Even if the government gives us $20,000 to buy health insurance, premiums will likely increase by $20,000.
Now now, why would you only increase it by the amount the government will give you, you clearly dont have what it takes to be a CEO. If everyone would get 20k. Increase the price to 25k
Bingo. Socializing profits or whatever this is called…”neoliberalism” “private public partnerships” is exactly what destroyed everything good about western society.
Brilliant!
Remember when they unveiled “the plan” many years ago? Huge stacks of paper, it looked very comprehensive indeed.
Of course, all the pages were blank. IT WAS TOP SECRET, YOU SEE, INVISIBLE INK!
Now, I’m wondering what was on the other 20K pages after the “$2000 credit a year” page. That was invisible. Eight years ago? Ten? I hate it here
ETA $2000 will be worth $20 by 2027. We should print more money to fix that!
My dudes, we have nothing to lose but our chains
This is just a roundabout way of subsidizing the health insurance industry while making his base think he actually did something for them.
No that’s the ACA. This is just peanuts.
Every subsidy that goes to a person basically is a roundabout way to fund an industry. Even tax write offs are. Like a mortgage interest rate deduction just helps banks and the real estate industry, not the people buying a house. The write off pushes housing prices up, since the banks can give out slightly higher mortgages to borrowers and the market adjusts to the bigger inflow of cash and supply doesn’t increase faster. If the write off didn’t exist people could borrow less but houses would cost less as well. This basically happened in my country the Netherlands. Nobody benefited from the introduction of the mortgage interest deduction except the banks and people who already owned a home when the policy was introduced.
How can there still RELATIVELY many people be able to have kids financially? The fertility rate in most european countries in comparison is lower, although we have affordable healthcare (well, compared to the US at least).
Why do you think they’re trying to shut down reproductive rights? They want people to have kids despite financial capability to raise them. As long as they survive growing up, they’ll labor.
And be raised by parents who don’t have any financial independence, ensuring they’re also in debt slavery for the rest of their lives.
Things feel so dystopian that I get the feeling that after they get everyone on debt slavery that they’ll put propaganda about how it’s unfair that debt is absolved on death and that your family/kids should pay for it. Fox News will be like: “why should a company’s debts just disappear? it’s unfair to the lender!”
Hey, someone is going to have to do all those below-subsistence jobs that the deported immigrants have been doing.
In an ideal world that’s what robots/AI would do. But we get the opposite; artists become unemployed whereas manual labor still continues to exist for humans.
The health insurance plans will just raise their prices by another $2000
I wouldn’t expect anything else from a Trump Policy - everything he does is to feather the nests of his wealthy supporters. I guarantee this trump-care policy was suggested and supported by health insurers.
Of course. It didn’t change anything and it’s unrealistic.
This is the biggest lesson I’ve learned in adulthood. As a high schooler I said many things like “just go fix it”.
Problem is there’s always someone who will happily take advantage and ruin something that should be a good thing.
Adding $660,000,000,000 to the federal deficit annually and still not making a dent in people’s healthcare costs?
A single-payer universal healthcare system would be cheaper, as almost every other country’s systems show.
The real trick is to get private equity and for-profit corporations out of healthcare. All they do is drive up costs while lowering outcomes.
Healthcare should be a public service, funded by the government.
Yeah, the US actually pays more PUBLIC funds per person than most other nations. Then the private cost on top - all for worse health outcomes.
We need more Luigis just from a financial perspective.
as almost every other country’s systems show
You can take out the “almost” here. Literally every other country on Earth pays half or less per capita than what we pay in the US, and this has been the case for decades.
UNH, CVS, ELV and CI share holders disagree with you and thanks to the SCOTUS Citizen United decision they have to money and the legal framework to legally bribe politicians. I’ll suggest to invest in those companies rather than flight them.
I’m not contributing to evil companies. “If you can’t beat them, join them” does not apply when they’re responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year and putting millions of people in poverty.
People willing to do anything to get rich is precisely the problem in this country, and I’m not going to be a part of it.
You’re right about Citizens United, though. It should be revoked.
It’s one healthcare, Michael. What could it cost? $2000?
Damn you beat me to it! Take your upvoter and be proud…
Circuses are cheap, bread is expensive
Not in America, you just add more sugar to make it cheap
Absolute circus.
I feel like there should still be 13 stripes
It’s the 9 original colonies that didn’t vote for Trump in 2024.
Edit: I made that up
(the white stripes also count)
Duum dudum dum dum duuuum duum
Same. I like the image, but the last two red stripes are inaccurate, and superfluous. We didn’t have 17 or 18 colonies, we had 13.
You didn’t have any colonies, the British did.
My Great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who owned and sold 2/3 of Virginia at the time might disagree.
I want a refund
Isn’t that basically universal basic income?
If he does it the proper way yes, but it’ll probably be something stupid and strictly controlled to be only insurance
Also ignoring the fact that even if it was $2000 annually no strings attached that still does little, though it would certainly be welcome
Health insurance would magically become $2k more expensive overnight, so
I mean, it takes minimum 150k per year to raise a family in the US, so that tracks.
Trump used to support a Canadian-style, single-payer health care plan. However, the closer he got to the presidency, the more he backed away from that. Funny how that works.
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How does anyone afford anything in the USA?
A lot don’t get insurance and just hope they don’t die?
Literally, yes.
My supervisor at work has 2 broken teeth and one is cracking, he can’t have food on his right side of his mouth and about once a month has go eat soft foods because the cracked tooth on his left side hurts again.
Another coworker has a knife wound because he managed to slice his arm open with his own folding knife (not suicidal just stupid), and he’s just self-treating even though it looks infected.
I have had bronchitis multiple times in my life when I didn’t have any insurance and even when I was so weak it took all my strength to crawl to the bathroom, going without eating for several days because I can’t make it downstairs to the kitchen, because just the urgent care visit would have sent me into years of debt.
My sister ignored signs of cancer until her daughter asked her to go to the doctor. It could have been operated on if she had gone earlier. Now it’s chemo and fingers crossed.
This shithole country kicks people when they’re down andat least 1/3 of the population is polishing the boot as the rich are kicking us.
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Enraging and 100% true. About 11% of working age Americans have no health insurance.
Consider also how many people have health insurance but cant afford to use it?
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Fun fact: On top of all that, you pay more in taxes for health care than any other country, even those where health care is entirely financed by tax money.
But hey, you go from having to pay 20 lifetimes worth of crippling debt to only 5 lifetimes worth of crippling debt, look on the bright side
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Its definitely not a circle, but the middle portion is big enough to make me lose hope for humanity.
Leopards be feasting
Literally true. I’ve lost two friends this way.
Yes
I feel bad for the americans who want to effect GOOD change
The worst part is so many americans are convinced that actually most Americans want half good, half bad policy; free healthcare is too far left, but theres definitely a cohort of voters who wont vote for that, but will vote for means-tested subsidies for health insurance companies, and that running on that policy is smarter than running on policy anyone actually wants.
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We dont though, tons of people forgo healthcare because they can’t afford it.
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We’re paying twice as much for it, but getting less and worse care because most of that money is going to death panels and shitbags like David Cordani, Patrick Conway, and Mark Bertolini.
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Don’t forget all the time we have to waste arguing with insurance companies to get them to cover our wife’s ongoing chemotherapy even though nothing has fucking changed
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If by “this” you mean an autoimmune disease for which there is no cure, yup!
A) its not universal because plenty of people don’t have coverage.
B) many of our insurance companies and “healthcare providers” are for profit and traded on the stock market, so our premiums are going to shareholders, with just enough paying for actual treatment to keep all of us from going full Luigi
While I was living in Seattle it was: $3.3k/mo for rent, like $500 utilities, about $1k for food (I was feeding me and another person, we ate out maybe once every couple months, I did go a bit fancy with our cooking), various things like gym and other stuff to keep my sanity brought it all up to about $5.5k/mo. My health insurance was through my work and I paid about $1.2k and they paid about $2k but that was all handled before I got my paychecks.
So in Seattle at least the answer is make at least $100k/yr before tax, don’t have kids, don’t have a car, be in reasonably good health, have a job that pays for most your insurance premiums, and never have a medical emergency. Or live in a house with 6 other people and dumpster dive for food. Or just go massively into debt.
Credit cards and payday loans until you declare bankruptcy 6 times just like uncle
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Honestly the best thing skilled Americans could do is leave. Changing things would be better but honestly simply leaving in droves could already change things for the better ironically enough.
I spent years trying to change things. Protests, donating to younger people more capable of direct action than me, building community, and yes voting too because we have to use all our tools. It became too dangerous for my aging trans ass and I managed to find myself in a position to move to Sweden. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop feeling guilty about it but it’s so much better outside the US. I’m still giving what I can to my community back in the US but at this point it’s more like using scotch tape to fix a stab wound. You better believe though if the US comes for Greenland I’m going to do everything I can to help my new neighbors
Hey. Don’t feel bad about leaving. You’ve done what you could and then did what you needed to in order to keep yourself safe. If what you say is true you’ve done an order of magnitude more work towards a better world than the majority of people.
I think we need good people left in this country to have a chance to try and turn things around, but I’ll never be upset with someone who left for their own good. There’s enough of us that can’t leave, or won’t leave, that we’ll never become irrelevant here. The fight will go on until death do us part, for better or for worse.
You better believe though if the US comes for Greenland I’m going to do everything I can to help my new neighbors
Do it, and don’t feel bad about it. If the US comes for Greenland I’m on the side of Greenland. Same for Canada, same for Mexico, same for anyone else whose sovereign borders are being threatened. Know that no matter what happens you still have friends here on the inside.
And if you can’t leave (or can’t do so reasonably), crashing the birth rates is another way to send a message…while simultaneously insulating you against some of the most egregiously out of control expenses.
Does your country have decent healthcare and need IT Admins?
60% of the country lives check-to-check, the rest are mostly in debt
60%+ of Americans do not even have $1,000 in some kind of savings or checking account, as an emergency fund.
We are all being run ragged, most people are in an apparently literally unbelievable amount of debt, because once you have that first month you have to borrow to pay for groceries or ultilities or rent or a medical copay… the debt spiral begins, you basically don’t get out, and the hole gets worse and worse.
Or… theres also a lot of people with less than 0 financial sense, because the average reading level of the US citizenry is that of a 5th to 6th grader, and many people have compulsive shopping addiction habits.
Something like 25% of Americans have negative net equity, ie, they have more debt than all their possessions are worth.
They’re basically debt slaves, whether or not they realize it.
Something like another 25% have basically 0, netted out.
… and that’s all before everyone’s 401ks and pension funds collapse from the Private Equity / Ptivate Capital (read: unregulated lending) firms ongoing implosion… and thats before the dollar gets further and further devalued so that the government can inflate away its real debt payments, which is the strategy the Treasury Sec is pursuing.
Americans in the bottom ~4/5 - 9/10 of society have no fucking clue how bad it is about to get.
most people are in an apparently literally unbelievable amount of debt, because once you have that first month you have to borrow to pay for groceries or ultilities or rent or a medical copay… the debt spiral begins, you basically don’t get out, and the hole gets worse and worse.
This is why I don’t have a credit card. I’m terrified of getting stuck in this loop. I know, I’m supposed to get a card and use it for things I already have the money for, so I can pay it off… but my ADHD brain just thinks, “That’s yet another bill to stay on top of. Another deadline to remember. Another threat if I forget to pay, or get sick one month and have a smaller paycheck in the end and can’t repay it after rent and utilities.” (Because remember - sick pay isn’t a guarantee in the US. My “sick time” at work is combined with “vacation” as “Paid Time Off” and accrues slowly.)
It’s absurd how paying for things with the money you already earned can be seen as a negative. I’d think if one doesn’t have credit for long enough, that should be a good sign that they’ve managed their money properly without needing credit. But no, it doesn’t work that way here. I’m in my upper 30s and have never had a credit card. My “credit score” is entirely based off of past student loans (that I only managed to pay off with help from my father.) Yet if I hadn’t had school debt, I’d have no “credit score” to speak of and might not have been accepted when I applied for my apartment. It’s all so ass-backwards. I mean, I get the logic of “credit” as a sign of responsibility, I just don’t agree with it.
Genuienly, if you have ADHD and don’t think you could manage the regular payments, it probably is the smart move to just not have another thing you need to remember.
There are various ways that you could go for some kind of ‘credit repair’ type thing that would just automatically make payments out of your checking or savings account, or something like that… but that is only really important if your credit scores are like, way, way below 720.
I also think this whole system is assbackwards insane, but as you say with the apartments and such… it just is our social credit score, there are downsides to just not doing anything with it, you do have to ‘play the game’ to some extent, there is no opting out.
I was homeless for 2 years, and its now been about 2 years I’m not homeless.
I ran up some cards to avoid going to jail for stealing food, freezing to death in a blizzard or dying of exposure in a heatwave… and some of my cards (and ids) got stolen, more than once.
I’m still either paying off legit collections or arguing against illegitimate ones, to this day… But I managed to improve from ~530 to ~700 in the last 2 years time, as well as set aside an emergency fund (currently just shy of 3 months of my ongoing CoL), and a bit of investments, and get some actual basic useful home type stuff, and a bit of a shelf stable food pantry, after losing literally everything.
I’ve never gone bankrupt. I’ve never had to go to court or jail over a summary judgement on debt collections.
That’ll be what happens to more and more Americans who have so much debt they either result to fraud or some other crime, or just think they can ignore it.
You can and will get arrested and jailed for not showing up at a court summons that results from debt collection, a lot of Americans don’t seem to understand that.
The other alternative is basically… well you’d have an armed force of your own to stop you from getting picked up by the cops, lets put it that way.
I’m glad you managed to get out of that mess. I’ve had three bouts of homelessness before, the fear of it happening again is ever-looming.
I agree with everything you said and don’t have much more to add. Just that I’m grateful you (and I) aren’t dealing with homelessness at this point in time. It sounds like you have more of an emergency fund than I do (though I’m trying!) This whole country is pay-to-play and if we lose, we just fall to the bottom without any support. Hell, even looking for low-income housing is a massive task in and of itself. Many of us have to literally win a lottery in this country in order to have a home.
Yep yep yep.
People who’ve never been homeless, they don’t understand this country.
Its that simple.
You’re not a real person anymore, you’re garbage that talks for some reason, has the gall to make eye contact for some reason.
And anyone can become homeless rather quickly, if they have a run of sufficiently bad luck, untrusthworthy friends/family, just are the wrong skin color or sexual orientation, etc.
Anybody who has not experienced it is fucking delusional about what this country really is, and I mean that absolutely, doesn’t matter what your ideology or day job is.
But yeah, I had to move halfway across the country, via Greyhound, to find a place to live.
Its not impossible to do this on SSDI alone (I was very seriously injured in my run of homelessness), I’ve managed to do it, but… its extremely difficult.
There were many days I was sure would be my last.
Saw a lot of people die.
Thats my American experience: No one cares, fuck you, die.
Glad you’ve survived it as well, at least thus far.
I’d just give up, buy food with credit, and literally walk off to invade someone’s forest, cannibalize them, use their land to hunt.
After all, they crowded everyone out on purpose.
Who am I kidding, I’m a pussy even now.
To afford everything you just need to be disabled, then you get health care, food support, monthly income, and rent help. If the top 10% paid their taxes then everyone can get these benefits.
Can’t tell if sarcastic. Too many people legit think this way.
Being disabled means having to be scrutinized regularly by government authority, by filling out endless paper forms in an attempt to justify your disability to someone with a vested interest in not believing you. I helped my girlfriend fill out disability forms last year. It’s particularly cruel because she can only use her hands for brief bursts of time before needing to rest. Sometimes she sends me voice recordings instead of texts so she can respond to me, because her hands simply can’t type everything she wants to say. Yet she’s given page after page of questions about her abilities, the chores she’s capable of completing, the hobbies she has, and so on, all so someone who’s never met her (or worse, probably an AI) can poke holes in her story and deny her claims.
Don’t even get me started on the income limits.
Not really being sarcastic, I am on SSI and have been for 15+ years. Was denied twice, even with the State declaring that I am disabled. To get SSI you have to get a lawyer to file certain paperwork. Went to several doctors that the government wanted me to. Luckily I also had a psychiatrist and a therapist so my mental disorder was on record. Also had a county case manager who put I so much work to make sure that I went to the correct adult foster home and found the lawyer I needed. That isn’t even scratching the surface of the paperwork I have to go through every year just to keep my CADI funding.
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Oh wow! In switzerland there is immense political pressure beause health insurance is very expensive.
I pay 6300 per year.
I’ve got a “Cadillac” plan in Spain, which for a family of 4 is about 5K a year. No copays or anything. Occasionally I’ll have a prescription which will cost €20, and the farmacist will get angry on my behalf.
In the US, we were paying $25,000 (pretax) in premiums for a meh plan with copays at every turn.
I love that.
In Canada the eyecare industry is a capitalist hellscape. We just got national dental care and now the opticians and eye doctors are jealous and revolting against their own system because people are buying their contacts and glasses online and not going to the eye doctor. Less and less people have jobs that cover eye care so the ones I talk to want their industry socialized like everyone else’s in the health industry.
Mind giving more detail? Who is the insurance provider and how did you sign up?
In Spain? I moved to Spain, and use Sanitas. My bank offers additional benefits since I signed through them - but honestly, as an American, they could be overcharging me massively and I’d never notice.
In Spain, yeah. Sanitas seems like a popular option for visa holders. The cost seems amazing, one year is about what I’d pay per month in the US.
Is that all inclusive, or do you pay additional costs when things happen?
The distinction here is important- $26K is premiums which is money that goes to the insurance companies. You will end up paying more than that with co-pays, deductibles, etc.
So this is including the deductibles. Ater that there still is 10% in co-pay. But that is really not that much.
Usually all inclusive from what Ive heard from others. Problem is wait times. But if it’s not life threating, you’re waiting anyways in the US. United States healthcare is dominated by insurance lobbyist. Fear mongering Republicans keep the system up.
Health insurance premiums are going to cost $28000 from now on.
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