2018 U.S election
- Thread starter Zkribbler
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Timsup2nothin
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Was that agreement from someone in a very similar position?
My state assembly district sent a Democrat to Sacramento for the first time in ages a couple elections back. He joined a group of fellow democrats and pushed through an amendment to a tax incentive bill that re-energized our local defense contractor branches and brought tens of millions in federal spending into town. Without him the state assembly would almost certainly have said "Palmdale? Pffft. Why do anything for them?" Then there was a scandal and we went right back to the big middle finger by sending a Republican appropriately named Lackey. The only bills he voted for that passed in his entire tenure, including the one and only that he himself was the primary sponsor of, involved the renaming of post offices.
Timsup2nothin
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LOL...well, yeah, there's that. Our local Republicans are running, by far and bar none, the most corrupt local government in the state, and they consider anything other than one of their loyalists going to Sacramento to be a risk for causing investigations into their perpetual re-elections. It seems highly likely that the scandal was a put up job, but what can ya do?
Zkribbler
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...then came the industrial revolution and all those kids moved away to the city to get jobs.
Timsup2nothin
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Increasing central authority doesn't seem like it would do much of anything for the circumstances described, and increasing checks on power appears to be more called for...at least on the power of one of the local mayors and his band of cronies. I just haven't discovered any way to get it done.
So... medicare should take all of your worldy possessions once you're in a nursing home?
Timsup2nothin
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If you have a bunch of wordly possessions you shouldn't be in a nursing home. If you don't have any because you gave them all to your kids then you really shouldn't be in a nursing home.
Timsup2nothin
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I'm against people who don't take responsibility for taking care of their own. I'm especially against people who don't take responsibility for taking care of their own and foist the costs off on other people unnecessarily. If there's no one to take care of you, you should be taken care of. If there's no one to take care of you, and you're broke, you should still be taken care of. If no one is willing to take care of you, maybe you're a jerk so maybe you actually shouldn't be taken care of. If no one wants to take care of you even though you intentionally went broke giving them all your stuff, then you really must be a jerk that shouldn't be taken care of.
The cost is on medicare though - you know, an entitlement they paid into. They shouldn't have to sacrifice everything on top of it. They're not leaving behind millions for their kids. They're leaving behind their house and probably credit card and funeral debt.
Zkribbler
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You're thinking Medicaid. There's no means test for Medicare.
IIRC, for Medicaid, the upper limit is $5k. Occasionally, my mom's net worth would leak above that, & I'd remit the excess to the State.
Estebonrober
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Medicaid pays for nursing homes, not medicare. The difference is important because since the states enact medicaid it is their decision on how to measure affordability.
Also if you've ever been in a nursing home you'd realize almost no one actually wants to be there.
Timsup2nothin
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Among the obscene things, IMO, is that the issue is about how to pay for not taking responsibility for your people rather than the not taking responsibility yourself. And I'm not totally dumping on the kids. As @Zkribbler points out, the industrial revolution allowed the kids, however many of them there may be, to get out from under the thumb of their parents and move to the city. Without "if you don't take care of us you will have no land" parents who couldn't adapt to not treating their kids like property found themselves as abandoned as the family farm, and deservedly so. But the solution isn't "so the elderly are all a societal problem and there's a warehouse for that."
My own parents provide a good case in point. They reached a point where they needed care, and their response to the problem of their potential caregivers being at removed distances was "well, we're not moving so someone will have to come back here." They weren't sitting on a family farm, they were sitting on a suburban house that was in worse shape than they were. What on earth gave them the idea that such behavior was remotely reasonable? But they were hardly extraordinary...they were the norm, and that sort of behavior isn't given even a blink of surprise, generally.
So, how do we distribute the limited resource of medicare when there are people who genuinely need it, people who paid in so think it is their due even if they have other resources, and people who may not have other resources but only do not because they gave them away or drove them away? Or should we just pretend that the resource is actually not limited, like caring for elderly people can be stretched over an infinite number of recipients without strain?
My own parents provide a good case in point. They reached a point where they needed care, and their response to the problem of their potential caregivers being at removed distances was "well, we're not moving so someone will have to come back here." They weren't sitting on a family farm, they were sitting on a suburban house that was in worse shape than they were. What on earth gave them the idea that such behavior was remotely reasonable? But they were hardly extraordinary...they were the norm, and that sort of behavior isn't given even a blink of surprise, generally.
So, how do we distribute the limited resource of medicare when there are people who genuinely need it, people who paid in so think it is their due even if they have other resources, and people who may not have other resources but only do not because they gave them away or drove them away? Or should we just pretend that the resource is actually not limited, like caring for elderly people can be stretched over an infinite number of recipients without strain?
Estebonrober
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Again guys nursing homes are generally covered by medicaid, which is not directly taxed out of income directly but funded by states and fed. You didn't directly pay into this like medicare or social security.
I still support accommodating the elderly I just think we should stop playing games about it.
I still support accommodating the elderly I just think we should stop playing games about it.
Timsup2nothin
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Yeah, my bad too on the not actually interchangeable wording there. I'm never really too heavy into "but that money goes in this government pool and the payout comes from that government pool so they aren't related" excusing, but I will try to maintain specificity.
I will say that when someone is saying "I deserve to be taken care of through some government program because I paid in" they may use the word 'medicare' and be thinking of social security, or they may be saying 'medicare' and be thinking of the income taxes they've paid, or pretty much anything in between on either end. Their position is about the deserving, not the specific details.
I will say that when someone is saying "I deserve to be taken care of through some government program because I paid in" they may use the word 'medicare' and be thinking of social security, or they may be saying 'medicare' and be thinking of the income taxes they've paid, or pretty much anything in between on either end. Their position is about the deserving, not the specific details.
