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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

#221

Post by cameldrv »

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'd argue that the insurers are a big part of the problem, but not for the reason you state. Their profit is capped as a percentage of revenues by law (Obamacare). In order to get more profits, they have to increase costs, so it's the complete opposite of normal market forces. It's to their benefit that you have things like hospital monopolies that overcharge, because as long as all of the insurance companies are being overcharged equally, the insurance company makes more money with out of control costs.

Now, insurance companies also play games with this law by having a common corporate parent own a PBM which the insurance company contracts with, and then the PBM receives various kickbacks from drug companies, which it doesn't pass on to the prices it charges the insurance company, thus getting larger than otherwise allowed profits for the corporate parent.

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

#222

Post by potato3732842 »

cameldrv wrote: post #194
gruez wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And it really is as simple as that. It really isn't, because your "simple" comparison is bunk. For one, it's measuring stock vs flow. Stock prices measure stock, eg. the size of a piggy bank. Salaries measure flow, eg. your annual salary. Directly comparing the two results is meaningless. It's easy to demonstrate this with the piggy bank example. If your salary was 50k/year, you saved 5k/year, then your piggy bank w…

If you want a flow, here you go: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A053RC1Q027SBEA Corporate profits in the U.S. have almost doubled since 2019.

All these "doubled since 2015/2019/20whatever" stats tie back to a dirty word that starts win In and ends with "flation"

And, as everyone who wasn't lying for various reasons predicted and anyone can see by looking at prior comparable events in history can tell you, wages are one of the last things to go up.

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

#223

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

theredleft wrote: post #145

socialism could help us here.

Has there ever been an example in history where this has been true? All of the largest famines were caused by socialist attempts at controlling the food supply.

Besides... the massive crash in population coming over the next 10 years should solve most fo this without ripping up entire societies.

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

#224

Post by testing22321 »

Health care costs are only a concern in the one developed country where it’s not universal and paid for by taxes (or completely free if you don’t work or don’t work much)

One of the reasons the US is in the mess it is comes from its inability to recognize many of its problems not only can be solved, but already have been in two dozen countries.

Making out like everyone puts up with the same dysfunction leads to people shrugging and saying “yeah, sucks this can’t be better” which is dangerously wrong and leads to inaction

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

#225

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

epgui wrote: post #13

I find it interesting that people worry much more about how much things cost than how much money they make. I would think these two numbers would be much closer together.

Baumols cost disease... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

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

#226

Post by huhkerrf »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #195
emushack wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I'm at a loss for words with this comment. So, in case you aren't from America, you might not know this: the food that is the cheapest also happens to be the food that is the least nutritious. Americans who are poor cannot afford fresh vegetables, fruit, meats and gym memberships. They can afford cheetos. It is quite the spurious correlation to say that obesity causes hunger. Just wow.

I don't know where you get this from Unprepared foods, in the US, are much cheaper than prepared foods. A bag of Cheetos (16oz) is $5. A pound of chicken legs is $2. 2 lbs of rice is $3. I'd suggest you instead argue that low income people work multiple jobs and therefore have no time to cook. I've had this debate a lot before.

People like the ones you're replying to like to make excuses for their lack of agency.

"I can't work out, I can't afford a gym! No, I'm not going to run around the park or join the YMCA!"

"I can't eat healthy, I can't afford it! No, I'm not going to buy a big bag of rice and black beans."

Before anyone comes at me: there are poor people and their struggles are real. I am 100% opposed to things like removing soda from food stamps.

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

#227

Post by jameslk »

huhkerrf wrote: post #202
garciasn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at the name of each of the primary groups in the US: - Progressives - Moderates - Conservatives Progressives, by definition, want 'progress'. Conversely, Conservatives do NOT want progress; if anything, they want regression and thus their desire to roll everything back done in the name of Progress(ives). Moderates just want to play both sides and find some sort of middle ground; something that doesn't reall…

> Progressives, by definition, want 'progress'. Conversely, Conservatives do NOT want progress; if anything, they want regression and thus their desire to roll everything back done in the name of Progress(ives). I don't know what this logical fallacy is called, but it's a logical fallacy nonetheless. I'm going to take you at face value, and assume you're talking about the idealized state and not the parties as they s…

> I don't know what this logical fallacy is called, but it's a logical fallacy nonetheless.

It’s a straw man. The US is usually represented by liberals vs conservatives, not progressives. Also progressivism doesn’t simply mean “progress” conceptually

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

#228

Post by mathiaspoint »

jrmg wrote: post #205
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.

> being forced to buy insurance with a premium so high my risk adjusted return for self insuring is actually higher This is how all insurance works though. Everyone pays in, and those unlucky enough to experience catastrophic problems get a way bigger payout than those who don’t. Pooling risk is the entire point of insurance. Without that, it’s not insurance, it’s just a payment system, and those unfortunate enough t…

That infact is not how insurance works. You don't charge low risk people insane premia because it isn't fair. My car insurance is far cheaper than my sister's for this reason for example.

Even if I had an event (outside something way out in the tails where I might not even want the treatment anyway if it's free because my QoL suffers too much either way) I'm coming out with a loss because I'm forced to subsidize care for high risk people as well as very bloated administration. Having the insurance doesn't make sense.

even when you're one of the people that needs healthcare

Insurance is an instrument for trading volatility not socializing costs. Those are radically different things.

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

#229

Post by huhkerrf »

emushack wrote: post #98
v5v3 wrote: post #75

There are times when I have been broke and just meant I ate more plainly. 20kg sack of rice is cheap and lasts a while. Flour is cheap. Eggs are cheap Potatoes Canned tuna Etc A lot of those who complain about groceries could swap out what they would rather have until times improve.

Yeah! And they could sell their refrigerators too! They use way too much electricity.

Is there anything someone can do to save money and stretch their budget farther, or are we saying that's all off base?

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

#230

Post by toomuchtodo »

cameldrv wrote: post #221
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…

I'd argue that the insurers are a big part of the problem, but not for the reason you state. Their profit is capped as a percentage of revenues by law (Obamacare). In order to get more profits, they have to increase costs, so it's the complete opposite of normal market forces. It's to their benefit that you have things like hospital monopolies that overcharge, because as long as all of the insurance companies are bei…

I agree PBMs are also a problem, as my comment mentioned. Several states are working to aggressively regulate them, but until there is more progress in that regard, people who need medication through these systems will experience maximum extraction.

Inside the Mafia of Pharma Pricing - https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/inside-the-mafia-of-pharm... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40971553 - July 2024

> Today, as a result of these changes, PBMs are big. Really big. The parent insurance companies of the biggest PBMs top nearly $1 trillion in revenue annually, roughly 4% of the GDP of America. Just the top four equal 22% of national healthcare expenditures, up from 14% in 2016. And no other country has anything like the PBM industry. The revenue of American PBMs is larger than what France spends on its entire healthcare system [My note: !!!].

> In 2021, for instance, Kentucky got rid of its use of big PBMs in Medicaid, and saved $285 million out of $1.2 billion its program spent on prescription drugs. It even led to an attempt by the Trump administration to get rid of the ability of PBMs to engage in certain forms of secret rebating. Academics are now focused on the problem of vertical integration, and so is Congress. And there have been dozens of PBM-related hearings - the next one is on July 23 with the CEOs of the ExpressScript, OptumRX, and Caremark - and Congress is closer to passing PBM legislation than it has ever been.

https://www.axios.com/2025/06/03/pbms-fight-state-regulation...

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/14/pbms-marked-up-specialty-ge...

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/07/...

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/PBM-6b-Second-I...

https://nashp.org/state-tracker/state-pharmacy-benefit-manag...

https://www.46brooklyn.com/

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