If minimum wage goes up to 15 bucks an hour?

Nobody disagrees with that. My wife and I are carrying ~90k in student loan debt between us. How many jobs do we have that require college? 0.

 

Yeah healthcare in this country is best viewed through a macro economic lense. We can talk about details until we're all blue in the face but one number ultimately matters more than all the other numbers: 17.8%. That's the % of the US GDP we spend on healthcare. The next highest spender is the Netherlands with 12%. This isn't about any one groups greed as the whole industry is at fault. Insurance, hospitals, doctors, especially pharma companies, long term care facilities, the government, and on and on it goes.

Our key problem is not access it is affordability as in our country can't afford to pay 50% more than other countries (actually more than that because our per capita GDP is higher we're actually paying close to double some other first world nations) for extremely similar (some would say inferior) results. People need subsidies to pay for healthcare in this country because healthcare costs roughly double what it should cost.

Healthcare is one of the few areas where I think going to a fully socialized model makes sense. I think this because the way I see it healthcare as a product has a lot more in common with police and fire protection than it does with normal goods and services. It's something that you can go years without using, but in an instant it can suddenly be a massive bill that you literally cannot say no to. I look at healthcare and can't see how the way we do it now is significantly different than what fire protection would look like if it were privatized.

There are a few very specific situations where the free market straight up takes a dump. These are natural monopolies (industries where the intitial investment is so high that it's almost automatically a bad business decision to build capacity to compete with an incumbent... think power companies, cable companies, etc), tragedy of the commons situations (where everyone does something that is bad for everyone because everyone else is doing it. In these situations society has to step in and punish people for making those choices for the good of all.), and products whose elasticity of demand is lower than 1 (Price Elasticity of Demand = % Change in Quantity Demanded / % Change in Price for raising or lowering price by one unit) because in those situations the rational choice for a business owner is to raise the price to whatever the customer can actually pay.

Healthcare is one of the last ones. If a doctor tells me I need to pony up 250k to get a heart surgery that will stop me from dying... I don't care if I have to rob a bank I'm getting him his money and I'm living another however many years. In other words as the doctor raises his price I still need the service and there is no replacement product I could choose instead. That's why healthcare is a bad for-profit business for society. It almost by definition has to be rationed because people have unlimited demand for it and don't care what it costs.

 

easy hoss. i don't recall challenging any of your statements regarding wealth inequality. ...perhaps because i was too busy watching fox news.

 

Not all true in the beginning. I got a quote for a catastrophic care policy the year before the ACA for $1675/mo with a $10,000 deductable. I was one of the first 50,000 to get insurance through the ACA. I got a policy through Blue Cross Blue Shield for $624/ mo. and only a $800 deductable. No pre existing conditions was the problem. Only people like me signed, people with serious health problems. They found a cure for Hep C not long after. $84,000 in pills over 3 months. That and 3 surgeries, 5 mri's in 2 years. That you for saving my life Obama at everyone elses expence. That's why premiums went up, tons of people like me with major pre existing conditions took advantage. You can't force insurance companies to accept everyone.
I was and still am apposed to the ACA. SAVED MY LIFE BUT THAT'S NOT EVERYBODY ELSES RESPONSABILITY!

 

inflation goes up and up but wages do not. so in order to keep things balanced and keep there an incentive to work, the government MUST raise wages, or else this country would be 3rd world and no incentive to work.

not only minimum waged needs to be raised, but also wages of all professions(outside of rich doctors and athletes ect), these wages need to be increased along with inflation aswell. trucking wages are still stuck in the 80s while everything costs alot more now a days.

 

you are looking at it ### backwards. there needs to be more incentive to work more reward, more stimulation of the economy, more people working all good things.

what's bad is when they don't raise wages, but instead hand out more free money to people who don't deserve money nor are they contributing to society. give more reward to the actual workers who have wages trapped into the 80s while costs of everything have risen. there is little incentive now a days to work. people would rather collect free money and that's 3rd world recipe.

money dollar value is meaningless, the idea is to get more people working, and in fields that we need them working in. give more reward for the people lving how they should be, giving back to the country via man power. to make america great again.