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Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

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Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#141

Post by Aurornis »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #76

I did some math a while ago on this topic: 40 million Americans live below the poverty line of $15,000 per year. [1] Total U.S. household net worth (excluding real estate) is around $54 trillion. [2] If every household above the poverty line donated 2.5% of their net worth annually to people living below the poverty line, we could erase poverty instantly. Here’s the math: 2.5% of $54 trillion = $1.35 trillion $1.35 t…

If you put a 2.5% annual tax on net worth, that net worth would very rapidly find its way to other countries.

Wealthy people would learn to structure their earnings to flow into businesses in other countries to avoid this wealth tax. This would reduce income tax in the United States. I would guess the overall effect would trend toward a net tax loss.

If you gave 40 million people an extra $15K per year to spend, the prices of the things those 40 million people buy would go up. The poverty threshold would rise.

There are many second order effects like this that are always ignored in simplistic analyses.

It’s never simple math like taking one number, moving it into another column, and problem is solved.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#142

Post by toomuchtodo »

cvwright wrote: post #104
Aurornis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did everyone just forget what it was like before Obamacare? Apparently you didn’t know anyone excluded for pre-existing conditions Obamacare also mandated coverage for basic care like your annual physical and many mental health conditions. It’s not perfect, but I guess it’s been long enough that people are forgetting how bad the situation was before.

The costs also used to be a lot lower - at least for most people who just pay the premium and don’t need much care. Now it’s not uncommon for a family’s health insurance to cost more than their housing. The people who are mad are those who are paying more and not experiencing the benefits.

https://penncapital-star.com/uncategorized/americans-suffer-...

> In 2022, UnitedHealth Group made over $20 billion in profit. Cigna made $6.7 billion, Elevance Health made $6 billion and CVS Health made $4.2 billion. All told, America’s largest health insurers raked in more than $41 billion of profits in 2022.

Universal healthcare is good. America's for profit system is bad. You have to get rid of for profit insurers (to start, lots of other changes need to be made as well, PBM and private equity ownership, etc). Is there will to do that? What is it going to take to get there? Every other OECD country has a functioning healthcare system, to keep the existing system in the US is a policy choice.

Edit: Absolutely wild to see the apologists who say, "This is fine." to billions of dollars being sucked out of the healthcare system as profits instead of being spent on care or reduced premiums.

Investors Are Pressing UnitedHealth Group to Deny More Care - https://jacobin.com/2025/06/investors-unitedhealth-group-car... - June 10th, 2025

Democrat senators probe UnitedHealth over nursing home care denials - https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/democrat-senators-probe-... - August 8th, 2025

Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/21/unitedhealth... - May 21st, 2025

> UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest healthcare conglomerate, has secretly paid nursing homes thousands in bonuses to help slash hospital transfers for ailing residents – part of a series of cost-cutting tactics that has saved the company millions, but at times risked residents’ health, a Guardian investigation has found. Those secret bonuses have been paid out as part of a UnitedHealth program that stations the company’s own medical teams in nursing homes and pushes them to cut care expenses for residents covered by the insurance giant. In several cases identified by the Guardian, nursing home residents who needed immediate hospital care under the program failed to receive it, after interventions from UnitedHealth staffers. At least one lived with permanent brain damage following his delayed transfer, according to a confidential nursing home incident log, recordings and photo evidence.

As long as a profit motive exists, there will be incentives to reduce or avoid care for more profits.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#143

Post by pempem »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #132
phyzix5761 wrote: post #76

I did some math a while ago on this topic: 40 million Americans live below the poverty line of $15,000 per year. [1] Total U.S. household net worth (excluding real estate) is around $54 trillion. [2] If every household above the poverty line donated 2.5% of their net worth annually to people living below the poverty line, we could erase poverty instantly. Here’s the math: 2.5% of $54 trillion = $1.35 trillion $1.35 t…

That would simply make food and housing more expensive, as it would devalue money, as it increases circulation, because it wouldn't produce more housing and food - just increase demand - unless they "donated" (tax) that 2.5% to increase production, and not to subsidize poverty. If you could subsidize your way out of poverty, Venezuela wouldn't be poor. They tried printing money and handing it out. It doesn't work. If…

Food and housing would get more more expensive but also food and housing are getting more expensive without this redistribution

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#144

Post by potato3732842 »

bix6 wrote: post #39
N_Lens wrote: post #25

The current financial system and various corporations see the majority of consumers like livestock - a kind of resource to be exploited. It's better to be free range organic though, in my humble opinion, but the majority seem to be trending towards battery/cage chickens.

What does free range organic mean in this context? To be free range you need significant wealth for the free range. To be organic you need significant wealth for farmers market type food. So in both cases you must be wealthy to avoid the cage or am I missing something?

>What does free range organic mean in this context?

It's a euphemism for white women who work an office job and shop at target/costco, or comparable demographis along those lines.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#146

Post by mathiaspoint »

potato3732842 wrote: post #139
mathiaspoint wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh I wasn't an adult then. All I've experienced is being forced to buy insurance with a premium so high my risk adjusted return for self insuring is actually higher. I was so happy when the individual mandate was finally killed. That was just straight theft by incompetent health care administration.

>incompetent health care administration. They're not incompetent. They looked at the laws and realized they get the same cut of a bigger number by bloating overhead costs.

Charging what they do for what they do and insisting it can't get lower? Yes incompetence is absolutely the correct word. Just because we can't choose to go elsewhere isn't a excuse.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#147

Post by dakna »

anonzzzies wrote: post #15
whatamidoingyo wrote: post #4

Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. I get an entire shopping cart full of food for $60-100 and that lasts for ~2 weeks. When I go to Publix (or any other grocery store), I get like 2-3 bags for $60... Discovering the Asian market has been one of the best financial things to happen to me. Although I'm not really sure how their prices are so low. If someone could answer, that would be awesome!

I pickle, ferment and sauce a lot of things. Then I look for things that can be made in very large quantities and then preserved frozen/cooled (a lot of times just in the cellar). A lot of these things are from Asia and are great and very cheap and I'm love them for taste as well; curry's (I make 10 liters at a time; from scratch, very very cheap except my time but I like cooking), auntie dumplings (prep + freeze; ju…

Same here, our freezer has lots of home made dumplings in dinner size packages.

Pancakes also work well for us, we usually put fresh chopped greens into them. We still eat the Bok Choy pancakes prepared months ago, usually when we just want a quick side for leftovers.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#148

Post by VoodooJuJu »

mattmaroon wrote: post #79
whatamidoingyo wrote: post #4

Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. I get an entire shopping cart full of food for $60-100 and that lasts for ~2 weeks. When I go to Publix (or any other grocery store), I get like 2-3 bags for $60... Discovering the Asian market has been one of the best financial things to happen to me. Although I'm not really sure how their prices are so low. If someone could answer, that would be awesome!

I believe Asian markets are basically an inversion of the regular grocery store pricing model. Regular grocery stores sell all the stuff around the perimeter (meat, dairy, produce, baked goods, etc.) at relatively high margins and all the shelf-stable packaged stuff in the middle at relatively low margins. It makes sense, one store may have better or worse produce or meat or bakery items or deli items etc. than anoth…

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Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#149

Post by epistasis »

cvwright wrote: post #104
Aurornis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did everyone just forget what it was like before Obamacare? Apparently you didn’t know anyone excluded for pre-existing conditions Obamacare also mandated coverage for basic care like your annual physical and many mental health conditions. It’s not perfect, but I guess it’s been long enough that people are forgetting how bad the situation was before.

The costs also used to be a lot lower - at least for most people who just pay the premium and don’t need much care. Now it’s not uncommon for a family’s health insurance to cost more than their housing. The people who are mad are those who are paying more and not experiencing the benefits.

The rises in health care costs were happening long before Obamacare, and if anything Obamacare reduced the rate of rises or kept them at the same level.

We have chosen this to have high access, high quality care, while also choosing to reduce health with the way we subsidize our food system and force indolent lifestyle with car-dependent urban planning.

The best primer on the choices that make our healthcare expensive, and where the money goes, are in this video:

https://youtu.be/QqrpFICtqpQ?si=JOR3COojPD9iLn94

Unfortunately our national discussion of health care is not centered on the reality of the discussion, and is several levels of technical depth too shallow for us to have a public discussion that could reduce costs without reducing the care level for many peopl.

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