GoFundMe?

[kaysixteen]

But you do not know this.  You are an economist, so you know all about the dangers of 'asymmetric information'.   Grifters count on this all the time.

[dismalist]

But you do not know this.  You are an economist, so you know all about the dangers of 'asymmetric information'.   Grifters count on this all the time.

Interesting question.

There are two answers:

1) Have somebody regulate who gets to be a beggar.

2) Don't give people money if you don't trust them.

My surmise is that the second method is cheaper on average.

[ciao_yall]

See, I would be a little hesitant to pass judgment just yet----I mean, she sold the house, right?  Which sounds like money problems for a rich person.

As I said, it looks to me like she may have made a boatload of money 30 years ago, but where has she been since?  Even millions fritter away if you are living the lifestyle of the rich and famous.  Johnny Depp I would absolutely be suspicious of. Mary Lou is famous for my generation, but after that, Mary Who?  And then one gets sick...  I know that my dad's cancer treatments cost almost a million dollars; even if he sold everything in his estate, he wouldn't have been able to pay all that; insurance actually worked the way it is supposed to.

Maybe this is somebody's scam.  Or maybe not.

https://www.jacksonprogress-argus.com/arena/parade/mary-lou-rettons-net-worth-in-2023-and-why-she-had-to-crowdfund-her-medical/article_db3bcf78-9243-5c3a-bc3a-f5cf03d49869.html

The challenge for many people is making a boatload of money and then thinking it will keep coming in.

Or buying an 11,000 square foot house and not realizing how much it costs to heat, cool, maintain, and pay property taxes on.

[secundem_artem]

The Affordable Care Act is still on the books. Nothing was "struck down" by a court. Rather, the "'tax' on not having insurance" was voted out of the law.

While there is a moral hazard argument for coercion here, the Act has nevertheless been effective. Lower income people are indeed subsidized. In 2022 92.1% of the population had some form of health insurance.

Share with health insurance

To return to Gofundme, the lady not having health insurance is anomalous. But no deception was undertaken, and as I said, donating was voluntary. So this is a non-problem.

Not quite.  Trump removed it via executive order.  That's as far as he got in repealing the ACA.  We never did find out what he had in mind to replace it.

[dismalist]

The Affordable Care Act is still on the books. Nothing was "struck down" by a court. Rather, the "'tax' on not having insurance" was voted out of the law.

While there is a moral hazard argument for coercion here, the Act has nevertheless been effective. Lower income people are indeed subsidized. In 2022 92.1% of the population had some form of health insurance.

Share with health insurance

To return to Gofundme, the lady not having health insurance is anomalous. But no deception was undertaken, and as I said, donating was voluntary. So this is a non-problem.

Not quite.  Trump removed it via executive order.  That's as far as he got in repealing the ACA.  We never did find out what he had in mind to replace it.

There were all kinds of executive orders [there always are], but eliminating the tax penalty for not being insured was part of the tax reform bill passed at the end of 2017.

[marshwiggle]

IF ONLY there was a law that would require people from all walks of life and incomes to have health insurance so that they do not become burdens to society. The government could even subsidize low income people afford the policies. 

Slightly off-topic....

I still haven't heard an explanation of why people in the U.S. don't think this is the way to fund police, fire, and all emergency services. Why does this make sense for healthcare, including "emergency" healthcare, (i.e. for unexpected situations requiring expensive treatment), whereas all of those other services are just *provided and funded directly by governments?

*I know some of those services in some municipalities get contracted out, but the funding is still provided by the government out of general revenue with universal coverage. So even when the services are provided by private contractors, they are still funded by government. This is how universal healthcare works in many countries.

[lightning]

IF ONLY there was a law that would require people from all walks of life and incomes to have health insurance so that they do not become burdens to society. The government could even subsidize low income people afford the policies. 

Slightly off-topic....

I still haven't heard an explanation of why people in the U.S. don't think this is the way to fund police, fire, and all emergency services. Why does this make sense for healthcare, including "emergency" healthcare, (i.e. for unexpected situations requiring expensive treatment), whereas all of those other services are just *provided and funded directly by governments?

*I know some of those services in some municipalities get contracted out, but the funding is still provided by the government out of general revenue with universal coverage. So even when the services are provided by private contractors, they are still funded by government. This is how universal healthcare works in many countries.

The people with health insurance, prefer to keep their power and control over those without health insurance (or without adequate health insurance).

For example:

1) the big corporations who have better health insurance which helps to retain employees, and keep their employees from jumping ship to a start-up that cannot afford to have the same health insurance package as the established corporation

A universal health insurance policy would level the playing field between the start-ups and the established corporations. No corporation wants that.

Also, an employee who is not dependent on the employer for health insurance, has more freedom to quit and drop out of the work force anytime they want to. No corporation wants that or any policy that empowers their employees over the bosses.

2) the abusive husband who abuses their stay-at-home wife, but she can't leave him and the relationship because she (and her children if the couple has kids) would lose health insurance coverage. A universal health insurance plan means that the abusive husband would have to stop being an a$$hole. A$$holes want to keep their power.

3) doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, hospital & health care staff all benefit financially from a system that allows them to obscure pricing, stifle competition, and jack up prices. Sure, they'll blame the insurance red tape, the insurance company, the malpractice lawyers, the bloated health care administration, the government over-regulation, etc., but in the end, there's a reason all the doctors & nurses in the world want to come to the USA to practice medicine: they can make a crapload more $ in the USA than anywhere else in the world, and that's partly because of the f**ked up health insurance system in the USA that obscures prices, stifles competition, and jacks up prices. There is no way that these people would support an actual national health insurance system that actually works. They would lose their vacation home.

4) the private health insurance lobby would, of course, never allow any nationalized health plan system to go into place that didn't enrich them over the welfare of the population (partly why the ACA is so mediocre)

[simpleSimon]

I'm curious.  Would anyone here donate to a (health) fund for someone who owned (or sold) a 9000sq ft house last year?

[Wahoo Redux]

I'm curious.  Would anyone here donate to a (health) fund for someone who owned (or sold) a 9000sq ft house last year?

We all have pop-star heroes in the media.  We feel like we know these people. 

My wife and I talked for some time about how much we liked Matthew Perry.  I'm still very sad about Eddie Van Halen.  I will always remember when James Dickey died (not a pop-star but same sort of thing).  I'm already bracing for Itzhak Perlman (again, not a pop-star) and Jerry Seinfeld, in fact the whole Seinfeld cast----although they still have a ways to go yet.

If any of these people's progenies got on the news and said, "My parent is ill and needs cash," yeah, I'd probably donate.

[simpleSimon]

I'm curious.  Would anyone here donate to a (health) fund for someone who owned (or sold) a 9000sq ft house last year?

We all have pop-star heroes in the media.  We feel like we know these people. 

My wife and I talked for some time about how much we liked Matthew Perry.  I'm still very sad about Eddie Van Halen.  I will always remember when James Dickey died (not a pop-star but same sort of thing).  I'm already bracing for Itzhak Perlman (again, not a pop-star) and Jerry Seinfeld, in fact the whole Seinfeld cast----although they still have a ways to go yet.

If any of these people's progenies got on the news and said, "My parent is ill and needs cash," yeah, I'd probably donate.

A) With respect I think Itzhak Perlman is indeed a pop start. At least he is to me.

B) I would not donate.  My first thought would be "Scam alert! What happened to the millions of dollars you made?"

[kaysixteen]

lightning's explanation of the reasons national health insurance faces multipart strong opposition are clear enough-- so how did places like Canada, Britain, etc., overcome these objections to get the national insurance schemes they have?   What other factors are at play differentiating us and them?

[marshwiggle]

lightning's explanation of the reasons national health insurance faces multipart strong opposition are clear enough-- so how did places like Canada, Britain, etc., overcome these objections to get the national insurance schemes they have?   What other factors are at play differentiating us and them?

For one thing, in Canada, (and I would assume in most others), the change was made decades ago, when there wasn't such a palpable distrust of governments, and when many people were poor enough to not expect that they could self-finance their own services.  (When there was a lot of regional disparity in services as well, a government-administered system had a better chance of *reducing regional inequalities.)

*There's another reason; in many societies, reducing inequalities is a high priority. In the U.S., there's always been a higher priority on letting everyone take care of themselves and not be "dragged down" by others.

[dismalist]

There's not going to be a concerted push for universal health insurance in the US. Look what happened to Elizabeth Warren's presidential bid!

The reasons are partly nefarious, though upthread posts identify the wrong villains. The overwhelming reason is that 81% of the insured rate their insurance as excellent or good. That extends to Medicare and even Medicaid.

Health Insurance Satisfaction

I infer that no politician has a ghost of a chance in promoting universal health insurance.

And, as I said upthread, 92.1% of the population is insured.

Universal health insurance -- statutory, everyone is forced to pay the premium -- started in Germany with Bismarck  in 1883. It is worth bearing in mind that the health system couldn't do much in those days. So, it was cheap to run.

Much of the world follows this Bismarckian system. That's financed by earmarked taxes but not run by the government.

Government provided health care is rare. It started off in the United Kingdom in 1948. Medical progress only increased noticeably in the 1930's, so it was early days and still cheap to run. Only Sweden and much later Italy have followed suit. [Oh, government provided health care doesn't necessarily reduce regional disparities. If you get sick in southern Italy, your best bet is to take a taxi to northern Italy! :-(]

As for the US, it has always puzzled me that the Roosevelt Administration didn't pass corresponding legislation. A student dug out the facts for me in a term paper: There were plans afoot, but Roosevelt was afraid of the American Medical Association!

And that is the villain in US medical care history. It started off by having medical schools shut down, limiting competition and raising doctors' incomes. Lobbied extensively to provide not health insurance, but hospital payment insurance, which eventually molded Medicare. The AMA is a shadow of its former self since the Reagan Administration cut it down on anti-trust grounds, but it still co-controls the number of medical students. The US has fewer doctors per capita than other civilized countries.

The US health care non-system is an anomaly. There is no other like it in the civilized world. It didn't start out that way. The bad guy has been the AMA and now its most of the rest of us.

[ciao_yall]

There's not going to be a concerted push for universal health insurance in the US. Look what happened to Elizabeth Warren's presidential bid!

Elizabeth Warren lost a lot of people when she then went on to say that private health insurance would be illegal. Every country with public health insurance has a private option, FFS.

Government provided health care is rare. It started off in the United Kingdom in 1948. Medical progress only increased noticeably in the 1930's, so it was early days and still cheap to run.

It was a continuation of the public health system set up during WW2 to keep citizens well during the war, and it stuck around.

As for the US, it has always puzzled me that the Roosevelt Administration didn't pass corresponding legislation. A student dug out the facts for me in a term paper: There were plans afoot, but Roosevelt was afraid of the American Medical Association!

Yes, FDR was picking his battles. LBJ was able to get Medicare and Medicaid passed in the mid-1960's but when Nixon tried to pass universal health care around 1970 he was shot down. Among the main reasons was that White Americans were upset that now Black Americans would (also) be getting "free" healthcare.

You know what is really weird? State-run lotteries. We don't want to pay a few dollars in taxes so people can have their basic needs met. But every once in a while the State pays out millions of dollars to one lucky person. And we're cool with that.

Whatever.

[dismalist]

Well, ideas for an NHS started around 1900.

Finance was by private insurance and by local government. The only thing that changed during the war was that central government financed war wounded.

One can't blame the failure of the Nixon plans on racism out of hand. There was almost a Nixon-Kennedy compromise plan ready, but then Watergate happened.

Then of course there was Hilary Clinton's plan when her husband was president. I have forgotten the details but her main man on developing the plan was one Ira Magaziner. I met him once, years before, and determined he was an idiot, so I didn't much follow the planning.

It is true, however, that in the development of the ACA great care was taken that it didn't look like the healthy would "subsidize" the sick. But that is the essence of insurance! Here, a main man, one Jonathan Gruber got in trouble for getting caught on video explaining how that was all hidden and that what Chief Justice Roberts said was a tax was actually not a tax and that it was important to tell the noble lie.

Jon Gruber

You don't want to see sausages being made.