Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
is an imaginary conversation that could never happen in a Minnesota bureaucracy:<\/p>\n
Colleague: Trump is an idiot.\u00a0 \u201cWho knew health care could be so hard?\u201d\u00a0 Moron.\u00a0 Single-payer is the answer and easily affordable.\u00a0 For example, if 3M didn\u2019t have to pay employees\u2019 health insurance premiums, 3M could afford to pay more taxes to buy everybody health insurance.\u00a0 Apply that principle across the board and Problem Solved.\u00a0 But Trump\u2019s so stupid, he can\u2019t understand simple math.<\/p>\n
Me: Well, yes, 3M would save money on premiums.\u00a0 But instead of buying health insurance for its present workforce of 90,000 people, 3M would be footing the bill for all of them PLUS a bunch of presently-uninsured people.\u00a0 If each person\u2019s health insurance cost the same under single-payer as it does under the present system, 3M would pay MORE in taxes than it now pays in premiums.\u00a0 That\u2019s bad for profits which means bad for shareholders who buy stock in big, safe, blue-chip companies, shareholders such as pension funds.\u00a0 Why hammer retirees?\u00a0 What have you got against them?<\/p>\n
Colleague:\u00a0 Unless the individual cost of health insurance under single-payer is cheaper, then it would work.<\/p>\n
Me:\u00a0 Seriously? Do you also believe we\u2019ll save $2,500 per year and be able to keep our own doctors?\u00a0 You\u2019re an adult.\u00a0 You have a college degree.\u00a0 Do you really believe health care is unlike any other commodity and therefore is exempt from the laws of supply and demand?\u00a0 Obamacare is collapsing because it was unsustainable from the day it was enacted and everybody knew it, which is why they bragged about lying to get it passed.\u00a0 The costs have skyrocketed exactly as predicted.\u00a0 Nothing about single-payer will change that.<\/p>\n
Colleague:\u00a0 It\u2019s the Republicans\u2019 fault that Obamacare isn\u2019t working better, they should have fixed it when they had the chance.<\/p>\n
Me:\u00a0 [Interior monologue: The guy seriously lives in fantasy land.\u00a0 If I push him too hard to confront the disconnect between his fantasy and the real world, he might snap.\u00a0 I\u2019d better back off, give him his safe space.]\u00a0 Okay, dude, whatever, see you around.<\/p>\n
Of course, this is an imaginary conversation.\u00a0 Could never happen in real life.<\/p>\n
Right?<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In Ramsey County?<\/p>\n
Maybe a time or 200,000…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: is an imaginary conversation that could never happen in a Minnesota bureaucracy: Colleague: Trump is an idiot.\u00a0 \u201cWho knew health care could be so hard?\u201d\u00a0 Moron.\u00a0 Single-payer is the answer and easily affordable.\u00a0 For example, if 3M didn\u2019t have to pay employees\u2019 health insurance premiums, 3M could afford to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,311],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-mnsure-debacle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67650,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67649\/revisions\/67650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}