Levels of health care in the USA

For people between 18 and 65

  1. You're rich. You can afford the care you need
  2. You're well-to-do. Insurance companies are required to sell you a policy and you can afford it.
  3. You're on the edge of well-to-do. Insurance companies are required to sell you a policy, but it's going to hurt, and it's going to hurt some more if you're over 50 or get really sick.
  4. You're doing OK. Insurance companies are required to see you a policy and there will be a subsidy to help out. Getting sick will hurt your wallet. If you're unlucky and have a modest windfall, the IRS will demand the subsidy back.
  5. You're squeaking along. Insurance companies are required to sell you a policy but the subsidy won't be enough.
  6. Your family savings are circling the drain. (a) In Medicaid expansion states, the government pays your health care, but you may have difficulty getting the subcontracted care-managment companies to pay. (b) In Medicaid-limited states, you are SOL, and will have to rely on charity. Don't get sick.
  7. Your family savings are gone, or never existed. The government pays your health care, but you may have difficulty getting the subcontracted care-managment companies to pay. You have many other problems, and time spent working the health care system makes them worse. Don't get sick.

This is an improvement over the pre-ACA situation.

For people 65 and over

  1. You're rich. You can afford the care you need.
  2. You have retired well, were able to purchase supplemental insurance early, or have a retirement medical benefit. You will get most of the care you need, but may run out of money for long-term care, in which case, see "You're poor."
  3. You can afford Medicare parts B and D (A is automatic, and there is no C), but not much supplemental coverage. Your doctor visits are not covered. Some of your medications are covered.
  4. You cannot afford Medicare parts B and D. Hospitalization is covered, but not the ambulance in emergencies.
  5. You're poor. You are required to spend most of your savings on care and then Medicaid steps in.
Don't retire poor.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Richard M. Stallman and the Failure of the Free Software Foundation

(Note: since the writing of the following, the Free Software Foundation has tweeted: “The FSF board unanimously condemns misogyny, racism, and other bigotry as well as defamation, intimidation, and unfair attacks on free thought and speech.” They are rejecting the criticism of Stallman as unfair and, in so doing, they aligned themselves with neo-Nazis and white supremacists. They have put themselves beyond redemption and any fair hearing for their ideas. No-one wants to listen to the logic-chopping of rape apologists – it is as bad as listening to Southern racists excusing slavery.)   This is outside of my usual ambit, and it is about cooperative software development rather than market economics, but it seems to belong here more than anywhere. People who follow free and open source software by now know that alleged harasser and rape apologist Richard M. Stallman has, by a secret process, been restored to the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. Stallman has lon
Read more

The General Intelligence of Robots

“Artificial intelligence” researchers mean by the phrase “general intelligence” two things. One is simply a machine learning system that can, like humans, use its knowledge for many different tasks. This is not something that has currently been built; language models produce language, stable diffusion models produce images, and neither seem to have any concepts of the underlying realities these words and images reflect. The second is the “general intelligence,” g , derived from intelligence tests, which is believed by some to be a unifying reality behind intelligence test scores. In a paper on GPT-4 from Microsoft a Wall Street Journal Editorial by Linda Gottfredson, Mainstream Science on Intelligence is cited as providing a definition of general intelligence. It’s an appalling piece, repeating debunked claims about racial differences in intelligence and claiming as scientific consensus hypotheses that are at best debatable and at worst outright false.
Read more

A Grand Unified Theory of Bad New Economy Firms

The wildly successful internet economy firms mostly operate by evading laws. New technology which has allowed firms to move their business to less-regulated jurisdictions and a generation of deregulation and favorable court decisions have allowed these firms to be bad places to work and bad places to do business with. Here’s a catalog of some of their abuses: Evasion of local laws through national operations . Amazon notoriously picks jurisdictions with lax labor laws for its warehouses. Uber simply ignores local laws until penalized. When penalized, they initiate political campaigns to get the laws overridden at the state level. Extortionate business practices . Doordash infamously underpays its workers. Grubhub notoriously overcharges restaurants . Uber has the resurrected long-illegal practice of raising taxi rates when demand is highest. Monopolistic practices . Enforcement in this
Read more