Don’t get me wrong, this proposal is by no means perfect or even the thing I would ideally address first.
But making more options for small companies and loosening the restrictions on what qualifies for health insurance will help curb the cost of medical care overall.
What is the point of having cheap insurance options if said insurance does not cover or actually do anything? It’s worthless junk literally! Instead of taking the insurance you’d be better off pocketing the money and forgoing it all together.
I don’t know how you can blame “Obamacare” for medical prices increasing when it is clear that they would have and will continue to rise no matter if “Obamacare” still exists or not. When healthcare is about profits and is a business, whether any of us live or die does not matter to these companies.
I have to jump thru hoops, wait, and pay a significantly higher out of pocket for any imaging outside of X-rays. Due to my employer, I am locked into a single provider. Sure, I can (and do) have supplementary insurance, but FFS why is that even necessary?
The answer to all of the above, IMO?
Corporate greed, enabled by government intervention.
The Affordable Care Act isn’t our real problem, we can lay that at the feet of Richard Nixon .
i mean, i agree that we should do something about healthcare prices & that obamacare is not faring so well right now. but trying to make it easier to get junk healthcare plans without doing anything about decreasing the price of full-fledged healthcare plans will just make things worse, & lead to a situation where low-income people are priced out of even being able to afford a full healthcare plan & forced to either default to these “short-term”/association plans or not have any at all
Frozen and canned fruits and vegetables are always cheap and plentiful. Fresh is always going to be more expensive because of the way growing seasons work.
In the future we will need more localized greenhouse farming because of water issues in the Southwest where most vegetables are grown (for u.s. consumption)
I mean… how many calories are in that big thing of salad mix? A few hundred probably. Compared to 1500 calories in a pound of ground beef.
Most fruits/veggies are pretty bad at giving calories. Even the mighty potato is only 400ish calories for a pound .
Grain/beans trounce meat in terms of energy per dollar spent, but I think that’s why it’s become so common to do grain/beans + meat. Meat is way more calorie/cost efficient than veggies, so it’s the perfect way to modify your grains/beans to be tastier and more filling.
So yeah, pushing that money to make it so that veggies are cheaper per calorie than meat would be super nice. So super agree on in door farming, I hope we get more of that.
Was about to say Whaaat? You want me to not be able to afford McDonalds or regular groceries now? Fruit and vegetables both are expensive as fuck when you have a couple kids.
Bananas are about the only thing that's still dirt cheap lol. Eggs have finally gone down. How about subsidize the good food too while enacting carbon taxes on meat.
A few years back there was a scandal where a whole chain of mental health facilities was doing this. They would buy local mental hospitals, not change the name of disclose that they’d been bought, and start committing everyone, no matter what, for exactly as long as their insurance would cover, then kicking them to the streets.
Took me a bit to dig up the story – it was these guys:
It is even it’s covered in American cheese which adds no flavor and increases calories by a lot and it’s on a bun made of American wheat, which increases calories by a lot and it’s covered in sugary ketchup and it comes with fried potatoes and a large soda made out of corn syrup.
Turns a normal amount of calories into 2k calories when you add in all the crap.
American cheese definitely adds flavor; that’s the whole point of it. Ketchup is meh. Fries are tasty, but admittedly quite bad for you. Diet sodas are a thing.
Bold move putting the cutline for the lead art below the story. Sidesaddle debates are for amateurs!
I was unaware that the nonprofit model was spreading to such an extent. I’d heard about the Tribune, but the Sun-Times was news to me. Subscription/donation-backed but free to all is the only way forward that I can see. If only there were an established site using that model that was a household name … I’m sure there is; just need to look it up on Wikipedia.
For a brief moment, I pictured living in my van and committing journalism for a competent newsroom at some point.
How are they measuring the costs here? Even fast-food burgers have significantly shot up in price.
If we go by raw ingredients, then healthy food can be considerably cheaper than pre-made garbage and fast food.
If we add the time cost of traveling to a grocery store, shopping, and then preparing the healthier food, then it could become more expensive.
There's also the fact that most of the USA has absolute shit public transportation which increases the burden for people who can't afford cars to get groceries in the first place. That and the time costs can be reduced with grocery deliveries, however. this might not be a viable option in all areas or work schedules; You want to be home when the groceries are delivered.
Then there is the fact that there are a lot of food deserts , especially in low-income areas. This can make it harder, if not impossible for people to even get healthier food.
Not sure where I'm going with my train of thought here...
The Farm Bill, every politician will say is to help the hard working American family farms, but actually just funnels billions into the agri-corps that keep them in power.
Reform-minded legislators have previously floated the idea of rewriting the Farm Bill to favor smaller family operations instead of agri-conglomerates like Con-Agra – to near-universal dissent from farmers. No matter the reality of the situation, conservative media has them convinced that they’re just one good season away from riches, and they don’t want to lose their subsidies when that happens.
Are there any who don’t support it? And if you find someone who doesn’t, does that outweigh the things they disagree with you on? Representative democracy doesn’t have the granularity to focus on anything other than the most important issues.
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