12 cent federal gas tax increase coming?

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

My worthless anecdote; wife's catastrophic insurance plan ($5k deductible) went from $98/mo to $211/mo.

That is almost exactly what happened to us.
I thought health care was going to get cheaper.
They promised.

I think you will find your worthless anecdote is being repeated all aroud the country by millions of people.

[darcane]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

The higher cost consumers get subsidized by the lower cost consumers- isn't that true of all insurance? Those who have never caused a claim should have darn near free insurance premiums vs those who wreck on a regular basis should be paying for their own repairs and the repairs for those they've wrecked into... right? But that isn't how it is.

1) Regular accidents WILL raise auto insurance premiums. Insurance premiums should be based strictly on the risk profile of the insured person. Health insurance is not allowed to take into account many aspects of the insured person's risk profile and has to increase premiums on low-risk people to make up for it.

2) Medical "insurance" isn't insurance at all. Insurance means you pay into a policy that will pay out for well-defined unforeseen expenses. Medical "insurance" pays for routine doctor visits, birth control, medication, OB/GYN, etc,. That would be like having auto insurance pay for maintaining your vehicle.

Get "insurance" out of the picture, and knock down the monopolistic protections that the healthcare industry has and healthcare cost will be cut down to 10-20% of what they currently are and you could afford it out-of-pocket.

Don't believe me? Find a bill for some sort of surgery (yours or someone elses) and compare with the Surgery Center of Oklahoma | Free market-loving, price-displaying, state-of-the-art, AAAHC accredited, doctor owned, multispecialty surgical facility in central OK.. They publish their prices for all to see, and run about a third of what most surgeries do.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by darcane

1)
Medical "insurance" isn't insurance at all. Insurance means you pay into a policy that will pay out for well-defined unforeseen expenses. Medical "insurance" pays for routine doctor visits, birth control, medication, OB/GYN, etc,. That would be like having auto insurance pay for maintaining your vehicle.

Get "insurance" out of the picture, and knock down the monopolistic protections that the healthcare industry has and healthcare cost will be cut down to 10-20% of what they currently are and you could afford it out-of-pocket.

I'm hyping your excellent post.

A doctor's visit for the sniffles isn't something that insurance should cover. Everyone should expect that sometime in their life they will need $200 for an office visit for something likely benign. My wife estimates that 2/3 of the office visits at the clinic she works at are frivolous. The doctor she works for will say sarcastically "really, congestion for 2 whole days? Why did you wait so long to see me?".

Health insurance costs so much because people are insulated from the full cost by employee benefit programs, and they see doctors trivially because their out of pocket expenses are very low. How many of you have shopped around for the best price for healthcare?

When I hurt my back, could hardly walk, and wasn't sleeping due to pain, I was on my own because I didn't have health insurance. This forced me to shop for the best price on an MRI, which I was able to get for $450. I'm sure I'd have no complaints that the MRI paid for by insurance was $2k, if I had coverage.

What does employment have to do with healthcare anyhow? Why did that ever become a thing? I need a job to earn money, and that's it. Eating, sleeping, playing, investing, and healthcare are my responsibility, and nobody else.

[gone-ot]

It's Health A$$urance, not Health IN$urance...with two $'s, not just one S.

[XYZ]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Pop is 93, retired from Civil Service at 55, last year they (parents) made easily over $100K. Pop jokes about living as long as he can to get more money from the govt so he can leave it to his survivors. At 23 he flew the first Mission by the 8th AAF over Berlin as the pilot of a B17. Everyone told him he should work for private companies when they were paying twice what a govt job paid until he retired in 1975. All of those people are dead.

His mother barely made the 40 quarter requirement for Social Security eligibility and paid 1% of her wages. She drew SS for 28 years. I calculated it once and for me to recieve the same benefit to paid in ratio I would have to live to the age of 545 years!

Cutting anything is political suicide and sadly we have subsidized poverty and childbirth by those who are less fortunate to the point where they are now the majority and I feel like the death sprial has begun and it's going to get real ugly. Think Weimar Republic in post WW1 Germany, when inflation peaked at something like 1000 percent a week. Germany solved the problem by going back on the silver standard, while we did the reverse in 1964.

Inflation is a tax on everyone but especailly those of lesser means. Computers were supposed to relieve us of drudgery but they have made us fat, unemployed, self absorbed, and weak. Sure they have done some things that are magnificent, but they also have reduced the need for jobs. GM has 1/20th of the employees they had when I was a child. How is 1 going to pay the retirement benefits for 20?. In the 60s the federal govt raided the social security fund by writing IOUs and we all know how good their IOUs are, right, just write another larger IOU and on and on.

SS is also not allowed to legally specualte with funding, of course they have no money to invest.

regards
Mech

I remember when Richard Nixon and the the congress of that time decided that "revenue sharing" was a good thing. Who would be against "sharing"? Only cruel, mean spirited people would oppose "sharing". We will all benefit from sharing, right?

The populace was gullible enough to accept that BS, and Social Security funding became part of the federal budget spending scheme (read: deficit). Government raided the piggy bank, took and spent whatever assets were there, and replaced them with political promises.

As for inflation: the government and their finance ministers under Presidents Bush the Elder, Clinton, and Bush the Younger decided that the cost of food and fuel would be no longer included in the inflation index. Voila! No more inflation! I can remember engaging in discussion with and hearing arguments from members of this list who insisted that THAT was not REAL inflation, just "price inflation". Nowadays only the market price of big ticket items like houses and cars are monitored for inflation - not the cost of buying food and buying fuel to heat your home or run your car. Inflation is now officially a mere figment of your imagination...

And on top of it all there's the new healthcare tax. Everyone thought they would come out ahead of the game, and they approved of it by voting.
As usual, our political leaders fooled us again - including Supreme Court Justice Roberts who smiled in approval, tipped the scales of justice, and called it merely a tax.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

It's the rape of the middle class. Both political parties are in on the scheme. We're screwed no matter which way way we vote.

Your post was very well stated. I wish I could thank you twice.

[XYZ]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

That is almost exactly what happened to us.
I thought health care was going to get cheaper.
They promised.

I think you will find your worthless anecdote is being repeated all aroud the country by millions of people.

Yep.

They promised.

The electorate bought and drank the Kool-Aid.

Fools 'em every time.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

My worthless anecdote; wife's catastrophic insurance plan ($5k deductible) went from $98/mo to $211/mo. She makes $20k/yr. If her income was not supplemented by mine, she would go from paying 6% of gross income for health insurance she will never use, to 12% of gross income. It is illegal for her to not have insurance (although this is not constitutional), and at her income level (not poor enough), there is no subsidy.

Another worthless anecdote that's pretty much a mirror image of that. I work as an independent contractor (a real one, not an employee without benefits 'contractor'), so instead of a regular paycheck, I get paid in largish chunks at intervals of several months. So I tried to sign up for Obamacare through the state's web site*, filling in the questionaire over a day while doing other work in the intervals between responses so I'm not exactly tracking the logic. Well, one of the questions was "What was your income last month?" to which I answered, truthfully, $0. So I eventually finish the thing, and guess what? It insists that I have to sign up for Medicaid 'cause I'm a low-income person! Forget the fact that I'm well in the upper quintile of both income and assets, that doesn't matter. Don't get that regular paycheck, you're poor.


* Which in itself is a marvel of software engineering. Come on, folks, 2-5 minute response times for selecting a radio button?

[Varn]

Raising the fed gas tax by 67% will drive up prices on everything not just fuel. It is very naive to think the prices will just go up on your own personally pumped fuel.

For instance Food is highly dependent on fuel. Farm diesel is exempt but getting it to the markets will cost more. Want to buy a sheet of coroplast. You guessed it, more expensive.
It is a totally bad idea.

[darcane]

Originally Posted by XYZ

It's the rape of the middle class. Both political parties are in on the scheme. We're screwed no matter which way way we vote.

If you vote for the lesser of two evils, you are still voting FOR evil.

I stopped voting for either party, and only vote for candidates that I can actually stand behind. Sometimes there are 3rd party candidates I vote for (typically libertarians) sometimes it's none-of-the-above. The lesser of two evils does NOT get my vote.

[Frank Lee]

It sux because in recent times, the winning party acts as if winning by 1% is some sort of huge mandate that permits them to do whatever they want.