Healthcare Reform

I probably should have made this post sooner - like this weekend - but I always kind of planned to do so tonight. It's just been a long @#$ day.

Anyway, I know our reach on this board is fairly small, and that's fine. We've got a really interesting crop of voices here and I'm really glad we can all shoot the sh#t about political stuff and learn from each other. Being able to discuss this stuff with all of you is really neat.

Anyway, to the extent I can influence anybody here, I just wanted to ask anybody who has yet to vote and was undecided or didn't have an opinion to vote Yes on Initiative 427 (Medicaid Expansion) in Nebraska on your ballot tomorrow. I say this as someone going into healthcare - this shouldn't be a partisan issue for us. It shouldn't be left vs. right or haves vs. have nots or anything like that. 

We have an opportunity to twist our pols arms since they'd never do this for us and help extend healthcare to those among us who are less well off. Expanding Medicaid would not only extend coverage to upwards of 90,000 Nebraskans, but it would be a boon for the state economy by keeping workers healthier and protecting rural hospitals, many of whom are vulnerable, from bankruptcy. The federal government currently covers 93% of the costs and will cover 90% of the costs after 2020. We would only have to come up with 10% of the total costs of this move. 

Here's a study done by two economics professors at UNK who found the move would bring almost $1T in net economic benefit back to the state over a decade if we'd expanded when first possible a few years ago.

Let's just help our fellow human beings again. Going to the doctor shouldn't be a luxury some of us can't afford. If conservatives here want to go hog wild and implement work requirements or whatever else so be it. We've got to put the ball in their court first. Please vote yes on 427.

 
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Redux said:
This country is in the toilet.  Elections are a sham and no change or shift in power does any good for any of us.

I work 50hrs a week at an elevator and my wife works around 40 as a Coordinator at an assisted living home.  Combined we make well under 90k a year.  To do this, we have to send our 3 children to daycare 4 days a week which costs around $1,500 a month.  Her work pays 90% of her health insurance, mine covers my entire portion plus a little bonus towards our HSA account.  Her bi weekly paychecks are gone after daycare and the remaining insurance costs which leaves my income to cover all the other stuff like mortgage, utilities, debt stuff and other cost of living.

Meanwhile, a girl she works with has a lazy fat a$$ of a husband who "can not work". They both receive enough government funding to buy new vehicles, new clothes all the time, eat out every day etc.

I've had it.  This morning my wife tells me it looks like insurance will go up next year.  So I flat out told her there is no effing reason for her to work and us to barely scrape by.  Her staying home would not only qualify us for Medicaid  but we would also be eligible for fun stuff like WIC and Home Improvement Grant's and daycare costs even though she would be home.  This is bulls#!t.  How is this even remotely fair?  How are we still rewarding laziness and punishing everyone willing to work.  We may as well reap some of the funds we have been paying in for years should we not?! This isn't a red thing or a blue thing.  It's a red and blue too busy fighting each other and we all play along for anything to actually change thing.
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So I'm not saying you're wrong because I have no idea what the situation is.  But I have never met anyone on government assistance that was getting the amount of money required to purchase new vehicles, and dining out all the time.  This includes several family members that were or still are using government assistance.

I guess I'd like to see what EXACTLY they are receiving to understand better.

But I do understand your frustration with 2 working parents.  I had 3 kids in daycare as well.  I finally told my wife it just didn't make sense for one of us to work for free every month.  SO we made the sacrifice and it was the best decision we ever made.

 
Redux said:
I'm not even remotely exaggerating.  They got some big government kick back and bought new vehicles, clothes etc.  Blew completely through it and put none of it towards any actual debt or into savings because that's what people like this do.  Assistance punishes the working people more and more while making it more and more affordable to not work and more and more enticing to make zero effort towards working.  Eventually, where the hell is the money going to come from?
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Through which program?

 
Bought the vehicles outright? Paid off? Or just put $1,000 towards a down payment on vehicles they can't afford and are likely tragically in debt or something? 

 
Redux said:
Assistance punishes the working people more and more while making it more and more affordable to not work and more and more enticing to make zero effort towards working.  Eventually, where the hell is the money going to come from?
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So are these people making more on government assistance than you and your wife?  

 
As far as I understand it, people on welfare programs are only eligible for a MAXIMUM (for say a single mother with two kids) of like $5,000-6,000 in actual unrestricted cash. The rest of the non-cash value is food stamps, housing subsidies, medicaid, and so on. A libertarian think thank did a study and while they found some hyper specific sets of circumstances where very small amounts of people could receive equivalent values of up to $30,000+ a year, the overwhelming majority of poor people on welfare would only be eligible for a cash equivalent of $17,347 a year. Or $8.34 an hour. 

And of course, the conservative response to dissatisfaction in situations like those is to work harder. Go back to school to learn a new trade. Get a second job. If you want to live more comfortably you've got to earn it. 

 
I've known a few people on government assistance and they're living pretty meager lives. Sounds like the people you're referring to may just be living off of credit, which a lot of folks do these days.  There's a reckoning coming for those kinds of people. Even if he's on SSI, there's just about no way they could be living a lavish lifestyle on those benefits. They're not much, like less than $1,000/month, which isn't close to enough to live that kind of lifestyle.

Regardless, I hear what you're saying about the cost of daycare, @Redux     Lots of people choose to go single-income and have a parent stay home because of the net gain of not paying for daycare.  It's insane what that costs. 

 
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Redux said:
But if you think people aren't taking advantage of it you're turning a blind eye to it.
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Nobody is saying that. It's just not available to the degree these people are apparently living.  But a couple who's willing to live like that is probably also willing to live off credit, or sponge off family, or just overspend & run themselves into debt. There's a reckoning coming for people like that.

Redux said:
Okay, so because daycare and healthcare are so expensive and it would be more affordable for my wife to NOT work, how does that make sense? Why is that okay?
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I don't think anyone thinks it's OK. But how do you fix that? Both healthcare and daycare are private enterprises, so it's not a government problem to fix. Apparently the free market hasn't regulated itself well enough for those costs to go down.

 
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