People Still Seem Confused About What Affordable Means

[unrepentant progress]

While the author makes it sound like people who choose high-deductible plans are being foolish (those stupid poors!), they often don’t have a choice. As I noted years ago, they can’t afford the low deductible plans. Essentially, they’re trying to skate by on the plan with the cheapest monthly payment because they can barely afford that, while hoping they don’t 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 don’t believe me, the Boston Federal Reserve has made the same point.

That the reporter for New York does not understand this–and is willing to blame lower-income people–is 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. It’s not helping. Instead, we need to discuss how to fix these particular problems. Or maybe just move to single-payer. A boy can dream, can’t he?

Full post: http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2014/12/19/people-still-seem-confused-about-what-affordable-means/