Saturday, June 2, 2012
2012 / Chow Seattle Cupcake Maker Endorses Barack Obama's Socialist Health Care Program, Is Rewarded in Presidential Tweets
Posted by Paul Constant on Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 6:58 AM
Yesterday afternoon, President Obama tweeted this:
The link goes to this editorial endorsing the Affordable Care Act, written by Cupcake Royale owner Jody Hall
As a small business owner, I know a thing or two about taking risks. In a city known for its coffee (Seattle), I went all in on cupcakes when I opened my first bakery in 2003. My business – Cupcake Royale – was the country’s first cupcake bakery outside the Big Apple...We offer health care to all employees who work over 28 hours a week – and we pay 75 percent of the cost. This is an important part of our business values. It’s also been a huge challenge.
Between 2004 and 2010, we were faced with rate increases routinely exceeding 20 percent – as high as 40 percent in 2009. In 2011, our health care costs were more than $67,000.
We’ve got to get these costs under control. How? Let’s start with upholding the Affordable Care Act.
It's a great editorial that addresses one of the biggest issues holding small business back today—out-of-control health care costs. When your health care increases by the salary of one or two employees every year, that's obviously going to stand in the way of job creation. You should definitely read it, and maybe pick up a cupcake or two today to thank Jody for sticking with her health-care policy. I know a lot of people who are uninsured because they work part-time jobs; Cupcake Royale's 28-hour-a-week cutoff is generous and responsible.
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Translation:
I want to be perceived as beneficient...except when it gets too expensive.
Then I want Government to shift the burden to other people and my employees themselves (which is all that Obamacare really does -- makes 20 and 30 year olds pay into the insurance pool) pay for it.
Yet I will get credit for being a "good guy". At least for those working more than 28 hours a week. (Uh, how many do?) And by the way, traditionally 30 hours is the cutoff between exempt and non-exempt anyway.
So yet again we have a person asking for sainthood for something that is just part and parcel of regular business.
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@2 So you don't think healthy 20 and 30 year olds should have to help pay for other people's health care?
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#3
That's not the point I'm making.
I think that a lot of 20 and 30 year olds perceive Obamacare as some kind of socialized medicine where they will get something for free.
As I understand it (and I'm not claiming to be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree) the key facet of Obamacare is simply getting people who aren't covered under health care to pay something into the system.
So for those currently uninsured 20 and 30 year olds, they will have more taken from their paychecks. Thus it is more like car insurance regulation not actual free health care.
So, you're question is whether this is good or not. Depends. The problem is that whenever Government forcibly or through the use of incentives gets the regular folks to pool their money together, there is great temptation for the crooks to swindle it. Pension funds, 401k mutuals, real estate are all examples of this.
So, now they put all our money into health care and magically expect prices to go down? Please...keep dreaming. More likely they'll figure out new and more costly ways to abscond with those dollars.
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At some point the cost of healthcare - in the form of drug costs, wages and hospital fees will have to be addressed. Even Canada is having issues with this and our costs are far lower than what you have in the US.
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@6 Obamacare does include some provisions to reign in the spiraling cost of Medicare. Hence that memorable Tea Party slogan "Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare!"
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The Affordable Care Act will do little to reign in the cost of health care for those who use it.
Premiums will continue to rise as insurance companies protect their profits and pay for administration costs for all the new people that will be added to the private insurance rolls.
People are expected to have to pay 10% of their income for health care and then have to pay 30% of the costs of the healthcare they do use.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_…
I'm not sure why Unions and this business owner feel like they have to tout the ACA when it's at risk of being shot down. It's OK to show it's flaws since the solution will have to be Medicare for all (single payor).
Premiums will continue to rise as insurance companies protect their profits and pay for administration costs for all the new people that will be added to the private insurance rolls.
People are expected to have to pay 10% of their income for health care and then have to pay 30% of the costs of the healthcare they do use.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_…
I'm not sure why Unions and this business owner feel like they have to tout the ACA when it's at risk of being shot down. It's OK to show it's flaws since the solution will have to be Medicare for all (single payor).
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We have socialist healthcare? That's news to me. I thought we had to wait to be seniors to have socialist healthcare in the US (or a member of Congress)
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The real but impossibly impractically unpolitical solution is scientific comparative effectiveness research and upfront rationing of care. The more palatable solution is to continue to ration care obliquely and to transfer the costs to other people (some here now, some from the future). Eventually healthcare will be such a burden on the entire economy that we'll inch toward the real solution.
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@8 Medicare for all? Please. Right now 48 million Americans are covered by Medicare and we can't afford that. The British and Canadian single payer health care systems work pretty well, but they are far stingier than our Medicare system. You can read more about that here:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/07/…
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/07/…
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@12 "Medicare for all? Please. Right now 48 million Americans are covered by Medicare and we can't afford that."
It's not a problem of not being able to afford it; it's a problem of not being willing to pay for it. Currently, as a self-employed person, I pay about $160/mo into Medicare and $385/mo into my private health insurance (the cheapest plan available to me is $284/mo which has very high deductibles and copays).
If I tripled my payment into Medicare (paying $480/mo instead of $160) I'd still come out ahead under a "Medicare for all" plan and given my use of the healthcare system the past two years (none) so would Medicare. That's the whole point of why single-payer saves money and doesn't break the bank.
It's not a problem of not being able to afford it; it's a problem of not being willing to pay for it. Currently, as a self-employed person, I pay about $160/mo into Medicare and $385/mo into my private health insurance (the cheapest plan available to me is $284/mo which has very high deductibles and copays).
If I tripled my payment into Medicare (paying $480/mo instead of $160) I'd still come out ahead under a "Medicare for all" plan and given my use of the healthcare system the past two years (none) so would Medicare. That's the whole point of why single-payer saves money and doesn't break the bank.
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Except she sells a product that can be detrimental to ones health.
NO FAT CHICKS!
Also if you run a business you should keep politics out of it.
NO FAT CHICKS!
Also if you run a business you should keep politics out of it.
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@15 Right, just like the various chambers of commerce and corporations "stay out of politics". Politics affect businesses just as much as it affects individuals and communities.
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Why on earth should someone keep politics out of a business?? It's THEIR business and isn't it THEIR right to pen an article re healthcare if they want to? That right is half the reason our ancestors moved to the US!
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I can't help but be a little skeptical. You see at my work, no one was ever allowed to work more than about 25 hours a week. It was exceedingly rare. Isn't it easier to hire more part-timers who therefore won't be costing employers anything in insurance coverage? I know first-hand that this is common.
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@18 Unless you know firsthand that this is common at the small business in question, you are basically labeling them as being guilty by association. Feel free to be skeptical, but please refrain from muddying the water with inflammatory speculation.
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Meanwhile, minimum-wage workers in France have comprehensive national health insurance with a low ceiling on out-of-pockets, like everyone else in France. (They also have five weeks of paid vacation, and paid sick leave, and paid parental leave, and protection from termination without just cause.) And what's the cost of this wildly irresponsible health-care socialism? As a percentage of GDP, their total health-care spending is lower than our public health-care spending alone -- what you pay taxes for, whether you, personally, get health care or not -- which is only around 60% of our total. It only makes sense if you listen to impartial, unconflicted health-care economists (of which there are very few in the US) instead of to Big Health / Democratic Party PR flacks. They say that national single-payer -- whether in the form of a (dramatically improved) "Medicare For All" or a (better funded) "Veterans Health Administration For All" -- is the only solution that will significantly reduce profiteering and administrative waste, reduce costs, and provide high-quality health care to every American regardless of circumstances. But since we're all listening to the PR flacks, let's hear it for Obamacare! It's crony capitalism, it's inverted fascism, it's a Heritage Foundation plan, and it's worse than Nixon's proposed employer mandate, but it extends crappy underinsurance to more people than before for only an additional 2% or 3% of GDP! How low the bar, and the Democratic Party, have fallen...
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@20 The French pay a terrible price for all those things you mentioned. You can read more about that here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26…
and if you don't mind bumping up against that NYT pay wall, here as well:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/world/…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26…
and if you don't mind bumping up against that NYT pay wall, here as well:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/world/…
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@14 $480/ month would come to $5760/ year. Back in 2008 Medicare spent an average of $9100/ beneficiary and that number's not getting any smaller. Granted, the average cost per beneficiary would be lower under a Medicare for all plan because younger folks tend to consume less healthcare. Still, such a program wouldn't be cheap.
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@21 (Ken Mehlman): Of course, in France, the unemployed keep getting unemployment comp, and then a minimum living allowance, as long as they keep looking for work, and therefore most of them are counted in unemployment statistics. Over here, a lot of the unemployed -- those who are no longer on unemployment comp and those who are not registered at a state employment agency, for example -- are not included in BLS unemployment statistics. The official US unemployment rate is around 8.2%; I wonder what it would be if we really counted everyone -- or just as many as the French count. I'll bet it would be higher than France's official rate of just under 10%.
But my parenthetical remark about mandatory employee benefits and protections was a just a side jab at jingoists who think that American workers have it better than workers in the rest of the developed world. The main point was that France provides comprehensive health insurance (and generally better health outcomes) to 100% of its population for under 12% of GDP, while we provide crappy health insurance (and close to the worst health outcomes in the OECD) to around 85% of our population for 18% of GDP. Please spin out the "terrible price" the French are paying for that. (The price we pay for our health-care system, compared to theirs, is around a trillion dollars in excess costs, somewhere between 20,000 and 45,000 medically preventable deaths, and around 500,000 medically induced bankruptcies, every year.)
But even if France's labor market is "too rigid" by American corporations' standards -- the same corporations that are outsourcing and offshoring everything they possibly can to the least regulated, lowest-wage jurisdictions they can find -- what's better? Having a percentage point or two more of the workforce on the dole, with full health coverage? Or having a huge subclass of workers barely scraping by on multiple McJobs that don't pay a living wage or any benefits?
More...
But my parenthetical remark about mandatory employee benefits and protections was a just a side jab at jingoists who think that American workers have it better than workers in the rest of the developed world. The main point was that France provides comprehensive health insurance (and generally better health outcomes) to 100% of its population for under 12% of GDP, while we provide crappy health insurance (and close to the worst health outcomes in the OECD) to around 85% of our population for 18% of GDP. Please spin out the "terrible price" the French are paying for that. (The price we pay for our health-care system, compared to theirs, is around a trillion dollars in excess costs, somewhere between 20,000 and 45,000 medically preventable deaths, and around 500,000 medically induced bankruptcies, every year.)
But even if France's labor market is "too rigid" by American corporations' standards -- the same corporations that are outsourcing and offshoring everything they possibly can to the least regulated, lowest-wage jurisdictions they can find -- what's better? Having a percentage point or two more of the workforce on the dole, with full health coverage? Or having a huge subclass of workers barely scraping by on multiple McJobs that don't pay a living wage or any benefits?
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@23 Considering the significant difference in workforce participation rates (64% here, versus 56% in France) I doubt the higher unemployment rate is simply the result of differences in statistical methodology. Not only are there, proportionally, more people actively seeking work in France, there are fewer people actually working. I've heard they make good cheese over there, but America is a better place to be if you want a job.
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@22 Yes, but by including the people like me in the pool, people who don't typically use the healthcare system, the average cost per beneficiary would go down and the average revenue per beneficiary would go up. With the current system only including the elderly and infirm, it's no surprise the average cost is so high.
Plus it's time to start up those death panels. Sorry grandma, but I don't want to pay for your open heart surgery at 89.
Plus it's time to start up those death panels. Sorry grandma, but I don't want to pay for your open heart surgery at 89.
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