JTrainDavis
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So -- Why does healthcare cost so damn much? (warning: novel-length post)
- Thread starter milohimself
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IPorange
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JTrainDavis
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JTrainDavis
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milohimself
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Look at the foods they eat; and if you were to live in a poor neighborhood, you'd have no idea that smoking advertisements went away.
But no, a disproportionate of the working poor smoke when compared up to the median income. Slightly more, yes, but not as out of whack as one would think.
They are, but again, look at the social context in which these are made; earlier I mentioned that I drive through the central east side of town which has a lot of lower income neighborhoods. I drive past probably 10-12 fast food places, countless convenience stores and gas stations, and just one grocery store on the 2 mile trek to work. The majority of these people don't drive and it becomes a major daily expedition just to get to a regular grocery store.
Actually Europe has lower smoking rates than the US, cited in OP. Asia, IIRC is higher, but Japan has a significantly lower rate of lung cancer.
Canned foods are not all that healthy for you, as JayVols mentioned they are loaded with preservatives, and much more often than not high fructose corn syrup can be found in damn near anything that comes in a can or box. Lazy has little to do with it, eating healthy is expensive, and quite frankly a luxury, plain and simple. EBT doesn't even cover the average family of three's grocery expenses when buying the bare essentials at WinCo, let alone buying healthy food.
I spent some time the other day talking to people at a local public health clinic for the homeless and generally not-so-well-to-do, and the local Oregon DHS office asking both employees and folks coming in through if they're on TANF, EBT or Medicaid, how they get along and their general views. As expected, a good population spoken to were single moms.
The first question I asked anybody I talked to was if they wanted to be off of government assistance; the overwhelming response was a resounding and sincere yes, I did have three folks mention that they'd ride it out if they could, but this was over the span of about four hours or so. When pressing why, I noticed a sense of embarrassment for lack of a better word. One woman I spoke to said "I need to know I can get this done on my own" in a sincere tone of voice; that one stuck with me.
Next I asked if they used any other form of support other than government assistance, i.e. charity or family support. About two thirds said charity, I had about a couple dozen respondents say they had good help from their families. A couple of them nervously commented that they didn't want anybody at the DHS to overhear that because they're not supposed to be getting other support. A handful of others said they've simply gone without food for a couple days on end from time to time.
I then asked them about their job prospects at the DHS office, but didn't take exact notes on this, just tried to get more of a general feel. Some of them were willing to identify their caseworker by name, but in general expressed dissatisfaction with their job search. Nearly all the work out there was remedial for minimum wage; Even in Oregon, where the minimum wage is top 2 or 3 in the country, most said they were holding out for something that paid better or had some benefits, and that they felt they'd be worse off with most jobs that came their way. The reasons were mixed, but the typical story I could piece together was this: Particularly among the mothers, they didn't want to take thirty hours out of their week that they could be using to raise their kids only to take a job that would end up having them in the same or even worse financial predicament that they're in. It seemed like they were trying to get at was that they were holding out for that $11-12/hour job with a few more benefits so they could take a minimal risk getting into the work place.
Lastly I asked them that if there benefits were to be expanded, say by 50% across the board and they could keep it on some level as a supplement even if they got work, would they. The overwhelming response was yes.
There was much more to it than that, using some of this study for school work.
I can't stress it enough though, and had to go out and see it through my own eyes. There is a significant gap for those on welfare getting into the work place. There is lots of part time work out there and workforce productivity could be greatly improved if that kind of work were enough to support oneself and their kids, but it's not. If you're talking welfare, you're talking about single moms. I know some of you will pop up and say "don't have the damn kid in the first place!" but that is not the issue; the kids already exist and present a problem now.
The overwhelming understanding I got was that if their support was more of a supplement so that they could get low-tier work without taking a decrease in standard of living, they would do it. Most of these people seemed spiteful of the fact that they were on the "gravy train" but dealt with it because for most of them, it was better than the alternative.
I know we've got some state-level and federal-level bills to reduce TANF from where it's at, both in terms of time and money. This bull**** idea of the "gravy train" that we've developed seems on its last legs anyhow. This is gonna force some people into low-tier jobs and bump the unemployment rate down, but I think we've all got a sufficient understanding that a sizable population of able-bodied people are going to have to be without jobs in order to maintain a health inflation rate (this is Milton Friedman's idea). Take TANF away and we'll get more people with bad jobs, but a pretty significant jump in populations of the homeless and wards of state and charity in addition to a sharp decline in overall productivity of low-level jobs.
n_huffhines
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Just saw this video and thought of our past discussion.
I know you can't stand his voice, but the Southern Avenger talks about when they banned smoking in bars in his hometown of Charleston and how it adversely affected the economy. The bar tender mentioned works 8 hours more and makes $200 less per week after the smoking ban because of the lack of demand for non-smoking bars.
YouTube - ‪Smoke Damage by the Southern Avenger‬‏
milohimself
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Pure canned foods?
droski, I consider healthy eating and diet to be a large and highly important part of my life. Every time I go grocery shopping, I spend more time than most people consider reasonable looking over what's in the food that I'm buying. I have a very tight knit circle of people who are into body building and thus also hold diet in high regard. I know that you, as another west coaster, are probably sick of the whole organic craze, but the research behind it is solid, thorough and overwhelming. If you're buying the cheap stuff (not talking about Chef Boyardee), then I guarantee that buffers in your body are likely to be insufficient to react to an acidic pH, you're highly likely to be nutrient deficient and at a higher risk for obesity. Economies of scale and large-scale agricultural engineering have led to it. Spending lots of time at the grocer and paying close attention to prices of both cheap and expensive produce and meat, vs canned goods, it has been my experience that the nutritionally sufficient option is almost always the more expensive option, and much of the time significantly more expensive. I know you know your economics. Look at the massive-scale, year-round output of industrial farms vs. what comes out of significantly smaller-scale, local seasonal operations.
droski, I consider healthy eating and diet to be a large and highly important part of my life. Every time I go grocery shopping, I spend more time than most people consider reasonable looking over what's in the food that I'm buying. I have a very tight knit circle of people who are into body building and thus also hold diet in high regard. I know that you, as another west coaster, are probably sick of the whole organic craze, but the research behind it is solid, thorough and overwhelming. If you're buying the cheap stuff (not talking about Chef Boyardee), then I guarantee that buffers in your body are likely to be insufficient to react to an acidic pH, you're highly likely to be nutrient deficient and at a higher risk for obesity. Economies of scale and large-scale agricultural engineering have led to it. Spending lots of time at the grocer and paying close attention to prices of both cheap and expensive produce and meat, vs canned goods, it has been my experience that the nutritionally sufficient option is almost always the more expensive option, and much of the time significantly more expensive. I know you know your economics. Look at the massive-scale, year-round output of industrial farms vs. what comes out of significantly smaller-scale, local seasonal operations.
n_huffhines
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Depends on the food you order, and how much you eat. In the documentary Downsize Me Chazz Weaver ate at McDonald's 4 times a day for a month and lost something like 8 lbs of body fat.
http://chazzweaver.com/site/projects/down-size-me/
milohimself
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Kind of irrelevant since I don't think you can use EBT to buy fast food (not here, anyways --- elsewhere? dunno). Irrelevant either way, since I'm talking about truly eating healthy and grocery shopping. Do people have to be OCD about labeling like I am? No. But you are right in that, cost aside, you also have to go out of your way to eat healthy. Part of it is a matter of individual responsibility to ones self to take care of their body.
The thing that I advocate, and what has been in process for at least a few years now, is nutritional literacy and awareness. After that, people are more aware of the incentives of eating truly healthy foods, demand increases and the supply matches that. More small agribusiness is created, more healthy products find their place alongside the cheap stuff on shelves. There was a good bit in Food Inc (great, great movie, a must watch for this topic) about Wally World finally opening up to supplying larger selections of organic products in certain areas because they finally had sufficient demand for it. Safeway reopened a store a few miles away from me where there was a few square miles with no grocery stores (which is absolutely insane in an urban area -- maybe ten thousand or so people). There's been a lot of progress in the last five or so years (at least here) but there's still a ways to go. There does exist, at some point, a scale back of large farming in favor local and regional based seasonal farming (which, surprise, surprise, creates more jobs) that would have a relatively minimal price impact. Yeah, you wouldn't be able to get tomatoes at any time of the year that you wanted. Guess what? You weren't supposed to.
The thing that I advocate, and what has been in process for at least a few years now, is nutritional literacy and awareness. After that, people are more aware of the incentives of eating truly healthy foods, demand increases and the supply matches that. More small agribusiness is created, more healthy products find their place alongside the cheap stuff on shelves. There was a good bit in Food Inc (great, great movie, a must watch for this topic) about Wally World finally opening up to supplying larger selections of organic products in certain areas because they finally had sufficient demand for it. Safeway reopened a store a few miles away from me where there was a few square miles with no grocery stores (which is absolutely insane in an urban area -- maybe ten thousand or so people). There's been a lot of progress in the last five or so years (at least here) but there's still a ways to go. There does exist, at some point, a scale back of large farming in favor local and regional based seasonal farming (which, surprise, surprise, creates more jobs) that would have a relatively minimal price impact. Yeah, you wouldn't be able to get tomatoes at any time of the year that you wanted. Guess what? You weren't supposed to.
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