Gould 0738 wrote:

Even those "millions" have access to health care. What they don't have
is
health care insurance and many of them CHOOSE not to.

There's a difference between access to health care and (practical) access to
health care insurance, particularly for poor or middle income people.

Fact is, the majority of poor people work at
low wage jobs. They are on the battle lines of American commerce, actually
delivering the services or building the widgets at $10 an hour, or often less.
These jobs rarely include health insurance any more. When you're paying
$1000-1200 a month for a worker's wages, adding 30, 40, 50 percent
to that total to fund health insurance doesn't make economic sense.

Even middle income jobs have tightened up on health insurance benefits. At my
wife's bank, they pay the premiums for the
employee only and the employee must pay the premiums for the family members.
(Not entirely unfair, why should party "A" with six kids be compensated more
highly than single person "B" for doing the same job? If the bank had to pay
for everybody, people with lots of kids would be less employable and have
trouble finding work).

A great observation.


And its not just corporate greed, it's the "global economy".

So, why don't poor folks just park the "$150 sneakers" and turn off the "big
screen TV"? and buy health insurance instead?

The cost is prohibitive. My wife and I could make a choice at any time to
retire. It wouldn't require much reorganizing of things to live a simpler, but
acceptably comfortable lifestyle for just about forever. We don't seriously
consider it for two reasons. 1) We both enjoy our work. 2) Health insurance.

We have looked into private health insurance in our state. $1000 deductible
plans for healthy adults in their early 50's run about $500 a month. *Each*.
The cost goes up at age 55, and again at age 60, and can go up in any
particular year when the health insurance companies decide their costs have
increased too much or their profits haven't increased enough.

You forgot to mention one of the greatest sources of increased premiums;
Increased payouts due to increases in damages awarded by overzealous
lawsuits, and a legal system which favors putting the screws to a large
company to pay for claims that exceed normal allowances for "pain and
suffering".


We could probably handle a giesel a month, but who wants to be in a position of

having to return to work 5 or six years from now because health insurance costs
have gone from $1000 a month to $2800?

So think of the poor mini-wage family.
Poppa, Mama, three or four kids...... probably $1200 to $1500 a month locally
(for health insurance that doesn't have such a ridiculously high deductible
that for most poor people with minor illnesses it would be a moot point whether
they had insurance or not).

Pretty tough to write even a single person a take-home check for $200-300 a
week and expect him to run out and buy a health insurance policy for $500 a
month.

So the observation is correct. The poor do have access to health insurance- but
not health insurance *and* groceries, rent, transportation, clothing, etc. "Big
screen TV's and $150 sneakers" aren't keeping the poor from health coverage, in
spite of the derogatory sterotypes.

The costs are high. So what do we do about it?

Dave