and was a focal point for jam sessions. Gone now, so the owner could take a job with health insurance!

My son took guitar lessons there. It's gone now because the owner didn't to the ER when he had chest pains because he had no health insurance.

We also had several small pharmacies that would deliver to you 24-7..(back when people could afford their meds).

We had shoe repair shops, alterations/tailoring places, and too mnay small restaurants to count.

All these places provided enough income to support an entire family

replaced with chain stores that pay minimum wage.

and then people are surprised that many can't afford the basics much less any thing else.

But a cobbled together mish-mash of garbage is hailed as progress, when in fact it makes the chains of the insurance companies stronger.

The HC reform, a horrific garbage heap of shit will stink through the rest of our lives.

And I appreciate that you posted this.

is that healthcare reform was also meant to be a jobs and economy stimulus. Obama said as much in the beginning.

As GM famously said...we're not in the auto business, we're in the health care business.

It's an insane drag on businesses.

The multinationals will/are getting tired of competing on a world market, and having to bear health care as a direct expense. Especially as the costs spiral upwards, they will be looking to covert this cost into a public burden, shared by all, instead of a private one on just them. So we'll end up with single payer via the GOP. I don't really want to see what that looks like. I suspect it will come with "privatization" of certain services and "public and private" features being open to those with the most money to spend.

The 'job creators' per the reichproles.

and I have my own business, but no way can hire any employees. I barely pay my 15,000 deductible health insurance that still pays for nothing.

I was terribly ill with a spider bite and the flu with a fever for two weeks, did I even consider going to the doctor?

It should be like social security, a payroll tax and there for when one is unemployed or self employed.

Our system of funding healthcare as a for-profit venture burdens society as a whole. We do our best to exclude many of the societal costs from the tally of the damage it does.

But, I don't believe universal healthcare should be linked to restricted educational opportunities.

I taught, I gave out B's, I had to evaluate transcripts for students with B's who wanted to transfer and/or get into grad programs in which I taught. I found that the nation's grading system isn't all that easy to apply.

What's does a B mean? Whose B? Are all B's alike? Should we make that assessment in middle-school or high-school? Or after a year at a community college?

Grades aren't always a good measure of a person.

I had an advisee who had great trouble getting B's in High School. It turned out English was his THIRD language, he was born of Polish parents who worked in Libya. He struggled with coursework because of language. Now, in his mid 30's he has won national science awards, is the president of several professional organizations. And he is a faculty member at a major university in Oklahoma with a great record of grant-getting that _funds_ the education of more grad students.

My colleagues on the admission's committee saw him as too much of an at risk admission based on his pre-college grades and modest ACT. They couldn't have known the future, but it would have been a terrible shame to have lost him to a B-limit on access to anything other than occupational training.

Lots of things get in the way of student performance. If a person becomes a teen-parent, or is otherwise educationally derailed by life circumstance (illness, poverty, orphanhood, unsupportive parents, etc) should that person be given even higher hurdles to overcome to get an education or outright denied some educational tracks altogether? I dislike the thought of that.

I like a system with multiple ports of entry that includes opportunities for the capable and successful to maneuver and reach for aspirations of their own choosing.

I guess it's the "If you can't beat em, join em" mentality. Lining their pockets with money from the corrupt and poisoned system while at the same time reinforcing & assuring the continuance of business as usual. We will have no peace until we can take the profit motive out of human suffering. I hold out hope that someday people will realize some things are really more important than money. That the idea of human rights and freedom aren't fantastical concepts but actual rock solid beliefs. Maybe even the core of liberalism. That our time should be spent helping people and people to come instead of throwing up our hands and joining the other side and assisting in making things worse to line our own pockets

There's a lot of risk involved in being an entrepreneur, not just the "seed money" risk. Having the health aspect covered by single-payer/universal healthcare will free up the mind concerned with such issues to pursue the useful aspects of the new enterprise.

Our healthcare is doomed to collapse, if not by its' own inefficency, then by demand destruction. If the electorate had any insight into the healthcare system (besides the Doctor shows on TV) they'd be screaming to pass something much more radical than what the Dems could push through in '09.
The EMTs around here have had incidents where people have refused to go to the hospital because they were in fear of being impoverished, and in one case, had to physically restrain someone to put him in the ambulance. This guy was in an automobile accident and bleeding profusely from a head trauma. The police had to intervene .

Keep your head in the sand America, this problem is not going away.

“Education is only one reason Toyota chose Ontario. Canada’s other big selling point is its national
health insurance system, which saves auto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments
compared with their costs in the United States.”

Paul Krugman – From his column “Toyota, Moving Northward,” New York Times, July 25, 2005

www.canadians.org/healthcare/documents/BKS/BKS_1.pdf

we need to face the fact that we're going to be Chinese slaves within 30 years or so. thank God I'll be dirt surfing by then. This is going to be a horrid place to live

ability to get out of here and live someplace civilized.

Just last night I watched a House Hunters Intl episode from Grenada.. $950 a month rent for a GORGEOUS villa with views to die for..and a separate "guest house/office".. It was small by our standards but perfectly beautiful..

Anyone relatively young & healthy should be thinking about other options. Who knows? They might end up in a gorgeous, civilized and very happy place

painter who travels and lives in several countries. She lives in her dream cottage with her two Cairn Terriers and occasionally flies when she is needed. She used to be a harried New Yorker and now she is my mellowest friend.

tapeworm

Single payer universal healthcare is the medicine our economy needs.

Thanks for the thread, SoCalDem.

insurance.

Just like holding torturers accountable, WMD liars accountable, criminally fraudulent banks accountable, etc...

In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism

We venture to the very heart of the hell that is Scandinavian socialism—and find out that it’s not so bad. Pricey, yes, but a good place to start and run a company. What exactly does that suggest about the link between taxes and entrepreneurship?

In 1998, Dalmo quit his job, bought a used pickup truck, and started calling on clients as an independent contractor.. He kept hiring, kept bidding, and when he looked around a decade later, he had a $44 million company with 150 employees. This is exactly the kind of pride I often hear from the CEOs I have met while working at Inc., but for one important difference: Whereas most entrepreneurs in Dalmo's position develop a retching distaste for paying taxes, Dalmo doesn't mind them much. "The tax system is good—it's fair," he tells me. "What we're doing when we are paying taxes is buying a product. So the question isn't how you pay for the product; it's the quality of the product." Dalmo likes the government's services, and he believes that he is paying a fair price.

Welcome to Norway, where business is radically transparent, militantly egalitarian, and, of course, heavily taxed. This is socialism, the sort of thing your average American CEO has nightmares about. But not Dalmo—and not most Norwegians. "The capitalist system functions well," Dalmo says. "But I'm a socialist in my bones."

More:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html

Had a nice little business, but every year the health insurance situation got worse. Finally, we just couldn't afford it anymore and closed shop.

Single Payer would be one of the most powerful positive forces for good ever created, just like Medicare was.

I'm dreaming of it. Please please please.

I bought corporate-quality insurance for reasonable cost from 1994 thru 2001 as a sole proprietorship consultant.

I checked again recently, and they only offer to help small companies find the best individual plans. Now I tend to be in and out of corporations with 18 month COBRA-enabled consulting gigs.

It's a well recognized problem.

may not help ( greatly enlarging the insurance pool might drive prices down), the other provisions of "Obamacare" will help people immensely. In 2014, no more "pre-existing conditions." That is huge and will save a lot of lives in this for-profit health care system.
While universal health care is the only humane system, If ACA is "shot down" by the crooks in the SCOTUS, the improvements that have already been instituted (no lifetime maximums, children able to stay on parents policy) and the really beneficial provisions that are soon to be implemented (mainly an end to pre-existing conditions) will probably be terminated also. That is untenable.

there is PLENTY of "access" to medical care...not nearly enough affordability..

Expensive housing developments are "accessible? We all drive past them and oooh and aaah at the beautiful houses..but they are UNAFFORDABLE to most of us..,

Just one more example of how much freedom we all could have if we had single payer.

to change jobs...so the bosses kind of like having that hold on people..

a mobile workforce drives wages up..

I would think it would be a relief to large employers too, like Walmart, etc. It's hard for me to understand why Big Business isn't leading the charge for single payer. Unless somehow they like having a workworce that lives in constant fear of losing insurance if they lose their job.

Undocumented workers have it even worse; they tolerate intolerable working conditions and are essentially disposable.

than actually like their jobs!

but our first child was born that year..with a very serious birth defect, and he was stuck in that job because everyone knew we could not afford Mayo Clinic and surgery over and over for nearly the next decade (29 surgeries before he was 8)..so that company moved us all over the country until they finally sent us to Calif and we could afford to quit them.

CA had a special program for people like us with horrendous medical issues for a child.. We were finally able to change jobs, but by then we were way behind others of our age group..and we never really caught up.. That program still cost us $2k out of pocket, and we could no longer go to Mayo Clinic, but there were doctors here who trained under his doctor from Mayos, so we were fine with it.

Had we had single payer back then, we would still be in the Chicago area and my husbnad would have had a much less stressful life.

As if having a sick child isn't hard enough. I sorry your whole family had to go through that. I wish I could say that it will never happen to anyone ever again.

I thought "It's just that simple" before I even read your post!

Totally agree!

Whenever rightwing tools claim single payer or universal health care is an issue of freedom, agree with them, then explain WHY.

==================

I kid, I kid. Hubby and I started our business after he got laid off and couldn't find another job. Our insurance is killing us; $1500/month, and it doesn't pay for anything until we spend another $2,200 out of pocket. That's coming out of our retirement savings, of course, as the business barely covers its operating expenses (on a good day).

Single payer is the only solution. Free college to good students and a living wage would also suit me fine.

We need consumer cooperatives to get around the medical industrial complex.

Even the biggest "Old Fashioned" Re-pugs I know who own business are talking about single payer.

Affordable Care was supposed to be the first step on the way to single payer but the pukes are putting an end to that. The Democratic base have been trying to throw the law under the bus since it didn't immediately produce Medicare for all. When the Extreme right wing Supreme Court begin to kill Affordable Care one piece at a time, we may be walking away from Single Payer forever.

type set up.

In fact the design has always been intended to even prevent any serious effort at even market based reform.

I wish folks would stop pretending this isn't a decades old right wing concept to maintain existing profit centers, regulatory ineptitude, and increase the level of corporate capture of government.

We were closer to the collapse of the present system without this silly ass law but some fucking rocket scientists have convinced themselves that propping up the predatory cartel and increasing their long term viability via a key to the Federal Treasury and mandated customers will magically usher in single payer.

THE DOTS DO NOT FUCKING CONNECT!!!

You and others are arguing a weak and emotion fueled case that makes no logical sense.

You have been hearded by a handful of pay to play features that would go without saying anywhere in the developed world at a fraction of the expense.

Dennis Kucinich is elected president and we control both houses of Congress with progressive Democrats? Come on...people are dying over this shit.

Maybe you can afford to wait. I can't and neither can hundreds of thousands of others.

We wouldn't have this BS about our employer's conscience being more important than our health care.

Large corporations supported national health care years ago. They all knew their costs were rising and it was a major cost in employing workers. Over time the right wing began using health care and single payer system as a political hot button and the wiser heads did not prevail. Now everybody is suffering and the idiots who are brainwashed by faux news think they think that it is better to have a wealthy insurance executive determine our health needs then our doctors.
The Koch's don't give a sheet about our health concerns they only think about their filthy corporatist agenda to push the middle class down, destroy our way of life and keep their profits high. We cannot let their efforts succeed. That said it is a difficult endeavor to get our country back on track.
Keep urging people to not fall for the crap on TV. Its hard to imagine but negative ads work to muddy the water and turn good people off to the Democratic process. In other words, citizens don't vote because they are "sick of the whole thing".

I totally agree! Not having universal coverage either puts them at risk of failure or forced to sell innovative ideas to larger corporations instead of developing themselves.

It's very very frustrating.

there are plenty of corporations who are very happy that they can pay wages for those good ideas instead of people starting their own businesses.

They get to pay a low price for the IP of their employees. Creative people create, and more often, some corporation is reaping the rewards.

The 1% wants it to stay that way. That is what we're up against.

we had a good start at making a living selling drapes and other window treatments. we did enough business to think about looking into full time furniture upholstery and commercial furniture sales . my wife had to work full time to have health insurance for five people in our family. it`s hard to make appointments and create more business when she had to work 40 plus hours a week at the factory.

the Dentist my wife works for didn't provide us with health insurance. It is as simple as that. I could take a gamble for myself but I couldn't take a gamble on the kids staying healthy.
I agree, it is one of the biggest impediments to entrepreneurship.

In fact, I'm proof of this. I was a small business owner until I got divorced. At that point I needed health insurance, so I went to work for a large organizations.

Large organizations know this. Our privatized health system - in which corporations have the buying power to negotiate better costs than individuals - keeps a large labor force eager to be employed.

If we had universal health care millions of Americans would happily go to work for themselves, and we'd see some wonderful Yankee ingenuity too - probably a lot of new energy solutions. Can't have that.

It's the biggest thing keeping me from starting my own business.