Thread: If the public option is a success...

Originally Posted by Dipper

They should absolutely be listening to us. If they did, the insurance industry would be out of business and we would join Canada and Europe in providing health care for all.

We are still be governed based upon the Constitution and I have never seen health care as a right.

Originally Posted by rob

We are still be governed based upon the Constitution and I have never seen health care as a right.

It's in the preamble. "To promote general welfare" about covers both education and health care.

Originally Posted by Mo.

We already have a public option. It's called medicaid. It's healthcare for those who can't afford it.

Why should the government offer healthcare to those who can afford it, but just don't want to pay for it?

short answer?

Don’t fall in the poverty trap – you might never get out…


Until you earn about $40,000 a year, you’re pretty much stuck in poverty, an economists’ numbers show.

In fact, until you get past $40,000 a year, any raise or higher paying job you get might actually sink you deeper into poverty.

Take a look at this story from economist Jeff Liebman, who now works in the Obama Administration.

The poverty trap is still very much a reality in the U.S.

A woman called me out of the blue last week and told me her self-sufficiency counselor had suggested she get in touch with me. She had moved from a $25,000 a year job to a $35,000 a year job, and suddenly she couldn’t make ends meet any more. I told her I didn’t know what I could do for her, but agreed to meet with her.

She showed me all her pay stubs, etc.

She really did come out behind by several hundred dollars a month.

She lost free health insurance and instead had to pay $230 a month for her employer-provided health insurance.

Her rent associated with her section 8 voucher went up by 30% of the income gain (which is the rule).

She lost the ($280 a month) subsidized child care voucher she had for after-school care for her child.

She lost around $1600 a year of the EITC.

She paid payroll tax on the additional income.

Finally, the new job was in Boston, and she lived in a suburb. So now she has $300 a month of additional gas and parking charges.

She asked me if she should go back to earning $25,000.

Take a look at this chart by economist Greg Mankiw. From the green dot, you can see that earned income rises… for a while. Then there’s this screwy wavy line.

That’s the mother making a little more, but earning a little less.

$40,000 a year is about $19 an hour. Over 40 percent of Chicagoans don’t earn that much.

There aren’t that many jobs out there that make $19 an hour. Bank Teller? $13.33 an hour. Office clerk? $15.60. Retail salesperson? $11.80. Security guard? $16.14. (statistics via Chicago Rehab network).

Our tax incentives work… initially.

Then they only serve to hurt people.

They say the poor don’t work hard enough, but that single mother sounds like a pretty hard working person to me.


The story goes on to say that she got a weekend job, to try to make ends meet. Except after childcare and gas, it didn’t help at all.

So if working harder means people might actually earn less, how is it that we expect people to work harder?

http://trueslant.com/megancottrell/2...never-get-out/

The public option is likely to be so popular that it quickly drowns out private insurers. The few that benefit from it will be pleased. But even the lefties will suffer with a single payer system. The "successes" of the left are almost always tremendous social losses.

Originally Posted by firebrand4

short answer?

Don’t fall in the poverty trap – you might never get out…


Until you earn about $40,000 a year, you’re pretty much stuck in poverty, an economists’ numbers show.

In fact, until you get past $40,000 a year, any raise or higher paying job you get might actually sink you deeper into poverty.

Take a look at this story from economist Jeff Liebman, who now works in the Obama Administration.

The poverty trap is still very much a reality in the U.S.

A woman called me out of the blue last week and told me her self-sufficiency counselor had suggested she get in touch with me. She had moved from a $25,000 a year job to a $35,000 a year job, and suddenly she couldn’t make ends meet any more. I told her I didn’t know what I could do for her, but agreed to meet with her.

She showed me all her pay stubs, etc.

She really did come out behind by several hundred dollars a month.

She lost free health insurance and instead had to pay $230 a month for her employer-provided health insurance.

Her rent associated with her section 8 voucher went up by 30% of the income gain (which is the rule).

She lost the ($280 a month) subsidized child care voucher she had for after-school care for her child.

She lost around $1600 a year of the EITC.

She paid payroll tax on the additional income.

Finally, the new job was in Boston, and she lived in a suburb. So now she has $300 a month of additional gas and parking charges.

She asked me if she should go back to earning $25,000.

Take a look at this chart by economist Greg Mankiw. From the green dot, you can see that earned income rises… for a while. Then there’s this screwy wavy line.

That’s the mother making a little more, but earning a little less.

$40,000 a year is about $19 an hour. Over 40 percent of Chicagoans don’t earn that much.

There aren’t that many jobs out there that make $19 an hour. Bank Teller? $13.33 an hour. Office clerk? $15.60. Retail salesperson? $11.80. Security guard? $16.14. (statistics via Chicago Rehab network).

Our tax incentives work… initially.

Then they only serve to hurt people.

They say the poor don’t work hard enough, but that single mother sounds like a pretty hard working person to me.


The story goes on to say that she got a weekend job, to try to make ends meet. Except after childcare and gas, it didn’t help at all.

So if working harder means people might actually earn less, how is it that we expect people to work harder?

http://trueslant.com/megancottrell/2...never-get-out/

thats what happens when we have a progressive tax system combined with a welfare "net" that is, in reality, a trap.

Originally Posted by Dipper

It's in the preamble. "To promote general welfare" about covers both education and health care.

Your idea of "general welfare" also encompasses tv's, cell phones, vacations, rent, cars, and every other want known to mankind. You want a nanny-state.

Originally Posted by Culero Vaquero Socialista

thats what happens when we have a progressive tax system combined with a welfare "net" that is, in reality, a trap.

Exactly. She may be better off tangibly by continuing to get her welfare health insurance, but if she really wants to better herself and feel self sufficient, she'll press on through the hard times and get through the tough transition from having free stuff handed to her to working and paying for stuff.

Welfare sets poverty stricken people up for failure by giving them fish, instead of teaching them to fish. It's incentive to stay less productive, and maintain the freebies from govt.

Originally Posted by Dipper

...and I mean really successful, how can those who voted against it ever expect to be re-elected?

This is why Republicans are trying so hard to kill this thing. They know that if it works, they're finished.

LOL! Not a chance..

The PO is merely the choice to be forced to purchase your insurance from a government pool.

Leftards and stupid niggers think it means "Medicare for ALL!" or that they're going to get something for free. They aren't.

What they're getting is Mitt Romney care, re-spun.

What happened: The whole problem with health care now is the cost is too high. We know it is too high because it is outstripping wages, inflation, gdp, you name it.

Now the only way costs can continue to rise beyond the ability of the consumer to purchase them is if you subsidize them. Which we have.

This is just another subsidy.. Unlike the others, it's a forced subsidy. It's up front. A one page ransom note that you have to pay.

It's a rip off.. to anyone here who doesn't trust the insurance companies and the medical industrial complex, you had better not support this bill.

Cause that's who it benefits.

Without this subsidy, costs would have to come DOWN.. and in line with the public's ability to pay for them.

This bill is to prevent that from happening and the PO is just so much smoke..

Remember, you heard it here first..

Originally Posted by Jhoffa_X

to anyone here who doesn't trust the insurance companies and the medical industrial complex, you had better not support this bill.

Cause that's who it benefits.

I know. Thanks to lobbyists, we're getting a pile of shit that's been sprayed with perfume and it's being presented to us as something good. In fact, we can see that it's just a pile of shit. If there was true lobbying reform-- and by that I mean a law that prohibits anyone in Congress from voting on issues that benefit those who they have taken money from-- we would be getting single-payer. The only ones eligible to vote on health care reform would be Dennis Kucinich and maybe a handful of true progressives. Baucus and Lieberman and Conrad and virtually every Republican in both houses would have to sit back and watch how it's done.

Originally Posted by Dipper

Because they have single-payer. They know that's a better plan than the tripe they want to force on the rest of us. It's just that their lobbyists won't let them give to you and me what they have because it would put their bread and butter out of business.

They do not have single payer plans. They have the same plans those of us with employer insurance have. And they have for-profit insurance companies' plans.