Healthy Is As Healthy Does
And my grading is done and submitted, which is the good news.
THERE’S something that’s going to land me in the hospital some day.
But, to get back to the subject–
1) Michael F misunderstood what I meant when I said the working poor weren’t the issue.
They may be the issue NOW, but that should be taken care of (more or less) under the ACA.
The people who will end up without health insurance under Obamacare will not be the working poor, but the people–like me–who must buy insurance on the INDIVIDUAL market.
It was also the effect of the Romney health care policy on the INDIVIDUAL market that was at issue, not that of what happened to employer-provided plans.
The ACA will not provide anything like universal coverage. It will cover only half the number of uninsured. On top of that, and the half left out are going to come from the ranks of those of us who do NOT have employer sponsored plans and who must therefore buy on the individual market.
And yes, of course, we’re a minority, but I don’t understand why forcing us to go from insured to uninsured and to do so based on requiring us to purchase coverage for things we neither need nor want is an acceptable price to pay.
As to the things I don’t need–I’m a sixty two year old female. If I ever again in my life require maternity coverage, it will shake my atheism to the core.
I do understand the way insurance works, but I do not see why it requires me to buy a one-size-fits-all, everybody must do the same thing plan now when it never did before.
But there’s more.
In the don’t want and don’t need category is something that is, for me, a matter of principle.
No insurance policy I have ever bought has included “mental health” coverage.
And yes, I’ve always checked.
That’s one of the advantages of working freelance and buying on your own, instead of being covered by an employer.
I don’t buy “mental health” coverage not only because clinical psychology, which controls such services, is neither science nor medicine.
I don’t buy it because the “mental health” system is largely an instrument of social control, allowed by the courts to redefine inconvenient people as not really competent and therefore not really citizens and therefore not really people who have rights, including the right to refuse “treatment.”
I’ll be happy to rethink my refusal here at such time as “mental health professionals” are barred from offering testimony in courts and barred from having any influence on whether or not people are locked up–in mental institutions as well as in jails.
Until that happens–and I’m not expecting it any time soon, since both parties are equally enamored of allowing “mental health professionals” to lock people up for indeterminate periods based only on their “professional judgment” or, worse, the “consensus of the field”–I’m not going to be buying in to the new health care system.
I admit, as well, that it’s frustrating as hell that even with “reform,” I and millions of people like me are still classified as nonpersons.
People who have employer sponsored health plans didn’t need reform.
People like me did.
And right now, even those of us who WILL buy “mental health coverage” are being forced out of the market by rate hikes we can’t afford to pay, caused by “increased coverage” we’ll never get.
We’re being reformed right out of having any health insurance at all.
18 Responses to 'Healthy Is As Healthy Does'
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Jane, you’ve missed the whole point of modern political theory. Sturdy, independent self-employed people who need a government primarily to protect them from force and fraud, to maintain roads and see to the national defense–that is, people like you–aren’t supposed to exist.
The accepted categories are (1) government bureaucrat (2) astoundingly rich, (3) employee of a very large private-sector firm, and (4) homeless, drug-addicted and, ideally, criminal. The system concerns itself with them. There are fewer of your type in every census. Remember that IRS regional supervisor who announced that by the time he was done, there would be no self-employed people in his region? He wasn’t an outlier–just a blabbermouth.
No, it won’t last. But we haven’t hit bottom yet.
robert_piepenbrink
21 Oct 13 at 1:12 pm
Robert, protection of people from force and fraud, maintance of roads and national defense have always existed and miraculously maintain themselves without human intervention.
The real purpose of government is social justice defined as A thinks X needs help but doesn’t want to pay for it himself. A thinks B has too much money. A says “Social justice requires that the government forces B to help X.”
We have somehow managed to make jealousy, envy and spite into supreme moral virtues.
jd
21 Oct 13 at 5:02 pm
I once explained–and I made a pretty good case, with plentiful examples–that the defining activity of the modern (American meaning) liberal was to lecture at outrageous length about his or her moral superiority to a captive and silenced audience. That was about eight years ago, but it seems more true than ever.
robert_piepenbrink
21 Oct 13 at 6:40 pm
Back when organized religion was important, charity was considered a virtue and many people considered 10% of income to be a reasonable amount.
Now work out your total taxes (federal, state and local) including sales tax and then see how much goes to education, health and welfare. I strongly suspect you will come up with close to 10% of your income.
jd
21 Oct 13 at 8:14 pm
Just noticed this the other day. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/10/21/debt-by-the-numbers/
Also, VDH sums it up pretty well here:
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=6645
We certainly do live in interesting time as much of the east of New South Wales is burning in a series of fires that the usual global warming suspects (who, like fighter pilots, only have two moving parts) are already claiming to have been caused by climate change skeptics.
Mique
21 Oct 13 at 8:25 pm
And if Jane will forgive me just this one last time, I just love this guy:
http://thediplomad.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/setting-low-bar-nobody-is-madder-than-me.html
Mique
21 Oct 13 at 8:30 pm
Re the US debt. Perhaps it would help if the media gave up using trillions. 17,000 billion looks much bigger than 17 trillion.
jd
21 Oct 13 at 9:48 pm
JD, 10% would be much too low. All the “modern” governments spend between 40-50% of their subjects’ money, Military spending is seldom over 2% these days and didn’t reach 4% in the US even during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. So figure 35 to 48% of everything a modern man makes is spent by the state for domestic purposes, then deduct for police, prisons, courts and “infrastructure.” I doubt whether health, education and welfare are anywhere as low as 25%. Mind you, like any corrupt, inefficient charity, administrative expenses and overhead are considerable.
robert_piepenbrink
22 Oct 13 at 6:02 am
Regading Mique’s first two links, the second of which tries to tap dance around the first.
Go to the first link, print out the chart if necessary, lay a ruler along the revenue line from 1995 to 2000 and extend it forward. Hmm. There would have been no deficit.
Further note the dishonesty of the graph in showing the deficit as a shadow behind the revenue when in fact there was zero deficit as revenues actually exceeded expenditures briefly — the debt line does flatten out momentarily right at the end of the Clinton presidency.
Note the sudden acceleration of the debt under Bush, with two tax cuts and two wars on the credit card. Those aren’t liberal fantasies, those are hard facts.
Then the legacies of Reagan+ Bush I + Bush II finally came due and the financial bubble exploded.
As for Robert’s comments, this pie chart (and other ones with the same breakdown that can be found, this is one of the easiest to read) rather disputes his numbers:
http://dakiniland.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/budget-pie-chart.jpg
Note military spending is 18-20% of the Federal budget, not 2%. Since Robert is off by an order of magnitude there, take the rest of his numbers with that in mind.
michaelwfisher@cox.net
22 Oct 13 at 7:16 am
Michael?
Robert didn’t say 2% of the budget.
He said 2% of GDP.
janeh
22 Oct 13 at 7:20 am
My bad
michaelwfisher@cox.net
22 Oct 13 at 7:24 am
Hm. Okay, if 2% of GDP = ~20% of budget then 40% (SS + HHS/Medicare etc.) = 4% of GDP.
Unless the laws of mathematics have suddenly been repealed.
Which would still seem to leave Robert with good bit of explaining to do.
michaelwfisher@cox.net
22 Oct 13 at 7:37 am
Never mind, Mike. This might make you feel a bit better:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/10/22/alarming-yes-but-not-the-end-of-civilisation/
It’s from the same (libertarian) blog as the graph you didn’t like. But in case you get too smug (:-)), so also is this:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/10/22/ignorance-rules/
Kates, like most of the people who post regularly to Catallaxy are professional economists. Needless to say, Keynesian economics does not impress any of them.
Mique
22 Oct 13 at 8:26 am
Here,Michael, because I know how much you love links:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html
But let’s try again. Government spending in the United states is about 40% of GDP. And, as I said, American military spending’s post-Clinton peak was about 4% of GDP. That leaves 36% for roads, bridges, HEW in all its various forms, and debt service. (The government of Denmark, which spends about 57% of GDP and less than 2% on its military, would have 55% to play with for such purposes.) My recollection is that Federal “domestic discretionary” runs 3-4% of GDP, much of which is infrastructure. If we double that to allow for the state contribution, we wind up at 28% for government overhead, interest on the debt and welfare in all its various forms.
You can sleep well tonight. The laws of mathematics are still with us.
You might have asked yourself, by the way, how a Social Security tax of between 12 and 13% of income got to be under 4% of GDP. Two problems, I think: (1) you’re only counting Federal spending, and (2) you’re not counting all of that. Those counts which place “government spending” around 20% only count Federal spending, and I’m pretty sure they exclude at least Social Security–which is how the Federal government used to “borrow” from the Social Security Trust Fund.
robert_piepenbrink
22 Oct 13 at 8:43 am
change of topic. Could someone explain why we talk about Regan tax cuts or Bush’s spending and ignore Congress? We have just had a demonstration that Congress has the power to control taxes and spending.
jd
22 Oct 13 at 7:45 pm
It’s an old American tradition of blaming or praising the chief executive–hence, for example, “Mr. Lincoln’s War” or “Mr. Madison’s War” going at least as far back as Queen Anne’s War, which the rest of the world calls the War of the Spanish Succession and forward to “Bush’s War” in Iraq. Hence also ObamaCare and not PelosiCare.
There’s probably a reason “boss” along with “dicker” is among the very few Dutch words to make the transition to American English.
Mind you, a President who had taxes or spending change because his veto was overridden would be in an interesting position, but I don’t remember any.
robert_piepenbrink
23 Oct 13 at 8:44 am
A link to an earlier comment on some of our political issues. It’s been seeming more pertinent in recent years:
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/old_issue.html
robert_piepenbrink
23 Oct 13 at 11:02 am
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=6672#more-6672
It would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious.
Mique
25 Oct 13 at 7:38 am