Author Topic: burdened primitive gives reason  (Read 1343 times)

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Offline franksolich

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burdened primitive gives reason
« on: February 15, 2008, 09:39:01 AM »
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2862443

Oh my.

According to the burdened primitive, it's all a scam.

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Tyler Durden  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 08:14 AM
Original message
 
The OTHER big reason why we won't get Single Payer Healthcare anytime soon: 

The first reason, the OBVIOUS one, is of course the profits of the Insurance companies and for-profit hospitals.

That's a no brainer and everyone "gets" that one.

The OTHER reason is not so obvious, and much more insidious and dark.

Here's the scam:

You have a job, the pay is shit, the benefits suck, BUT...you have health insurance (kind of, but some sort of coverage).

There's a recession on, OR, since St. Ronnie the Reagan, you can count on "competitiveness" being the god worshiped by industry, so you ain't got too many new prospects.

Plus, half the states are "right to work" (LOVE that one. Not.) States, where you also have the "right to be fired for no God Damned reason at all.

So...you're stuck. So Single Payer Health Care would be a "good thing," right?

If you're the poor schmuck stuck in that job, this is the answer to your hopes (ooooo. LOVE that one too), dreams, and prayers. Plus, your asthmatic kid will finally get the good care they need, and those ruinous deductables and copays will go away. Joy unconfined! Where do we sign up?

Wellllll.......There's a catch.

Employers, for all their pissing and moaning about paying for health care insurance get a HUGE bennie from it: a work force that is TIED to them to keep their health care; really a relatively cheap way to get a captive work force without COLA, raises, bonuses, or even having to guarantee any sort of job security. AND, they can't vote with their feet.

SHIT. What a Good Deal.

Now not a single employer will admit this, but you do the math: retraining costs are estimated at more than half of an employee's yearly pay. The most expensive health care package I've ever seen an employer pay cost them less than 25% of an employee's yearly pay.

Another thing, what keeps very small entrepreneurs from shooting their shot and attempting a new venture or benefit is...you guessed it...Health Care for the family. Also, how do you go back to college or a trade school and improve your situation without health care for your family? Wellll...you DON'T.

You keep "flipping the burgers."

Hmmm.

One suspects the burdened primitive's been going through some short-term temporary jobs since he got laid off in the Granholm economy up there in Michigan.

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Tesha (1000+ posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 08:15 AM
Response to Original message
 
1. Absolutely.

If this were not the absolute truth, you'd be seeing all of those companies that claim "health care costs are
*KILLING* us!" crying for, well, health care! But you don't.

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Tyler Durden  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 08:18 AM
Response to Reply #1

3. The only Companies screaming for it?   

Companies with a large retiree pool to be given health care under Union contract.

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sentelle (293 posts)      Fri Feb-15-08 10:16 AM
Response to Reply #1

22. i have heard employers complain

My boss for example: the way he structures his plan, the longer you are with the company, the more the company picks up the premium, up to a maximum of all of it (after 5 years).

The problem though is that the average increase in price on the true cost of the plan (actual dollars paid) has risen, on average, 20% a year, every year since I have been there. So as I have been there, the plan has gotten worse. Its a small business, in that its maybe 40 people in 2 offices.

My boss complains, sure he does. He pays the bills, and he's on the same insurance as everyone else. Lately, its been a choice between raises or medical.

The primitive with two houses:

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Donk Yore  (632 posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 08:17 AM
Response to Original message

2. Things used to be hoped for in the good old days. Things were going to get better.

Now, just hope it doesn't get too much worse.

I've seen the future; it is murder.

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dmosh42  (613 posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 08:38 AM
Response to Original message

4. Another reason for candidates not to be specific....

The insurance cos wrote their plans. Edwards had been trying to get people to understand that!

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Tyler Durden  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 08:40 AM
Response to Reply #4

5. HARD to fight against the Insurance Cos. and Pharma when they help you run your campaign.   

...as is happening with both front runners.

Foxes in charge of the henhouse.

The Omaha primitive who's waiting for her maternal ancestress to hurry up and kick off, so the Omaha primitive can move to Oregon:

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acmavm  (1000+ posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 08:46 AM
Response to Original message

6. Yep. And I pay 300.00/month for my son and myself. That's not counting dental or life.

Insurance is killing me.

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lonestarnot  (1000+ posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 08:52 AM
Response to Reply #6

8. And any chance they can grab more they never miss.

Primitive projection.

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acmavm  (1000+ posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 09:43 AM
Response to Reply #8
 
11. No kidding. The insurance is crap. But at least it's a foot in the door to a hospital if something catastrophic happens.

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Tyler Durden  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 02:05 PM
Response to Reply #6
 
13. That's cheap.   

I used to pay almost $400 for the same thing. Add in the Dental and vision, it was well over $500/month.

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acmavm  (1000+ posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 10:05 PM
Response to Reply #13

19. No Tyler, $300 a month is not cheap. Not when you make only 13.00 an hour.

And not when the insurance is crap.

Plus I pay dental, life, ad&d, and whatever the hell the shit is thay pays me so much a month if I get hurt or sick for a long time.

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Tyler Durden  (1000+ posts)       Fri Feb-15-08 09:50 AM
Response to Reply #19
 
20. Oh no, I didn't mean it was cheap for YOU.   

I just meant that some people pay twice to three times that much.

Expensive is relative, and when you make $13.00 an hour, Ground Round vs Hamburger is expensive.

Sorry that seemed insensitive.

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JNelson6563  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 08:50 AM
Response to Original message

7. Excellent point!

America, the gateway to servitude.

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Tyler Durden  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 09:34 AM
Response to Reply #7

9. Why do you think Bushites LOVE the "Guest Worker" plan? 

You don't honestly think THEY get any health care, do you?

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baldguy  (1000+ posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 09:42 AM
Response to Original message

10. We are all corporate serfs.

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KitSileya  (1000+ posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 12:33 PM
Response to Original message

12. Anyone who haven't realized the US is a the last feudal kingdom just haven't been paying attention. The corporations are Americans' feudal lords, and the lack of worker's rights is the chains. One such right is health care rights, rather than benefits. Benefits are something you are given, and for which you depend on someone's generosity. Rights, as we all know, are inherent.

I just had to take 2 sick days this week - no worries, as I have 24 to use in a 12-month period. And if I am seriously ill, I can just go to the doctor and get a doctor's leave, which don't count towards these 24 days (which can be taken up to 8 in a row) which is good, as I was out 4 weeks this Fall after ankle surgery. Of course, I didn't have to take any of my vacation days - that's unheard of.

My fairytale land? Norway. Where the working class realized that Ben Franklin was right and decided they would hang together in the battle for adequate living conditions etc. Too bad Americans are too brainwashed to realize that for themselves.

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McCamy Taylor  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 02:10 PM
Response to Original message
 
14. Health insurance costs employers big $$$ now. THEY are screaming for Nat'l Health.

It is the combined pressure of all the big companies that are paying $1500/month/per family for health insurance for their skilled union workers (without whom they can not operate their factories) but charging the union workers so much less that will get us national health insurance.

The medical industrial complex is HUGE (15% of the GNP) but everybody else (including GE) is HUGER.

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Tyler Durden  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 02:53 PM
Response to Reply #14

15. Not where I work.   

These people would rather drink sewage than have what they call "Socialized Medicine."

Hmmm.  Just as I thought.  The burdened primitive's been working for one of these Kelly Girl agencies.

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Tyler Durden  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 03:41 PM
Response to Reply #16

17. Any way they can run their scam on us.   

I was following the torture debate. There's a flikr slide show from TUOL SLENG prison in Phnom Penh, including their waterboard apparatus. We have become the monsters the just shall abhor in the future. We neglect our own, and torture the innocent.

What have we done?

Does that include infants who wish to live, burdened primitive?

I thought not.

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minerva50  (206 posts)      Thu Feb-14-08 03:50 PM
Response to Original message
 
18. Similar to why the US encourages home ownership

You're stuck with a big mortgage, you're reluctant to risk job or location changes. They have a more stable workforce.

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Dulcinea  (1000+ posts)      Fri Feb-15-08 10:09 AM
Response to Original message
 
21. The only way universal health care will ever happen...

...is if & when corporate America demands it. I'm sure the US automakers, for example, would LOVE to dump their retiree health costs on the government.

But you have a good point! I know a LOT of people who would quit their jobs in a heartbeat if they didn't have to worry about health insurance.

I dunno.

I can't understand this primitive obsession with medical care; it's like it's the most important thing in the whole wide world to them.

Maybe it's just me, but things such as education, the war against terror, taxes, the infrastructure, the future, &c., &c., &c., seem more important; I don't even rank "medical care" in my Top Ten or Top Twenty-Five Issues, even given this melanoma situation.

For the record, franksolich has quit lousy jobs with great medical insurance and taken good jobs with crummy or no medical insurance.  (Caveat, however; franksolich has no spouse or dependents, and so can get away with doing things most people, including those here, can't.)

apres moi, le deluge

Offline Carl

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Re: burdened primitive gives reason
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2008, 10:09:27 AM »
The main thing I take away from this rant is his resentment that he is expected to be part of the workforce and contribute to society in order to take something back from it.

Offline Lord Undies

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Re: burdened primitive gives reason
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2008, 10:33:49 AM »
I don't understand the DUmmie obsession with health care either, Franklyn.  It just doesn't make sense.  (< that may be the answer)

I have asked over and over why any intelligent person would want to spend billions upon billions of dollars insuring children.  By nature, children are the healthiest people on the planet.  Their little runny noses and sore throats, which are a good things, don't need a tremendous free health care system. 

There are children,  in abnormal circumstances, who are very sick.  They are rare in numbers compared to the over all population of children.  I can see how a civilized society should want to find a way to ease the burden of the few who must care for a sick child.  In fact, I think our society does just that.  Our nation is awash in agencies and charities and foundations who take care of our sick children.  These institutions work miracles.

Why would we want to create another burden for ourselves and our children by making another social program which forces society to pay through the nose to insure those other children who will never need care?  Where is the benefit?  Would it not be more prudent, efficient, intelligent, and American to address these issues on an individual basis, as needed,  than by another silly "equal misery" socialist dream program bound for failure?         

Offline franksolich

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Re: burdened primitive gives reason
« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2008, 11:08:28 AM »
The main thing I take away from this rant is his resentment that he is expected to be part of the workforce and contribute to society in order to take something back from it.

If one notices the primitives obsessed with medical care, one also notices they tend to be in their late 50s, early 60s, and have alleged various ailments in the past; ailments that can be directly linked with "life-style" "choices."

It's time to pay the piper, and the primitives don't want to pay the piper; they want someone else to.

In addition to that, one sees the primitives clinging, desperately, to some sort of vague notion that with "free medical care for all," we all will live forever.  The primitives don't want to die.

That's to be expected of a subspecies who cling to this notion that "this" is all there is, and once one dies, there's nothing else.  The primitives are cold-sweating about this, that they'll some day simply evaporate into nothingness.

I have no idea what happens when one dies, even though by the time I was 22 years old, I already had more than enough close, personal second-hand experiences with it.  But since reality is Infinite, and the human mind finite, what is finite cannot possibly comprehend that which is Infinite.  I rather strongly suspect, though, that when one dies, he doesn't evaporate into nothingness, as the primitives seem to believe.

The primitives don't want to die.

It's a healthy, natural, wholesome thing to not want to die, of course.

But these are primitives, whose thought-processes are severely deformed and deficient.

Death is inevitable; sooner or later, it comes. 

One hopes it doesn't come too soon, but it comes.

But the primitives, refusing to calmly accept a blunt fact of life (death), desperately cling to some sort of notion that if enough money were poured into medicine and technology, they can be primitives forever, in this world.

I think that's what it is; the primitives' wasted lives are started to haunt them.
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Offline Chris_

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Re: burdened primitive gives reason
« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2008, 01:37:49 PM »
Quote
JNelson6563  (1000+ posts)       Thu Feb-14-08 08:50 AM
Response to Original message

7. Excellent point!

America, the gateway to servitude.

This from a group of people who spend half their life unemployed.

Cindie
If you want to worship an orange pile of garbage with a reckless disregard for everything, get on down to Arbys & try our loaded curly fries.

Offline jukin

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Re: burdened primitive gives reason
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2008, 03:04:02 PM »
Heres a dirty little secret.  If you are good productive employee the company will do just about anything to keep you. If you just occupy a chair they give the same rat's ass about you  that you give about the job.
When you are the beneficiary of someone’s kindness and generosity, it produces a sense of gratitude and community.

When you are the beneficiary of a policy that steals from someone and gives it to you in return for your vote, it produces a sense of entitlement and dependency.

Offline FlaGator

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Re: burdened primitive gives reason
« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2008, 04:54:48 PM »
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Plus, half the states are "right to work" (LOVE that one. Not.) States, where you also have the "right to be fired for no God Damned reason at all.

That statement really jumped out at me. He sure doesn't seem to think much of states that require people to actually do the job they are hired to do. Tyler seems to be confused about what 'no reason at all' means'. If getting canned because you are sitting around doing as little as possible and the tiny bit that does get done just doesn't cut it quality wise then I guess people get fired for no reason at all.
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