Federal Reserve Says State Minimum Wage Hikes Have Cost Up to 200,000 Jobs

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: Xtrozero

The plastic surgery market is regulated too.

Here is the FDA code regulating plastic surgery devices
FDA

Also, we have this.

Cosmetic Surgery Likely To Face Tough Regulation After Review

The booming cosmetic treatments industry is facing a wide-ranging crackdown over an array of dubious practices that exploit, pressurise and pose a danger to often vulnerable patients who are hoping to improve their appearance.

Just like most regulations, you only have the exploiters to blame for them. If it weren't for people abusing a good thing, we'd all have totally free markets. But some people can't play nice with others and ruin it for everyone else.

The problem with many regulations is that they inconvenience 99% of people trying to protect the 1% who aren't so bright.

Regulations are needed, but what often happens is that regulatory bureaucracy becomes enamored in protecting their little fiefdom instead of actually caring about if their regulations are actually effective.

originally posted by: Edumakated
Regulations are needed, but what often happens is that regulatory bureaucracy becomes enamored in protecting their little fiefdom instead of actually caring about if their regulations are actually effective.

I already touched on something similar to this in the post I directly responded to you on.

ETA: Sorry I got confused which thread I was posting on. I was referring to the post in the Baltimore thread. Sorry.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

So you think the "free market" is going to save Baltimore?

Hip replacement in the States 30k, hip replacement outside of the States 7k. I wonder how much catastrophic insurance would be if I paid all my doctor visits out of pocket for 30 to 50 per visit and used insurance for a 7k surgery... I bet it would be close to 40 bucks or less per month.

a reply to: Xtrozero

It should be noted that the price of medical care is highly inflated BECAUSE of insurance and not because of government. Government is currently making it worse with Obamacare, but health insurance and medical procedure costs were already through the roof. And that is because of the money grubbing ways the insurance company setup its payments and hospitals pricing their procedures with insurance costs in mind (costs that are priced high on purpose so that they can be negotiated down later by the insurance company).

Then in comes the government that doesn't want to dismantle this very shady business practice and instead protects the insurance industry with Obamacare and now you have the disaster that is our healthcare system. You CANNOT blame the state of our health care industry solely on government regulation. Heck, it got the way it did due to the FREE market.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: Xtrozero

It should be noted that the price of medical care is highly inflated BECAUSE of insurance and not because of government. Government is currently making it worse with Obamacare, but health insurance and medical procedure costs were already through the roof. And that is because of the money grubbing ways the insurance company setup its payments and hospitals pricing their procedures with insurance costs in mind (costs that are priced high on purpose so that they can be negotiated down later by the insurance company).

Then in comes the government that doesn't want to dismantle this very shady business practice and instead protects the insurance industry with Obamacare and now you have the disaster that is our healthcare system. You CANNOT blame the state of our health care industry solely on government regulation. Heck, it got the way it did due to the FREE market.

There is no free market for insurance because of government. Government is why your insurance is tied to the employer instead of you just being able to go out and buy insurance like you would car insurance. Government is why health insurance is not sold across state lines reducing choice of providers.

You should be able to buy health insurance just like car insurance. Everyone should be able to buy some type of catastrophic type healthcare at a very low cost.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Then in comes the government that doesn't want to dismantle this very shady business practice and instead protects the insurance industry with Obamacare and now you have the disaster that is our healthcare system. You CANNOT blame the state of our health care industry solely on government regulation. Heck, it got the way it did due to the FREE market.

I do not blame regulations at all. Regulations do not regulate the price. I liked the Republican plan to offer vouchers instead of ACA and medicare kind of like what Netherlands have, but to reduce cost to what the person can actually afford out of pocket or with cheap catastrophic insurance can only happen if medical practices decide to not use insurance at all except for newly rated catastrophic insurance.

a reply to: Edumakated

Except that wasn't the case pre-obamacare. Health insurance costs were rising significantly from year to year. This was a problem identified EARLY in the Bush Presidency years, let along the Obama years. I remember sitting in high school talking about health insurance costs rising faster than people can afford to pay them and I graduated in 2003.

Oh yea, and why did you use auto insurance as an example? Auto insurance, the product that we are required to buy in order drive a car in most states...

a reply to: Xtrozero

And that's exactly what needs to happen. The idea that insurance is necessary to pay for health care is a ridiculous idea to begin with. If we weren't concerned with making sure the health insurance companies didn't go out of business, then we could EASILY fix health care costs. But that isn't in the cards.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Health insurance costs are going up because people are living longer and requiring more extensive care in old age. Almost all the insurance costs in our system are incurred at end of life. The costs aren't increasing just because insurance companies are being greedy.

I have no problem really with an insurance mandate, but we still need a free market to offer insurance which we really don't have. We all know you are required to carry auto insurance if you drive on public roads, but you don't buy your auto insurance through your employer, nor are you prevented from buying cheaper policies from other providers who are not in your state.

Unless you are going to mandate that Doctors work at a fraction of their current compensation levels, take over pharmaceutical industry, and hospitals how are you going to "fix" healthcare prices without doing it organically through more competition?

a reply to: Edumakated

The idea of health insurance being provided by your employer is a holdover from the 50's and 60's when businesses had very high progressive tax rates on their profits, so they reinvested their profits back into their company (namely into labor) for a tax break and hence employer health insurance was born.

Now a days, employers offer it but charge you for it because we are desperately trying to hold onto an economic model that isn't relevant anymore because we destroyed the Socialist ideas that contributed to it existing.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Now a days, employers offer it but charge you for it because we are desperately trying to hold onto an economic model that isn't relevant anymore because we destroyed the Socialist ideas that contributed to it existing.

Actually mine offers it free and pays out of picket for it with a 30 dollar co-pay. I just went through 2 1/2 month of 1000 dollar a day med treatment and surgery with maybe 10 office visits and I paid less than 200 bucks out of pocket for the whole thing.

a reply to: Xtrozero

Yea, it really depends on the company I guess, but many ARE going away from offering it for free and usually make you pay some portion of the co-pay. I like my company's plan. I pay the monthly payment out of my paycheck, but they cover our deductible 100%.

originally posted by: Edumakated
Unless you are going to mandate that Doctors work at a fraction of their current compensation levels, take over pharmaceutical industry, and hospitals how are you going to "fix" healthcare prices without doing it organically through more competition?

Here is how it works... A doctor doesn't know what the insurance will pay him, so he bills very high to get full payment. If the doctor bills insurance $100 and max payout is 250 then he gets only $100, if he bills $400 then he get max payout $250. If you walk in and pay cash you get billed $400 too.

Also for hospitals it is the same, they bill the insurance 30,000 and they get paid 6,000, but the out of pocket guy also gets billed 30,000.

three-day stay in the hospital for a Medicare patient. The total of this bill was $30,000, but Medicare paid only $6,000. The patient was left with 20 percent of the charge Medicare accepted, so they had to pay $1,100 and the other $23,000 was completely wiped out.
Different insurance companies compensate at different levels based on their algorithms, which are calculated by number of days, types of services, diagnoses, and so on. Medicare covers more services than private insurance, but private insurance premiums are still on an apparent continuous incline.
As with doctor’s offices, if a patient doesn’t have insurance, they still get an over-inflated bill. Many hospitals do not seem to take into consideration that an uninsured person might not be able to afford these high fees.

a reply to: Informer1958

This is what people aren't getting. You have a girl with a degree in molecular biology making 13.50 out of college and at the same time the government loaned her $40k to get the degree. How is she suppose to pay down her debt? The debt keeps rising as she has to get back into school to get further educated so she can make enough to pay off her original debt. So now you're in school for 7 years, not in the labor pool, and you're competing for less and less available positions as your education demands it. This is the story of so many people. Most likely she decides to stay in school. Then comes the PhD (still not making money) and finally the post doc (might make some money here). She was just in school for over 10 years before she started affording to pay off her debt. How can this be? Such an advanced education, but no way to get ahead. Even the jobs she gets after all this hard work won't pay that great even if she is able to find a position that fits her experience. The government is too busy sinking money into people who won't contribute unlike this girl who wants to contribute. Instead of good science funding they sink money into the military and welfare. Look at where the lions share goes and look at how much the government puts into funding research. It's incomparable. One group are the non contributors and the other group are the contributors so why do the contributors get next to nothing? They don't know how to say no to the weakest members of society so we carry the burden through lower paying jobs. I'm sick of the take home being less and less because others are incapable.

a reply to: BrokedownChevy

Such ignorance. A lot of the people on welfare are similar to the girl you described. People who do not contribute not because they are unable or unwilling, but because the simply cannot due to outside circumstances. People enslaved by debt after going through college and being the unlucky ones who do not end up with a good job despite their high level of education.

Did You Know (You May Not Have): It would be less expensive to just give every homeless person a home. For free. Guess why this doesn't happen?
If your answer was, "Because jerkwards would think it's unfair, that those leeches get the easy way while we work hard and yada yada yada my own talent clawed me up to where I am. I'd never allow it to happen because I'd feel bad.", BIN PON BIN PON BIN PON! We've got a winner.

But yes, it's definitely those lazy bastards working three jobs a week and living to pay check to pay check that are the problem, or the people forced to use food stamps while working a job that classifies as full time. THEY are the reason for your problems, not at all the top 0.1% hoarding as much as the bottom 90%. Not at all the corrupt government's terrible economic deals like NAFTA and the TPP (the TPP in particular being SO amazing for the general public it was written in private by corporate lawyers and kept hush-hush, and still is kept hush-hush.)

I agree with you on the military, however. Completely wasteful.

I have to agree; if I have to pay my employees at the small burger joint I run 10.00 an hour, I might as well shut down or jack up the prices on everything. You'd have to pay $10.00 for a burger.

As far as the "price of service or good is based solely on hourly wage" crap ... by that logic, we should drop the minimum wage to $0.25 an hour ... then a burger would be $0.50 again ... wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

Nope. It would stay at $5.00 and the owner would pocket the profits, just as they are doing now.

21st century "capitalism" at it's best. Ever increasing profits, screw the worker, screw the consumer.

a reply to: Gryphon66



Totally ridiculous.

Nobody would work for two bits an hour.

Would they? Would they?

originally posted by: xuenchen
a reply to: Gryphon66

Totally ridiculous.

Nobody would work for two bits an hour.

Would they? Would they?

Two bits is better than no bits though, amirite?

I didn't say it made sense, or that it would work, merely that it employs the same absurd logic being seen here.

/shrug

Low wage part time workers save companies a fortune in overtime and benefits, maybe there'd be more jobs for everyone if people didn't have to work two of them.