This is a pitch-perfect example of the Brexit-like self-destructive politics that come with the "win" of appearing strong.
Here is a person who has the typical experience, who could easily be convinced by their positive experience to say "everybody should have this." But instead of going that route you impute negative motivations and put very ugly distasteful words into their mouth. Which, even if they are highly supportive of your position, will likely turn them against you. Instead of using this opportunity to advocate for a really good thing, you use it as an opportunity to hit somebody you view as the enemy with a rhetorical hammer. End result: no more people in favor of better means of distributing health care, and perhaps a net negative.
Especially in the context of how to account for free-at-point-of-care healthcare, which started this. If the employer is paying the prices that are revealed to employees only via COBRA, should that be accounted for in part of the wages or not? The US chooses to put about twice the fraction of GDP into healthcare that the UK does, and that per-capita GDP is also higher, how do we account for that in terms of wages and individuals? The $1T that employers pay for healthcare should be accounted for how, exactly? It's a tough question, and most likely in any comparison of nations there's a couple different ways to see how it impacts the average person. And when the "average" person in the US has such varying experiences, that has to enter into any comparison too.
In California there is great healthcare coverage for those with extremely low to no income, due to subsidy. Those with healthy salaries and savings can weather the times of unemployment and pay the COBRA prices. Those who struggle the most are the ones in between, and improving that involves getting those on the high and low end to advocate for the in-between incomes. It does not involve making enemies of them.
This is bullshit: not seeing a bill is atypical in California. Parent is also bullshitting by saying it's easy to get a job with no-bills health insurance in CA, unless they are ignoring 98% of Californians.
Medicare and Medical are not going to see a bill ever (if the people I know on them are anything to go by), and that's almost 40% of the population. A huge majority of people on employer plans are in the same situation, so thats some fraction of the 47%. For example, nearly a quarter of Californians are covered by Kaiser. It's not some super rare privilege reserved for those making >$500k.
I never see bills from my employer based healthcare, and it's not anything super fancy, and it's not Kaiser, just BC/BS. I had a surgery that billed my insurance in the tens of thousands of dollars and I never saw a bill. My spouse sees bills but it's because she has her physician order tests that are a bit outside well established medicine that would never be covered by NHS in the UK or Health Canada.
This is a pitch-perfect example of the Brexit-like self-destructive politics that come with the "win" of appearing strong.
Here is a person who has the typical experience, who could easily be convinced by their positive experience to say "everybody should have this." But instead of going that route you impute negative motivations and put very ugly distasteful words into their mouth. Which, even if they are highly supportive of your position, will likely turn them against you. Instead of using this opportunity to advocate for a really good thing, you use it as an opportunity to hit somebody you view as the enemy with a rhetorical hammer. End result: no more people in favor of better means of distributing health care, and perhaps a net negative.
Especially in the context of how to account for free-at-point-of-care healthcare, which started this. If the employer is paying the prices that are revealed to employees only via COBRA, should that be accounted for in part of the wages or not? The US chooses to put about twice the fraction of GDP into healthcare that the UK does, and that per-capita GDP is also higher, how do we account for that in terms of wages and individuals? The $1T that employers pay for healthcare should be accounted for how, exactly? It's a tough question, and most likely in any comparison of nations there's a couple different ways to see how it impacts the average person. And when the "average" person in the US has such varying experiences, that has to enter into any comparison too.
In California there is great healthcare coverage for those with extremely low to no income, due to subsidy. Those with healthy salaries and savings can weather the times of unemployment and pay the COBRA prices. Those who struggle the most are the ones in between, and improving that involves getting those on the high and low end to advocate for the in-between incomes. It does not involve making enemies of them.