How Can You Tell A Politician is Lying To You?

Do you think maybe parents would benefit from lower health care costs for kids? Maybe there is something for them in this too?

Anonymous: A cheap tv is a one-time purchase. Health insurance is a monthly bill that only goes up, and is only available to those who know where and how to buy it. Do you really think these are in the same category?

Anonymous, just exactly who are you talking about? I represent people pro bono in bankruptcy. I have yet to represent anyone who is forced to file for medical reasons who had more than basic cable. I know for a fact that very few people who file chapter 7 or chapter 13 in my district have big cable bills. You may be right, but I am not seeing it. And frankly, it sounds like the old welfare queens in cadillacs meme, updated.

Hey! Take care of your own forsaken spawn. Criminallopath is tired of having his taxes raised (including the latest “its for the children” pap tax on cigars to further enrich the providers). Put the onus of punishment on the assault uteri and sperm donors that create the problems in the first place.

Yeah, don’t you just love the “It’;s for the children!” bullshit. In the current SCHIP bill before congress they’re about to upgrade the definition of “Child” to a person up to 25 years of age.

So the poor pro bono lawyers won’t have as much business. The cable companies will. And more pro bono doctors will get sick and tired of tis shit and go into something else.

Anonymous, I was not talking about my pro bono work. I was talking about people I know in my work life, and trying to explain how I might know what I am talking about. I have seen an average of 1500 chapter 7 cases a year for many years. My point is that my experience with very broke people is that they don’t have expensive cable, or expensive anything. They live just as close to the bone as you might imagine.

Consider this family. Mom averages 35 hours a week as an assistant night manager at a fast food chain, making $14,500. Dad averages 35 hours a week as a grill cook at a mid-level chain restaurant (think Outback), making $16,000. Commute time is about 3 hours a day. They have three grade school kids. Does it bother you to pay taxes to cover their SCHIP?

Why do I know these people? Mom has no insurance. She got sick, and ran up $30,000 in medical debt. Dad has no health care insurance either. They paid on the debt for a while, lost their apartment, moved in with Mom’s mother, which saves the rent, but increased their gas expense. Their budget is food, gas, clothes for the kids, after-school care and a car payment, one car for the two of them. So, Mom had to file. I did it.

So, again, do you mind paying taxes to cover SCHIP for their kids? Consider this. If a kid gets sick and runs up a big medical bill, who will pay? Mom won’t be able to file again, so dad will have to be responsible, and file himself. These people work as hard as they reasonably can, take every overtime hour that they can and still cannot make it. They are not unusual.

As to other commenters, let me just point out that if Mom and Dad had their own coverage, doctors and hospitals would have been paid. My dad took care of plenty of what were then called charity cases in the 50s, and he hated medi-care, and then he found out that he was getting paid for what he used to do for free. I’m just sayin’.

Pax vobiscum.

Of course they don’t have big cable bills. Afer two or three unpaid months, the cable will be shut off.

Of course, if they’d used the cable money toward health insurance, maybe they wouldn’t have had a “medical” bankruptcy either.

I don’t know if you have read the SCHIP bills that were approved by the House and the Senate next week, but if you have you will
see that the funding is there
without raising taxes on
anything except cigarettes. (Do the numbers.)

The Senate bill would fund the SCHIP expansion totaly with taxes
on cigarettes: the House bill would do it partially with cigarette taxes, partially by cutting the overpayment to private
sector health insurance companies that provide Medicare Advantage. (Medicare is now paying them 12% more than it would spend if it provided the services to the same beneficiaires directly.)

Moreover, the bills do not provide
healthcare for upper-middle-class (or middle class) kids. What they do is provide care for two groups of kids who are not covered today: a)poor children who are eligible for Schip but are not getting it because the state has not fully funded its part of the program and b) poor kids who have insurance part of the year (when their parents income is so low that they qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP) and then lose the insurance when their parents get a low-paying job (that probably doesn’t offer health insurance.) Then when their parents are laid off–they’re back on SCHIP for a few months. These
kids need consistent care.

Finally, what counts as “poor” varies state by state depending on the cost of living in that state.
Four times the National Poverty Level is worth a lot less if you live in Chicago or D.C. than if you live in Mississippi.