@edwards183 @kharyp $25k is the average for a family. I didn't make that number up. Regardless, either way they'd be taxed on it.
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Seth Borman
21.9K posts
Seth Borman
@SethBorman
Real estate. Cofounded a medical clinic. Former artillerist. Henry George was right. Non-subscriber to pagan Caesarism.
Phoenix, AZ Sumali Eylül 2013
907 Sinusundan588 Mga Tagasunod
@SethBorman @kharyp They wouldn’t get that 25K in their pockets because the companies who employ 67% (self-funded plans) don’t pay anywhere near that amount. A better idea would be ending/limiting employer/employee tax deductibility in addition to limiting some of the ACA mandated benefits.
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Tie health care to the job and you trap people in jobs they hate, afraid to start a business or change careers because a diagnosis would bankrupt them. We built a leash and called it a benefit. Cut it loose.
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@scandlenjosh Kids today demand much more home. Our 1st mortgage was at 10% interest, on a $100K balance, largely due to us 1st saving up a very large down payment. Delayed gratification, another foreign concept these days. BTW, we still live in that home several decades later.
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Going through my mom's stuff and found an old mortgage statement from 1977. 25 year term at 8.75% for the $15,500 house on Peaks Island, Maine.
The idea that "kids today" are so much worse off than previous generations is silly. Yes, housing costs are more expensive today than 10 years ago.
But come on, today isn't extreme. This higher you are on this graph the more affordable housing is.
@texasrunnerDFW
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@LorenAdler I don't understand the obsession with in-network rates when the entire point of billing out of network is to get higher reimbursements. The insurance companies don't seem to care as much as people on Twitter, either, because they aren't signing providers up with better payments.
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You can see here how much higher the prices emerging from arbitration have been than prior in-network rates: brookings.edu/articles/no-su…
The Turquoise Health comparisons with concurrent in-network prices appear even more stark: turquoise.health/idr-insights
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CBO wants research analyzing the impacts of the No Surprises Act on health care costs.
While they originally estimated the law would ↓ premiums, that relied on the assumption that IDR outcomes would be close to prior in-network rates.
Instead, outcomes have been far higher.
U.S. CBO@USCBO
The No Surprises Act protects patients from unexpected charges from out-of-network health care providers. CBO is seeking research that evaluates the law's effects on health care prices and network participation. cbo.gov/publication/62…
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@neildecrypt @NLeconandpolicy Do you think people shove move to the parts of the country that their parents escaped?
When I graduated college I went to my dad's hometown and one of the cousins told me "now you need to get you on the welfare."
Is that the expectation now?
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@NLeconandpolicy median home price in the US is $400k
people can't afford houses because they all want to live in NYC or California.
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Why can't Millennials afford the houses that their parents bought in their 20s and they grew up in?
Why does a lawyer today live in literally the same building originally built for factory workers 100 years ago?
Why was it possible for one parent (in their 20s) to work while the other stayed home to care for small children?
It's true that having iPhone 17s makes us "richer" than when televisions had vacuum tubes and phones had rotary dials. But, Nicaraguans today also have iPhone 17s, and they are still poor.
This isn't the only reason, but it is a big reason.
Lyn Alden@LynAldenContact
If you denominate US GDP in gold instead of dollars, the chart is wild.
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@MarkNaughton9 On the plus side, you can probably since two songs with the word "Chattahoochee" in them.
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Fun Fact: With 18 years of Honorable Service, a toxic Captain ended my Air Force Career…
The Army gave me a chance, then smoked the shit out of me, ultimately commissioning me at 38 years old
Thank you Army and happy birthday to the world’s greatest fighting force 🇺🇸
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@CoreyLeander @ryanscottborman Then ask yourself what people that COULD be building things are doing when they aren't building buildings, and figure out how to lure them away from that and back onto a job site.
Or figure out how to train more workers.
FEMA doesn't build. Some of their employees might.
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@ryanscottborman @SethBorman That's fine. Use FEMA or [insert other large agency] that could be assigned to literally work and help build houses, not create bureaucracy.
I just want to supercharge the workforce, physically, to get more built more quickly.
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Obvious solution:
(1) Mass public-private construction (think USACE + Nat'l Guard + Horton + Lennar + Pulte) of apartments & houses on federal (create new suburbs) & private land
(2) Massive zoning de-regulation to facilitate both (1) and organic private construction
Stephen Semler@stephensemler
Monthly rent has increased 37% since 2019. From 2019 to 2024, rent increased 55% faster than household income.
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@CoreyLeander Contracting it out is precisely how you get that kind of effort... but the government can't do it since the governments super power is 1) saying no and 2) financing things.
Those things are in direct opposition.
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I just want to mobilize as many bodies as possible to pour concrete foundations, mount drywall, and build floor joists.
You cant just contract this out. It has to be done in a wartime, emergency-footing style way while maintaining high build quality. That combinations requires lots of manpower
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@CoreyLeander They don't multiply anything. I had a female colleague that quit because one of the USACE PMs kept jerking off in front of her.
They upgraded him to a windowless office.
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@SethBorman I dont want them "involved" so much as I want them to be a force multiplier for the private companies so many many units can be built quickly to shock the housing market. Just need more bodies!
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@Stretchedwiener @CharlestonArchi The cheaper materials generally aren't repairable at all. They have to be replaced. Vinyl windows and siding, synthetic stucco, carpet, etc. Increasingly the mechanical systems as well.
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I'm not talking about disposable buildings.
I'm talking about use of materials that result in 5 repairs over 20 years instead of 1 repair over 20 years. The cost savings is greater than the cost of repairs. No reason to be sarcastic, it's a different subject.
If it goes too far, then yes the repairs cost more than using the right robust materials. It's a calculation.
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Disposable buildings are not cheaper than well-built ones unless you are measuring cost in the short-term only. Maybe you don't know this, so I'm pointing it out directly to you.
Wetterschneider@Stretchedwiener
@CharlestonArchi It's cheaper to repair the occasional rare damage than to build it so robust there's never damage. That's the calculation. I know that you know this. But it's worth pointing out for people reading along.
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@seandparnell @mcuban I don't think it's a hard lift to build something like that for someone that has a little bit of money. Very surprised that employers haven't don't more on this.
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@SethBorman @mcuban Yup. Been a few years since I pulled numbers together, but for a few million $$$ it would be easy to build a "network" - and I do NOT mean that the way insurers do - of self-pay friendly practices and facilities as well as create a market for employers to buy care for employees.
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I have connected with 4 smaller HC systems. When I told them how much they would have to change in order for me to invest, they all ghosted me.
Stan Skahovskoj@skahovskoj56284
@mcuban @mcuban Mark, can you buy hospital network and make it transparent and efficient, like you did with costplus drugs? Not to be an example of future healthcare and then we will know how much HC actually cost. Maybe @elonmusk and @JeffBezos can do the same
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@seandparnell @mcuban Yea I think that's accurate. FMMA has a presentation from an ED that did cash bundles pricing with 6 tiers from $250 to $2999 or so, they had to drop it because insurance wanted that pricing. So the trick is to not take insurance.
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@SethBorman @mcuban That market, plus health sharing ministries and others in the self-pay market. There's a whole universe of practices/facilities that could make a real dent in the current third-party payer dominated system, show a better way.
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@CharlestonArchi IMO assemblies are getting so complicated that the real thing would be much cheaper. The obsession with getting R9 insulation in a cavity is making walls shorter lived.
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People say construction costs are too high. Maybe the problem is construction costs are too low. Rather than limiting the size of a building to the best construction the budget can afford, we build the largest building cheap construction will permit.
Architecture@CharlestonArchi
Even granite can only handle so much value engineering.
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@SethBorman What a dumb response. No I did not say that
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People need to stop shitting on parking lots. They’re awesome. I learned to do so many things in a parking lot, from skateboarding to driving a car. And no, a road isn’t good enough. You need the calm and free space of a parking lot. Anti-Parking lot bullshit only helps gentrifiers
𝕂ℕ𝔽 𝕀𝕆𝕆 ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️@KNF100
This is a historic site and must be protected.
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@YAppelbaum That was before AC, insulation, and building codes. You didn't need different designs for different seismic zones. You didn't have to worry about drying a wall out in Mississippi or clay soils in Houston, or the different energy code between Bemidji and Bakersfield.
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2. I live in a house that was purchased from a Sears catalog. Some 80 to 100 models were offered each year, in every conceivable style. There are several on my block, and if you didn't know, you could never distinguish them from their custom-built neighbors.
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1. This solid look at pre-approved building plans also highlights the total insanity of the present system. There are some 38,000 local jurisdictions in the United States. Are they each supposed to purchase the same custom plan for $50,000? washingtonpost.com/business/2026/…
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@YAppelbaum They can't use the same custom plan because of differences in local building cultures, climate, soils, etc. Best you could get is regional plans.
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@VoteManley Most firefighters are volunteers, most soldiers are part time, and cops actually get things like pensions.
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Funny how nobody says police officers, firefighters, or soldiers are being forced into “free labor” because we fund those services publicly.
But the second you suggest everyone should be able to see a doctor, suddenly they’re libertarians.
mike bski@BskiMike22802
Oh, WONDERFUL. A congressional CANDIDATE has discovered that "Medicare for All" fits perfectly on a campaign flyer — and absolutely nowhere else. Let me walk through this slowly. For the folks who apparently let their economics class expire like an unused gym membership. Healthcare is a SERVICE. Not a right. A TRUE right costs other people NOTHING. Your right to free speech only requires that everyone leave you alone. Zero dollars. Zero labor extracted from a single person. But healthcare? Healthcare requires doctors, nurses, researchers, lab technicians, pharmacists — human beings who spent DECADES training to provide it. Calling it a "human right" does not conjure any of those people out of thin air, nor does it convince them to work without compensation. Words are not magical incantations, no matter how many yard signs you print them on. Here is the part that short-circuits this argument entirely: the only way to GUARANTEE provision of a service is to FORCE someone to provide it. That is not a right. That is a claim on another person's labor. There is an older word for that arrangement, and it is not flattering. Now — stay with me here, because this next part is DELICIOUS — the left spent the last few years CHEERING for Luigi Mangione, the young man who allegedly murdered a health insurance CEO because he was SO outraged at insurance companies profiteering off sick Americans. T-shirts sold out. Trending on social media. Practically a national holiday for some people. And now you want to hand those SAME companies a LEGALLY MANDATED captive customer base of 330 MILLION Americans, funded entirely by tax dollars, with no ability to opt out? You jobbernowl — that is not "taking on" big insurance. That is handing them the biggest monopoly contract in human history and billing ME for the delivery. Here is an idea: why are you pushing Medicare for All instead of MASSIVELY EXPANDING Health Savings Accounts? HSAs put every medical decision in the PATIENT'S hands — not a bureaucrat's, not a congressman's. Oh. Right. That gives power to individuals instead of the government. Carry on. Quick math, since we apparently need it: Medicare for All has been estimated between $32 TRILLION and $43.9 TRILLION over ten years. For reference — the ACA, the LAST time we were told government was going to fix healthcare — drove insurance costs 38% ABOVE their pre-ACA trend line. Thirty-eight percent. UP. After we were promised it would come DOWN. If someone did that to your bank account, you would call the police. So the government-expanded healthcare experiment ran. Costs went up. Access did not improve proportionally. The solution is now... DRAMATICALLY MORE government healthcare? What did you do, donate your brain to science before you were finished with it? Quinn's Law #1: Liberalism ALWAYS generates the exact opposite of its stated intent. Quinn's Law #9: To a liberal, INTENTIONS matter far more than OUTCOMES. The intention sounds compassionate. The outcome is a $43.9 trillion waiting list, staffed by doctors who did not attend medical school for twelve years to be told by a federal algorithm what they will earn. On January 10, 1963, Rep. A.S. Herlong Jr. read Communist Goal #30 into the Congressional Record: discrediting free enterprise and promoting the view that government central planning is superior to a free market. I am not calling you a communist. I am asking you to look at the checklist and tell me where your platform diverges from it. But what do I know — I am only a science teacher who can do the math on a $43 trillion price tag without needing it printed on a bumper sticker first. IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it. SHARE this. COMMENT below — if healthcare is truly a "human right," tell me exactly WHO is legally obligated to provide it, and what happens to that person when they refuse. Tell me. JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube. @JoJoFromJerz @GuntherEagleman @catturd2 #MAGA #Veterans #Trump
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