<p>Lol. I suspect Lasma you may find that answers to that question distinguish the unlucky from the unwilling as anyone who hasn’t done what the responder has to look after themselves ;)</p>
<p>In his speech, Lewis was referring to the lack of the sense of noblesse oblige in modern day society, and pointing out that quite often, success has more to do with luck and happy accident than an individual’s particular skill or talent alone, despite the fact that most successful people would bristle at the notion :)</p>
<p>To me, I might go a bit further and say it often feels that modern day society is more akin to too many children fighting over scraps of pizza…after all, 99% of us are comparatively feral in the greater economic scheme of things. I think its hard for some to embrace the spirit of nobless oblige when they view themselves as feral.</p>
<p>This notion of a “feral psychology” is for me reinforced by the fact that statistically, many people opposed to any kind of social compact that would give every human access to a baseline of healthcare enjoyed by countries the world over would themselves benefit from a little nobless oblige Hence my comment about the tax code.</p>
<p>To me, it is not “noble” for a state to abrogate its share of Medicaid cost by exploiting a loophole, whatever the ends. That too strikes me a evidence of a feral psychology.</p>
<p>PS @dstark … By coincidence I was googling how to compute the volume of water in my hot tub the other day and I laughed out loud when one of the results was a cc thread about water heaters and jacuzzi tubs in which you participated. I took it as evidence that the google algorithm is stalking my surfing habits talk about almost AI! I meant to ask you if that money was still under the park bench as I was in your fair city two weeks ago :)</p>
<p>Choosing a purposefully vague term like “unlucky”, with it’s connotation of blamelessly unfortunate, isn’t really surprising and neither is an unwillingness to offer up a working definition of it. It’s what I would do if wanted the money of others and decided I could make the giving mandatory. Mandatory charity being the utterly remarkable thing that it is.</p>
<p>
I suppose that’s one way to define the concept of personal responsibility. Another would be to point out that the health risks of smoking, over-eating, excess consumption of alcohol, lack of exercise, etc., etc., have been pointed out by the same government that’s gotten into the healthcare business. Pointed out as long as I’ve been alive.</p>
<p>I think the following are a safe bet:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>If you spend a significant portion of your take home on cigarrettes, alcohol, or drugs, you’re not ‘unlucky’. (we might add that if a significant portion of your take home arrives as a check from a governmental agency, and you’re blowing it on the same, you stand a high chance of being ‘unwilling’.)</p></li>
<li><p>If you’re on the weight charts (available from same government) as ‘obese’, can’t find the time or inclination to exercise, yet manage to regularly catch the View, etc., you’re not ‘unlucky’.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>My perspective is that those who like to slip on the mantle of ‘caring the most’ ought to be doing the heavy lifting of identifying the truly ‘unlucky’, so they’re first in line for the benefit of that ‘mandatory charity’.</p>
<p>There was a time, not very long ago at all, when every new sign-up was viewed with a little bit of celebration by ACA supporters. Needed them to make it work, all those mandated benefits were a good thing, and the insurance networks were being billed as more than adequate - better than Medicaid’s was the impression I got.</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t Texas be looked at as noble for encouraging participation?</p>
<p>What’s noble about having someone at 120% of poverty covered by private insurance they pay nothing for rather than Medicaid they pay nothing for? Not much difference there, especially in states where Medicaid is handled by private insurance.</p>
<p>How is that relevant to anything? Are you suggesting that if an asymptomatic person comes to the US and develops Ebola, they shouldn’t be put in an isolation ward if they can’t pay? What would you suggest doing instead?</p>
<p>It’s relevant in a number of ways.Cost is one of them. And, the idea that unlucky people are dummies who have no idea how to advantage themselves of the offerings of our government is another. There are more. But, I have work to do right now… </p>
As it turns out, you’re right, but the reality of the “narrowed till you’ll need an all day bus pass & money for lunch” networks wasn’t known at the time. </p>
<p>Cata, the devil is in the details. If you’re one pound over the “obese” line per your doctor, you don’t get insurance, but if you’re one pound under the line, you do? What if you fast for a couple of days to qualify for insurance? Do you have to weigh in every day/week/month to prove you’re staying under the line? If you do go over the line, do you lose your insurance?</p>
<p>I agree with you that insurance companies have done an abysmal job of following the law re making sure that doctors are reasonably available to all of their subscribers. There should be heavy fines for that, fines that hurt.</p>
<p>I don’t see why this is a problem. If you’re income in $1 over the subsidy amount for ACA you get $0.00. If it is $1 under the amount you get subsidy dollars. If your ACT score is X you get full tuition scholarship, if it is X-1 you pay full tuition. You could weigh in every year at renewal time to determine your status for the next cycle. </p>
<p>And the people that are 1 pound over are going to be complaining and complaining. It is not fair. They are big boned. The operator of the scale had his thumb on the scale. The scale was manufactured in China. </p>
<p>Then the person who was 1 pound over is going to have to raise his tenants’ rents to pay for the premium increases. And the person who is one pound over is going to complain anyway over and over. Then the program is going to be delayed a year and the person is going to complain anyway…over and over. </p>
<p>The same people that complain about govt, bureacracy, and regulation want more bureacracy and regulation. Lol!</p>
<p>Next thing we know, we will have to have pictures taken of our naked bodies to verify our weights. Computers will have to be purchased and people will have to be hired to take care of these procedures. There will be forced operations so people weigh less and Cedar’s will charge 100 times what everyplace else charges.</p>
<p>The photos will be stored on a cloud. The cloud will be hacked. Our photos will be published all over the internet. I am ok with this because my wife and I look good. ;)</p>
<p>And think of the cost of all this monitoring of the marginally obese. Who’s going to absorb that? Providers? Insurance companies? Insurance subscribers? Taxpayers?</p>
<p>The issue is not the insurance companies. It is doctors who quit the networks, which is their right to do, as they can decide for whom they work. The insurance companies cannot do anything about not having enough doctors in their networks, if doctors have quit, so fining the insurance companies makes no sense. </p>
<p>The same goes for hospitals, which decide not to be in the ACA program and the Marketplace network. Nothing the insurance companies can do here either re hospitals in their networks.</p>
Hence my comment about the tax code.</p>