Sanders failed by not simply asking her about her 49 employees, and what would happen to them without the ACA.
Obummercare sux. But, I am so glad I get my insurance from the ACA.
Oh wait, they are not the same thing?
says 35% of Americans.
In the survey, 35 percent of respondents said either they thought
Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act were different policies (17
percent) or didn’t know if they were the same or different (18 percent).
This confusion was more pronounced among people 18 to 29 and those who
earn less than $50,000 — two groups that could be significantly affected
by repeal.
Did she say they were money making businesses? Maybe 3 of 5 were making money?
As someone who runs a business I can tell you the cost of insuring your employees is not a small expense. Telling someone that they need to come up with an additional $50k-$75-$100k a year in profits to pay for health insurance may sound easy, but yea…
I don’t know the answer by the way. I think in some industries you could do that. In others, I am not so sure. If that additional profit was available I am sure the business owner would already be earning it.
The answer is to not have the burden of providing healthcare to citizens be the responsibility of businesses and corporations.
Oh, without question. I’m not saying its cheap at all. It’s a huge cost. But that cost remains, whether it’s being paid by the employer, or by the employees.
But to be clear, I wasn’t calling bullshit on her saying she couldn’t afford insurance for the employees.
I was calling bullshit on her saying that SHE HERSELF couldn’t afford insurance.
Not easy, but health insurance is part of someone’s wage. Employee 1 makes 50k, has quality insurance. Employee 2 makes 60k, receives no insurance. and too many people in this country will say Employee 2 makes “more”. Throw in subpar insurance, which will show up again without ACA… and it complicates things even more.
The crux of her question was how she could pay for employee healthcare “without raising my prices to my customers.” It’s sort of a d’uh moment. Raise your damn prices, like every business does when costs increase!
Bernie sort of cleared it up in a follow-up when he talked about how she currently had a competitive advantage by not paying for healthcare when larger salon chains did, but the phrasing was over the heads of most people. That’s always been Sanders’ weakness. He has a hard time talking policy at the level of the audience he needs to convince.
In contrast, Cruz flipped it around and hammered on providing “choice” to Americans, which is a fundamentally dumb proposition, but it plays a lot better to the electorate.
Bernie’s answer sounded like “Fuck you pay more,” while Ted’s answer was “We’re going to make everything better.”
And if her businesses compete with smaller businesses that aren’t required to raise prices for health insurance? She should raise her prices anyway and assume customer loyalty will overcome the increased costs? That is a formula for disaster.
I am in the camp that sees the problem of health insurance only being solved by complete government control of the situation. There is no way the private sector can do the job for everyone.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Sure. I get that. The point is that there isn’t a great realistic answer for her. You’ll note I already said the truth sounds terrible and plays badly to voters.
The only choice is for her to raise her prices, or not go above 50 employees if she’s unwilling/unable to raise prices.
Or… Some governing body could wave a magic wand and somehow make it so the majority of healthcare isn’t supplied by employers’ contracts.
It wouldn’t even take a magic wand, just for enough legislators to grow a conscience or for the electorate to understand health insurance well enough that they won’t roast the people who vote for it.
Okay, you’re right; magic wand needed.
Let’s not forget that providing health insurance for business is not a dollar for dollar exchange. They get relief, tax wise, for providing health insurance as part of the salary instead of just upping the salary. She doesn’t want to give her employees a raise, which is what health benefits are… at the same time, the employees are paying out of pocket and in some cases they might get subsidies which means even if she isn’t paying, she is… and so are the rest of us.
I was thinking about this last night.
My wife and I pay somewheres around $11k/yr for healthcare. Now, obviously we have some expenses in that regard, but between premiums and out-of-pocket maxes we’re talking about $11k/yr. Her employer chips in the majority of her part of the premium to the insurer, so that’s something like another $4k/yr. So total cost is more or less $15k/yr for a family of 4.
Plus whatever we’re contributing to Medicare, which is not insignificant. Statutory rate is 2.9% according to my cursory google, so let’s add 3% of our gross income to that $15k figure. Ballpark it at $3k. Now we’re at $18k/yr.
Some tax money goes into Medicaid as well, but I have no damn idea how much. Its funding is more complex, with states sharing the burden with the feds. Call it, idk, $1k/yr for argument’s sake. Total is now at $19k/yr.
If Comrades Warren and Franken were to introduce a bill that eliminated all other costs - kills Medicare, kills Medicaid, kills insurance entirely - and provided no-cost healthcare to all Americans at a tax rate of $9k/yr/middle-class-working-adult, people would lose their shit at how unbearably expensive that would be and how it would destroy the economy.
People, unfortunately, are idiots. Burn it down.
So say we all, Comrade Adam.
Well, a few things here…
First, it kind of highlights a problem with the government only making the mandate at some arbitrary point. But this isn’t really unique here. There are already tons of things which only apply to groups above size X. It creates a point where additional inertia is required to “break through” that point… like, eventually, a business will be successful enough that it has enough stored profits to absorb the additional costs and start growing again.
You could address this by requiring that all employers, regardless of size, provide it… or you could say that no employers need to provide it, and instead the government provides or subsidizes it.
Yeah, the idea that it’s a “choice” is silly, in that it’s only a choice for those people who can afford it. It’s like saying, “Hey, I believe that everyone should be free to choose to be rich or poor!” It doesn’t really work like that.
The people that Cruz is ignoring, are the people who could not afford healthcare prior to the ACA. For those people, there was no “choice” simply because the government didn’t mandate it. For them, REALITY mandated that they had no healthcare.
Likewise, Cruz hammered on the specter of rationing… and Sanders fucked up the response. He suggested that income inequality was resulting in rationing, and that’s certainly true… but it’s only part of the answer, and probably not the most compelling part. Here’s the response that should be given:
“In our system, we have rationing, but it’s being done by private insurance companies who are not beholden to you at all. Those companies decide what diseases are covered. Those companies decide what you pay for it. Those companies decide what constitutes excessive costs. They inject themselves into EVERY decision made by patients and their doctors. The idea that removing the government puts control into the hands of the patients from the process is a bold faced lie. It just puts the control into the hands of a giant faceless corporation who sees you as a revenue stream.”
That’s what Sanders should have said. And really, the fact that he couldn’t kind of highlights how he was an empty candidate. He had some good catch phrases, but ultimately he just gave the same speech a billion times. Go off script, and he couldn’t fully articulate real ideas.
This is utter horseshit. There’s space between Sanders and Obama in terms of forging a connection with voters, for sure, but he’s an “empty candidate” who doesn’t understand anything “off script”? Come on, man. Sanders is one of the absolute policy-wonkiest federal legislators of our time.
Oh really? Let’s see some examples.
CLINTON was a policy wonk. She provided mountains of research and papers to back up her plans, and they actually had a chance of playing out as she projected.
By contrast, Sanders’ plans were total nonsense. The fucking math never even came CLOSE to working.
Sanders always existed at a high level, pointing out stuff like, “We’re the only western nation to not have healthcare as a right…” and the other dozen or so things that he repeated a billion times. But he never actually presented workable POLICY to address those problems. He presented policy that claimed to, but even cursory examinations showed it to be bullshit.
Sanders’ strength came from his commitment to the people, and his sincerity. But he never had the depth of knowledge regarding policy that someone like Clinton had. Not even close.
While I believe that Sanders knows his stuff and then some, he’s not a think-on-his-feet kind of candidate and responding to idiocy effectively requires that kind of quick creativity (how can one truly be prepared for the absurd?). Hillary Clinton suffered from a similar inability to pivot fast enough when dealing with Trump’s brand of lunacy.
My personal theory is that Sanders and Hillary both gave the people what they thought we wanted to hear. However, Sanders was going a little more Trump-style while playing a little loose with some of the numbers. Clinton was more practical in her responses, thinking that the majority of people wanted demonstrable competency.
And facts, and solutions and reasonable approaches… yeah she made the mistake of thinking most people wanted something other than pitchforks and nooses and a stick of dynamite for a system that was dragged to its knees in 2008 but is actually pretty stable right now.
Ok, so this is maybe amusing.
So here’s the deal… the Freedom Caucus, who are basically imbeciles, are the idiots who were voted in a few years back and have literally no idea how to govern.
They have basically made a pact now, that they will ONLY support the repeal that was passed in 2015. This effectively precludes anything that will allow them to replace parts simultaneously, or pass more moderate alternatives.
And this, in turn, may fracture the GOP to the extent that they can’t do ANYTHING on this issue.
Which would be amazingly ironic.