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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine dealing with such bills for bringing a child into the world. I was a military wife when I had kids. It cost me a few dollars a day for a hospital stay. I think both births were around $20 out of pocket, give or take a few bucks. I was in the hospital three days the first time and two days the second and the price went up a bit in between the two births.

but I have to think that I'm living in the worst of all worlds here.

I worked in insurance for a time. I do think Obamacare is the worst of all worlds. Requiring universal insurance is a terrible way to try to arrange universal health coverage for the nation.

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> Requiring universal insurance is a terrible way to try to arrange universal health coverage for the nation.

The country where Obamacare was copied from, Switzerland, also outlawed group insurance so (a) you didn't get health insurance from work and (b) EVERYONE was in the same risk pool.

The current situation, you have group policies that are actually affordable because...people with good jobs to provide it typically are lower health risks. Everyone else is stuck a shitty individual pool with lots of high risk individuals. As long as the group pools siphon off all of the low risk, Obamacare won't work.

Group policies are still very expensive by international standards.

The markets were broken before Obamacare, and are just getting worse. It's vile.

Swiss insurance policies cost around the same as group policies in the states if you are on COBRA.

Salaries are also higher in Swiss though.

I was also active duty military when my wife had our first child so I know what you mean. It's been pricey having the other kids but at least I've had decent insurance to do it. My heart goes out to those with no insurance or crappy insurance.

Regarding universal healthcare, we have a unique viewpoint because we've actually lived universal healthcare in the military.

Long wait times for appointments, crappy doctors that you have no choice but to go see (or have fun paying out of pocket at a civilian doctor), an employer with 100% insight into your medical situation, the loving kindness of a DMV clerk surrounding you while going through the wonder of childbirth for the first time... Ah, those days don't come back.

What are your thoughts on universal (or single-payer) healthcare?

I think it would make more sense than what we are doing currently. Given the high percentage of US GDP and individual income going to healthcare, it would also make a lot more sense than all this talk of Basic Income.

When I was a military wife, I never had to wonder if my kid was sick enough to justify seeing a doctor. I never had to consider cost as a factor. I never had to save for retirement. If he made 20 years, we would have a retirement check. When I was in quarters, I didn't have to worry about rent going up or other related expenses.

That security and stability was incredibly valuable for my peace of mind. It made life simple. We just needed to stay out of trouble and make sure my husband was a good soldier and everything would be okay.

We had two special needs kids and I have serious health issues. I had a college class on homelessness while still married. These kinds of problems are a root cause of homelessness in the US. After the divorce, my adult sons and I spent nearly 6 years homeless.

I think universal basic healthcare and a solution for the affordable housing crisis in the US would drastically reduce homelessness and be a vastly better solution than Basic Income. These are proven solutions with many available models. Basic Income is an unknown that has a lot of potential problems.

If people think single payer medical us not politically viable in the US, what in earth makes them think Basic Income is more politically viable? And if they don't think it is politically viable and are touting it anyway, doesn't that mean they are just jerking our chain and hoping that talk if some feel good answer will keep the masses mollified and not rioting in the streets while we continue to be crapped all over?

Interesting, and sorry to hear about your bout with homelessness. I spent some time homeless as a teenager and it was awful. I can't imagine going through that with kids.

I've wondered quite a bit about the basic income idea. One of the issues that has me stumped is what to do when AI and automation are taking lots of jobs that people currently do (like truck driving, which is going to disappear fast). I'm not sure providing only health care and not basic necessities will be enough.

Maybe at first people can retrain into other career fields, but the AI revolution will come swiftly and leave much wreckage in its path. I tend to think this will eventually be a very good thing, but it will wreak havoc and cause a lot of short term pain like the industrial revolution did in the 19th century.

Definitely interesting stuff to think about. Thanks for sharing.

Machines previously were threatening to take jobs away. It ultimately led to many improvements for commoners, such as the 40 hour work week. We call it The Industrial Revolution.

But no need to learn from history. We can just pretend that restructuring work isn't possible and act like what we are currently facing is utterly unique and the world hasn't seen anything like it before.

(Not a swipe at you. I am just angry and frustrated about the entire world acting like only UBI can save us from the robot-job-pocalypse.)

Totally fair :-)

I have also wondered if that wouldn't be the case. As machines take over, we may see new jobs created that never existed before, just (as you rightly pointed out) happened in the industrial revolution. I really hope this is the case actually.

My certainty diminishes somewhat when listening to people like Ray Kurzweil talk about his Law of Accelerating returns (exponential growth)[1]. I wonder if things might be different this time around (change is too fast, too extreme/disruptive) due to things like the exponential growth curve. Of course we humans always like to think "this time is different" so who knows.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/ray-kurzweil-law-of-accelerat...

It definitely wasn't a seamless transition. I'm sure we will come out the other side but more than a few eggs will probably be broken along the way.

You're trivializing the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution. The 40 hour work week was only won after centuries of bloody labor revolts. https://futurism.com/what-the-industrial-revolution-really-t...

This time is fundamentally different because AI automates the human mind. Human input may always be needed, but fewer and fewer jobs are required to support the needs of the population. New quality jobs are not being created at a sufficient enough pace to be offset the loses.

I'm not trivializing anything. I spent 5.7 years homeless. I got off the street 4.5 months ago.

We have a ridiculous number of homeless in the US. Meanwhile, rich tech giants talk of giving UBI to everyone as their solution to so many jobs going away. The jobs that are going away pay about $20k-$50k. UBI is expected to be $10k or maybe $18k. Articles that talk about this then write warm little vignettes about how lovely it will be to have that supplemental income on top of your low paid job, utterly ignoring the actual scenario posited that this money is in place of a job in a climate where there is little or no hope of getting another job.

If you think the Industrial Revolution was bloody, you don't want to see what happens with millions of people getting just enough money to sleep in a tent and keep eating while the cops harass them and the system gives them no hope of getting back to a middle class lifestyle. They won't be actually starving. But they will be mad as hell and have nothing but time on their hands to plot a revolution and train for it.

With UBI, you have two important new options:

- You can move away from expensive locale to a cheapest one.

- You can find supplemental income: do something with your hands, provide services, etc. You have all day to do that. It shouldn't be that your time is worthless and nobody is willing to pay anything for it.

- You can pool with other people to form a community, save on bulk.

Three actually.

You can find supplemental income: do something with your hands, provide services, etc. You have all day to do that. It shouldn't be that your time is worthless and nobody is willing to pay anything for it.

People are positing that we need UBI because jobs are outright going away and there will be no paid work to be found. If it is possible to create earning opportunities in the post robo-job-pocalypse, then why can't we focus on restructuring work to begin with?

I wish people would pick one. Either it will be possible to keep earning money somehow, in which case we don't need UBI to replace jobs and we can, instead, focus on restructuring work to improve quality of life generally. Or it won't be possible to find earning opportunities, in which case UBI is all the money you will have.

I don't think it would be a kind of work that can earn a living in urban setting.

However, it's something that can be used to earn supplemental income in cheap locale.

Teach spoken English using Skype, for example. There's 2B potential customers. Or maybe 4B. All you have to be is native speaker.

If someone wants to do that, they are currently free to move someplace cheap and do that.

On the other hand, a lot of low cost areas, like rural parts of the US, don't have the high speed internet necessary to do something like that. It doesn't work unless you have both low cost of living and amenities like high speed internet. Right now, amenities like high speed internet and jobs are mostly concentrated in big cities. So just giving people a check (UBI) and telling them to work the rest out themselves while the world is actively against the idea of restructuring work simply doesn't work.

Either we can make a world that supports living someplace cheap and earning money online or we can't. Basic Income has no bearing on the logistics of making that work.

This world kind of exists already. A lot of people move to Southeast Asia (for cheap and comfortable living) and there travel between countries while making money remotely.

Then why do we need UBI?

I work remotely. I moved someplace cheap within the US. I am still struggling for various reasons, but I currently live like you describe.

So if it can be done without UBI, why do we need UBI?

Either we need UBI because you can't get paid work and you need to live off UBI, or you can get paid work, in which case we don't need UBI. Please pick one

You bring a strong point in that I'm not ready to challenge right now :)

>plot a revolution and train for it.

i suspect the wheels are already in motion.

Give me 10K a year, no strings attached and I can live comfortably without ever working again.

Move somewhere cheap or go in with some friends, you will be surprised what 10k a year can do.

I have a bit over $10k a year in alimony. To get off the street, I spent 2 years researching where in the western half of the US I could a) travel inexpensively without a car and b) afford to buy a house. I am in a cheap rental trying to figure out how to buy a house with no money down.

There are places in the US where you can rent for $500/mo or less, but they are pretty hard to find. If it is just you, you may be able to make it, especially if you are willing and able to get a roommate.

If you have dependents, high health costs or any complications whatsoever, it rapidly falls apart. If we don't give UBI from birth, poor families with children won't be lifted out of poverty like we imagine. If we do, you can guarantee that some women will crank out babies as a means to raise their income and be lousy, abusive mothers who don't actually care about the kids.

For the vast majority of people, cutting their income 50 to 80 percent in exchange for going jobless will be a hardship. Most lottery winners are bankrupt within 5 years. I suspect part of the reason for this is that most people divide their time between working to make money and consuming in their off hours. When you remove the job from the equation, they suddenly have about 50 hours more a week that they need to entertain themselves. If you are used to spending money in your leisure time, it can be incredibly hard to shift gears and find cheap or free means to do so.

It can be done. I have lived on damn little for a long time and I do a lot for free because my income supports three people, not one. So the budget is quite tight. But a lot of people fail at it.

Currently, people failing to make ends meet can turn to food stamps, section 8 housing, etc. Many people feel that the way to finance UBI is to eliminate all that stuff. So if you get UBI and fail to make it work, it is possible there won't be a safety net to catch you when you fall. It may be one huge fuck you.

UBI is supplemental income, you can still work. With a UBI, you wouldn't have to live in a tent because you could afford an apartment.

I find it strange that someone who was once homeless is opposed to a policy like UBI that would end or at least severely curtail homelessness.

So if not UBI, what's your solution?

You can't still work if all the big wigs with the power to create jobs are not bothering to make work available because you have your UBI.

I have already laid out my solution: accessible healthcare, affordable housing and restructuring work.

And the reason I hold the position I hold is because I was homeless. So I know what bs it is to say "You can just move someplace cheaper and supplement your income." I was both willing and able to do both of those things. It isn't the easy answer folks imagine.

I owe a bunch of money from making the move. People who, themselves, make money online mostly shat all over me and wouldn't help me figure out how to make money online while saying things to me like I was panhandling the internet for trying to figure out how to earn money online etc.

UBI will not give anyone the knowledge, skills and connections necessary to turn free time into income. What it will do is allow classist or sexist or racist assholes to be more comfortable with shutting out Those People from the paths to an earned income because, hey, you don't need me to give you an opportunity. You have your UBI.

If we don't fix the affordable housing mess, UBI fixes nothing. There are lots of places where $10k is basically just rent for the year, with no money leftover for anything else. And if you think people can just move to the cheap seats, it is hard to find a place for under $500/mo. That leaves less than $500/mo to cover all other living expenses.

I have lived on that kind of a budget. I have looked for housing on that kind of a budget. I know firsthand how hard it is to make that work. So when folks who likely have more income than me post imaginary stories about what a piece of cake life will be when there are no jobs but everyone has UBI, that really sticks in my craw.

You telling me that UBI is supplemental income tells me you don't get it. UBI is not supposed to be supplemental. It is supposed to make sure most people don't starve when there simply is no paid work to be found.

These kinds of comments are crazy making. If it is supplemental, we don't need it. If it isn't supplemental, it doesn't work without also fixing healthcare and housing.

I think we don't need it. We just need to fix healthcare and housing and restructure work. We need to do all that with or without UBI. I think without UBI, we will do a better job of fixing those things. With UBI, too many people think those problems don't really matter that much. Poor people can just move elsewhere or something.

I'm totally with you on fixing affordable housing and healthcare, and that a UBI can only do so much without fixing those problems.

I don't buy the idea that UBI will make it harder to solve those problems. I think UBI will make it easier to fix those problems because it would free up more peoples' time (especially the lower and middle class) to be politically active and fix these fundamental problems. Right now nothing is really improving because the wealthy who've bought out the politicians don't care, and the poor have no time or energy to protest because they're too busy working multiple jobs and worrying about whether or not they'll make rent next month.

> You can't still work if all the big wigs with the power to create jobs are not bothering to make work available because you have your UBI.

Jobs aren't some kind of charity case that companies offer to appease the financially desperate masses. Jobs are created when there's a need for labor, and they believe the revenue generated by the labor will offset the wages. UBI does not mean that companies go "well looks like the masses don't need our money anymore, we can finally take away these jobs". Businesses are there to maximize profit, and UBI doesn't change that.

UBI however would massively increase the bargaining power of laborers by giving them the option to walk away. Wages of jobs that nobody wants to do but are services that we need would rise. We'd probably see more people opting to work less hours. The whole dynamic of interviews would change in favor of the laborer (as opposed to right now where the employer has the upper hand). Overall, it'd be a massive boon to labor.

Currently, multiple tech giants are pro UBI. Sam Altman is constantly on the front page of HN talking about it. He is putting millions of his own money into UBI experiments.

I am not aware of him doing anything about healthcare or affordable housing. Since he became president of YC, he has used it as a platform to promote various social agendas he is interested in. YC fosters the development of businesses.

You cannot convince me that the focus of someone like that has no impact on the kind of world we are creating. I do not believe he in any way cares about the little people. I do not believe he has any interest in or willingness to open doors for poor people. His interest in UBI strikes me as a huge fuck you and quit your bitching to the little people.

You need to be very leery of the motives of the architects of such a system. Currently, American welfare does an excellent job of trapping people in poverty. I have no idea why you are so strongly convinced that some new welfare scheme with a shiny new name won't continue that pattern. I have seen zero evidence that it will.

Since healthcare and affordable housing both need to be fixed anyway, I would much prefer to see time and effort to into those things in the here and now rather than into all this talk of UBI. If both of those things get fixed first and people still think UBI is a good idea, I would be much more willing to support it at that point. But at this point in time, talk of UBI looks to me like a lazy concept if throwing money at the problems of poor people as if their problems are easily solved. This makes me extremely leery of both the idea itself and of the idea that people trying to spearhead the movement are at all qualified to do the heavy lifting involved in solving healthcare and affordable housing.

Most of those complaints seem to be specific to your individual situation, rather than features of universal health care systems. I would argue that experiencing universal healthcare isn't that unique (Most developed countries) - what's unique is the specific (US Military) system you've experienced.

Employer knowing your medical situation? State-run healthcare keeps your employer out of healthcare completely.

Crappy doctors? Outcomes vary across countries and by treatment, but I think it's hard to argue that US outcomes are in general better than the average socialised system.

Choice of doctor? There's no reason private insurance can't co-exist with socialised healthcare. We have private healthcare in the UK (which is, I believe, kept to a reasonable price / practice by having to compete with the NHS). Furthermore, you do have some choice of your doctor in the NHS. If I want to see a doctor, I can choose where I make the appointment. Nobody is compelling me to see a particular doctor. For more serious issues, requiring complex treatments the choices do narrow. But this seems right to me - If I'm seriously sick, I want to rely on the expertise of a specialist. Even then, nobody is compelling me to have any particular treatment and I always have pretty much the same choice a US patient does - to go private.

Long waiting times? Perhaps, but it's pretty horrific to argue that this is worth the pain and suffering caused by shutting a significant portion of society out of the healthcare system.

There are other countries that use the mandatory insurance model, and it works fine. Of course, they do it much better.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_mandate

I am not seeing anything described here remotely like Obamacare. It sounds like bald faced copying any of those systems to the best of our ability would be a vast improvement.

I was homeless when Obamacare passed, so I was exempt. I am no longer homeless. I worry how this will impact me and I wish Trump would actually fix it like he said he was going to do when he took office. If he fixed our completely broken health coverage system, I would be willing to largely overlook what an utter shit show of a politician the man has been.

The individual mandate was repealed in the recent tax bill.

(I'm assuming that's what you mean with exempt)

Thank you. I will need to look that up.

In Austria if you are self enployed there is a mandate for medical insurance and pension contributions. If you are employed there is a mandate which is shared with the employer.

What indication do you have that Trump will ever do the things he promises to do?

I see zero indication of this, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wish for it.

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