[scarmig]

Perhaps I just lack imagination, but if someone blew their week's money on nonessentials, my sympathy is rather limited, and they can figure out a way to survive the couple days they've run out of money. Maybe some TaskRabbit jobs or panhandling. As far as children, I don't think this offers any new tools beyond what we have now (CPS) to help make sure they're taken care of.

I do have concerns about disabilities in particular and medical costs more generally. Someone with a real disability (instead of the fake disabilities rampant now) has extremely high costs that far exceed any reasonable amount provided by the BI. Are they just screwed? Condemned to private charity? What about cancer patients, or even just old people as a class?

And I suspect these very expensive tail-end cases make up the majority of the costs of existent programs. Banning age-discrimination in health insurance and an individual health insurance mandate for catastrophic coverage might account for the medical aspects, but that doesn't address the disability portion.

Not sure of the answer, here.

[ceejayoz]

If you're going with BI you might as well also have universal single-payer healthcare to solve the cancer patients aspect, and severe disabilities could be covered as an additional program.

[scarmig]

Perhaps, but that takes away from much of the conceptual beauty and promise of a BIG, and many people who like the BIG (including myself) are loath to implement a single-payer system.

[ceejayoz]

Why does it take away from the beauty/promise, and why would someone for BI dislike single-payer healthcare?