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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

#181

Post by m0llusk »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #142
cvwright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 insurer…

That is a sloppy generalization. The Heritage Foundation plan for market based universal medical coverage was put in place in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney and mostly works with related issues like low supply of doctors. There are many options being left of the table for political reasons and comprehensibility.

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

#182

Post by jrmg »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #142
cvwright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 insurer…

I’m no lover of the US healthcare system - other countries get better outcomes for less than is spent by the US government - and basically all their costs are borne by the government, unlike in the US.

But: you have to be careful with large numbers. There are 0.3 billion people in the USA. United Healthcare says they cover 51 million. That $20 billion is $392 per insured person - a lot, sure, but hardly a large fraction of what they each pay.

Compared with other countries, the inefficiency of for-profit healthcare is a far worse problem than the amount of profit they make.

I agree with the gist of your comment overall. The system needs massive overhaul, which will take a lot of political will.

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

#183

Post by self_awareness »

ambicapter wrote: post #170
self_awareness wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always comes down to the same set of arguments. The rich doesn't pay the price because money is nothing to them. The poorest have additional grants, so life is not that bad for them, even if they don't work. And who pays the most expensive fee for this? Middle class. The actually working class. The class that nobody thinks about, and the class that always funds everything. In your world, the worst place to be is t…

??? If they earn barely enough to sustain themselves, they're not middle class by any sane individual's definition. They're poor.

Well, you can use the "poverty line" definition to separate people who will get grants (below the line), and people who will pay for the grants (above the line).

So being just barely above the line means that you pay, not that you get. This is the worst place to be in.

Also, a lot of sane US citizens seem to use the "poor" word to describe someone who is not able to get the newest model of iphone. That's why it's generally hard to talk about the issue.

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

#184

Post by donatj »

Epa095 wrote: post #138

I encourage everyone to do the following simple exercise: look at the main stock market in your country, and see how far back you must go for the main index to be half of what it is today. The answer is probably somewhere between 5 and 7 years. Then find salary statistics, and see how much the average salary has increased in the same time. The answer is probably somewhere between 20 and 30%. And it really is as simpl…

It’s really not that simple.

    - Populations have grown in the last 7 years. Workforces have changed.
    - Stocks rise on hype, debt, and low interest rates — not from actual value or work done.
    - Borders are porous. Cheap labor moves.
    - Companies come and go.
And there's far more to it than that. Saying it is "really that simple" is nothing but call to outrage.

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

#185

Post by hansvm »

kasey_junk wrote: post #74
hansvm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you control most of the market it works out a little differently. People can only eat so much food, but you can price gouge them relatively easily.

Kroger, the largest grocery in America and one that routinely sets of anti-monopoly interdictions have a profit margin of 1.76%. What profit margin line would you suggest counts as price gouging?

Doesn't that also count the investment losses they made last year, the cost of gobbling up other companies, the interest from the debt they acquired with previous expansionary practices, etc?

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

#186

Post by toomuchtodo »

Swizec wrote: post #164
toomuchtodo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 insurer…

All you need to know about America’s health system is this graph comparing average cost to life expectancy of OECD countries. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health... USA has an order of magnitude higher cost but middling life expectancy comparable to Argentina, Poland, Peru, Colombia etc.

https://www.kff.org/health-policy-101-international-comparis...

> Unlike the U.S., similarly large and wealthy nations have long had universal or near-universal health coverage and more robust access to health care. Although the U.S. has recently reached an all-time high rate of insurance coverage, it still lags behind its peers and the ongoing disenrollments from Medicaid may cause the uninsured rate to rise. Additionally, even people who are insured in the U.S. often face such high out-of-pocket costs for medical care that they go without needed care or incur medical debt. Future policymaking in the U.S. may continue to focus on improving insurance coverage rates and addressing cost-related and other barriers to care.

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

#187

Post by micromacrofoot »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #175
aoskskoans wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and from a purely logical standpoint, the correct thing to do is put everything you buy on a 0% loan for as long as possible. Only because the financial system is rigged in favor of capital owners. Targeting 3% inflation is a death sentence for the middle class when you have fractional reserve banking (coin clipping). They print money and constantly devalue labor while increasing their own wealth simply because the…

I think the biggest failure is not having economics and finance classes be part of core curriculum. The amount of confusion and misunderstanding from forcing people to personally figure out the system is totally crazy.

While this is a common refrain, I think we should also live in a society where governance isn't so bad that you have to educate yourself to avoid the rampant scams in literally every aspect of life. What good is a government that doesn't care for it's most vulnerable citizens.

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

#188

Post by conductr »

unshavedyak wrote: post #119
hasnd wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the part where that causes massive inflation.

Honest question, but it sounds like you're describing that if ~11% (based on the parent numbers) of people weren't very poor the economic system would fail? Eg inflation would spiral out of control? (i assume spiral since they'd have more money, but money would be worth less, there by making them have less effective spending power - thereby needing them to have more money, etcetc.) If so, sounds like morally somethin…

Inflation and affordability are different concepts. I think affordability is the term I’ll use as it’s best for casual/lay economic discussions.

It would be unstable at first, like how inflation during Covid differed by industry/product type. This is a big shock to the system. But over time as it normalized sure things will have inflated but relative affordability basically will return to what it is now or where it started.

If you make $10 and food is $1, it’s no different than if you make $100 and food is $10. What’s been happening due to wage growth (lack of), is you make $11 and food is $2, next year you make $12 but food is $3, etc. from a relative perspective food cost is growing too fast to keep up. To make people feel wealthier, we need the ratio to move the other way, $15/$2 then $30/$3 or something similar. This is how a middle class would get re-established. It’s a tough thing to accomplish is our complex global economy. Were marching towards a global income equilibrium, which only puts downward pressure on a high labor cost economy like the US/CA/EU.

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

#189

Post by ac29 »

kasey_junk wrote: post #74
hansvm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you control most of the market it works out a little differently. People can only eat so much food, but you can price gouge them relatively easily.

Kroger, the largest grocery in America and one that routinely sets of anti-monopoly interdictions have a profit margin of 1.76%. What profit margin line would you suggest counts as price gouging?

Just to clarify, that is their net margin.

Their gross margin was slightly above 30% last quarter.

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

#190

Post by teeray »

hardanonymity wrote: post #167

Why is food still a source of stress? Food is a solved problem. The amount of food waste alone is just staggering. Healthcare and housing are harder problems. There's no abundance there. But there is something seriously wrong with the link between food production and food consumption.

Food is far from a solved problem. There are many food deserts in the US, where the best you can hope for for groceries is a gas station mini mart. “They can just drive further to a real grocery store.” Yes, but they start cutting into their grocery budget driving there and back, limiting what they can buy. In extreme cases, it obviates the purpose of the trip entirely.
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