Many of those in HI who are having trouble making ends meet ARE college-educated and some have masters and PhDs–the jobs are scarce, wages low (even for white color positions and professions like teachers, engineers, etc), housing and food high. This makes for a very bad combo.
Real estate can be purchased by anyone in the world, which for HI really drives up prices.
There is another thread out there right now about the gig economy which affects all ranges of education and employment sectors and often doesn’t provide benefits like retirement funds and health insurance. Then you add in all those employers who’ll hire employees for 30 hours or less to avoid the same, and then the employers who only hire supposed “contract employees” to avoid paying benefits as well as taking care of the employer portion of FICA. You’ll see newly minted college grads being offered work that way and I often think its a scam way for the employer to cut corners.
I’m all for single payer healthcare. It would protect all the workers in situations above. ACA, IMO, was a step in the right direction but became too watered down by bipartisan politics. I’m tired of seeing basic human rights provided by an employer based system. We don’t cover K-12 education through employers so I don’t see why healthcare should be any different. It’s not the only answer but it would be a big step towards giving as many Americans as we can a foothold on economic stability.
"busdriver PA and some other states created a nightmare for the lower middle class. No Medicare expansion and too poor to qualify for subsidies. Many at the home care agency where I moonlight either bought the cheapest ACA insurance and can’t afford the OOP costs or pay the fine which is cheaper than insurance and hope they stay healthy…
Most of the church members contribute church offerings and thus pay for my insurance (lot of budget paid by endowment fund) can’t afford their own. Which makes me feel grateful and awful."
Besides the states, it sounds like the people who wrote the law made some serious errors, also. They must have known that not every state would go along with the expansion. Seems bizarre that someone could be too poor to qualify for subsidies.
You should not feel awful about your church paying for your insurance. They need you to be as healthy as you can be.
There were a LOT of compromises made to pass ACA, including gutting things and then there were lawsuits to challenge various portions of the law which made things even more challenging. I believe the original thought was that if you were too poor for subsidies, you could apply for Medicaid except many states chose NOT to expand Medicaid because the federal government only pays a portion of the Medicaid costs and many states claim it is too expensive to provider to ever growing #s of the people within its borders. Getting quality medical care when you are poor is VERY difficult and medical bills can be extremely costly for families and individuals.
That seems like a bad decision to put that income cutoff in there, as now the people who need it the most are suffering. What a mess.
well, some of the people that need it most. Some states have expanded. Not surprisingly, in many cases its predictable red state vs. blue state. You have your elected officials to thank - or not.
Here are some maps:
https://www.statereforum.org/Medicaid-Expansion-Decisions-Map?gclid=CNKlkrvbt8wCFQckhgodThsK0A
http://kff.org/medicaid/fact-sheet/where-are-states-today-medicaid-and-chip/
Yes, our relative has NO income (medically disabled), but she doesn’t qualify for ACA since income of $0 is way too low, and doesn’t really want Medicaid and isn’t sure all the she would be able to get through all the hoops to get it if she tried. She’s currently in a weird limbo, trying to determine whether she is allowed to remain on coverage as a disabled dependent of parents medical insurance or will be allowed to get cobra-like coverage. In the meantime, getting medical care is VERY challenging and she has to pay out of pocket, up front.
The expansion was supposed to be for all states. But it was taken to court, and it was the one part of the law that the Supreme Court struck down, saying it was up to the states.
That’s not the way it was written.
States rights and all…I guess. :-< It just makes it hard to getting anything meaningful done on a national level.
@HImom Is your relative living in Hawaii as well? I don’t get why she doesn’t go for the Medicaid. I don’t think its really that cumbersome. In my state, you start the process right through the ACA website once it determines you are below ACA income thresholds.
I used the following way to help lesson the burden (more correctly speaking, spreading the burden or “pain” over 12 months) of paying the deductible:
I contribute as much as I can to my flexible spending account. At the beginning of the year, if I had to pay my deductible, I used the money from that account.
In two of the past three years, my doctor prescribed $$$ MRI and procedures. If I remember it correctly, the total cost (paid by private health insurance company and me) was 50,000 to 60,000, and the portion I had to pay was between 5000 and 6000. This is an in-network price, and I usually choose the “best” (i.e., the highest premium) health insurance plan provided through my employer’s plan.
It seems the maximum amount I am allowed to contribute to the flexible spending account could be reduced by the Congress in the coming year. (I think I read this from somewhere, but I could be wrong here.)
In one year, I was unlucky to have a series of surgeries. The hospitals, etc., charged my insurance company approaching half a million dollars (to be exact, I think it was $476,000! I paid the maximal OOP amount in that year. (I received several calls from the “debt collectors” who worked for the hospital in that year – a lot of threatening words were thrown at me, when the health insurance company was still negotiating with the hospital about the money matters and before the transactions were settled.)
I hate, hate, hate paying for health care!
If I am incapable of increasing the size of my retirement account to what I would like to have before I retire, the two major reasons are: 1) the housing cost (in the area where I could find a job) and 2) the healthcare cost. (Nevertheless, I think I have still managed to increase the size of our nest egg by 20-25% in the past 5 years (after almost one year out of job. This was achieved by putting the burden on our son who had started to carry more and more student loans.)
I recently saw statistics that indicated only 1/3 of Americans have passports, and only 1/3 have a budget.
Our monthly budget is set up in an Excel spreadsheet. There are roughly 20 items: mortgage payment, electric, water & gas bills, car insurance, etc. And then we have a section below that for credit card bills. As each is paid we move it from the unpaid column to the paid column. A running balance is kept, so we can always see how much remains to be paid for the month as compared to how much is left in the checking account. It really helps us to put the brakes on impulse purchases. And it is handy to be able to compare to previous months to see which expenses are trending upward. As our cable bill went up about six months ago, I went down to their office and argued it back down.
One of the line items this month just happened to be $110 for renewal of my passport.
We don’t have a budget, though my husband had tracked our daily expenses for years. We kind of attack it from that perspective, trying to control the daily expense.
We also have some maxed out credit cards, that we pay the minimum on. However, they are at 0% interest, and when the rate goes up, we will pay them off. We’ve played this game for years, to buy some rental condos. But I think when we pay them off this time, the money shuffle will be over. I’m getting tired of it.
@al2simon, instead of making all kinds of regulations forcing people to save, we as a society could ensure basic health, education and retirement through taxes and the appropriate infrastructure, the way the Europeans do. That system wouldn’t have saved Neal Gabler, but it would have saved his parents half a million dollars in their granchildren’s college tuition.
^Which in turn might have helped NG by allowing him to inherit from his parents at an older age what he was unable to save during his lifetime.
Do the Europeans offer a half a million dollars of private education to people for free (or that would be, courtesy of the taxpayers)?
That seems like an uncomfortable way to shift money from the lower income who might never get into college, to the upper income who could have paid for it anyways. I don’t think we want to emulate that.
“Which in turn might have helped NG by allowing him to inherit from his parents at an older age what he was unable to save during his lifetime”
And that would be pretty pathetic. Taxpayers pick up the bill so someone can spend all their money, and count on mom and dad passing away and leaving them money. Better not use my inheritance for that assisted living facility! Ugh, I don’t think I like the direction that goes.
Actually, maybe if they hadn’t spent the grandparents money on private schools, maybe the grandparents might have used it on things they wanted. Such as assisted living, vacations, and a newer car. That could be a boost to the economy.
That savings for the grandparents was said tongue-in-cheek.
My point is that forcing people to save and forcing them to pay for common expenses through taxes aren’t that different.
"Do the Europeans offer a half a million dollars of private education to people for free (or that would be, courtesy of the taxpayers)?
That seems like an uncomfortable way to shift money from the lower income who might never get into college, to the upper income who could have paid for it anyways. I don’t think we want to emulate that."
More progressive taxes would even out that playing field. 
And for your post above, his parents were better savers so they would have saved with or without the grandchildren’s tuition bill. In a way, I could argue its not the two daughters’ fault their dad can’t manage his money. They deserve an education as much as the lower income kids whose parents can’t afford it. I’m all for uncoupling children from their parents for educational costs. Like healthcare, I see education as a right to all not just the wealthy or those fortunate enough to be born to financially intelligent and generous parents.
“In a way, I could argue its not the two daughters’ fault their dad can’t manage his money. They deserve an education as much as the lower income kids whose parents can’t afford it. I’m all for uncoupling children from their parents for educational costs. Like healthcare, I see education as a right to all not just the wealthy or those fortunate enough to be born to financially intelligent and generous parents.”
Perhaps. However, is a 250K education a right for all? Just think of how expensive it would be when it is “free” and the prices go up like crazy every year. It seems as if his children (who sound very bright), could have easily gotten a free, merit based education if they wanted. So free wasn’t good enough. Seems like the price tag would be pretty high, and we would have to build a whole lot of Ivy League schools, to fit that bill.
If just an education for all who want it is the goal, then it would be pretty easy to increase the amount of Pell grants that are already available, to those who qualify. And massively lower the interest rate for others.
I agree with your points. I think if something were implemented there should be some kind of cap or limit. I think everyone has a right to an education but it doesn’t have to be the Rolls Royce version with all the bells and whistles. 
But yes, you are right that they could have gotten a merit scholarship at some schools. Not all qualify for a merit scholarship though, let alone a completely free ride. But given our current huge university system of privates and publics, I think the reality of implementing something would be very challenging.