Affordable Care?

[SaltyDawg]

Against what threat? Is there even one documented case of someone breaking into a SSA office after it was closed to steal personal info like social secuirty numbers, bank accounts and what not?

I don't know if there is a documented case of it happening at an SSA office, but there are countless documented cases of it happening at other businesses. My guess is it probably doesn't happen as often (or at all) at SSA offices because of the security.

Kind of like banks getting robbed all the time, but Fort Knox never gets robbed. Doesn't mean we need less security there, it just means the security there is doing a good job.

 

[babe]

These are great suggestions. Except for allowing the guards to leave. I might prefer to have security there 24/7 to curb the data (identity) theft threat.

I'm on board with pretty much everything you suggested though.

Send it to your congressman and maybe someone will actually read it.

I think pretty much everyone is on board with improving social security. It's when people start talking about getting rid of it, or privatizing it, when people start to disagree.

I for one want to just get rid of it. I don't want this monster in the "house".

I have had to "contribute" to it all my life, and the SSA sends me a statement every few years of what the benefits will be when I retire. I don't even want to retire. I have assets that I have acquired by being willing to save pretty frugally. If I had been able to apply the money "contributed" in my name, on the basis of my wages, according to my pay stubs, my kids would have a substantial secure future. The SSA isn't going to do anything for them, and they have just squandered everything they have taken.

Within the next few years, our government will be telling us we all have to accept less than has been promised. OB is going to be disappointed in the "return" when our government's program of printing fake money becomes obvious. This policy of spending everything available is the ruin of our nation, and we will pay for it with the loss of value of our printied money, especially compared to the prices we pay for the necessities of life. Our taxes are going to be going up pretty steep, and the "benefits" we've been promised will not be actually delivered.

In my lifetime, I have seen people accept less and less over the years as "reasonable" wages, "adeqiate" housing, and "good" health care. It is only the advances in materials and technologies that has sustained us above absolute destitution. Our government has not been a driver in that, but an obstructionary force. I don't even give our educational institutions credit there, as we are en masse being "trained to the task" instead of encouraged to be more innovative.

I outright call OB on the falsehood that elderly folks of even the twenties had it worse than now. Before Social Security, we had country doctors who made house calls. .. . . yes they were peddling "medicines" that didn't do much, but nobody was actually not getting the care that their skills and knowledge afforded. I remember having a family physician who had served our family and community for decades, who was still working in his seventies. He kept going for some years after, into my teens. My grandfather lived to 103, and didn't have any problem going to a hospital in his nineties, getting the treatment he needed, and coming home to live an independent life for the last ten years in his own home. He didn't even know what "insurance" was. Doctors told him up front the charge, and he paid it. Maybe a lot of people didn't go to doctors at all, or something like that, but no one was being turned away. Community hospitals got some equipment from the taxpayer dollar/government deficit spending even then, but people gave money to hospitals. We had significant instutions operated by the Catholic orders, the Mormon Church, and other community-minded charitable/serving organizations.

Under the "ACA" there is going to be rationed care. . . . they will call it "cost-effective" decisions. It won't be your decision. You are going to pay more for less care, and that is the big lie in the ACA.

Will people like it? maybe. They won't have any choice, they might think without it they would have absolutely no hope. Like the SSA, it is just a lie. The government cannot give anyone "security" or "care". It takes people to do those things, and people have done it forever, and will do it when the government can't pay.

The people who are in power with the government will use their power to enrich themselves, not care for you.

 

[One Brow]

And yet here you are arguing against all the examples I have given you of poor stewardship.

No, I'm saying they are examples that are similar to the poor stewardship you see from any other human activity (including self-management of funds), and that they weren't directly on-point to the question I asked.

I fully acknowledge the examples you provided exist and your portrayal is accurate to the degree I can rely on your say-so, and I trust your say-so above that of the average poster. I think a lot of your ideas, carefully implemented, sound pretty good. I have no doubt you know more on the topic of where the inefficiencies occur than I.

 

[One Brow]

Can you find a study NOT done in Britain?

Possibly. Why? Is there some fundamental human difference that means impoverished people are less likely to commit suicide in the USA?

 

[One Brow]

I outright call OB on the falsehood that elderly folks of even the twenties had it worse than now.

Call me out on that all you want. The historical record will not change.

 

[Stoked]

No, I'm saying they are examples that are similar to the poor stewardship you see from any other human activity (including self-management of funds), and that they weren't directly on-point to the question I asked.

I fully acknowledge the examples you provided exist and your portrayal is accurate to the degree I can rely on your say-so, and I trust your say-so above that of the average poster. I think a lot of your ideas, carefully implemented, sound pretty good. I have no doubt you know more on the topic of where the inefficiencies occur than I.

Fair enough but I see that as even more reason to fix what we can. On this one topic you are making a safe bet.

 

[babe]

Call me out on that all you want. The historical record will not change.

The "history" as conveyed by succeeding generations of schoolteachers does change. Sorta tautological fact there, but let's see, is it worth getting some history textbooks from the twenties and thirties, and compare what is said there with some contemporary textbooks?

I think the thesis you are trying to maintain is something like this: People just didn't get any care beore the government programs fixed everything.


I, however, am talking about something else: It used to be affordable, in terms of people being able to pay for it, without going bankrupt and losing their homes. And we could choose within the range of treatments we could afford. And most people could get something in the ballpark of current state of the art care. It is only with the advent of our supposedly wonderful government programs that people now are going to pay for it through direct taxes whether we need care or not, and now if we want care, we have to let some bureaucrats decide whether we really need it or not, and we're going to be sitting and waiting for them to decide. And for the old useless geezers who no longer can work, "society" is going to decide their care is not cost-effective.

What I do see as a pretty strong positive across history is that medical care has improved through research, and technological developments including materials and products that are now available, and overall understanding of how to treat our maladies. I think the government involvement in that is a mixed bag. Yes some advanced have been financed by government expenditure and research, but there is a set of limiting or negative impacts as well, principally in decreasing the range of choices we are allowed to pursue.

 

[Deleted member 365]

Lol hilarious how the right is constantly rewriting history. So now the old, disabled, and poor had it good during the Great Depression? Wow.

Damn you FDR!!! Hoover was doing such a great job and you had to ruin it!

 

[babe]

Lol hilarious how the right is constantly rewriting history. So now the old, disabled, and poor had it good during the Great Depression? Wow.

Damn you FDR!!! Hoover was doing such a great job and you had to ruin it!

show me some textbooks written by conservatives, that are used in public schools.

well here is one study relevant to my point above:

Our results suggest that Old Age Assistance in the 1930s had little impact on the death rate of the elderly. Our sense is that the OAA programs in the 1930s transferred the elderly from general relief programs without necessarily increasing the resources available to them.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w14970

 

[One Brow]

I think the thesis you are trying to maintain is something like this: People just didn't get any care beore the government programs fixed everything.

Not at all. First, I was discussing poverty, not medicare specifically. Second, with regard to either, it was that not only were fewer resources going to the elderly, but also that they were very unevenly distributed. Government programs filled in many of the potholes.

 

[PearlWatson]

Not at all. First, I was discussing poverty, not medicare specifically. Second, with regard to either, it was that not only were fewer resources going to the elderly, but also that they were very unevenly distributed. Government programs filled in many of the potholes.

Before The Great Depression the care of the poor of all ages was a responsibility assumed by the private sector, generally through the extended family, friends and neighbors, and organized private charity. (Public Assistance: American Principles and Policies)

As late as 1927, when welfare expenditures by all levels of government amounted to less than $200 million, private philanthropy was estimated to exceed a billion dollars. (Bureau of Census 1975 pp. 1120-28)

By and large, the elderly who were poor tended to have been poor or to have had low incomes as younger people; workers who had sufficient resources to save for retirement had outlets for their savings in a well-developed market for life insurance, a developing market for private pensions, and a variety of other financial arrangements. The available evidence suggests that private financial institutions, in combination with public and private assistance for the poor accommodated the retirement income needs of the elderly. As those needs changed private institutions were responding and the basis for compulsory insurance was weakening. (Support of the Elderly Before the Depression: Individual and Collective Arrangements)

 

[One Brow]

Before The Great Depression the care of the poor of all ages was a responsibility assumed by the private sector, generally through the extended family, friends and neighbors, and organized private charity. As late as 1927, when welfare expenditures by all levels of government amounted to less than $200 million, private philanthropy was estimated to exceed a billion dollars. (Public Assistance: American Principles and Policies)

By and large, the elderly who were poor tended to have been poor or to have had low incomes as younger people; workers who had sufficient resources to save for retirement had outlets for their savings in a well-developed market for life insurance, a developing market for private pensions, and a variety of other financial arrangements. The available evidence suggests that private financial institutions, in combination with public and private assistance for the poor accommodated the retirement income needs of the elderly. As those needs changed private institutions were responding and the basis for compulsory insurance was weakening. (Support of the Elderly Before the Depression: Individual and Collective Arrangements)

I found the first book on Google books. The word "billion" doesn't appear in a search of it.

The second is CATO institute denialism. I noticed a heavy focus on average amounts, but little on distribution, quartiles, etc. For example, you won't find in that article what percentage of the elderly had no retirement income at all, before or after the depression started.