How has no one (here or at this organization) picked up on this gaffe?
> Suggested Citation: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. “Support for legal abortion remains strong.” (July 2025).
Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
321–330 of 563 posts
Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
#322In the US insurance (of all types: car, house, health) is a major expense and only getting worse.
Vehicles in general. In Houston, I share a car with my girlfriend since I work from home. But some days I don't feel very independent when I want to run an errand while she's at work. I'll look up the price of a used Corolla and think about all the additional expenses, and I'm immediately disabused of the idea. Instead, I decided to book some motorcycle lessons so I can use a $3000 moto. But then I need to pay for li…
> Instead, I decided to book some motorcycle lessons so I can use a $3000 moto. But then I need to pay for life insurance!
Don't forget disability insurance. And fill out your organ donation card!
Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
#323Americans 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.
HOAs come with the house. You can't just cancel them like you can cancel your netflix subscription.
Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
#324In the US insurance (of all types: car, house, health) is a major expense and only getting worse.
Vehicles in general. In Houston, I share a car with my girlfriend since I work from home. But some days I don't feel very independent when I want to run an errand while she's at work. I'll look up the price of a used Corolla and think about all the additional expenses, and I'm immediately disabused of the idea. Instead, I decided to book some motorcycle lessons so I can use a $3000 moto. But then I need to pay for li…
You're not really going to come out ahead on a $3000 motorcycle. Factor in gear, maintenance (more intensive per mile than a corolla), and it's hard to make the math work. You have to enjoy riding.
In Houston, I wouldn't even consider a vehicle without A/C!
Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
#325Earlier 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…
Feel free to look at dividend yields, but I can pretty much guarantee that it has not halfed in the period the stock market doubled. Most likely it stayed relatively flat, somewhere between 1.5% and 2%. So if you had 100 million you would get 1.7 million as dividend 5-7 years ago, now it's roughly doubled, without selling any of your stocks. Not that it really matters. Given how much faster the stock market grows com…
Keep in mind that anyone can buy stock. And stocks in the US historically outperform passive real estate investing.
Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
#326Earlier 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.
But one can very easily argue that American health outcomes are significantly driven by the average number of steps they take per day relative to other geographic peers.
Astonishingly few Americans are getting more than 15 minutes of light aerobic exercise in per day. And that exercise is largely being spent moving between seats.
Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And I have good health insurance I think your example illustrates how low people's expectation can be when it comes to calling health insurance "good" in the U.S. If I were asked to pay $3400 for urgent care or $250 for an ophthalmologist I would not consider the health insurance "good" for its intended purpose of insuring against medical expenses. (It might be good for other purposes like enabling you to invest wi…
Yeah, I wouldn't consider any HDHP (High-Deductable Healthcare Plan) to be "good insurance".
Why not? Do you expect to not pay any part of your normal, expected annual heath care costs?
Insurance is for unexpected expenses that (a) you cannot foresee and (b) would be catastrophic to your finances. Thinks like major storm or fire damage to your house. A car accident that results in a total loss or worse, liability for someone's injuries.
Your annual physical, eye exam, and dental hygiene vists, and other routine medical expenses are as predictable as your utilites or grocery expenses. You can plan and save for those in an HSA, and your HDHP can cover anything catastrophic.
Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
(First, I apologise that this message must be hasty, I must do life stuff). I really feel like your first graph proves my point? OK, at times it goes up, at times it goes down. But since 2002 the dividend is the same, but the S&P 500 is 7x. So the lazy capitalist puting in 10 million there in 2002 got 132k in yearly 'income' then, now he gets 925k yearly. You wanna figure out how much average salary increased the sam…
I fully agree. Additionally, stock price is driven also by expectations of further growth, which in order to keep happening, something's gotta give so it must chip away at quality of the final product too (cheaper materials, cheaper manufacturing, etc) with a consequent enshittification. My parents, who live in Italy, could afford a stone house from the 1800s in their thirties. I live in Canada and everything's made…
Just for fun, watch a movie from the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc., and take a look at the interiors of houses.
We've got a lot better today, and a lot more of it.
Even watch an episode of Dynasty (about rich people). Look at the crappy TV in the corner. I remember taking my last CRT TV to the recycler. I was sure glad to be rid of it.
Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't think you're making contact with what the other commenter is saying. Explaining that a health insurer makes a little over $100 in profit per person over the course of a year is meant to disprove the argument that removing profit from the health insurance system is all it will take to make everything affordable. Philosophical arguments around the economic value of a life is separate from how to reduce costs of a healthcare system in a mixed market economy.
Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
#330Americans 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…
this is something i strongly desire for people close to me to learn
i dont think it sticks if i preach at them but think it would if i somehow engineered a way for them to "find out for themselves"
are there approachable resources (not Dave Ramsey, please) to make this stick?