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Rebecca Fusco
Old Town, FL
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Rebecca signed the petition | -
Rebecca commented on the article |Greg, I respect the work you do and admire your drive toward equality. The title of your article is striking, but in a way it feeds the stereo type many productive citizens have of those recieving benefits. It also does little to contradict the idea that most african americans families depend on welfare. To be fair to Marvin, an increase in education and access to birth control may help reduce the number of children that are born to parents who cannot support them, but we must be careful not to punish the children. In my opinion all children deserve three meals everyday.
I would prefer to see the numbers crunched without race to find causes of poverty which we can address (since we cannot change people's race). What percentage of foodstamp recipients are unmarried? what percentage are uneducated? finished highschool? went to college? are unemployed? live in rural areas? live in urban areas? Have been incarcerated? Have access to church sponsered outreach?
Unlike race these are underlying issues we can address. We must find solutions or a generational problem becomes a permanant way of life. How many of those 90% will have the oppertunity to go to college or learn a trade and become middle class? How many of them will go onto have children and require aid themselves? How many of them consider foodstamps part of a normal family life? I would argue that there are populations in this country where the statistcs for whites are strikingly simular.
I would also take the time to argue for those who live just outside the limits of assistance. If you get foodstamps at least you get food. How many people don't qualify because they earn wages, but still do not have enough money after the bills are paid to buy food. Looking back on my life, I felt more secure that I would have food during the time we qualified for food stamps because of my mother's unemployment than I did some of the time she was working and we got no assistance. I would hear her say I have no money for groceries because the car ins. is due this week or we have to get a new refridgerator, or the electric bill went up, or the car broke down or daycare got more expensive. Working at low wages and surving is harder in this country than not working and surviving on assistance.
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Rebecca commented on the article |As I have mentioned in other comment threads, I believe that this legislation may actually result in higher premiums. (don't start thinking that I don't want reform because I DO) Under the current bill they are putting al these mandates on ins companies. In order to meet these mandates and retain their profit margins they will just raise premiums only now if they raise your premiums you cannot just drop coverage with out being subject to a IRS penalty. Unless they legislate otherwise (which they have not) the insurance companies can sill charge whatever they want and will probably punish us for the actions of congress just like the credit card companies did. And if if they have a public option, they are making sure that the majority of americans who are paying painfully high premiums will not qualify to purchase the public option. Sounds like a win for Ins companies.
All that aside, congress is making legislation about insurance when the real problem is the cost of CARE. Insurance costs are high because the cost of care is high!
It is funny that we are trying to fix medicaid and insurance without fixing the reason that we have problems with both of them. A hospital bills $22,000 to have a baby, $3,000 for a non conclusive ER visit, $100,000 for a heart attack with surgery, $85,000 for a stroke, $500,000 for a major trauma, $300 for and ultrasound and $1500 for a CAT scan. A diabetic patient or one with high BP/ high cholesterol can require $200 worth of medicaton each month. It is the cost of healthCARE that is unsustainable. It is the cost of healthCARE that drives up the cost of insurance.
Technically in this system curing someone is a conflict of interest. Treating someone every month is very profitable, testing someone over and over is lucrative, but the minute you fix the problem you cease to make money. Preventative care is seldom reimbursed and there is no incentive to provide quality, only quantity.
A single payer or socialized system might fix this. Tort reform might help because not only are the insurance companies gouging us but they are also gouging the doctors with high mal-practice premiums thereby increasing the cost of healthCARE. But tort reform is tricky because patients do need protection from the "in-and-out-how-many-patients-can-I-see-in-a-day-who-cares-if-I-make-a-mistake" kind of doctors. More home care might help (facilities are expensive). Cuting out insurance between patients and doctors would help. Maybe we would still need insurance for hospital visits, but my grandparents raised 7 kids and when they needed a doctor they paid him a fair rate and he came to their house. When they didn't need a doctor they saved their money. The doctor was not rich but he was loved. If we could go back 50 years or so it might fix things. Money paid to insurance companies is money lost, whether you need the care or not.
As you can see there are many underlying problems that are not fixed by this bill. Like so many doctors these days the legislation only adresses the symptoms of a bad system not the root cause.
When the goverment collected money from my grandfather for medicare taxes I bet they never thought he would be sick with cancer for 6 years and my grandmother would have 5 heart attacks 3 open heart surgeries and require dialysis for 9 years. Do you know how much my grandparents must have cost the system. (much more than they paid in I bet)
When they were my age things weren't so expensive. If it cost them 25% of their income for insurance how would they have had the type of savings accounts they had? If it cost them one years income to give birth how did my grandmother have seven children?We need price transparency if not gov't set prices and we need the price of services to be more in line with wages and the ability of people to pay. In any other industry if they charge more for their services that their customers could afford to pay they would have no customers.
For the record I would prefer a single payer system because even if they charged me a 30% tax but healthcare was free I would still come out ahead. Our elected officials will never fix this problem because this problem does not affect them. Their benefit package is far too generous.
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Rebecca commented on the article |
I'm not saying we can or should eleminate these benefits but what I am saying is that we should bring jobs and higher education to these communities, rebuild the working middle class, stop penalizing families for being married, make things like healthcare and childcare affordable to productive citizens and incentivise healthy family units.
Instead of pushing employment so hard on single mothers (because lets face it if you are a single parent to 3 kids making low women's wages it does NOT pay to work) why don't they push marriage. Then the women can work at home (raising and educating the children) and the men can share the financial burden of raising the family with the government. Women's Libbers will shoot me for implying that women should become dependent on men, but if they cannot provide for themselves maybe they do need the men.
Lets just say (for sake of argument) they made marriage at the time of conception OR marriage at the time of application a requirement for recieving full benefits. All children who did not fit into this category would, I admit, suffer but perhaps churches and private citizens could step up during the transition.
Use your imagination for a minute... sure it will result in sham marriages, but if every child in the system had a man attatched to their file, men would become part of the system and at least partly responsible for the children. Better to be part of this sytem than the prison system. Men would become needed (if only for "sham" marriages its a start). The men in these communities will have to learn how to deal with and relate to the women (not just in the bedroom) and I think that, with time the role of husband and father will grow on them. Now we will need jobs for these men, and an oppertunity to be educated, but for once they may have the desire to take advantage of these oppertunities (if they are provided). Things would not change immediately but it took 30 years to get this way.
I welcome comments! As a community we must discuss any posssible solutions.
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Rebecca commented on the article |
I don't want to rub people the wrong way, but the truth is.... the reason so many black children depend on foodstamps is because so many black children are born out of wedlock and therefore qualify for food stamps. I don't know the actual number, but I believe its close to 80% of all black children are born out of wedlock. (I laughed when they said on the news last year that the african american community in California turned out in large numbers to vote against Gay marriage. The gay community took it so personally but what they failed to see is that the african american community in California is opposed to marriage in general but only gay marriage was on the ballot) The same dynamics also exist in mostly white poor rural areas where wages are low and work is scarce. (It just so happens that there are huge urban epicenters full of wealthy white people that are averaged in to make the percentage of white people on foodstamps much lower)
This has not always been the case. As Laurie mentioned there was a time in this country when relying on goverment aid was a more temporary thing that helped hardworking people survive a difficult event in their lives. Two generations ago there actually was a black middle/working class. Although it was extremely difficult for them many african americans coming out of the civil rights movement wanted nothing else but the chance to attain middle class and they strived hard toward that end. They got married, started businesses and families, worked very hard and wanted what every other american at the time wanted, a house and a white pickett fence.
The thing that has changed is the system. Welfare has become more generous and easier to collect on a full time basis. The benefits used to be temporary and so minimal that is was miserable to try and live on them. People who had benefits then did not drive nice cars or have TV's and computers (I know we didn't when we were recieving benefits) But now most of the recipients do. The bottom line is that it has gotten harder to attain working/middle class status as a family unit. Any community where wages are low and an education is more difficult to get soon finds that being unmarried on assistance puts them in the same place financially as being married and employed (only it requires alot less work). To an african american woman (who was most likely raised without a father) the government is a far more dependable and consistant provider than an uneducated black man earning low wages. Sad how the system discards black men in favor of a matriarchalcommunity. Boys who never see fathers never learn to become fathers. And men who do not have the opportunity to be a father to their children have little incentive to be productive. Two generations ago men worked two, three, even four jobs because their families DEPENDED on them. Not because it was a fun way to pass the time.
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Rebecca commented on the article |Oh ya, Here's another reason why healthcare will not perform at it's best in the free market:
Under the current system it is not financially beneficial to spend time and money developing cures or understanding causes.Technically in this system curing someone is a conflict of interest. Treating someone every month is very profitable, testing someone over and over is lucrative, but the minute you fix the problem you cease to make money. Preventative care is seldom reimbursed and there is no incentive to provide quality, only quantity.
One example: I have known since highschool (I studied science) that cervical cancer was caused by a virus. That information was not public or actively diseminated until recently when a pharm company had financial interest to do so (they had created a vaccine).
Another example: Thay have know for 30 years that HSV causes cancer in chickens and since chickens are a valuable commodity they have had an HSV vaccine for chickens for the last 30 years. The free market at work!
If the goverment had to pay for everyone's care you better believe it would be in their best financial interest to develop CURES (not treatments) and facilitate prevention. If a doctor prevents you from getting sick he just screwed himself out of a few expensive office visits and a repeat customer.
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Rebecca commented on the article |
Personally, I would love a single payer system. Even if they taxed my family 30% for it but healthcare was free we would still end up ahead. That is not the case with everyone, though.
I donot think free market has worked with healthcare. Anything that is mandated by law is not really subject to the free market. If healthcare was really free market there would be price transprency, and people would have to be okay with letting their children die if they cannot pay the bill for their care. Insurance allows the prices to exceed the wages and abilities of the customers. If there was no insurance, hospitals and doctors could only charge what people were willing and able to pay (or serve only rich customers), thus keeping the price of their product more in line with the actual value of it. Goverment mandates to purchase the product (ie. take your children to the doctor) also creates a captive audience and artificially boosts the marketplace in favor of the sellers.
The problem with women being a pre-condition is that unlike when someone is a smoker being a woman is not a choice. Trust me I would not have been born into a gender burdened with such inequities if I had a choice. Not until there are as many women doctors as men developing the standards of the AMA will women's care ever catch up to that of men. There is so much about women science cannot explain and doctors don't yet understand. I still don't understand how, childbearing aside, they are more expensive, though. I thought strokes and heart attacks, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and even diabetes were more common in men. Maybe I'm wrong. I'll have to look into it.
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Rebecca commented on the article |
$5,00-$8,000 to give birth where do you live? it is much more expensive here. Why are we stuck on the cost of insurance? It is the cost of CARE that is the problem. What about giving birth should cost $22,000 (that's what an uncomplicated birth costs at the hospital in my city)? The whole system is messed up. If the hospital bills my insurance $22,000 everytime I have a kid I understand why the insurance costs $8,000 a year, but that does not change the fact that I cannot afford the care or the insurance.
As to the C-section thing- American doctors don't know how to deliver anyother way anymore. I got a C-section against my will because the doctor didn't want to miss the big football game. He had a choice: 10+ hours of monitoring labor and $20,000... or a fifteen minute surgery and $24,000. It's like they think every woman is born with a petocin deficiency.
And then what would happen if I decided I can't afford to give birth at the hospital and I tried to have a baby at home? If the baby died they would put me in jail for endangerment. What is free market about that. We are obligated by law to take our children to the hospital whether or not we can pay the bill. What if I take one child to the hospital and it costs us the house. Where will the other children live?
CT Yankee, this is for you....
Should it cost a whole years income for a young couple to have a child? Is having children now a privalege only reserved for the rich and the welfare whores? What about the working class? should they be childless?
Mr. Libertarian,
(I have no political party but on many issues I too may lean toward libertarian)
In my understanding of economics insurance would not exsist in a purely free market system. It is a relic of mob bosses and loan sharking and price fixing and monopolies and other unscrupulous third party practices. The truely free market system would have only the doctor and the patient. The doctor would either charge a fee the patient could pay or refuse the patient. The patient would choose a doctor based on performance not participation in a network and the patient (customer) would pay the doctor what his services were worth. People would save for calamity and if the calamaty never occurred they would retain their savings. Before the cost of CARE went all out of control that's how my grandparents did it... pay as you go and save save save.
If you add up car ins, homeowners ins, life ins, health ins, disability ins, malpractice ins, flood ins, workers comp ins, unemployment ins how much of your earnings does it account for? That is the portion of their income that my grandparents were able to save. Insurance is just a really BIG tax. probably 40% of our families income goes to insurance. If I just gave that money to the gov't as a tax couldn't they just provide the same services without the CEO"s?
I currently pay $8,000 a year on insurance (for my family with no pre-x) if i put that in savings every year i could pay for a heart attack in 10 years or send my daughter to a really good college and then die of the heart attack, but the money would still be mine. I would get to decide how to spend it or if I spend it. With insurace they keep the money no matter what. But if we had some serious trauma I would lose everything. If you slip on a patch of ice it could cost $1,000,000. That's where things are different than they were for my grandparents.
Sorry, I have no solutions just complaints.
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Rebecca commented on the article |The reason that this bill is so disapointing, both to the left and to the right is ...... Our elected officials are incapable of identifying and solving problems. They have always promised change but never in my lifetime have I seen anything but hollow, watered down, please the people with lies and the corporations with swiss cheese regulation and long leashes, pointless thousand page nonsense. The Bill of Rights are the most important bills ever and not one of them is a thousand pages of pork and pandering. Short simple solutions... can we have the authors of the Bill of Rights back?
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Rebecca commented on the article |
It is funny that we are trying to fix medicaid and insurance without fixing the reason that we have problems with both of them. A hospital bills $22,000 to have a baby, $3,000 for a non conclusive ER visit, $100,000 for a heart attack with surgery, $85,000 for a stroke, $500,000 for a major trauma, $300 for and ultrasound and $1500 for a CAT scan. A diabetic patient or one with high BP/ high cholesterol can require $200 worth of medicaton each month. It is the cost of healthCARE that is unsustainable. It is the cost of healthCARE that drives up the cost of insurance.
Technically in this system curing someone is a conflict of interest. Treating someone every month is very profitable, testing someone over and over is lucrative, but the minute you fix the problem you cease to make money. Preventative care is seldom reimbursed and there is no incentive to provide quality, only quantity.
A single payer or socialized system might fix this. Tort reform might help because not only are the insurance companies gouging us but they are also gouging the doctors with high mal-practice premiums thereby increasing the cost of healthCARE. But tort reform is tricky because patients do need protection from the "in-and-out-how-many-patients-can-I-see-in-a-day-who-cares-if-I-make-a-mistake" kind of doctors. More home care might help (facilities are expensive). Cuting out insurance between patients and doctors would help. Maybe we would still need insurance for hospital visits, but my grandparents raised 7 kids and when they needed a doctor they paid him a fair rate and he came to their house. When they didn't need a doctor they saved their money. The doctor was not rich but he was loved. If we could go back 50 years or so it might fix things. Money paid to insurance companies is money lost, whether you need the care or not.
As you can see there are many underlying problems that are not fixed by this bill. Like so many doctors these days the legislation only adresses the symptoms of a bad system not the root cause.
When the goverment collected money from my grandfather for medicare taxes I bet they never thought he would be sick with cancer for 6 years and my grandmother would have 5 heart attacks 3 open heart surgeries and require dialysis for 9 years. Do you know how much my grandparents must have cost the system. (much more than they paid in I bet)
When they were my age things weren't so expensive. If it cost them 25% of their income for insurance how would they have had the type of savings accounts they had? If it cost them one years income to give birth how did my grandmother have seven children?Yes I agree that medicaid does not reimburse general physicians enough but it does pay hospitals plenty, too much if you ask me. My daughter's pediatrician treats mostly medicaid patients (out here in the boonies everyone is on medicaid but me) and I doubt he clears 100K a year. Sad because he is a great doctor (with plenty of student loans no doubt). My insurance pays him $25 a visit while it payed the specialist who never even saw my daughter (his nurse did) and was no help at all $300. Not fair at all.
How do you propose we fix the system?
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