Socialized Medicine?
It seems like I might as well post since we all may just be waiting for the apparently imminent demise of bindlesnitch and some of us seem to have stopped posting already.
I’m back to Maureen, myself. More to the point, to Maureen’s medical care and its cost.
I write a check for between four and five dollars about once a month. This is the copay on her calcium pills. She’s in one of the better nursing homes – having the top ranking on the Medicare website. (I’d post a link to that but I seem to have misplaced the bookmark.) It’s a decent place, not anywhere I’d want to live but people who have seen a number of them agree that it’s pretty good.
The nursing home bills the county for between one and two thousand dollars every month and that seems to be paid both from Maureen’s social security and payments by the county. More may be paid that I don’t see. She is visited weekly by a nurse practitioner and a psychologist. Until recently she got physical, occupational and speech therapy 3 times a week. She would not cooperate with physical therapy and the therapists’ opinions on the other two were that she could accomplish what she needs to on her own which means that Medicare stops paying. They say Medicare will start paying again if we go outside the home for physical therapy. I should learn more about that next week.
She was hospitalized for about 6 weeks and on a ventilator for about half that time. She’s had several visits with doctors outside the home and the hospital since leaving the hospital.
Did I mention I pay for her calcium pills about $4.00 a month? That’s all I pay. It’s all I have paid. The money billed to the county and SS is handled through her group home because they are the designated payee of her SS and through the county via Medicaid. She has a healthy SSI income as recipient of my father’s survivor benefits.
She is covered by Medicare and Medicaid and our county is pretty liberal. It feels a little like living in Europe must when it comes to this.
I pay significant property tax to the county relative to the value of my house and I have no idea how much other tax incidentally to the county and the city. For awhile I tried not to shop in the city because a portion of the city sales tax goes to pay for the godforsaken behemoth football stadium the state forced on us. I’ve given up on that And even go to the rebuilt Lake St. Target from time to time. The other stores I frequent are in the county if not the city.
A brother and one of my kids pay more property tax than I do. A sister pays less, the rest of the family lives out of the county. My parents paid for over 60 years. Both parents paid into SS for much longer than they drew from it. Maureen also has 8 siblings who have paid into SS, two have and will withdraw nothing from it (they died before they could) and several others of us will have paid in for longer than we withdraw, just based on probable life expectancies. At least 4 of the 8 have paid the maximum rate for a number of years. (That group doesn’t include me and never has.)
Am I justifying the cost of supporting Maureen by the amounts our family has paid out? Do I need to do that? I don’t think so but it’s always a part of my thinking. She’s an expensive citizen.
This piece is actually partly in response to Alan Milner’s recent facebook post but I don’t want to put all this out there on facebook where the whole family will see it, I am not sure why. It might be a good thing for the trumpers in the family to have poked in their eyes. And it fit into my recent Maureen theme here.
Alan said, among other things: “Absolutely no one LIKES to pay taxes. No one wants to pay taxes. ..
“Whenever someone says that they don’t mind paying taxes, I conclude that they are in a higher tax bracket than I am…”
First of all, I can guarantee you that I am not in a higher tax bracket than Alan.
Secondly, at least in part because of everything listed above, I honestly don’t mind paying taxes. I may not pay a lot of income tax but I pay other taxes in reasonable amounts.
And please don’t think it’s worth a handicap to get that level of support. I’d way rather be paying twice as much for medical insurance than have to deal with the godawful handicap Maureen does.
Bitey
06/21/2021 @ 6:49 pm
I agree with you, Jonna. “Liking” taxes is not necessarily about the amount of disposable income someone has. It is fundamentally about understanding public wealth versus private wealth. Americans are under the misconception that private wealth is preferable in all cases, and it simply is not. Healthcare is a perfect example of how public wealth is greater dollar for dollar than private wealth when it comes to what the dollars can accomplish. Also, our illness care system pits profit against outcome, and that is a losing battle for most people. At the very least it is unwise, and when it is understood it is inhumane. I find myself at the intersection of alarmism and resignation when I think about that subject, and no one wants to hear anything said on those corners. (Not referring to you, of course).
Jonna Connelly
06/21/2021 @ 7:15 pm
I love that way of seeing it – public vs private wealth – it’s perfect but I’ve never heard the concepts expressed that way before.
Luckily, In Minnesota HMOs have to be non-profit which I think may help control costs or at least profit seeking. (Yet United Healthcare is headquartered here and they certainly do the profit seeking.) Maureen’s medicaid is administered through one of the non profit HMOs. They still manage to keep their premium prices up, I have stopped paying attention to the details. I am claiming that as one of the perqs of old age.
You are spot on, Bitey though I arrived at the corner awhile ago, firmly on the alarmism side of the street. Partly the impetus for the above mentioned policy.
Myriad
07/02/2021 @ 9:30 pm
I live in a country with socialized medicine, and will sing its praises operatically indefinitely until hooked off the stage.
Jonna Connelly
07/02/2021 @ 10:46 pm
Beautifully well said, Myr!
koshersalaami
07/05/2021 @ 9:16 am
Socialized medicine makes sense. I don’t know who in the US decided that capitalism should turn into a religion rather than a way to produce and distribute goods and services. Like any other system, there are places where it is efficient and places where it isn’t. What it isn’t is efficient by definition, and a lot of people treat it like it is. But that’s all based on myths about how it works.
koshersalaami
06/21/2021 @ 11:18 pm
The difference between public and private services is that the primary responsibility of the public employee is the mission of the office while the primary responsibility of the private employee is the profits of the company’s stockholders, regardless of what that means to the client base or even the health of the company.
You get what you incentivize. Sometimes private incentives interfere with public goals.
Jonna Connelly
06/22/2021 @ 11:01 am
In the beginning of the US, corporations were limited both in time and in their aims and goals – the corporation’s purpose was stated in its charter and that’s what it was allowed to do. That it made profits was incidental, profit seeking was not the primary purpose. That interpretation, the primacy of profit for the shareholders is more recent, it began to change, as I understand it, in the 19th century when political and community controls and the definition ofwider group of stakeholders that included the community began to be both loosened and limited to shareholders by the courts.
As things stand now, of course, it’s all about the profits but that is a corruption of the original purpose and definition of the corporation.
Remember Reagan’s most famous quote: “The scariest words in the English langluage are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,” or something to that ridiculous effect.
Bitey
06/22/2021 @ 4:40 am
Regarding taxation, and the willingness to pay it, this goes a bit beyond services. It goes from everything like public school buildings and fallout shelters, to Civics courses, participation in the government through voting or jury duty…or whatever. It involves citizens taking stock of their citizenship, and their cities, and counties, and states. Publicly funded elections rather than dark money. Free public libraries, and quilting classes taught in the meeting rooms.
The quality of our country has changed dramatically from the country of the mid-70s that started to dismantle the abuses of the Nixon administration to the election of Jimmy Carter. After Carter there was the backlash which wrapped all sorts of garbage American myths like rugged individualism, and trickle down taxation, etc., which has led to the society that we live in today. We have stripped away the public wealth, and demolished the quality of life that was ambient. We are now the dystopian future of the 1950s or 1970s.
koshersalaami
06/22/2021 @ 7:03 am
That’s because the Reagan administration successfully blamed the consequences of the Japanese economic invasion on unions.
Bitey
06/22/2021 @ 7:44 am
One sad thing about that is that a generation has been poisoned against unions. If you follow issues in sports, you can see strains of anti-unionism in the discussion of a variety of sports issues. Attitudes about vaccinations reflect it. Discussions about contract disputes between teams and players reflect a heavy bias toward supporting owners and against players. That spreads over onto states and cities being willing to give billionaires free stadiums and take abatement rather than have the billionaires foot the bill for their assets. This, in turn, pits communities against each other, and turns taxation and public wealth on its head.
Alan Milner
06/25/2021 @ 3:57 pm
Every time I write something about how people hate paying taxes, I am rebutted by people who say that they don’t mind paying taxes. I believe them but I also believe the far larger number of people who ALWAYS cite excessive taxes for their opposition to social programs without ever expressing any opposition to military spending. In point of fact, many people say that, if they were getting what Norway gets for its taxes, they would happily pay the same share…until anyone tries to raise their taxes in order to fund those very services.
Bitey
06/25/2021 @ 4:24 pm
Respectfully, Alan, that is misunderstanding it.
It’s like this, when I bought my house, I paid as little as I had to to become the owner of the house, but I sought ownership. Ownership provided me with certain benefits legally. Taxation works pretty much the same way. In this case, you are buying government. Whoever pays for the government owns it. I don’t want to pay as much as possible for it, but I want to pay for it, and for other citizens to pay for it, and then function as owners of it.
If we hand over ownership of ‘the public’ to private entities like corporations, they will own them, and the public will be reduced. During W. Bush’s admin, they considered building freeways from Mexico to Canada, but not for public use. They would be owned by corporations. I think this is an absurd notion, and should never happen. They also considered plans for too roads owned by corporations. As it is, we lease toll roads to corporations. This is a bad position to be in for the public.
Likewise, the public should fund government and elections. The more the funding slips away to ‘dark money’, the more the public loses control of its future. It can and should be done efficiently, but it should definitely be owned by the people. And that will take taxation.
I take vitamins daily. I take one. I don’t take 300, and I don’t take zero.
Jonna Connelly
06/25/2021 @ 4:57 pm
Well said, Bitey.
Look out – I believe privately owned roads are in the recently passed infrastructure bill, part of the effort to avoid any new taxes. Hoping I misunderstood.
koshersalaami
06/25/2021 @ 4:58 pm
That’s a really cool way to explain it, but I don’t think most people are thinking anywhere near that clearly.
Part of the problem with taxation is that income/wealth polarization has led to a lack of general prosperity, which means that taxation is more of a hardship.
Bitey
06/25/2021 @ 6:09 pm
That’s true. Taxation is done badly in our country. Like many other things, it has been twisted to benefit the wealthy. Tax and policy experts will have to untangle the unjust mess that has been created. I do not favor the tax structure as it currently exists. Just generally speaking, I am in favor of the public owning, and managing government, and owning and managing public assets.
koshersalaami
06/26/2021 @ 8:26 am
I absolutely agree.
koshersalaami
06/26/2021 @ 8:31 am
The issue now is that the public doesn’t own what’s public because the public doesn’t determine public policy. Influence with legislators belongs mostly to the wealthy because of the expense of campaigning. They have to spend a ton of time fundraising and fundraising with the wealthy is far more efficient because less time generates more money. The first thing that has to happen to correct this is campaign finance laws have to be seriously overhauled.
Bitey
06/26/2021 @ 11:16 am
Yes. There are two things which doom the status of the citizen human. The first is as you mentioned, the way in which campaigns are financed. Corporate interests massively outspend individuals, and hold all of the influence cards. The other is the living status given to corporations. Human life is temporary, but a corporation can live forever, so the political power that corporations can have by having immense financial advantages, and an unnatural time horizon, can simply snuff out the natural human life as competition politically.
Supporters of conservative politicians have been sold a bill of goods regarding corporations making quality of life better for individuals and workers. One are of concern after another has fallen to corporate interests until actual humans now are in danger of losing democracy altogether. Again, I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but we have to start making solid practical decisions favoring human life soon, or we will lose the right to do so.
koshersalaami
06/26/2021 @ 4:58 pm
Again, I agree
jpHart
07/22/2021 @ 12:13 am
Hence the Biden Boom is well on its way!
Its head in the clouds. Curious what imaginary readers’ take is about the windfall-wallop Child Tax Credit….While I’m no economist, I am comfortable with the moment, turning for home so to speak, enthusiastic perhaps that our mystical brotherhood of man at last has two hands tightly on the brass ring. Over on Grow Acorns I learned that youngsters with two children under six with a joint income of $62,000 (copula’ kids looking for home sweet home) will be able to plan and manage ‘found’ direct deposits for their ‘babes asleep’. However I’d an enlightened conversational with an enlightened dude whom, at 25 with two babies as well as a stay at home
jpHart
07/22/2021 @ 1:25 am
wife, I’d an enlightened conversation with this recent graduate and he was acutely angst-riddled
with his enhanced discretionary income as his concern is that his kids will have to pay for it … that is, one of those ‘national debt’ conversations — you know the sometimes politico ping-pong wherein old-timer enjoys SS COLAs and young yeoman just home from the Mideast adamantly sweats the ‘projection futurology’ of a balanced budget when his children pay tax. I then kinda’ popped the clutch and parlayed our very civilized banter to organized innovations. (I should mention that the young traveler was homeward bound to Flint, MI with a skid of titanium horseshoes….) Point might be that neither could thoroughly comprehend the polarization perpetrated by reality-BIGSPEAK- like the prowess of ‘flash words’ such as socialism-tribes-bumper-sticker adages — finally crossed the aisle post haste with a raucously loud group sing-along to the Stones’ Gimme Shelter.
jpHart
07/22/2021 @ 1:55 am
Just saying campaign reform yesterday or reform schools all day long! And don’t get me started on the Clinton surplus! O! Abrupt kudos to the mass merchandiser 5 & Under for all those $5. basketballs.
I’m from Milwaukee and I oughta know!
Blue skies guys!
koshersalaami
07/28/2021 @ 7:42 am
The Biden Boom can be short circuited if states allow one party to vote to overturn election results.