People Still Seem Confused About What Affordable Means [View all]
While the author makes it sound like people who choose high-deductible plans are being foolish (those stupid poors!), they often dont have a choice. As I noted years ago, they cant afford the low deductible plans. Essentially, theyre trying to skate by on the plan with the cheapest monthly payment because they can barely afford that, while hoping they dont get sick (or possibly get a better job). If they do get sick, instead of going into ten of thousands of dollars of debt, they will only go into thousands of dollars of debt. If you dont believe me, the Boston Federal Reserve has made the same point.
That the reporter for New York does not understand thisand is willing to blame lower-income peopleis why the transformation of journalism into a nearly exclusive upper-middle class domain is so harmful (and is a perfect example of what some would call class privilege).
We need to stop telling people not to believe their lying eyes. Its not helping. Instead, we need to discuss how to fix these particular problems. Or maybe just move to single-payer. A boy can dream, cant he?
Full post:
http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2014/12/19/people-still-seem-confused-about-what-affordable-means/