is a wealthy person who then invests the money in index funds etc. which transfers ~98% of it out of the state. So the value isn't "destroyed" but it immediately leaves the state, which from the state's perspective is basically equivalent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you drop those who start costing too much, private insurance could totally be cheaper. :)
Or you could socialize the costs, cut out the massive waste involved by the private system and realize a healthcare cost that nears that paid by similar first world countries. Plus I think(/hope) that people in the US have fully embraced their hatred of pre-existing condition exclusion in health care that came through with the ACA. The GOP keeps saying they'll drop it and they keep shying away due to the popularity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> margins The profit margin is the amount by which revenue exceeds costs. It's circular reasoning to point out that an industry with enormous redundant costs has low margins.
I'm not sure you understand what circular reasoning is. And anyways, i can show you an industry with enormous redundant costs that also has high margins - hollywood - but of course they achieve that through clever use of corporate law; the median hollywood company loses money but the wins all go to the margins of the major holding companies.
The value of a sector to its host civilizaiton is the amount by which its externalities exceed its revenues. If the sector were eliminated, those revenues could be directed elsewhere.
In the case of Hollywood, the value of the movies produced is worth at least as much as people are willing to pay to see them. Solvency here is evidence of net positive value.
Even in a vilified industry like big tobacco, the value of the product is worth more to the people paying for it than their money is. Solvency here is evidence of net positive (perceived) value.
But in the case of the private medical insurance sector, the amount of benefit that all customers receive has to be less than the amount that all customers pay. Solvency is evidence of net negative value, unless there are some other externalities. So, what could those be? Fire insurance can prevent disruptions to a city. But can private medical insurance prevent public health hazards? I don't see why it would be better suited to do so than a single-payer alternative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can keep it there and withdraw it after 65 penalty free (have to pay taxes like a traditional IRA) or you can pull it out now and pay taxes plus a 10% penalty.
Probably better to withdraw and eat the penalty then, inflation will make it worth peanuts by the time I'm 65.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is actually a huge lever of control for the federal government, and I think has contributed greatly to increase of federal power over the states. The reason being that states can tap into that large federal stream... If they meet the federal criteria. This kind of carrot system is actually how many federal laws that seem to effect the states work. For instance, no state was ever mandated to implement the No Chil…
Yeah, like did you know that 18 is the legal drinking age in the US? That's why 18 year old soldiers can drink alcohol in the military. BUT, if a state increases the drinking age to 21 in their state then they get sweet sweet federal highway funds. For a long time Louisiana was a holdout, so 18-21 year olds would go there to party for mardis gras, and the road quality showed it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Guess what, private insurance companies will also negotiate prices. They negotiate prices based on the size of the pool. This is why if you are a small business the rates you will get will be worse than if you were a large enterprise. With socialized healthcare, the pool is the entire citizenry, which is what gives the government substantial leverage when negotiating.
The German government doesn't negotiate anything. They set prices, period. Set them too low and you create shortages. Guess what the German healthcare system has, it's a shortage of doctors , especially specialists. German doctors are leaving for greener pastures, like Switzerland. They are replaced by doctors from Eastern Europe. Quality suffers. Waiting times are high. Most Germans are too uninformed or arrogant to…