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Originally Posted by
cwolff
Buying a car from Big Head DBag car dealership benefits Big Head DBag. That's not charity. You're required to pay taxes if you are a part of this economy and those taxes pay for roads. Does that mean roads are charity spending? It's just not true that any time somebody pays for anything that benefits another it's charity.
Big Head DBag isn't using the car. If you bought a car from him and gave it to someone else, that would be charity. Me paying taxes for roads isn't charity, it's me paying for a service I use. Me paying taxes for welfare is charity, forced on me by the government. I'm really not understanding what you're going through on this...it's not a difficult concept.
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Charity is a great thing but I wouldn't go patting yourself on the back too hard about how it makes America great. Social programs only exist because we do not give enough money to charity to take care of these issues within our communities. If churches, families, communities and the people who live there could be counted on to be charitable we'd not have so many people on unemployment or welfare.
This is completely untrue. We have so many people on unemployment and welfare because the government allows them to be there. If my neighbor asks me for money, but I know he's going to spend it on crack and not diapers, I'm not going to give him any money. The government still will, though.
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One could say that welfare is actually the exact opposite of charity. Charity is voluntary,...
On this we, agree. Which is why I've clarified it as forced charity.
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...welfare programs have to be paid for from taxes because we, as a society, decided that there's value to do it and no one else is.
I have absolutely no problem with my tax money going to help mentally and/or physically disabled citizens. THAT is our responsibility as a society. Allowing able-bodied citizens to be comfortable in poverty is a kick in my nuts.
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You may not like that I debunked the blackjack argument because you are gambling right now.
You didn't debunk anything, and I'm not gambling at all. Well, I am I guess, but it's with my own money, so it's ok.
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If you face major health problems between now and the Jan 1 you may not be able to pay those bills. If you can't then we're looking at another bankruptcy or written off bad debt.
They have a great payment plan.
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The more people that don't pay the more the rest of society has to chip in.
Pretty much what the ACA is built on...a few people getting benefits from the rest of us chipping in.
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A real world example is FHA mortgage insurance. They took a beating on foreclosures so they not only raised mortgage insurance rates, they also made it a permanent fixture of FHA loans. All the people that gambled on home ownership with low down payments through FHA that lost, have caused the new home buyers who want FHA loans to pay much higher insurance premiums. That's how someone else's medical bills affect all of us.
Eh, not really. You're talking about an extra 1.75% or so, and you can cancel it after 78% loan to value...not to mention after 5% equity you can refinance through Fannie or Freddy and eliminate it completely. Regardless, this is a terrible example. The housing finance market is nothing even remotely similar to the healthcare market. You aren't going to have a run on sub-prime heart surgeries crashing the system. I get that you're trying to say a company could raise it's rates to cover the cost of people defaulting on their debt with them, and there is some degree of truth to that. ACA isn't going to cause a massive decrease in average medical bills just because another 2% of our population has health insurance. I'm curious what the real numbers are on that, by the way...I know we can look at the numbers for how many people have signed up through ACA, but is anyone tracking how many of those were completely uninsured prior? As in...weren't on Medicaid, didn't have different insurance, etc. I'm guessing that number is pretty small. Now, let's look at how many of those newly insured are going to face catastrophic health issues that would have ruined them financially prior to insurance, but now they're insured...that number would be even smaller. Certainly not large enough to have any demonstrable effect on healthcare prices as a whole.
