171–180 of 431 posts
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It’s also what critical thinkers do when evaluating “what percentage full of shit do I think this author is?” If a glaring innumeracy or terrible estimate is in the article, why did the author include that? What was their angle? Does that make me trust the rest of the article more or less?
Hmm, counting the insurance premiums 100% towards the birth of the child is a bit misleading. Presumably, you'd be paying those even if you didn't have the child. That said, the cost of health insurance for a family is pretty outrageous. My premiums are along the same lines as the ones here (although less noticeable since they're paid by my employer).
Given he has 3 children, 400% of FPL in 2026 is $150,600 so he's easily eligible for ACA subsidies (which, by the way, in 2021-2026, were available to everyone) by tweaking his income (easy to do when you have a company).
He also says uninformed things like:
> My wife and I are healthy, but we’re building our family and I have yet to see a marketplace plan that supports child-birth. Maybe the subsidized ones do, but I earn too much money to see those.
The premiums have nothing to do with the plans. Every single plan on the marketplace has to cover child-birth, that's sort of the point of the ACA.
> HMOs or EPOs that have some issues with them: coinsurance
What matters at the end of the day when you have a child is your maximum out of pocket (which you will 100% hit the year you have a child!). Whether you have copays or coinsurance after a deductible does not matter here. The ACA caps your maximum out of pocket at $18,400 no matter what (which, yes, is too high), so what you need to optimize for is premium + OOP for the providers that you care about.
Like, I get it, it's America, for healthcare like many other things (student loans, credit card debt, ...) it's easy to end up in a bad situation, but at some point you have to spend time understanding the game.
The value the article comes up with (he says like $130,000) is more like the living wage, which might be a good target. The living wage for Bergen County, NJ, is calculated to be $145k for a family of 4 with 2 working parents, and about $100k for the same family without childcare expenses (1 working parent).
https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/34003
I am not sure what counts as poor in reality. Obviously the federal poverty guideline is pretty low. It can't really make sense as a contiguous-48-states guideline for the purpose of feeling "not poor". The calculated living wage is above the median household income for most areas. I have not heard a serious proposal for increasing the median (or, preferably, the 30th %ile) income up to the living wage. I reckon that most proposals that involve the government sound too much like communism for the average American voter.
But we could bring the living wage down to the median. We could make housing cheap, reduce our health care costs, and reduce the childcare component.
Hmm, counting the insurance premiums 100% towards the birth of the child is a bit misleading. Presumably, you'd be paying those even if you didn't have the child. That said, the cost of health insurance for a family is pretty outrageous. My premiums are along the same lines as the ones here (although less noticeable since they're paid by my employer).
I think OP here is just keeping a completely dominated plan (and his health insurance company knows it). He has less than 50 employees, he is not required to offer health insurance to his employees and he should go on the ACA market. Given he has 3 children, 400% of FPL in 2026 is $150,600 so he's easily eligible for ACA subsidies (which, by the way, in 2021-2026, were available to everyone) by tweaking his income (e…
I am absolutely not eligible. I earn more than $150k. And "manipulating your income" is not really feasible with a pass-through entity.
> The premiums have nothing to do with the plans. Every single plan on the marketplace has to cover child-birth, that's sort of the point of the ACA.
As I mention in the piece, I check every year. I have no idea what subsidized plans include, but the other marketplace plans definitely do not include child birth.
I explicitly address this point:
> The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) barred insurers from turning down applicants based on existing pre-conditions; the way insurers get around this for pregnancy and child-birth is not by rejecting pregnant applicants (illegal), but by simply refusing to cover the care those applicants need to survive pregnancy (legal and common.)
and
> My wife and I are healthy, but we’re building our family and I have yet to see a marketplace plan that supports child-birth. Maybe the subsidized ones do, but I earn too much money to see those. All of the ones I’ve found through eHealth Insurance or Healthcare.gov never cover it - and I check every year.
Love the over-confidence though. The best outcome for me in even writing this article would be to get some internet commenter pissed off enough to find me a cheaper version of my plan. That would solve my problem immediately!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Australia 5 out of 5 people are covered by Medicare, and 5 of them bear the burden. (at some point in their life. assuming they become a tax payer, which seems likely for most.)
What percentage of Australian society is net-positive tax payer? That’s your real number, not this pretend 5 out of 5 as you claim.
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> Hmm, counting the insurance premiums 100% towards the birth of the child is a bit misleading. I see your point, but do you not think that if you're a family of 4, having to pay $40K before insurance kicks in is ridiculously expensive, and out of reach for most Americans? I'd wager that most self employed folks in the US almost never benefit from insurance (except for things covered by Obamacare which come nowhere n…
> I'd wager that most self employed folks in the US almost never benefit from insurance (except for things covered by Obamacare which come nowhere near justifying the premiums). Self-employed here. My wife and I paid $470/month last year, $618/month next year, for a gold insurance plan than has a $3400 deductible with typically a $20 co-pay. It covers 3 prescriptions, therapy sessions for each of us, various older ag…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also not a big impact on the message, but $200/mo for a phone is a bit disingenuous.
Claiming $200/month for a phone makes one wonder which numbers are valid. I'm not saying everyone needs to make a $100 phone last 5 years and use a $15/month plan, but I'm not even sure how I would get to $200/month in phone bill, even including financing an iPhone 17 Pro Max.
The corruption is so entrenched and so out of control, the only way out of this mess is for regular people to just stop using the health care system. Yes, there's no alternative, and yes, it means living a riskier life. It sucks, and it's not what we want to hear, but they can only charge us if we show up and purchase the product, and that's the last lever of power we can wield.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I went to Canada, I talked to someone who said the Canadian government will subsidize trips to the US for certain treatments because it's not available at all in Canada or has insane waiting times. It's one data point, I know, but generally I think it's true that quality and availability of care in the US is much better.
I’m a Canadian and I’ve worked in health care. This is only done for very specialized treatments where the province (they run the health care delivery) doesn’t have the treatment and/or the American resource is closer than a Canadian treatment location. For example Nova Scotia will send some complex paediatric cases to Boston. They could send them to Toronto, but Boston is closer. Same with Manitoba but they use Minn…