Obamacare not affordable

[popeyespappy]

Okay, I do have an opinion on this.

I am strongly in favour of universal healthcare. However, the Fed. govt. of the USA cannot afford it, and I do think it should be instituted at State levels.

Ideally, this would be good, but there are the Southern states to contend with. Texas, Mississippi, Alabama... these states cannot be trusted to run ANYTHING. Look at how they run their schools and that's a good indicator of how they'd run their healthcare systems.

Zaz, while I generally agree with most of your posts I don’t think you have a clue what you are talking about this time. In fact I believe your comments are biased generalizations with roots in prejudice that you would normally be quick to call out when you see it others.

To begin with the state of Alabama was doing a pretty good job of regulating the health insurance industry prior to the ACA. Two years ago I was 50 years old, self-employed and paying for my own health insurance. I was paying $221 a month for dam good health insurance. Those rates were among the lowest in the nation for someone my age. They were a direct result of state laws controlling the way insurance providers did business in this state. Currently my employer picks up 100% of the tab for my health insurance, but if I had to buy an individual policy tomorrow I’d be paying over $400 a month for coverage that isn’t nearly as good as what I had the last time I bought my own insurance.

Neither is this state’s legislature doing a particularly poor job in education. Yes, Alabama ranks near the bottom of the list of states in education, but that has a lot more to do with demographics than legislation. Take a look at this chart.



That’s right, the five states (including DC) with highest poverty rates are the five states with the worst education rankings. The five states at the top of the list in the poverty rankings also rate highly in education.

This correlation holds true from the national level all the way down to the local level. Globally the US barely ranks in the top 25 in reading, math and science. But if you only count the schools with 10% or less students on free or reduced cost lunches (the schools with the fewest poor kids) The US moves into the top five in all three categories. The same holds true in Alabama. There are good schools here. The good schools are the ones with the least amounts of poor kids.

The problem isn’t the way the government runs the schools. It isn’t funding for the schools. The schools with the highest number of kids living in poverty get the most money. The problem with US schools is the children of poor adults generally make poor students. If you want to fix the US school system don't worry about what labels the legislators are putting on the biology books. Fix the students by bringing their parents out of poverty.