John, his facts are totally wrong…
So let’s start with the bankruptcy. While medical conditions appear to be behind around 60% of bankruptcies in this country (I say appear I could not find an accurate study just an estimate based on a very limited study). The vast majority of the 60% do not experience bankruptcy due to medical bills (some do, but not many). Rather the majority experience bankruptcy because their medical condition prevents them from working and the loss of income causes them to file for bankruptcy protection. Subsequent readers of the study missed that it was not the “bills” but the lost income that led to bankruptcy and so you have a perpetrated falsity that gains credence through repetition.
This of income sounds right. I spent most of my career in health care. We never put someone into bankruptcy because of money owned us. That would be dumb as an unsecured creditor. Though I do admit some health care providers use some unethical collection agencies, it is not their medical bills but their bills in general that trigger the bankruptcy. Almost any medical provider organization will accept any payment plan a patient is willing to commit to. Typical losses from patients paying out of pocket are huge so any recovery is a “win”.
Instead patients faced with an on going medical condition that prevented them from working and with limited assets opted for bankruptcy to get a “fresh start”. That is the purpose of bankruptcy. As an aside, I retired a few years before the ACA came out. At that time around 18% of all the health care we delivered was done on a charitable basis (at no or minimal cost to the patient).
Your second point was 30 million die every year because they could not afford to go to a hospital. Right off, you need to now this is crap. It is virtually illegal in every state for a hospital to refuse health care to anyone that needs it regardless of their ability to pay. Instead, you provide the health care and usually a department at the hospital will enroll you in Medicaid if you qualify or put you under one of their various charitable programs if your unique circumstances call for it.
If your condition is not life threatening, then you may be transported to a county hospital for care. But the statistic is even more ludicrous… Only 2.8–3 million people die of all causes annually and those who die because of lack of access to health care are a very small percentage of that number. That is a far cry from 30 million.
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 2,813,503 registered deaths in the United States in 2017.”
Umair was speaking about a generation. As I said around 13% of American live in poverty. Poverty statistics have always been concentrated among the young (under 24 and the old over 65). In the millennial age group the leading cause of poverty is being a single woman with children or being the child of a single woman. But that has always been true of every generation. Remember, Umair argument is that somehow millenials are unique.
I live in California that has largely been under Democratic leadership for decades. The largest causes of homelessness according to a recent study on the issue are mental health (a product of letting the mentally ill out of institutions where they were housed in the past), drug addiction (this does seem to be a bit more serious as a result of the growing acceptance of drug use among younger Americans… hard to blame Trump… Trump is trying like crazy to block them, but it is really hard) and wait for it… zoning in predominantly liberal counties in the coastal areas of California.
Strict zoning in liberal counties makes affordable housing almost impossible to build and so we have a new cohort of homeless… people working full time that cannot afford a place to live. That is shameful… but how do you get the Democratic controlled city councils to allow multi family housing next to their beautiful homes? The solution for liberal New York mayor DeBlasio is to put the homeless on one way tickets out of the city. As an aside homelessness does not change in cities with the $15 minimum wage, it is generally higher than those without. Why… higher wages reflects to many people in an area but does the supply of housing does not if cities won’t issue permits to build more housing… it just drives up the rents of the limited supply that exists.
Some areas you and I would like agree on…
- We need to “urbanize” more areas where housing shortages exist. By urbanize I mean change the zoning to allow four story structures and multi-family housing. A portion of this new housing needs to be “affordable housing” for the working poor… in other words, you must have a full time job to qualify. It is far more “affordable” to house those without full time jobs in communities with lower cost housing then building expensive affordable housing in expensive cities for people not working.
- I do think we should set fair pricing limits for health care products and services. I have presented this to my state representatives but there is no appetite to take on the powerful medical lobbies who by the way give disproportionately to Democrats.
- We need to improve our education system. Most countries have education that is more targeted for real careers. In America much of our education is very general and of marginal value when it comes to getting a job. So we spend a multiple of what other countries do on education and get less results. Again Democrats control the education in most of America. But major changes in educational focus would have dramatic impact on jobs. For example, in Germany it takes six years to “manufacture” a doctor in the US, you are lucky if you get it done in ten and even more if the doctor pursues a fellowship. We under produce for the trades. With record numbers of baby boomers retiring, we are not producing the skilled employees to take their place. My wife and I started a property management business when I retired, tradesmen earn a good living and they are hard to come by.
- We need to teach more life skills in schools. I am shocked at the number of children that can’t budget, balance a check book, or even open a checking account in high school. We send them into the world with a lot of general knowledge but little specific knowledge related to life. So if they can’t cook, they end up eating unhealthy relatively expensive fast food instead.
Areas we don’t seem to agree on is that every generation needs to learn the importance of saving. Sure now and then a disaster in life will upset all of one’s plans. But for the majority of people adding to their skills and saving money is the key to escaping poverty and it is as true today as it ever was.
An area I am interested in is how poverty causes people to make bad choices… since it seems to suggest there is a solution… timely interventions designed to assist the poor could make an important impact on future poverty.
I am convinced that “victimhood” is a mental state of mind that leads to failure in life. Yet “victimhood” is self imposed. It may be the result of real things that have happened to a person, but the fact that some respond differently suggests there are other options.
But it may be that “victimhood” happens to be terrible “natural” biological response. Like the deer in the headlights, that gets frozen and can’t move. If that is the case, then the more we do to help people “shake” this sense of doom and act to improve their future, the better results they will achieve. But again these are “individual” circumstances… generationally… Umair’s statements are false…
