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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

#311

Post by beezle »

Americans confuse need with 'nice to have' which leads to the "I don't have money for food/rent/hc" problem.

You do not need cable tv or home internet. You do not need an iPhone or top end Samsung. There are many mid-range Android phones much cheaper that can add a MVNO phone plan for around $20/mo that has more than enough data for necessary internet. Key word: necessary. OTA HDTV is available to many millions at the cost of an antenna (in window/attic/roof). Free books at the library. People give away old dvds and players for free. There is a thing called 'the outside'.

Look at the cars many of the people who complain about being squeezed are driving. Pickups for the sake of driving one. Lower/mid end BMW/Lexus/Mercedes. Giant SUVs when a smaller one will more than do. There are actually still relatively low priced vehicles available but they are plain jane and looked down upon.

I mention those things as I was head of an HOA for about 10 years and we regularly had owners who were in arrears or in and out of arrears. They would come before the board asking for waivers of late fees, interest and even the basic common charge. Yet they were aghast when the board suggested they drop their cable TV or swapped their expensive car lease for a beater. And heaven forbid you suggest they stop going to Starbucks as they sit in front of you asking forgiveness with a large latte in hand.

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

#313

Post by burnt-resistor »

bluedino wrote: post #174
siliconc0w wrote: post #34

Our health system is so amazingly bad. Even if you have insurance, you roll the dice getting even basic care. Very easy to end up with hundreds or thousands of dollars in bills if your provider codes something wrong or your insurance denies payment. Much less an actual medical issue that requires repeated trips to a specialist, an expensive medication (even generic), or hospitalizations.

On the other hand you can get things like million-dollar organ transplants.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/organ-transplants-afford/story...

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

#314

Post by mathiaspoint »

cloverich wrote: post #298
mathiaspoint wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Right but you'll quickly see that analogy doesn't work in another way. With car insurance, its possible I can pay into it my entire life and NEVER have an accident (my current trajectory). I deserve a lower rate! With health insurance, you are 100% guaranteed to become sick and die, at some point. So the options are either, everyone pays in and it covers everyone, or it only covers a small subset of issues, and every…

Healthcare costs will grow without bound near the end. Your model only works if everyone choses every treatment available in the end which is just dumb because the outcome is the same.

It's appropriate for premia to be very high for geriatrics. The appropriate response is to chose when you're done not to crush younger workers so you can sit in a hospital bed for an extra month.

Also an exponential distribution is still a probability distribution you can trade volatility on.

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

#315

Post by burnt-resistor »

m0llusk wrote: post #181
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…

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.

RomneyObamacare and Project 2025 anarcho-chrony-kakisto-capitalism.

Never forget Obama was a center-right figure with identity bingo politics attributes.

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

#316

Post by justin66 »

em500 wrote: post #278
conductr wrote: post #122

Wage stagnation is the root problem. When costs of all expenses go up over time but paychecks do not, it causes major stress.

Paychecks did go up though, +50% nominal[1], +11% real (inflation adjusted)[2], over the past 10 years. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Real wages didn't track with increases in productivity, which is sort of the long-standing problem, since the late seventies or early eighties. (the problem for workers, I mean)

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

#317

Post by pfannkuchen »

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…

If the stock price is primarily reflective of real productivity, then stock market crashes would have to be caused by sudden drops in productivity. Are they?

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

#318

Post by burnt-resistor »

gotoeleven wrote: post #178
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…

UnitedHealth has 147 million customers, according to google. 20 billion / 147 million = $136 So they're making $136 dollars per customer in profit. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. 136 is much less than the crazy costs that people are complaining about. Are people who like to quote these big numbers just not capable of critical thinking or is it just that they like the chance to rage at capitalism's supposed fai…

Hard to say what a life is worth, which is part of the problem of for-profit healthcare.

Their most recent quarterly call had their CEO apologize for providing too much care.

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

#319

Post by WalterBright »

gruez wrote: post #162
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…

>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…

Another way to say that is comparing velocity to distance traveled is not meaningful.

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

#320

Post by rconti »

beezle wrote: post #311

Americans confuse need with 'nice to have' which leads to the "I don't have money for food/rent/hc" problem. You do not need cable tv or home internet. You do not need an iPhone or top end Samsung. There are many mid-range Android phones much cheaper that can add a MVNO phone plan for around $20/mo that has more than enough data for necessary internet. Key word: necessary. OTA HDTV is available to many millions at th…

I'd drop the HOA first, I sure as _hell_ don't need one of those.
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