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But we ain't broke and headed to the poor house. Rich and dumb in the same sentence. Kind of like saying its because our people are so smart we have to have a huge welfare system.
Yeah, I don't remember pointing at California and saying, "Wow, what an awesome way to go about solving a problem." Also, you raised a terrific point earlier when you countered BayAreaHillbilly's comparison of our state's system with that of a third world country. The fact of the matter is, for those people concerned about the heavy taxpayer burden to fund healthcare for those less fortunate, we pay no matter what. Whether we pay in higher insurance premiums because hospitals have to charge more to cover the uninsured or whether we pay in higher taxes, we still pay. The only way out of paying for the uninsured is to leave them completely out in the cold, bereft of healthcare altogether. I'm not prepared to return to such medieval thinking. We'll have so many dead bodies laying around we'll have to start throwing them in dumpsters. We'll return to a time when a simple cut can cause an infection that'll lead to a child's death. Too bad their parents couldn't afford insurance, the fools!
Medieval thinking? Dead bodies in the streets? Please ... that is so over the top and melodramatic. Maybe you should move here and I should move there, I think we fit in better to each others' states than our own.
You'd think after passin' thru AZ, NM or NV they'd get a clue... but they don't. Californians bring their liberal goofiness with 'em and expect it be perfectly acceptable... even to becoming a cultural norm.
I happened to go into a motel restaurant awhile back up in Prescott... 'n noticed a load of CA license plates in the lot. My wife sez: "This'll be fun..." We're both carryin' loaded sidearms. The whole bunch of these baggy shorts, Birkenstock wearin' Kommiefornia yahoo's looked at us like we were gonna shoot the place up. Yuma... right across the Colorado from Winter Haven is even worse.
Everytime my wife sees a California license plate goin' down I-10 she yells: "Go Home!" (She's originally from Illinois... 'hates them too..)
Quote: "I wouldn't knock California's and other progressive state's social programs." Progressive... code word for Marxist. Social... as in Facist/Communist! These 'progessive... socialist states... have the worst economies in the nation... the least freedoms and the highest crime rates. Get a clue...
How to take back California. Go back to open carry.
It would be interesting to drill down on the "uninsured children" stats. How many parents of uninsured children have big screen TVs? How many have credit card debt?
Look of course there is justification for a safety net for the truly needy.
But by the same token, there are many stupid decisions being made by the user community.
Time for some individual responsibility.
Also, I would add, as an aside, one of the things bankrupting health care is our overmedicated, I need to feel good right now culture ... people who make a visit to their GP for every little sniffle, ache and minor pain, and, furthermore, demand meds every time.
Okay, here is the deal with insurance and one can not blame the State of Texas for this problem at all. The issue is the rising costs of the basic coverage itself. Texas is unique in the fact that MANY MANY people here own their own business or whatever. A skilled person can make a decent living IN Texas doing their "own thing". The average "Joe The Electrician" (did not want to use that other profession ) can do his own thing on his own and make enough to support his family. Then you have NUMEROUS small business owners. We are one. Most USED to provide health insurance or covered a big chunk of it. I can tell you honestly that for the last 10 years every single year the premiums have skyrocketed. Ours is going up again by 75%. Some people be it self-employed or small business owners stopped with the private health insurance years ago. We have not because we want it for ourselves. Thank God we have been HUGELY BLESSED in our business to be able to keep providing it BUT this coming renewal is going to be a HUGE change. We are changing insurance carriers after this HUGE increase because the insurance company raised it to get away from insuring small companies. They only want the HUGE companies w/ 1000's of employees. So this time we are going w/ a different ins. company but with the still increased rates and the lower coverage (something else that goes on every year ) the employees are going to have to pay some of their own coverage AND the coverage is less while the deductibles are higher. MUCH higher. But we still have coverage.
So don't blame the State of Texas for the high numbers of uninsured children. Their parents are able to make a living here where they probably could not in many other states. Blame the politicians in Washington and the Fat Cat presidents of the insurance companies that don't want to insure anyone that MIGHT get sick and need to visit the doctor or hospital. They annually jack the rates up and lower the coverage so they have less out of pocket expenses on their end. So it DOES make sense for the average self-employed person w/ a usually healthy family to drop insurance coverage. Otherwise they would be spending thousands of dollars every year in insurance that does not even cover a basic x-ray to check to see if a kid broke their arm.
This problem is NOT going to get fixed by the State of Texas. It is only going to get fixed when Washington wakes up (HA!) and puts the hammer down on the insurance companies to stop jerking around the consumers.
Okay, here is the deal with insurance and one can not blame the State of Texas for this problem at all. The issue is the rising costs of the basic coverage itself. Texas is unique in the fact that MANY MANY people here own their own business or whatever. A skilled person can make a decent living IN Texas doing their "own thing". The average "Joe The Electrician" (did not want to use that other profession ) can do his own thing on his own and make enough to support his family. Then you have NUMEROUS small business owners. We are one. Most USED to provide health insurance or covered a big chunk of it. I can tell you honestly that for the last 10 years every single year the premiums have skyrocketed. Ours is going up again by 75%. Some people be it self-employed or small business owners stopped with the private health insurance years ago. We have not because we want it for ourselves. Thank God we have been HUGELY BLESSED in our business to be able to keep providing it BUT this coming renewal is going to be a HUGE change. We are changing insurance carriers after this HUGE increase because the insurance company raised it to get away from insuring small companies. They only want the HUGE companies w/ 1000's of employees. So this time we are going w/ a different ins. company but with the still increased rates and the lower coverage (something else that goes on every year ) the employees are going to have to pay some of their own coverage AND the coverage is less while the deductibles are higher. MUCH higher. But we still have coverage.
So don't blame the State of Texas for the high numbers of uninsured children. Their parents are able to make a living here where they probably could not in many other states. Blame the politicians in Washington and the Fat Cat presidents of the insurance companies that don't want to insure anyone that MIGHT get sick and need to visit the doctor or hospital. They annually jack the rates up and lower the coverage so they have less out of pocket expenses on their end. So it DOES make sense for the average self-employed person w/ a usually healthy family to drop insurance coverage. Otherwise they would be spending thousands of dollars every year in insurance that does not even cover a basic x-ray to check to see if a kid broke their arm.
This problem is NOT going to get fixed by the State of Texas. It is only going to get fixed when Washington wakes up (HA!) and puts the hammer down on the insurance companies to stop jerking around the consumers.
Wild applause, and a great description of the real situation.
It would be interesting to drill down on the "uninsured children" stats. How many parents of uninsured children have big screen TVs? How many have credit card debt?
Look of course there is justification for a safety net for the truly needy.
But by the same token, there are many stupid decisions being made by the user community.
Time for some individual responsibility.
Also, I would add, as an aside, one of the things bankrupting health care is our overmedicated, I need to feel good right now culture ... people who make a visit to their GP for every little sniffle, ache and minor pain, and, furthermore, demand meds every time.
I will venture to say that very, very few parents of uninsured kids have plasma tvs. They may have credit card debt but I don't think that's from wastefull spending, I think it's from legitimate costs.
Most parents genuinely want their kids to be insured but with the ever-rising and exhorbitant costs of coverage it's difficult for a low-income family to do this. The state can't do all the work but it definitely can help.
I don't think kids should be punished for their parents inability to pay--they deserve the best health care that this state can offer them regardless of their ability to pay for the service. Otherwise we are failing as a state and ought to be ashamed of ourselves as a people. ONE QUARTER of our kids are not insured and are currently reliant on expensive emergency-only care for healthcare. This is a dangerous and expensive way to take care of our kids, and we should be embarrased that we let it happen.
I know that the state can't do everything, but they can do a hell of a lot more than they are doing now.
And the overmedicated culture is a blessing. True sickness and illness costs thousands of dollars more than catching something before it gets bad. You know why we spend so much money on healthcare for illegal immigrants? Because they aren't able to get treated why it's still cheap.
Oh, the Californians definitely overdo the welfare thing, to the point of falling even beneath us in services offered because they can't pay for it anymore.
However, our state could do far more for EVERYONE if people weren't so damn stingy about taxes. We rely on sales taxes and lotteries which prey on the poor to finance our schools and local institutions, and then we rely on exhorbitant salary tax rates to finance everything.
I definitely don't want to see our state become the broken-down, debt-ridden system that California is, but we can definitely do far more than we do now with little impact to most people.
Im extremely happy with our tax system. Let's agree to keep things the same and if you want to move to a place that "does more" you can! The greatest thing about property taxes is that you pay them once out of pocket at the end of the year and it makes you really pissed off.
The danger of what you are advocating is that it is a slippery slope. Once you decide to take care of people it never stops. California did not get to where it is overnight, they took baby steps. There is tremendous opportunity here and I believe that people have to hit rock bottom before they can pick themselves up. Watching people hit rock bottom is painful and some will not make it, but most will. Ironically giving people something for nothing actually hurts them proportionally to how much you give them.
I have seen vietnamese immigrants with no education and zero english skills and 8 children come to the US and make it without taking any welfare. All of their kids went to college (community-state school) and the parents own 3 houses.
Okay, here is the deal with insurance and one can not blame the State of Texas for this problem at all. The issue is the rising costs of the basic coverage itself. Texas is unique in the fact that MANY MANY people here own their own business or whatever. A skilled person can make a decent living IN Texas doing their "own thing". The average "Joe The Electrician" (did not want to use that other profession ) can do his own thing on his own and make enough to support his family. Then you have NUMEROUS small business owners. We are one. Most USED to provide health insurance or covered a big chunk of it. I can tell you honestly that for the last 10 years every single year the premiums have skyrocketed. Ours is going up again by 75%. Some people be it self-employed or small business owners stopped with the private health insurance years ago. We have not because we want it for ourselves. Thank God we have been HUGELY BLESSED in our business to be able to keep providing it BUT this coming renewal is going to be a HUGE change. We are changing insurance carriers after this HUGE increase because the insurance company raised it to get away from insuring small companies. They only want the HUGE companies w/ 1000's of employees. So this time we are going w/ a different ins. company but with the still increased rates and the lower coverage (something else that goes on every year ) the employees are going to have to pay some of their own coverage AND the coverage is less while the deductibles are higher. MUCH higher. But we still have coverage.
So don't blame the State of Texas for the high numbers of uninsured children. Their parents are able to make a living here where they probably could not in many other states. Blame the politicians in Washington and the Fat Cat presidents of the insurance companies that don't want to insure anyone that MIGHT get sick and need to visit the doctor or hospital. They annually jack the rates up and lower the coverage so they have less out of pocket expenses on their end. So it DOES make sense for the average self-employed person w/ a usually healthy family to drop insurance coverage. Otherwise they would be spending thousands of dollars every year in insurance that does not even cover a basic x-ray to check to see if a kid broke their arm.
This problem is NOT going to get fixed by the State of Texas. It is only going to get fixed when Washington wakes up (HA!) and puts the hammer down on the insurance companies to stop jerking around the consumers.
It is hard to tease out root causes. However one reason why you can barely buy insurance on your own is because there is no market for it. The reasonfor that is that if your employer buys it it is tax deductible. If you buy it you pay for it post tax, that is a 30%+ surcharge tacked on immediately.
Next the government limits who can provide medical care through licensing. Im not saying the licensing is bad, but for fixing a broken arm you dont need to go to 8 years of school + 4+ years of residency + half a million dollars in tuition. You dont even need a dr to have a baby, a midwife will do fine and they can be trained in a short period of time.
Since most people have insurance and dont pay out of pocket, no one looks at prices and there is no pressure to reduce prices. All the uninsured people are a blessing because they will create a market for things like xrays and inexpensive dr visits at independent clinics that are run like businesses. Xrays and mri's can drop radically in price. The illegals are probably one of our best chances to fix the medical system as they dont have insurance and so will shop around for non-emergency medical care and will thus create a market for it.
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Yuma... right across the Colorado from Winter Haven is even worse. 
) can do his own thing on his own and make enough to support his family. Then you have NUMEROUS small business owners. We are one. Most USED to provide health insurance or covered a big chunk of it. I can tell you honestly that for the last 10 years every single year the premiums have skyrocketed. Ours is going up again by 75%
. Some people be it self-employed or small business owners stopped with the private health insurance years ago. We have not because we want it for ourselves. Thank God we have been HUGELY BLESSED in our business to be able to keep providing it BUT this coming renewal is going to be a HUGE change. We are changing insurance carriers after this HUGE increase because the insurance company raised it to get away from insuring small companies. They only want the HUGE companies w/ 1000's of employees. So this time we are going w/ a different ins. company but with the still increased rates and the lower coverage (something else that goes on every year 
) the employees are going to have to pay some of their own coverage AND the coverage is less while the deductibles are higher. MUCH higher. But we still have coverage. 
