On November 24, 2017 at 15:04, Mac Burks (39) said...
Wants become needs in civilization. No one needed water brought into their homes. They just wanted it. Now people think they need it. We don't need roads...Humanity walked the globe before shoes were invented let alone the automobile.
Labeling things with "GMO" or "Explicit Lyrics" is stupid and i understand it affects business by creating confusion and shouldn't be allowed but it doesn't stop me personally from buying whatever corn or CD i want. If Comcast wants to force me to click through a "yes i am 18 and want to see boobs" nag every time i went to see boobs...no big deal. Labeling music and corn and websites isn't the same thing as blocking someones access though.
Charging more for accounts that use more internet is about as American as dropping bombs in the middle east. Its pure capitalism...like Reagan Era capitalism not the oligarchy grind we find ourselves in now. How can any American be against this?
Blocking access to a service or site is the only thing that bothers me...ONLY because the ISP's have monopolies in most areas. If we actually had a choice (2 or more) this wouldn't be an issue for me either. I would just go with the company that lets me access what i want to access.
Affordable means something different to everyone. It's not affordable when compared to no insurance or junk insurance. It's very affordable vs coming up with $500k to deal with kidney or liver or kidney and liver failure.
The problem isn't that ACA is expensive. The problem is that it exists. Healthcare should be $100 a month per person. Who will pay for it? The guys writing checks for tanks and helicopters and caskets we ship to the middle east. Obviously that would mean we have to stop our endless wars...or at least ask the oil companies to pay their army instead of forcing tax payers to do it for them under the guise of freedom.
Want vs need becomes 'Keeping Up With The Jones' ' very quickly. Does anyone need to erect the tallest building? Indoor plumbing is great- don't have to go out during Winter to chip ice off of a well pump or find that it's frozen solid. However, with progress comes needs- we
didn't need roads until wheeled transportation became common.
I don't know what you're looking for on the internet, but if corn and nagging boobs does it for ya, carry on.
So, charging for quantity is pure capitalism? Do you sell one foot of cable for the same price as 1000 feet? No, of course not. You charge, based on your cost and if you don't charge for additional products and services, you lose money. The concept of saving personal income is EXACTLY the same as making a profit. There's nothing wrong with recovering your cost or even making a profit. More bandwidth costs more to provide for one user, or a million. Why is saving for retirement OK and corporate profit bad? Both are done as a way to save for the future. Well, without the shareholder aspect.
How can you pick a random number like $100/month? What is your basis for that? That would require ALL health care to cost less than that, if you want people who provide it to earn a living, build hospitals and buy supplies. The problem is the insurance industry- they charge doctors and hospitals for protection, they charge us so our health care will be partially paid for by their having collected a shitload of money so that "we can share in the cost" but what do they do with it? Do they ONLY spend what we paid? No, absolutely not! They pay big bonuses, build impressive headquarters, send their top agents on paid trips, etc. Let's audit them, if we want to see how much insurance SHOULD cost.
'Affordable' is relative, for sure but after posting yesterday, I did some number crunching on an insurance site- if someone needs no care and they're in the lowest income range used for the rates, they might pay about $165/month. That lowest range starts at $11K/year. I didn't look for subsidies but if they don't get any, a single person who can only afford that premium might end up paying more than they make for a year if they eat the deductible, co-pay and drug costs for an event or a recurring problem. That's not affordable.
As I wrote before, administrative costs are the single highest expense for the insurers- some kind of HSA and direct payment would reduce EVERYONE's costs. If they want to make it easier for poor people to be insured, I would bet that 1% of everyone's gross income would pay for it with ease. Personal income in the US came in at about $16 Trillion last year and health care cost about $3.2Trillion, up about 6% form the year before. Why did it rise so much? Because people spent more for their insurance! Health care expense will hit $10K/person this year, but what about those who spend almost nothing?
[Link: money.cnn.com]I have never been a fan of the insurance industry- we're betting that we'll have an insurable event an they're betting against it. They usually win.
WRT the bold section- if we could resist paying the IRS when we disagree on what the government spends, they wouldn't have much choice, in theory. Even when most people pay their taxes, it hasn't stopped Congress from over-spending, so.....
