[mfer]

How would this work for the majority of people? Most people live paycheck-to-paycheck. Even those who make more than enough not to. It's a habit. If health care isn't baked in, will people pay for it? If not, how will they avoid bankruptcy?

[boroboro4]

How about not tying choosing health insurance to employers. Let’s permit employers reimburse insurance for employees, but put the choice of insurance to employers into the marketplaces. I think it would improve state of things significantly by tying beneficiaries and customers into same person again.

[ethbr1]

Part of the issue there is group policy. Insurers by the nature of their business prefer blended groups vs individuals, especially when individuals have a choice among insurers.

Or to put it another way, any insurer offering a "better" policy (in terms of more coverage for less money) will attract the highest-consuming patients, individually.

If they sign up groups with less choice, they're more likely to get a balanced cohort of consumers / non-consumers, young / old, etc. etc.

[tbrownaw]

> Most people live paycheck-to-paycheck

Not in any meaningful sense.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/paycheck-to-paycheck-and-five-...

> In other words, a number of government surveys just contradict LendingClub’s survey. Why does [politician] choose to believe a survey by a payday lender with a secret methodology, instead of multiple surveys by the U.S. government with transparent methodologies? I guess being ...

[chomp]

I wish people would stop linking Noah Smith substacks. He makes a strawman out of the LendingClub survey and then beats it with surveys that do not contradict the original survey. In fact, a lot of his writings are strawman beatdowns.

Living paycheck to paycheck has low bearing on savings. The LendingClub survey is self reported, and includes people whose finances fluctuate seasonally (they overall live paycheck to paycheck but wind up with random windfalls) and people who maintain a small pile of cash but are always counting on the next paycheck to avoid dipping into their savings. The report even mentions that a chunk of the paycheck to paycheck people are superprime credit consumers, but Noah refuses to stop and think about why that is the case.

I personally know people who very well off who are riding the razor’s edge so to speak- they have huge savings but 100% of income does straight to bills.

[etc-hosts]

Wow 40 percent of Americans have THREE months instead of ONE month of expense money saved up. Truly thunderous debunking by Noah Smith.

[ethbr1]

Public funding. Plenty of countries do this.

Instead of US-style employer + individual paying insurance premium...

... you increase taxes and fund universal insurance directly from those revenues.

In the end, it should hypothetically balance out ($1 for healthcare == $1 for healthcare), except employment would no longer be a precondition for having access to affordable insurance.