Re: [OT] Re: Linux & BSD history

From: Bulent Murtezaoglu (bm_at_acm.org)
Date: 12/24/03 

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 20:32:59 +0200

>>>>> "NG" == Nils Gösche <ngo@cartan.de> writes:
[...]
    NG> Yes, how many. That's the question I was asking, and without
    NG> answering it, any such number doesn't say much. Moreover,
    NG> health insurance isn't /that/ expensive. [...]

No, it is _that_ expensive. It has been about two years since I priced
it in the US, but I was paying something like $240/mo as a single guy
(Blue Cross/Blue Shield + something). This covered an awful lot with
low deductibles. There are supposed to be cheaper kinds but you'll have
a lot of trouble finding someone who sells them. For a family of 4 with
two kids, I imagine the rate would be $600+/mo. That is a lot of money
in the US where minimum wage is about $6/hr gross.

The issue that I could see is that the general population is clueless
as to what alternative approaches there might be. My touble in
finding a good cheap plan was partly caused by nobody in the company I
was working for wanting anything less than low-deductible fullish
coverage. There is this scheme, called medical savings accounts, that
enables you to save money without the gov't taxing it along with a
high-deductible insurance so after a few healthy years you basically
save enough money in interest-bearing accounts earmarked for health
expenses and simultaneously have a low-premium high-deductible
insurance of catastrophic problems. But the climate is such that the
population does not want it or understand it, the broker sharks panic
when you ask them about it (one guy even said "I would like to know
the name of my employee who told you about this"!) and you basically
cannot get it. Instead you get this super-insurance where you pay
through the nose every month so you never ever pay more than $20 at
the pharmacy.

    NG> [...] An insurance is something I pay for when I want the risk
    NG> protection it offers. When the government forces me to pay,
    NG> it just becomes taxes by another name.

The language for health insurance had been so corrupted in the US that
people make sure 'insurance' exists for expenses they _plan_ to incur
like pregnancy. The issue is not simply that some comparison of the DoD
budget to some social program for the health of the poor doesn't make
sense, the issue is that the working middle class who will get screwed
under almost any system is now lacking even the terminology and the
mindset to articulate _how_ they are getting screwed under the present
scheme. All in my very humble foreign opinion (but I did pay a small
fortune for this 'insurance' thing that got shoved down my throat for most
of the 15 years I spent in the US).

    NG> [...] however, in Germany, there is this
    NG> insane law saying that my employer has to pay the same amount
    NG> to my insurance company. [...]

This insanity is repeated in most countries. In the US it is not the
health insurance costs but social security taxes (and maybe disability
insurance I am not sure). They call it the 'employer share' and you
don't even see it as a tax you paid in your paystub. Here in Turkey
the same deal for 'social insurance' (which does cover health care at
government hospitals) except the 'employer share' is even higher than
the employee share. I don't know if people really believe these don't
come out of the employee's pocket, but maybe they do. I do know an
awful lot of folks here work for minimum wage on paper and get the
remainder of their salary in cash so they get full health coverage and
points for retirement for cheap. This evasion is seen as something
_employers_ do when in fact it is the _employee_ who's cheating not
just for the social insurance tax but also for the income tax. So
maybe the naming scheme does work and people really do believe the
employers are the ones who are actually paying the 'employer shares'.

Anyway, now back on topic: merry Christmas!

BM

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