Obamacare for the unemployed?
People who do not qualify for Medicaid will receive subsidies to help with purchase of insurance. (A tax return is not a requirement.) Although I fail to see how they don't qualify for Medicaid if they have no income. Note that people below certain poverty guidelines receive a waiver of the penalty. Part of the ACA is expanding eligibility for Medicaid.
Why are so many people against Obamacare?
I would like to understand why so many people are against Obamacare. I am guessing Obamacare could help sick people or other people with no ways to pay for health cares. So why do they wanna delay it for a year? Why not give the opportunity to everyone to have better care. This is not a pro Obama question, I just want to understand. I'm from Europe
Is there a level of unemployment that is actually healthy in economics? Is it bad to have literally zero or near zero unemployment?
Zero unemployment means that nobody is changing jobs or preparing for a new job.If everybody changes jobs every year, and takes two weeks between jobs, there is 4% unemployment (2 weeks out of 50 weeks is 4%). If one person out of 1,000 is taking time off to go to school or enjoy leisure time (searching for the perfect trout stream, perhaps) that is an additional 0.1%.In the developed nations, it is expected that workers take 2 weeks of vacation every year; this itself is actually 4% unemployment but is not officially counted because it is “paid vacation”, actually a 4% reduction in pay when the worker is working to cover the 4% of the time he is not working.Then there are those retired. Unemployed, but not counted as unemployed in official statistics.Two points:The official designation of “unemployed” can be fiddled with to make statistics come out as government officials desire. After the 2008 crash, people who had been unemployed so long they stopped wasting time reporting to government employment centers were not counted as unemployed, even though they were. This understated true unemployment by perhaps 5%, perhaps more.In a dynamic and growing economy, in which the overall standard of living is improving, people change jobs, becoming unemployed in between. A zero-unemployment economy is stagnant.
How come people voted President Obama back in office as president again?
There were a number of factors that negatively affected the Republicans during the 2012 election: • Misogynistic pro-rape comments from the likes of Todd Aiken and other GOP incumbents. And Republicans wonder why women tend to overwhelmingly vote Democrat or Independent. • The GOP platform during the 2012 elections was horrendous. Jon Huntsman, the only decent Republican in the lineup, was dead last in the race, while an extreme fundie, a two-time adulterer (who had the nerve to spout that tired "marriage is between a man and woman" tripe), and a flip-flopping rich boy were vying for nomination. That doesn't even include the other wacky candidates. • We the voters had a choice between two elitist, flip-flopping dunderheads, so it was the VPs that really did it for some people. Paul "Vampire" Ryan alienated all voters except those on the extreme right wing. The Democrats are no angels, but it's time for the Republicans to wake up and boot the Tea Party from Congress. They're the ones who were behind the government shutdown: "But among Republicans and Republican-leaning Americans who ally themselves with the tea party movement, opposition to the healthcare program was nearly universal, with 94% opposing it. Most of them — 89% — said they disapproved very strongly, a figure of uncommon vehemence. Of the tea party-aligned healthcare opponents, about two-thirds wanted elected officials to force it to fail. (The numbers were less emphatic among non-tea party Republicans; Democrats remained forcefully supportive of Obamacare.)" Source: http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/p... Mark Meadows, a tea party candidate, is one of the biggest figures behind the government shutdown: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/politics/h...
Why can European nations afford universal health care and the USA can't?
I am from Europe and live in the US now - hence, familiar with both systems.The short answer is: The US, just as Europe, can afford universal healthcare just as well as Europe does. But the political situation in the US prevents it from happening.Due to the facts that …a) US politicians (senators, representatives, presidents, …) need lots of money to be able to run their campaigns to get electedb) Citizens United makes it legal for companies to donate millions to such campaigns… many politicians are indebted to their donors (companies and rich individuals) and hence work to implement policies that are beneficial to THEM, i.e. the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry as a whole.The current US healthcare system is extremely lucrative for these industries while being extraordinarily expensive for the insured.When comparing the US health care system to that of Europe, it becomes immediately clear where the solution lies: to wit, in regulating or centrally negotiating the prices that healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies can charge for their products and services AND by making health insurance mandatory for everyone.This would solve all of the US system’s inherent issues:Prices and premiums would come down and there would be enough money in the risk pools to cover everyone and offer a fair profit for insurers.The fact that no one in the government is even talking about doing this or maligning any such efforts (by say Bernie Sanders) to do so as “socialist medicine”, is a telltale sign that they are more aligned with corporate interests than those of their citizens.Being a businessman myself, I asked myself:With so many readily available Best Practices out there in the form of the many countries that have working AND affordable health care, how come that the US population doesn't simply demand that their government copy and adapt any of these existing systems?The only explanation I found so far is that over many years of misinformation and outright manipulation, parts of the general public are so misguided by now, that they don't see through all this or even side with those that want to maintain a system biased to benefit the health care providers over the patients.Mass manipulation, funded by the corporations and aided by right-wing media, has managed to get many sheep to vote for the slaughterhouse.
Actuary or medical doctor?
which one of these earn higher salary? an actuary or a medical doctor? i am about to pursue either one in my degree program, please share your experience or opinion.