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In Latest Obamacare Fiasco, Most Low-Income Workers Can't Afford "Affordable Care Act"
Just ten days ago we described the latest unintended (we hope) consequence of the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, when Colorado's largest nonprofit co-op health insurer and participant in that state's insurance exchange, Colorado HealthOP, announcing it was abruptly shutting down ahead of the November 1 start of enrollment for 2016, forcing 80,000 Coloradans to find a new insurer for 2016.
It wasn't the first: the Colorado co-op was at least the fifth in the nation to collapse. Similar nonprofit insurers have already failed in Louisiana, Iowa/Nebraska, Nevada and New York. A health insurance cooperative in Tennessee announced this week that it would stop offering new policies.
The insurer failed because it would fail to be profitable, in the process burning through $23 million in taxpayer-funded loss that would not be repaid. "Taxpayers are on the hook for millions of dollars in loans given out to the CO-OP, money that will likely never be repaid," U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner said in a statement after the announcement.
And while many had anticipated from the beginning that the Obamacare tax was merely a subsidy for the large insurance companies (or rather, their public shareholders), few had expected a far more sinister consequence of the "Affordable" care plan: that the employer mandate would turn out to be unaffordable for a vast majority of low-income workers - the very people who were supposed to benefit from it.
But before we unveil this latest depressing, if also anticipated, outcome of socialized healthcare, let's remember that much of the U.S. has press has touted the success of Obamacare. To be sure, nationwide, the Affordable Care Act has significantly reduced the number of Americans without health insurance. Around 10.7% of the country’s under-65 population was uninsured in the first three months of this year, down from 17.5% five years earlier, according to the National Health Interview Survey, a long-running federal study. Some 14 million previously uninsured adults have gained coverage in the last two years, the Obama administration estimates.
However, what is left unsaid is that most of those gains have come from a vast expansion of Medicaid and from the subsidies that help lower-income people buy insurance through federal and state exchanges. Workers who are offered affordable individual coverage through their employers — a group that the employer mandate was intended to expand — are not eligible for government-subsidized insurance through the exchanges, even if their income would otherwise have qualified them.
It is the failing of Obamacare to address the needs of America's struggling lower-middle class, those women and men who work long, hard hours, often at minimum wage, scrambling to make ends meet. It is them, that the NYT writes about in its recent scathing critique of Obamacare (traditionally, it has been the WSJ that gives scathing reports on the disaster that is Obamacare, usually involving soaring monthly premiums for those who were dragged into the Scotus-enabled tax beyond their will).
Take the case of Billy Sewell who began offering health insurance this year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns. He wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million — a hit he wasn’t sure his low-margin business could afford. His actual costs, though, turned out to be far smaller than he had feared. So far, only two people have signed up.
“We offered, and they didn’t take it,” he said.
But isn't that against the stated primary objective of Obamacare: to make affordable health insurance more accessible and affordable to everyone? The answer, according to the NYT, is no.
The Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer most of their employees insurance or face financial penalties, was one of the law’s most controversial provisions. Business owners and industry groups fiercely protested the change, and some companies cut workers’ hours to reduce the number of employees who would be eligible.
But 10 months after the first phase of the mandate took effect, covering companies with 100 or more workers, many business owners say they are finding very few employees willing to buy the health insurance that they are now compelled to offer. The trend is especially pronounced among smaller and midsize businesses in fields filled with low-wage hourly workers, like restaurants, retailing and hospitality. (Companies with 50 to 99 workers are not required to comply with the mandate until next year.)
Hold on, aren't those some of the "best" performing job categories in the past year? Why yes they are, in fact, with 11.1 million workers, those employed by "food service and drinking places" are the single largest job subcategory tracked by the BLS. It is almost as if the bulk of the jobs growth went to fields that would be mostly disadvantaged by Obamacare.
Well, there may be millions of waiters and bartenders in the US, but contrary to what Obamacare promised the vast majority are and will remain uninsured:
“Based on what we’ve seen in the marketplace, we’re advising some of our clients to expect single-digit take rates,” said Michael A. Bodack, an insurance broker in Harrison, N.Y. “One to 2 percent isn’t unusual.”
The reason? What was supposed to be affordable remains painfully unaffordable for the lowest rung of the employment pyramid.
Here is the actual math as experienced by both the abovementioned Mr. Sewell of Golden Corral restaurants, and his mostly minimum-wage employees.
He employs 1,800 people at the 26 Golden Corral franchises he owns in six Southern and Midwestern states, and previously offered insurance only to his salaried management staff. In January, when the employer mandate took effect, he made the same insurance plan, with a bigger employer contribution, available to all employees working an average of 30 or more hours a week.
Running the math on his plan — a typical one for the restaurant industry — illustrates why a number of low-wage workers are falling through gaps in the Affordable Care Act.
The annual premium for individual coverage through the Golden Corral Blue Cross Blue Shield plan is $4,800. Mr. Sewell pays 65 percent for service workers, leaving them with a monthly cost of $140.
The health care law defines affordable employer-sponsored insurance as that priced at 9.5 percent or less of an employee’s annual household income for individual coverage. (Because employers do not know how much money their workers’ relatives make, there are several “safe harbors” they can use for compliance, including basing their calculation on only their own employees’ wages.) Mr. Sewell’s insurance meets the test, but $65 per biweekly paycheck is more than most of his workers are willing — or able — to pay for insurance that still carries steep out-of-pocket costs, including a $2,500 deductible.
And this is where Obamacare's employee mandate fails for a vast majority of US workers.
Clarissa Morris, 47, has been a server at the Golden Corral here for five years, earning $2.13 an hour plus tips. On a typical day, she leaves the restaurant with about $70 in tips. Her husband makes $9 an hour at Walmart but has been offered only a part-time schedule there, without benefits. Their combined paychecks barely cover their rent and daily essentials.
“It’s either buy insurance or put food in the house,” she said. On the rare occasions that she gets sick, she visits a local clinic with sliding-scale fees. It costs her $25 for a visit, and $4 to fill prescriptions at Walmart.
Other business owners find the same paradox:
Brad Mete, the managing partner of Affinity Resources, a staffing agency in Dania Beach, Fla., began offering insurance this year to most of his workers only because the law required it. He said the alternative, paying a penalty of about $2,000 per full-time employee, was unthinkable, “That would put us out of business, in one swoop.”
Trying to persuade his hourly workers to buy the insurance is “like pulling teeth,” he said. His company’s plan costs $120 a month, but workers making about $300 a week are reluctant to spend $30 of it on insurance.
That's ok - if you beleive the Obama administration, wages are about to soar.
Or maybe not.
What is truly tragic, however, that just like in the case of "punishing work" when Earned Income Tax benefits for those living around the poverty line, see their after tax pay rise above what comparable workers who make up to $50k per year, Obamacare seems to have been designed only for those making above the median US wage and above:
A study by ADP, the payroll processing giant, found an income tipping point at which most employees who are eligible for health insurance will buy it: $45,000 a year.
Workers making $15,000 to $20,000 a year buy employer-sponsored individual insurance when it is offered only 37 percent of the time. That rate rises at every income increment ADP studied until $45,000, when it reaches 82 percent and levels off. Further income gains have virtually no effect on the rate, ADP found.
And so the wheels slowly fall off the socialized healthcare train:
Low-income, full-time workers like Ms. Morris may prove to be some of the hardest people to bring into the ranks of the insured, said Gary Claxton, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducts an annual study on employer health benefits.
“This is one of the outcomes of trying to keep employer-based coverage in place,” Mr. Claxton said. “These are folks that didn’t have coverage before, and they’re not being given much help to get coverage now.”
Then, now that the disastrous law has been observed in practice, the result is nothing short of a bureaucratic nightmare, and everyone is scrambling to find loopholes:
Mario K. Castillo, a lawyer in Houston who has extensively studied the new law, said it was poorly understood in the industry, and a bureaucratic nightmare.
“They have to issue you a policy, but dropping it after one year is perfectly legal,” he said. “If you’re in this space, you essentially have to shop for insurance every year.”
But the biggest slap in Obama's care comes from those who were supposed to be the direct beneficiaries.
For employees, forgoing coverage can mean facing tax penalties. Ms. Morris said she was surprised by the $95 fee she had to pay this year for being uninsured in 2014. “I had kind of heard about it, but I didn’t think it was going to kick in until later,” she said.
Around 7.5 million taxpayers paid the fine, according to a preliminary report by the Internal Revenue Service. That is significantly more than the three million to six million the government had forecast.
Actually, considering central planning and government takeover of private industries always leads to disaster, it is more surprising that the number isn't far, far greater.
As for those tens of millions of minimum wage workers, who thought they had a right to "hope" for "change", and instead ended up even worse off - as well as unisnured and paying a penalty - our apologies, especially since it is all downhill from here. What you should have done is buy the stock of health insurance companies: because their shareholders' gain (and your loss) is what the "Affordable" Care Act is truly all about.
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Of course not. How can it be health care if you can't pay the deductible? It is a TAX. Just wait until 2017 when the premiums rise another 20-40 percent.
Easy fix for those under 40k-50k per year and relatively healthy.
This is not the pefect solution but it will be cheaper than not having insurance and cheaper than the penalty.
Why doesn't the US just copy one of the superior health care systems from the OECD?
Too proud?
This is the type of shit that causes revolts
When 62% of Americans have $1000 or less in savings.
Plenty of countries in the world the deductible is $0 for everyone and the cost per capita for healthcare is less than $4,000 per year.
http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//most-efficient-heal...
In America 17% of GDP goes through sick people.
But the health insurance company stocks in those countries are not doing nearly as well as in the USA.
The "success" of Obamacare that the MSM is crowing about is DUE ENTIRELY TO THE EXPANSION OF MEDICAID FURTHER UP THE INCOME SPECTRUM. Everyone else has gotten the shaft.
Obamacare is failing in EXACTLY the way it was hoped it would- adverse selection. I doubt even Obama could have hoped it would happen so fast. It's exceeded even the wildest socialist expecations.
We're probably within 10 years of single-payer government-sponsored healthcare. All those fancy hospitals that have been built the last few decades? You won't be going to them any more- those are for rich people and maybe the upper middle class. Everyone else, take a number at the deli counter and wait outside your local VA hospital for 6 months to see a doctor.
Once you do see that doctor I hope you don't have anything more serious than a hang nail. Your life isn't worth the drugs or procedure needed to cure anything more serious than that.
Yep, decent healthcare will require household income of about $100k. Not rolling in it...but enough to get you into the cheap seats. If you welch on the tab the fuckers can always come after you.
That's it right there. They are fucking the lower classes, the middle class, the upper middle class.
The only exceptions are the Elites and CONgress. If the upper middle class doesn't cough up the dough when they get sick they always have assets and "retirement" to pilfer. The middle class sells the house and liquidates the kid's college fund. The lower classes do without or rely on seedy clinics or prison.
Amurika!
You have to give credit to the corrupt miserable POS to fuckup an already broken system.
Jew cum is an acquired taste - BHO
Can't afford Romneycare-lite? You must not work for Bain-capital. How about we stop giving handouts to the insurance companies for poor people tax? (Poor? Well, we better raise your rates!) How about we organize and distribute the risk between people who aren't trying to make multi billion dollar profits with single payer? Wake up and turn off Fox.
The country will collapse into chaos long before then. No way we can get to ten years out on this level of madness. No chance in hell of that ten years going by without massive civil unrest and disobedience.
Harvard grad and affirmitive action fucking the peasants hard.
We got a letter from aetna with a suprize 55% increase for 2016 renewal. Mind you the letter also states that the final amount may be different depending on regulatory requirements. (Not lesser. Different)
New years surprize!?
BTW: There is a company in Hong Kong and the Marianna islands (US territory) that insures Americans anywhere in the world. You go to the doctor anywhere and they deal with it. Much lesser cost. I will look it up as we used to have it in 2001 to 2003 and repost
Cheers mates
Keep us updated. Interested in hearing what this cluster-fuck does (did) to their cost structure.
Only 55% ? My Aetna increase came i the form of a "we are cancelling your plan but are offering this better deal" in the form of an 82% increase in premium, a 300% increase in the deductible and a change of copay from 100% to 70%.
Do the fuckers really think anyone will simply sit and take that ? Fuck Aetna and fuck Obama and fuck SCOTUS...feel free to add anyone else that deserves fucking.
I thought the exact same thing 20 years ago. Yet, here we are.
To late.
This is what is so fucking in-human about these satanic statists... any means to justify the ends. They don't fucking care one bit about anyone's well being, health, income, livelihood, etc. They have a mental illness allowing them to be co-opted by the devil bent on inflicting as much pain and suffering they can on mankind.
Get rid of the middle man. Amen to that.
And the income tax rates those countries charge are?
Well the cost is right here http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//most-efficient-heal...
You can see it as a percentage of GDP or as a nominal cost per capita.
Singapore, you want the healthcare system to be like Singapore?
No need to go as radical as that.
USA has similar culture to UK and Australia.
USA has higher income tax than UK and Australia.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/oecd-income-tax-wedge-chart-2015-4?r=US&IR=T
Australia = 82.1 life expectancy, 9.1% of GDP, $6,140/capita
UK = 81.5 life expectancy, 9.4% of GDP, $3,647/capita
USA = 78.17life expectancy, 17.2% of GDP, $8,895/capita
Dont bother copying the high tax European socialist countries. Also we don't have the same lifestyle/culture as the Asian countries.
But Australia, UK and New Zealand? What are those guys doing?
So lemme get this straight, after Obama-Pelosi-Reid "fixed it all" you want to fuck around with it some more? But don't bother copying "European socialist countries" where one can go blind waiting for "permission from the state" for a cataract surgery or in Singapore where you're "warded off" based on your taxable income?
See, what we really need is the fucking IRS involved in medical decisions, right?
ever been in the UK health system? I have....and a friend almost died of a routine appendicitis....it isn't a very good sysetm....2-5 year wait for hernia operation
Mebbe it's the lack of MIC?
What is Australia doing? All levels of Australian "government" are fucking everyone as hard and as fast as they can... sans lube.
I just did my taxes. Last financial year I paid $21K in income tax and another $4K for private health insurance for my wife, son and I. Like Obamacare, it is legislated that you have private health insurance, lest you pay a tax for not having it. The ATO assesses my income, and decides that I'm $2500 short. I need to pay the Medicare Levy to cover all the people using the public system without insurance. Private Health Insurance in Australia is subsidised by the Federal Government, because people couldn't afford the full price, which means that $4K I paid would have been closer to $6K without the subsidies.
Anecdotal: My wife and I had our son during this last financial year, and we used our private health insurance to cover the costs. Now, we went to the closest hospital, which happens to both be a public hospital and the best Midwifery group in the state. When we were doing our admission forms (which we were able to do a few months prior), we said we'll use our insurance to cover the costs. The registrar was really happy about that, because the hospital gets to charge the health insurance company a lot more for services provided.
I've no idea how they can do that, but the end result is everyone gets fucked because health insurers just pass on rising costs to the insured, and the FedGov has to pay more in subsidies for private health insurance, which pushes more people to the public system, meaning the Medicare Levy has to rise (again), which means insurance costs rise to insurers can keep their profit margins.
I don't think there's any health care system on the planet that functions properly. At best, it's just taking money from people who don't use the system, and giving it indirectly to people who do. Lots of people don't see it like that though. They see it as our "moral obligation" to help those in need. If that was the case, health insurance providers wouldn't be making the rules.
The take away from all this: Eat well, exercise, sleep, and don't stress. Do your best to avoid the health insurance debacle.
I work in a part of healthcare and Obamacare is far worse than you think. It is like a spreading cancer in our system. I am not sure if it is just incompetent or it is designed to fail. It will fail in the end and the pain will be enormous. You only see the tip of the iceberg right now. Remember, too that everyone who does not buy Obamacare becomes a criminal or at least a tax cheat. I see these people every single day. They are not just the poor like this article says. I would say most of them are what I would call Trade-Class. These are working class independent guys who might do electric, carpentry or be a 1099 guy in an oil field. They work hard and run thin. They cannot afford $500/mo and a $5k deductible. That is 11 large out of pocket every year. Almost no one outside of the top 5% of Americans can afford that. In fact, it is not really insurance. It is self pay and someone gives you a shitty piece of paper to say you are insured. You are mostly self insured.
Here are a few points for my fellow ZH friends that will help make sense of things including why Europe is cheaper than America according to leftist lemmings.
1. Private insurance has always subsidized government programs. That is why it is rather costly. Everyone from your doctor to the nursing home makes more on insurance than the razor thin, even money losing reimbursements of Medicare, Medicaid and even TriCare. So, if they have enough insured and make enough they take the lousy government plans, too. Obamacare designers are too stupid to know this and now they are eating the whole financial enchilada. They will choke on it.
2. America subsidizes the rest of the world. Most everyone involved in medical innovation looks at the American market to make their money on. Europe gets a discount because you have the heavy hand of government "negotiating" (if you do not agree to their prices they have the ability to seize your patents) and you do at least get total access to the population. However, the real money is in America. For an analogy compare our military to their crappy little contingents. Because we have a military roughly as big as all of them put together to protect them, they can scrimp on their military and devote it to social programs. It actually works roughly the same in medicine.
3. Lefties just cannot get the difference between actual health care and insurance through their thick skulls. There were many uninsured in America and 100% of them had access to healthcare. There are a zillion community health and subsidized and discount plans across America. I expect they will begin to evaporate or change their business models.
4. Obamacare has a bunch of expensive and adverse selection mandates. There is a part called "Accountable Care Organizations" which are cooperative groups of doctors who will work around disease states for cost savings, e.g., diabetes, allergy, asthma, etc. Without a long explanation, I predict the more ruthless ones will begin discharging complex and sick patients as the inevitably blow your cost averages. In other words, if you are sick and complicated you will find it HARDER to get a doctor. If the groups beat cost targets they get kick backs from government. This happened in the good ole USSR. If you were sick you got kicked out of hospitals. If you were well they tried to hold onto you forever because you improved their ratings and government reimbursements.
Obamacare is a ruthless brainless attempt to put the whiney leftist "social justice" ideas into actual practice. It is stupid and supremely arrogant people intervening in things they do not understand.
Unfortunately, outside of Ben Carson who has real connections to medicine (and maybe Rand Paul), I do not think any of the Republicans are bright enough to see both the economic carnage, healthcare destruction or the gigantic voter appeal opportunity right on their doorstep. I expect the R's to do nothing.
Thanks for taking the time to compose that informative missive.
you are forgetting, perhaps because you also work in healthcare, that the average salary of a physician in the EU is less than $100K, here the average MD makes over $200k, the average surgeon over $400-500k, and don't even get me started with the top tier hospital admins, they are on the millions range... the money for that racket is coming from the patients
It's the cost of administration that has positively skyrocketed in the last thirty years.
I don't have a problem with a doctor making $200k. It's a tough job and they earn it. It's the fucking administrators that need to be cut out of the system.
There are a lot of different stats to answer your question about incomes. First, doctors' incomes vary widely with specialty. Basic patient care and office visits do not pay so well. Procedures pay much better. Averages tell you very little. A family doctor might make about $125k, less in some areas and much more in others. It really depends on who your patients are. If you work in a large Medicaid area or on are loan repayment you will make much less. If it makes you feel better, incomes are dropping as most everything pays less.
The administrators in the hospitals earn a bunch because they usually can do two things. First, they run a pretty good (profitable) ship and second, they figure out how to game the billing system. I could talk about the art of billing for an entire page. It is a game and it is run mostly by insurers (including government). It is a mix of not paying for anything they don't have to pay for, paying as low as possible and sometimes getting gouged when someone finds something they MUST pay for...sort of revenge, actually.
Obamacare empowered insurers because Obamaphiles and designers really do not know how to price risk. They have not done it before.
Frankly, if you had to go to school till your early 30's, go through what the doctors have to go through, pay huge sums for overhead and liability you'd demand decent compensation. Their salaries are not any higher than mid level corporate types and they actually save or lengthen your life. Lawyers earn far more creating havoc in every system and industry known to mankind.
In a freely traded market, doctors, nurses and so on would all find their proper value like anyone else. I submit it is pretty high. I would also double check those income stats. Those sound far too low for Europe. I will also guess they put in regular hours and are more like government employees in most of those countries.
You will find that many come to the USA to practice, as well. I have known lots of Canadian physicians, in particular.
Remember, every system, economic or ecological adapts to the forces within that system. Medicine is one of the most government controlled systems anywhere.
It's because the healthcare system was overtaken by the insurance agencies, then by the lawyers/bean counters, and then overrun by the govt. Next up everyone will really take an ass-raping when the UN or the World Health Organization decides to take over.
I've lived in the Uk and the US and always thought Americans pay much more tax (and get nothing in return). My education in the Uk was free and so was the healthcare. Plus part of the tax goes to maintain parasitic royal family etc
"My education in the Uk was free and so was the healthcare."
Free? So you never paid taxes? And you call the royalty parasites.....
You left out that most advances and expenditures on research come from the US.
Thus those other nations may not be sharing in the costs for the benefits they are getting. Would the life expectancy around the world drop? Don't know. Would their costs go up if they spent the billions for R&D? Don't know.
We also find that many of those nations have a higher public debt per gdp then the US. Eventually something has to give and most likely it won't be pleasant for the populations around the world.
So perhaps there is no fair comparison.
Good point but actually a subset of my point. The research might actually take place in Europe or even S. America. But whatever they are developing, whether a new med or a new MRI machine is aimed squarely for the U.S. market.
My assertion is we do not know what fair compensation is because the market for healthcare is either horribly distorted or fully government controlled (which is also distortion). If we can reconnect or better connect people with costs and value judgments, including the price of insurance we will get a more rational market. This includes people, not employers owning their healthcare.
A growing number of Americans are indeed travel abroaad to get very good and affordable healh care:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/us/the-growing-popularity-of-having-su...
As if you have any knowledge of the Sing. system
LOL
I don't care if they pay me to take medical insurance, I don't want the government involved so intimately in my life. Have I no right to opt out entirely no matter how wonderful the deal is?
Hillary says no.
Try to remember, it takes a village to raise an idiot.
7 years and counting since 2008.
8 downers? Strange that truth hurts.
Anyway we are 44th .. USA USA USA
Strawman. These bullshit articles measure effiiency based on cherry picking statistics such as life expectancy. Life expectancy misses quality of life, which has NOTHING to do with FUCKING SICK CARE. With life suport, I can keep you alive for 100 years., but what is your qualify of life? Life expectancy falls into the trap of quantity over quality.
So much for the goal seeking horseshit. Who the fuck would want to live forever in this shit show anyway?
" Who the fuck would want to live forever in this shit show anyway?"
Raises hand!
This shit is fun to watch.
Imteresting times indeed.
Obamacare is certainly a train wreck,but no one can say that socialized medicine has failed in the USA, because socialized medicine has yet to be tried in the USA. Obamacare is a far cry from the socialization of health risk. It is more like an enhancement, or an amplification, to an already deeply capitalist medical system.
"In America 17% of GDP goes through sick people."
It's a hell of a lot more than 17% going through the hands of "sick" people.
The system is an obomination.
Yep we spend A TRILLION FRIGGIN DOLLARS on the MIC and the poor US worker
gets screwed health insurance wise. Medicare or single payer for everyone and if you want your
own insurance and doctors let the free mkt, run
This is all by design, folks.
Obamacare was designed to be too expensive.
It was designed to be inefficient.
It was designed to be confusing and awkward.
This is only the first step in the Demonazi plan to implement fullblown socialized medicine.
This is the David Lloyd George initial phase, which is designed to get people to say, "It isn't working. The government must takeover even more of our healthcare, must take more of our earnings, must replace the copper fist with the iron fist."
This is designed to force the citizenry to demand a totalitarian state.
Hitlery! Will finish that off and, as a concerned and loving grandma, will finally get rid of that 2nd Amendment issue (for the chil'ren).
Fuck it, make sure your income qualifies for medicaid.
Income based not asset based.
I would have qualified but opted to purchase a new policy directly from my provider. Would have preferred to keep my old policy but it suddenly became too "affordable."
So you would have qualified for Medicaid, which means you have poverty level income. But you come here every day and lecture everyone here on ZH -- a website that is primarily about investments -- about how the so-called productive class should run the world without the annoyance of elected government. You certainly fit my cliche that most Ayn Rand types are poor and blame everyone but themselves for their predicament. And the lad fancies himself a poet.
I'm self employed and semi-retired. I have my property and my nest egg and now I value my time over the consumption of consumer goods. No cell phone, No TV. Frugal tastes and low expenses. I garden. I cut firewood. I do home repairs. I read. And yes, I realize just how despicable that all is.
You certainly fit my expectation of the socialist gadfly with your demands that everyone must run as fast as possible on a Keynesian treadmill, creating a great carbon footprint which you blame on capitalism while the mailed fist of your hatred for the poor glints from beneath the compassion which you wear on your sleeve.
You remind me of every self-involved and self-congratulatory person I've ever met who likes Rand. You spout platitudes, and have no idea what they mean. So capitalism is not about consumerism?
You may want to read Thoreau more closely. He has about as much in common with Ayn Rand as Bernie Sanders.
Capitalism depends on setting aside some of today's profit and not consuming it. That's what puts the capital in capitalism. Consumerism was created to sustain the central banks debt backed monetary system which requires an ever increasing monetary base. And as you know the central bank is a socialist institution.
The Ten Planks of the
Communist Manifesto
1848 by Karl Heinrich Marx
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
More platitudes.
Marx advocated for the creation of a state owned central bank, not a privately owned one.
Capitalism requires consumerism. Capitalists make shit that people buy.
Thoreau -- the part of my comment you ignored, probably because you just now realized that your repeated quotations to him are ridiculous in the context of your Ayn Rand worship -- detested capitalists and consumerism.
noun con·sum·er·ism the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable; also : a preoccupation with and an inclination toward the buying of consumer goods
Capitalism does not depend on excess consumption of goods. It is Keynes who demands that saving (the creation of capital) must be avoided at all costs. This leads to a misallocation of resources and creates a business cycle of large booms followed by great busts. You claimed to have voted for Ron Paul. Surely you're aware of these facts.
Doing a lot of reading is great. Understanding it is something else.
Ron Paul wanted to end the Fed (a private cartel of banks) and the MIC (a private cartel of military suppliers). He got my vote as a protest, even though I disagree with his contradictory views of laissez-faire economics.
Apparently you couldn't understand even when Ron Paul explained it to you clearly and concisely. All you had to do was set aside your rose colored glasses and listen.
Thoreau -- the part of my comment you ignored, probably because you just now realized that your repeated quotations to him are ridiculous in the context of your Ayn Rand worship -- detested capitalists and consumerism.
Yes, Thoreau would have detest the consumerist rat race which Keynesian requires. He also understood that the desires of the individual supersedes the desires of any collective which would seek to overwhelm him. Thoreau's sentiment was later echoed by your favorite author.
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." -- Thoreau
"If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too." -- Thoreau
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” -- Ayn Rand
What are you semi-retired from?
Did you mean, "From what business have you semi-retired?" Old editors never die they just annoy people for free.
I established a web presence for dozens of local businesses back in the previous century. Now I'm just a hobbyist.
What type of business do you operate?
I run a commune.
That's the first truly funny thing I've ever heard you say.
But seriously?
A commune where your employees can never unionize lest they pull too much cake from your mouth and inhibit your personal consumerism.. Remember that? Us old timer do...
If you want to piss of a collectivist, just mention you want to opt out, that you want nothing from them and as such want to provide them nothing. It is their death virus that cannot be allowed to spread. Communism, socialism, collectivism demands 100% participation. Not just because they need the money but because that can't allow defectors. It is why most communist states built walls. They try to create walls with political correctness and when that fails they use law.
Another purveyor of platitudes. Do you use public roads? Ever driven across the country on an interstate? Ever bought a car that was built to run on those interstates?
It's easy to say you want nothing from the "collective" while you have the benefit of it. I could care less if you want to live in the mountains or desert or swamp or somewhere else and use no public services, and you and I agree that you should be allowed to do so and not pay a penny for the privilege (even though you would be benefitting indirectly from the fact that the country exists because of tax dollars that fund defense from other countries who don't care much about your right to anything). But most people who claim to want nothing from the society they disdain utilize their services every day.
Trees? Forest? What do you see?
The "contract" that our constitution provided did not include all that you seem to think it does. There are many many people who consume or use very little from the public plate, and what they do, they would happily pay.
BUT NOT THIS.
I can just see LTER berating Harriet Tubman for wearing a kerchief given to her by her master so that see could work longer under the grueling sun.
You do realize that Tubman was a big supporter of womens' suffrage. You know. Voting in elections. After she was subjected to slavery by plantation owners.
But she did wear the clothes bought by her master just as Oldwood drives on roads provided by his master. You see that as a flaw in Oldwood's character so to be consistent you would have to see it as a flaw in Tubman's character as well.
But then consistency is not something I would expect from you.
Also note that slavery was protected by the elected government.
"Slavery was protected by the elected government."
Actually, it was introduced before there were laws on the books one way or the other. All slave owners were private businessmen. It was ultimately outlawed by elected government.
Actually, it was introduced before there were laws on the books one way or the other.
You say that as if the fact that government undeniably protected slavery is mutually exclusive with slavery having existed before government endorsed it and used it's power to maintain it. But of course it isn't.
All slave owners were private businessmen.
You claim to be a businessman. If the implication is that businessmen are bad then you are bad as well.
Being a businessman is not bad. Being a slave owner is. Therefore, some businessmen are bad and some are not. Government can do bad and government can do good. Are these difficult concepts for you?
Therefore, some businessmen are bad and some are not.
There you go channeling Ayn Rand again.
Governmenet can do bad and government can do good.
The initiation of violence is always a bad thing. That is obviously a difficult concept for you.
"Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong, is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world." -- Emerson's Politics
I have no idea wtf he is proposing and defending half the time.
His view of individual Liberty and Freedom and personal choice is very dim.
I realize it's difficult for you to follow anyone who does not paint by numbers.
As a person who demands that his life be controlled by central planners it is you who more accurately represents one who paints by numbers.
In Obamacare you get $500/mo, $6k deductibles because the first person you buy insurance for is someone else. That is why you pay a huge amount. Then you also pay for yourself.
It is why only the poor and heavily subsidized like Obamacare...and maybe some with preexisting conditions. The poor will become the most advantaged group in America very soon. Kids will all be on Medicaid, free housing, free medical care and a host of other things. Obamacare makes the transfer almost direct. Look at the cost of insurance before and after. It is going up even faster than when it was mostly or partly private. This is success for the Left.
In collectivism you win by doing the least because your upside is fixed and you get a lot of free things for being poor. Everyone becomes poor. In capitalism or free exchange you do better by working either harder or smarter. That is how you attract customers for your products or labor. The results are quite predictable.
When it gets to extreme poverty with autocracy you see the walls being built. You have to capture the populace. Ideally the whole world would be afflicted with collectivism and then only the moon or Mars would offer freedom.
" most Ayn Rand types"
Holy cow! An epiphany! I thought your user name meant Let Them Eat Rand Paul.
Now that's change I could believe in!
Doesn't give the elite NWO types enough power to really crush the serfs.
FORWARD HIGH DEDUCTIBLE SOVIET!
You're a fucking idiot. The OECD can only afford their socialist healthcare system because the jackass American taxpayer subsidizes it for the OECD just like the jackass American taxpayer subsidized defense spending for Western Europe for 60 years. Americans are forced to pay 4-10x more for medical treatment and drugs so the pharmas can make a big fat profit in America and a slimmer profit everywhere else. Thank the American jackass politicians from both parties for the betrayal.
You are forgetting a lot of other subsidies. Freedom of the seas, courtesy of the US Navy. 1200+?? US Military Basis, US contributions in military and money cash payments to all our friends. Bailout of the Banking System, including through money swaps for all other currencies, etc, etc.
That shit gets expensive really quick.
Sun tzu you are the first person I have seen who gets it mostly right. You are about 75% there as best I can tell. The private American system also subsidizes the American government systems in the same way.
Also, the dynamics in medicine are such that the inputs are very expensive. If you decide tomorrow you want more doctors it will take at least eleven years to get them. New meds have to go through a long and laborious process with a high failure rate and class action lawsuits on the other side, too. Virtually everything in medicine is separated by a minimum of two layers from the patient. First, an expert, generally a doctor must give you permission to get the test, medicine, procedure or admittance. Then your insurance will tell you whether or not they will buy or you can have it. This is on top of a layer of government which may add more inputs into whether or not you get something. The people who make the products cannot relibably get it to you with any kind of market price. There is no consumer market.
This is just part of the reason why medicine around most of the Western world looks mildly to majorly screwed up. It starts within the "rules".
because drug industries can't make big money on the markets strictly regulated by governments like those in OECD.
"Why doesn't the US just copy one of the superior health care systems from the OECD?"
Judging by the number of down arrows, I suspect many missed your not-so-subtle sarcasm.
At least I hope that is what is was.
Live in Tokyo and I am on the local plan. Three years in a row I go for the annual checkup and some retard called a doctor - without looking at me - reads my results to me and tells me I am a little bit obese.
I am 6'-1'' and 190 pounds...fit.
I will have to be in some serious trouble before I'll go see these fucks called the Japanese health care system again.
Can they afford $20 for 50 rounds of ammo?
That would allow 49 opportunities to reach out and touch the source of that fucking legislation, with one round remaining for their final "insurance policy".
So how small is your penis?
Bend over and find out. You know what they say, an asshole has no gender.
Now that we have the childish fucking cock jokes out of the way, maybe you can explain why you fear your own mortality?
Matter of fact, the reason that this country is in the shitshape that it is, can be directly attributed to nearly all sheople fearing mortality...
Yes, you are so much smarter then me.
I loved you in the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePRYhNNdzwk
Obamacare was never meant to really provide stopgap insurance for the working poor, a classification that now applies to maybe 40% of the American population, thanks to 35 years of Wall Street criminals running (and really ruining) the U.S. economy. Obamacare health insurance plans represent the worst of medical coverage, on par with the high deductible, high co-pay and limited doctor and hospital network plans available before Obamacare. In other words, garbage health insurance plans whose only saving grace is the government subsidy that pays part of the monthly premium cost. A subsidy that is the reason private health insurerers are merging like wild, since only a fool or a crook could not make money providing health insurance to new Obabacare subscribers. "Fool" and "crook" are words that pretty much describes those goniffs who ran into the ground those health co-ops going out of business. But those guys got high salaries, nice offices when they showed up for work and the chance to hire their dimwit relatives as long as the taxpayer money flowed in. Wait until Obama's accomplices pull a "bait and switch" and cut those subsidies to Obamacare members.
CUT TO TRUTH usa. This OBAMACARE was enacted for show only. Meant to insure incredible profits for private companies. Insurance co's,,,,pharma. everything to do with health and death is now monetized. Give your heads a shake and look at what was objected to. (and that would be long running health care in many other countires.) BUT no no no usa had to go with this profit-captured system that allows every single insurer to price-fix at 'WHATEVER', that allows the capture of FDA and drug prices.
WHY is it that other countries can provide universal health are for decades? i KNOW i KNOW THE ANSWER. Because they did not funnel all the money to entitled military. Know how much that runs? How can a society even pretend to say it it more efficient to spend trillions on entitled military, spying ops? as responsible use of taxpayer funds? Now please tell me why normal taxpayer USA has limited tax payer dollars fed to NSA and military spending BEFORE it looks after citizens?
UK, Canada, France, Sweden, Norway etc. have had universal health care for decades.
But now we got TPP that will allow all these greedy insurance, pharmas to come in and dismantle decades of something that other country"s have enshrined as a benefit of taxation.
Anyone in the US who is now complaining about co=pays or premiums had better give their head's a shake. Brainwashed. Brainwashed..."oh it it Socialism, communism etc." NO it is profit gouging and now completely protected monopolies on your wallet. How do you guys feel about $1200/month premiums? s that monoploy insurers can control your health????? Nice choice Obama.
I always get booed at when I state that I would rather pay for health care for all Americans than bombing people in other countries. I get called a commie, softie and faggot. My friends are a bit tough.
It is beyond belief to me how ignorant USA is.
How USA can paint basic health care as a Communist act.
How USA can paint medical care as purely profit driven without control and supervised by a completley comprosmised FDA? How people work kand pay tax have their dollare directed to military as opposed to their own benefit.
How can a working person in USA even begin to afford this legislated profit grab? There is no way. Legislated theft is what it is. Plain and siimple.
It is beyond belief to me that my tax dollar and labour would go to support bankers/bailouts/TPP. What the frig? How can a family afford this protected, legislated money grab? How can a family afford these profit-protected, monopoly health care insurers? And it is legislated that you have to pay. Tlak about a sweet and abusive deal.
I dont know why you are so suprised. Interview the man on the street. Pick any man in any town below executive level, any sex and race. Pick any non Professional knowledge topic.
Go interview 10 random people on that topic. Almost all will sound like morons.
'Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.' - George Carlin
Socialism/communism is the ultimate monopoly....undefeatable.
Bullshit!
I'd rather "not be able to pay" a $5000 deductible than a $50,000 tab for going without insurance.
Who works at the Golden Corral...women and kids...both groups highly likely to have someone else (husband/parents) providing the health insurance.
Exactly why insurance succeeds. It offers to sell at a discount by increasing costs.
Only an idiot would think that by buying healthcare through an insurance company would actually cost less than buying directly from a provider. Insurance can only save you cost if it makes someone else pay for it...just like the government does. It is simply another wealth redistribution scheme that is maturing to it natural state of ponzi collapse. You can't get out of something more than you put in. Further you gain NO efficiency by pouring your money into a black hole and then looking for a positive return from the other end. When the consumer is insulated from the provider, there is no efficiency, only the continual passing through of increasing costs, costs that occur largely because there is NO incentive for efficiency and no market mechanism to minimize costs.
Your slightly mistaken. Preminums will rise 20-40% in 2016. They will rise an additional 20-40% in 2017.
And they will rise an additional 20%-40% every year henceforth, or until no one can pay.
exactly. i have had a torn rotator cuff for six monthes. i am saving up to meet my deductible before i even bother going to the doctor.
Ensuring part time employment act.
If you are white you need to pay up on your Obamacare bills. Hard working undocumented workers and knockout king champions are entitled to free healthcare, free phones, well... free everything. Pay up or be deemed a RACIST.
Really tired of you dumb fucks and your "free phone" comments. Go look into these "free phones"...yeah, you get a free phone..but if you really want to use it, it RAPES THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!
Those "free phones" are the Government (on behalf of the lobbyists) funneling the poorest and dumbest Americans last pennies into Corporate America's pockets.
The Obama Phone?http://www.factcheck.org/2009/10/the-obama-phone/
~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's a cell company with marketing aimed at the Geezer crowd...you get a super cheap phone and plans start at $10 a month!
What do you get for $10 a month? Not a single fucken minute, text or data...You get fucking nothing! Well, you get the privilage of owning a phone that will break you if you actually use it...
Dial a number and it will cost you 25 cents a minute! Holy cow! Pricing like that would make ATT blush!
Raise minimum wage so I can pay the F-ing penalty.
But just think, once the penalty exceeds your tax refund amount they can't extract any more blood from the stone.
The IRS will bill you for the remainder. Don't pay it, and they will garnish your wages and place a lien on your real property. Eventually, they will jail you for back taxes. Ask Wesley Snipes how it works.
If they raise your "minimum wage" more layoffs will ensue which means you will have to pick up the slack and costing you your raise in higher premiums. Anyways you will figure out someday that you are here to be sheared on Oligarch Acres and Petting Zoo.
"Raise minimum wage so I can pay the F-ing penalty."
Alternately, you could have learned a trade that would guarantee better hourly compensation. Unless you really like service industry, entry-level jobs.
Oh, can't afford the training you say? Mine was available at the cost of a few (6) years of my life. My skills come from serving in the U.S. Navy. They have excellent technical schools and on the job training.
Obamacare was written by insurance companies. The only possible solution to the health care problem in this country is to create a two-tiered system that allows those who can afford it to have regular insurance/healthcare, and everyone else to have something that provides basic care for much less. The US healthcare industry as it currently exists is a massive wealth generator from top to bottom, and nothing can change that from a public policy point of view for those who cannot afford to partake in it.
Yes, there is one and only one centrally planned solution to this and all other aspects of people's lives. Forward!
you cant do that. The EBT crowd has rights same as the rich. (sarc)
Insurance companies were the initial target of healthcare reform and plenty seem to be quiet concerned about it in the begining, and found themselves threatened and ultimately silenced. The reality is that none of these insurance companies are run by people who give one shit about their future. They are lining their pockets as we speak. They got big fat juicy deals to keep their mouths shut and they will do so. Everyone can see that this constant escalation of costs is not sustainable, that people cannot and will not pay these prices. Where there was a crisis claimed as an excuse for their revolutionary reforms, there now is one. One that unfortunately will call for even MORE government crisis response and as many here have guessed, it will be a 100% government run insurance. The heads of these corporations could care less if their companies are still in existence five years from now, retired and living nicely on their "pay". And we will be stuck with a lying cheating stealing government dictating everything we do, say, eat or spend. Freedom is on its last legs. We will soon be saved by the collective that none of us are actually part of until it comes time to pay the bills.
Obama is far and away the least qualified person to ever hold the office. He was so ill prepared unless you believe he purposefully fucks up everything he touches. In that case he's been an overwhelming success.
So you could say he's the bizarro King Midas.
Everything he touches turns to shit.
And, yes he can polish that turd till it shines.
The lying cunt Hitlery Clinton will be far worse than Obama. God help this country if the voters are stupid enough to elect that fucking bitch as President.
The lying cunt Hitlery Clinton will be far worse than Obama.
Tell you what, put that on a bumper sticker and I will be your first customer.
One Revolution was not enough.
There are reasons Obama has paid millions to keep his college transcripts sealed. My confident guess is that this is what we would find:
1. He had crappy grades in most everything.
2. He skipped class a lot.
3. He registered as a foreign student.
When I hear him talking about being a Constitutional scholar and then I see that he has no published works and seems to understand less than a good high school student...I know he faking it and his transcripts will tell the truth.
Teleprompter is the least fit commander since crowns.
Ring? Ring?
If you think health insurance / care costs a lot now - just wait until the government makes it free.
Yep. The universal system will be free and the tax donkeys will foot the bill. If you want a good doctor and a decent hospital...pay extra.
Purple lipped mother fucker
Blue Gummed Cock Jockey
Burr headed saucer lip. Moon cricket.
Blue Cross Blue Shield have already notified clients of a 60% raise. 12k before they pay for a thing. Thats including the deductable. Thanks Barry!
You prayed for "Hope" and got shafted by the "Change".
And in California, they notified doctors of a 30% reduction in reimbursement rates for Obamacare plans. My doctor refuses to take any Obamacare plans, even the Platinum versions.
What are "Obamacare" plans? Do they differ in any way from regular private insurance plans? In Minnesota at least, there is no "Obamacare" insurance. It's all just private insurance. The same plans are available through the state-run exchange, or your employer buys one of them, or you can buy it directly from the insurance companies themselves. The same policies and plans are available through whichever means. There's nothing about any particular policy that sets it apart as being "Obamacare."
Has your doctor has stopped taking insurance? How does he know what is an "Obamacare" plan, compared to any other?
Insurance companies can only sell policies that meet Obamacare mandates which create significant cost increases while eliminating options for lower cost policies that used to be available. Of course, in theory, those who can't afford the higher premiums can just get government subsidies to pay for it, which apparently is just money from heaven.
I attempt to provide insurance for my employees and have watched my premiums increase by 20-25% every year. We are up to a $7k deductible. Yes I and my employees LOVE Obamacare. Next year will likely be the end of it.
Oh, I'm with you 100% on this. Not on everything, but on this. I've been watching this slow-motion trainwreck since the late 1980s. I'm self-emnployed, and when I wasn't, I was one of the only employees who had any idea how much this stuff cost and what my total cost of employment truly was.
My question had to do with the recurrent meme that "My doctor is refusing to take Obamacare." It's all "Obamacare," as far as I'm aware. There are no Non-"Obamacare" insurance policies anymore, other than the dwindling number of "grandfathered" policies.
"Obamacare" is obviously the insurance companies' agenda to save themselves, made mandatory by force of law, provided by the best legislation the insurance companies could purchase through their wholly-owned operatives in Congress.
The crisis we all see has been brewing since the 1970s. That's why Nixon's Administration started talking about HMO's. That's why Hillary Clinton came up with a plan, and the Heritage Foundation, in reaction to "HillaryCare," came up with what then-Gov. Romney enacted in Massachusetts, and what we now call "ObamaCare." None of these schemes address the basic fact that the stuff now costs more than a critical mass of Americans and their employers can pay. The exceptions to eligibility for the government subsidies are broad enough that, as usual, huge swaths of what we used to call "The Middle Class" aren't going to get any help.
If not next year, then soon enough we'll see the end of it. These things always seem to take a lot longer than I expect. America is a much bigger country and vastly more wealthy than I can get through my thick head. But the current trend can't go on indefinitely, so it won't.
"Blue Cross Blue Shield have already notified clients of a 60% raise."
Total HOGSHIT!
BCBS ALWAYS "notifies" of huge increases...then they sit down with the State Insurance Commissioner and the agreed increase is ~12%...seen that shit a million times...year after year...same fucking bullshit...RATES TO INCREASE 60%..rates end up raising by the teens instead.
If you WANT 12%, then ASK for 60%, then "cave in" and agree to 12%; oldest trick in the book.
What is ACTUALLY being asked for is say, 60% over 5 years. Now of course, that's 12% per year, right? This goes over the head of most people who don't understand percentages and the propensity for something to increase exponentially in the long term. Starting at $100, $12 this year is $13.44 next year, is $15.05 the year after etc. etc. Simple, but completely misunderstood.
"This goes over the head of most people who don't understand percentages and the propensity for something to increase exponentially in the long term."
You mean like the compounded interest for a mortgage?
Ask anyone who has paid off their mortgage over the entire term how much they paid, and they will most likely cite the purchase price. Once you show them how to multiply the P+I (principle and interest) times 12, times 30, they suddenly realize how much their home actually costs.
Some will see this level of increase, but not all. I have Blue Cross and my group plan increased 25% this year, 23% last year and 25% the year before that, all while my deductible increased from 5K to 6K and now 7K. So yes, not 60% in one year, but none the less SIGNIFICANT increases that will eventually lead us to DROP all insurance.
Now, of course, if you are an employee, your employer can pay whatever it costs as they are made of money, completely immune and insulated from any real economy, and any complaints they might express are just more bullshit excuses to deny you your well deserved and "entitled" raise.
Liberty Health Share
http://www.libertyhealthshare.org/3-program-options
Family $449 a month. Couple $299 a month. Individual $199 with $500 a year deductible.
Under 30 - Family $399 and couple $249. Individual $149 a month.
There are five other health ministries.
http://selfpaypatient.com/2014/06/18/health-sharing-ministry-members-ref...
It is not for everyone but it is far better than United Healthcare, Blue Cross, Aetna, Cigna and the other pirates. .
It was insurance , not healthcare.
It's not about health or care folks. It's about moving money to the top so they can control you. I'm lucky enough to have some medical knowlege in my family......we can treat ourselves for the over the top basic expenses.
I sewed myself up the last run in with sheet metal, Dr.Jack Daniels was the anesthesiologist. Wife frowned on it but the kids thought it was cool.
Next time try Super Glue. It's actually sold as the wound closure product "Dermabond", for 100x the price of course.
I've heard it was originally invented for that purpose, for the military. At probably 1000x the price.
And duct tape is just the thing for dislocated fingers.
If you can afford a cell phone, a cable bill, a two pack a day cigarette habit, a case of beer on the weekends, a quarter ounce of weed, a car newer than 1987, and anything more than bologna in the fridge then you can afford Obamacare.
You can afford the insurance just not the actual medical care.
Just because how obscene the pricing is here: A 2 pack a day (25 packs) habit in Australia will set you back $50 a day. All up, for someone to have those habits before purchasing anything else, they'll need $490 a week for everything except the weed (fuel for the car, not the car itself).
$350 for the cigarettes
$20 for the cell phone
$20 for the cable
$50 for the beer
$50 for the gas
Obama Care is a Heritage Foundation program written at the behest of the Insurance company's. It was never intended to help insure the masses. Why do you think Congress has their own Private plan and not Obama Care? Dumb Ass Americans thought Obama was gonna give them cheap healthcare. Dumb Fuckers....
"Dumb Ass Americans" didn't have much of a choice, did they?
Why don't you tell the dumb fuckers what their recourse would be?
You have free reign here...spill it out.
Much of the world is tired of bullshit,
and much of the world has reached a head in the entitled-but-no-solution department...
go on then,
explain: