I disagree with Ravan on several of her points. But on the health care one . . . I believe you are placing the profits of insurance companies above the profits of every other company. They're inflicting a double hit on employers: demanding their cut, and then allowing only cheapskate health services to be delivered, thereby reducing the fitness of everybody's workers. And that's not factoring in the people who can't work, or die, because they didn't have jobs or jobs with health insurance. If people like me can get inhalers; if people like ladyqkat can get their head meds; if people like Ravan's former roomie can get their heart ailments treated, we can all work. And pay taxes. Without those things, we are a drain on society. And we hurt our employers if we have any by coming to work sick because we can't afford to go to the doctor, or to buy medication, or by being absent more often than we would have been with medical care--either way. Or if we have health insurance and use it, we hurt the employer and our co-workers by making the premiums go up. Then we hurt the employer's retiree plan and the country both by swelling the ranks of the ill elderly, whether or not we're forced to retire early. We even hurt the employer if we stay in a job we loathe, or don't move to take one we're offered, because our family needs the health insurance coverage. What kind of capitalist system is that?
Anyway, who do you think pays for the county hospitals? And the unnecessary emergency room visits because someone doesn't have a doctor, or has a health plan that doesn't pay for preventive care?
It's simple math. Take the money everybody is being gouged for health insurance and put it toward a government-paid system instead. The costs would be more equitably distributed as part of income tax, businesses would be relieved of a tremendous burden, and people would lose their major incentive to be censorious about others' lives. It's none of your or my business whether someone has 9 children or "makes no effort to better himself." Or is fat or smokes, so long as they do the latter far away from me. Or has a spouse or not. (That is currently obscenely connected to whether one gets healthcare.) Or saves up for a sex change or a nose job or boob implants or to retire to Mexico at 35 or spends every penny they have paying their grandmother's rent.
If Kaiser was originally supplying health benefits, why do you suppose they did so? I'd bet it was because it made their workers more productive. Damn good idea. The country should go back to that idea and the insurance companies can go back to selling auto insurance, theft insurance, and home insurance.
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Anyway, who do you think pays for the county hospitals? And the unnecessary emergency room visits because someone doesn't have a doctor, or has a health plan that doesn't pay for preventive care?
It's simple math. Take the money everybody is being gouged for health insurance and put it toward a government-paid system instead. The costs would be more equitably distributed as part of income tax, businesses would be relieved of a tremendous burden, and people would lose their major incentive to be censorious about others' lives. It's none of your or my business whether someone has 9 children or "makes no effort to better himself." Or is fat or smokes, so long as they do the latter far away from me. Or has a spouse or not. (That is currently obscenely connected to whether one gets healthcare.) Or saves up for a sex change or a nose job or boob implants or to retire to Mexico at 35 or spends every penny they have paying their grandmother's rent.
If Kaiser was originally supplying health benefits, why do you suppose they did so? I'd bet it was because it made their workers more productive. Damn good idea. The country should go back to that idea and the insurance companies can go back to selling auto insurance, theft insurance, and home insurance.
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