Reply to Let Lower Income "Pay Their Fair Share"!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, you still haven't answered the question of how making the poor pay an extra $8-40+ per month for income tax/insurance/doctor appointments is going to improve YOUR life.

No platitudes about everyone have skin in the game.  I want to know how your own financial situation will improve by making a struggling single mother choose between paying rent and paying the electricity bill.

Specifics, please.  Thanks for answering.[/quote]
OP. A few things:

1) It's just common sense. We have an exchange system where 85% of people are getting subsidized! and a large portion of them are subsidized entirely through the Medicaid expansion. (In fact, Medicsid expansion was the largest driver behind the Obamacare enrollments.) So now you have a system where 15% of the people are paying full freight! and a huge segment paying nothing. it's just math that if you get the large group paying nothing to kick in a little something, the minority  - often with incomes of only $50k or $60k - who are shouldering the entire burden will pay less.

2) But that's not the most important factor. It's ACCESS. While you've dismissed the idea that lower-income should pay $10 to see a doctor, others have pointed out that when people are invested in their own care, they make responsible decisions. When I'm not well, I go through all sorts of mental contortions trying to decide whether to go to the doctor, because the hundreds it will cost (on top of the premiums) means I need to sacrifice elsewhere.

But those for whom it's entirely free to have to go through that decision process, and thus they show up - and take limited slots from people who really do need care - for every minor thing. In the meantime, the middle class person who really needs to see the doctor and therefore has decided to make the financial sacrifice can't get in. This recently happened to me. I needed to see a doctor, and the soonest I could get in was more than a month later. (And I called around....some were two months.) When my time finally arrived, I walk into a room full of lower-income, non-Engkish speaking people. It's fair to assume some of them (I'd guess most) were on Medicaid. IF they had to pay $10, it's a sure bet that some of them were there for minor issues that they would have waited. The end result is because the "free system" encourages an overuse of doctor's visits, people like me - who pay a fortune - can't see a doctor in time.

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