patrick.net

jessica says

a person over 19 now qualifies for Medicare.

No, a person has to be over 65 to qualify for Medicare, and there is talk of raising that. There was a proposal to reduce the age to qualify for Medicare, but it was rejected by Democrats. Now, they talk of raising the age, in order to stave off the bankruptcy of the program.

jessica says

So what percentage of young people are we talking about here?

"57% of Millennials disapprove of Obamacare." That matches the general adult population (all ages over 18), where 57% disapprove.

Also, you don't seem to have read any of the actual policies. You cite a subsidized premium, but that's only the start of the cost. You have to ask what do the policies actually cover, and to what extent. People are figuring out that the policies pay mainly the providers with the best connected lobbyists, e.g. PhRMA & AHA, but not others. They might cover part of an in-network hospital's emergency room charges, but try asking about the ambulance, or doctors who work in a hospital as independent contractors, or what happens if you wake up in the ICU - especially if it's out of network. Don't even bother asking about dental, it's not covered.

I understand the point, but I see the boomers situation as due to circumstances beyond their control (i.e., inflation followed by massive drop in interest rates and then globalization). It was the globalization that caused the younger gen to be situated so much worse.

It's not a conspiracy of old against the young.

The fact that this sorry excuse for (more) universal health care, where everyone pays in, starts with now is also just a random circumstance not a planned fucking over of the millennials.

I just don't like the age warfare being added to the class warfare we already have.

I get it that there's an intersection between the two. But there's also a huge number of boomers that have no savings and are unprepared for retirement.
That is, in spite of the fact that they had better opportunities in some ways.

Just take the Aussie strategy, and make it the same for all, about 3600/year.

Then take the Aussie strategy, and set minimum wages for industries.
e.g. people at McD's make 15/hour in NSW. I suspect this helps lower turnover.

Then cut the tip out of the equation. You get more money via salary, and not via tips.

Then cut the fee and additional taxes crap out of the prices, aka hotel prices per night include all taxes.

Then add a Value added tax. Collect those taxes along the way.

Dan8267 says

The Internet.

The Internet is just a telephone system, based on text.

Doing more of it is not an order of magnitude change.

curious2 says

Gordon Moore was too young to serve in WWII, and others who founded INTC were younger.

A silicon chip transistor is faster. But it does the same job as a vacuum tube.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page weren't even born.

Boolean search was in use in libraries for two decades before Google (or Alta Vista or Yahoo) as DIALOG.

Google and Intel made improvements on technology, but did not create order of magnitude changes.

John Bailo says

A silicon chip transistor is faster. But it does the same job as a vacuum tube.

Silicon chips are orders of magnitude faster, smaller, cheaper, and more reliable than vacuum tubes.

I remember doing Boolean searches in the library, the printed Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, the card catalogs, inter-library loans for materials not available locally, etc. Google is orders of magnitude faster and more convenient, and if you don't like Google, there are competitors, e.g. DuckDuckGo. Information retrieval that used to take days can be done in seconds now, without even leaving my desk; that is transformational change.

But, I will concede one point. Average vocabularies have reportedly shrunk, and sufficing behavior seems to have enabled people to devote less time to learning and more time to angry avians or birdbrained consumerians or similar chaff.

jessica says

It's been my experience that the young are excited to actually get insurance for the first time since being on their parent's plan..

Everything I've read online including the article linked in the original post says that young adults are very reluctant to sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The Millennials are the most educated generation in history. They understand that the principle of "sign up the young to pay for the old" means that the young are being taken advantaged of and forced to pay way more than their fair share, and that's a lousy deal.

I believe more Millennials would sign up if age brackets were enforced and part of the law. Health insurance should be dirt cheap for the young. And any "transfer of wealth" mechanism should be independent of the insurance mechanism. Heck, we already have a mechanism designed explicitly for transferring wealth from the rich to the needy; it's called the graduated income tax. We should fix that rather than pervert health insurance.

jessica says

At a salary of just over 15k, a person over 19 now qualifies for Medicare.

In CA, at 16K a person qualifies for insurance for $1 a month.

At 20K, $27 a month.

At 30K, $156 a month....capping at $190 with no discounts.

They are making 30 to 40k and are whining that it is not completely free.

John Bailo says

Dan8267 says

The Internet.

The Internet is just a telephone system, based on text.

Doing more of it is not an order of magnitude change.

Like Microsoft and Apple, you missed the point and the boat. As a result, both companies lost a decade of incredible profits as they had to catch up, and both face severe competition from younger companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

The publishing industry, especially newspapers, are another great example of this.

Here's a good illustration of what the point you're missing. Please listen to it carefully. It's full of wisdom.
http://www.ImaH51F4HBw

Simple solution, put all the Boomers out of our collective misery, take their assets. Who needs Death Panels, this is America land of DIY!

FortWayne says

They are making 30 to 40k and are whining that it is not completely free.

Actually, they are whining that the whole system is set up to screw them over. Funny how people don't like getting taken advantage of.

And if it weren't for other people trying to take advantage of the young adults, no one would be upset that the young adults aren't signing up for the ACA. Hence my original post.

curious2 says

Silicon chips are orders of magnitude faster, smaller, cheaper, and more reliable than vacuum tubes.

The point is orders of magnitude change in human society and understanding.

For example, a dual core Intel is orders of magnitude faster than an IBM XT's chip. But so what? They essentially do the same thing. Much in the way that a 4 cylinder car engine and a 12 cylinder car engine do the same thing.

Dan8267 says

Here's a good illustration of what the point you're missing. Please listen to it carefully. It's full of wisdom.

I've read many of his books, and yes, I am following along the lines of his thoughts about obsolescence.

(In fact, I entitled my 1994 essay "The Global Village and You", http://www.questia.com/library/1P3-5819744/the-global-village-and-you-give-something-in-return )

For example, he consider the the missions of NASA to be "Newtonian" and hence backward looking.

And so too we see this in all our technologies. Just doing more of something is not creating an order of magnitude change.

I continue to maintain that post-WWII generations have not come up with anything really that does that, and hence are not entitled to big income gains.

John Bailo says

For example, a dual core Intel is orders of magnitude faster than an IBM XT's chip. But so what? They essentially do the same thing.

One chip can render video and make video editing practical (due to the MMX and XXM instructions) and so make things like YouTube and ChatRoulette possible. This changes everything from culture to the way people interact, date, debate, and meet people.

An order of magnitude faster doesn't mean doing the same things faster; it means doing things that you could not practically do before. And if everyone else can also do these things now, then new communities and new interactions can be created. For example, various persons across the world worked together to produce a performance of What a Wonderful World. That's something that could not have happened before the Internet. It could not have happened with the phone systems of the 1980s.

Dan8267 says

This changes everything from culture to the way people interact, date, debate, and meet people.

Usenet -- a pure text social media network -- established computer mediated social interaction long before PCs were even widely available.

And again, these are not major productivity increases...the kind that earn a big increase in salary.

Dan8267 says

That's something that could not have happened before the Internet. It could not have happened with the phone systems of the 1980s.

The jump was communications at the speed of light.

Before the telegraph, information moved at the speed of the horse.

After the telegraph it moved at the speed of light.

Can you think of any other change since WWII that is even remotely as big a leap?

John Bailo says

I continue to maintain that post-WWII generations have not come up with anything really that does that, and hence are not entitled to big income gains.

I don't see how one can justify that statement given the enormous advances in just my field:
1. The Internet
2. Computer graphics, sound, and multimedia
3. Software development - Hell, I could go on for hours and hours about how much software development as a field has advanced.
- managed code
- dynamic HTML
- unit testing
- reflection
- LINQ
- software design patterns
- separation of concern
- client/server, 3-tier, n-tier architecture
- declarative languages
- XML-based languages leveraging grammar for extensibility
- Unicode
- the MPEG standard and the concepts behind it (motion vectors, etc.)

John Bailo says

Usenet -- a pure text social media network -- established computer mediated social interaction long before PCs were even widely available.

Ah, but only a few academics use Usenet. Almost everyone uses social media today. That ubiquitousness makes it different.

The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes and edges.

John Bailo says

Can you think of any other change since WWII that is even remotely as big a leap?

Yes, everything I listed in the previous post and much, much more.

New concepts have been created every day over the past 20 years just in the software industry. These concepts have made software far superior to the software between 1940 and 1989 in ways that are unimaginable.

Dan8267 says

They understand that the principle of "sign up the young to pay for the old" means that the young are being taken advantaged of and forced to pay way more than their fair share, and that's a lousy deal.

I believe more Millennials would sign up if age brackets were enforced and part of the law. Health insurance should be dirt cheap for the young. And any "transfer of wealth" mechanism should be independent of the insurance mechanism. Heck, we already have a mechanism designed explicitly for transferring wealth from the rich to the needy; it's called the graduated income tax.

The same argument applies within age groups, but the point of the legislation is to maximize revenue and power. Remember Aesop's fable of the grasshopper and the ant, and consider how it feels to be the ant year after year, decade after decade, and then having to pay for all the grasshoppers. As renters and savers bailed out TBTF banks and deadbeat loanowners, so too the careful and healthy end up paying PhRMA retail for Homefool's SSRIs. If Congress wanted to solve the problem of people worrying that a sudden emergency might bankrupt them, we'd see a plan to deal with true emergencies - either single payer for emergencies or a national health service. If Congress wanted to improve public health, we'd see vaccines distributed freely via the VA, the Post Office, and the private sector. Instead, we see revenue maximization - shifting costs around so that entrenched industry players can continue to overcharge. The federal government bought vaccines against H1N1, but didn't give them to people, it gave them free to re-sellers who overcharged more than the market would bear, so more than 70 million doses expired unused and more than 10,000 Americans died expensively in hospitals. This was at the same time as the enactment of Obamacare. These aren't aberrations, they are the inevitable results of a system operating as designed: maximizing revenue and power.

Soylent green is people.

There will be less for everyone.
The future is defined by resource depletion.
Technology is not energy.
Nor does it replace finite minerals.

Dan you really need to get the hell out of Boca Ratton and the West Palm Beach area. You do realize that is where the worlds riches asshole go to live, and retire?

I don't know what Old people you know up there, but believe me.
You wouldn't want to be any of the Old people that I know that don't live up there.

You make it sound like they are all Warren Buffet's evil twin.

Dan8267 says

- unit testing

unit testing = developers idiot light

While it will save you that embarrassing presentation in an iteration, launch, or even just a board members executive software review, where some IT honcho is demonstrating the project's progress and you get the yellow page, because of a data type conversion error, null exception, overflow, or some other broken code error.
It wont or can't, tell you that some knucklehead either mapped the wrong parameter to the stored procedure, or that that the return query was properly constructed to yield the most accurate data. Nor will it tell you how your application will perform when you get slammed by X amount of people at any given time, nor will ever be to tell what number X is, before the whole thing goes to hell.
Unit testing wont tell you, that through out the development cycle, varchar was the appropriate data type for a field, based on their current database. Then three months after launch there's a special need for storing special Unicode characters in that field.
Sometimes proper design patters would dictate that should have been nvarchar from the start, but then sometimes, it's a decision left up the need of that particular tables function, decided based on legacy data. Then there is competency, a unit test will tell you that some fool has mastered the Microsoft's UI, and some fundamentals of class formation and data access, but it can't tell you if their logic and process is meeting the over all requirement of the process that is being written.

Don't even get me started on requirements. Sometimes they are just a blurb in writing but it takes 5 minutes to describe process.

You listed a lot technology that has made a lot of work for a lot of people. But I wouldn't necessarily call them all advances, most of them are. But a few of those are just a convoluted waste of time, resources and money.

Can never beat a tenacious, business savvy, tech stupid, detail oriented and astute QA person. The most annoying sons of bitches ever put on this earth. But I don't think I would be as good as I am today had they not driven me crazy with their petty, anal compulsive nit picking, throughout early on in my career.

Which brings me to my second thing you can't beat. Consciously writing bug free code, in the first place.

Dan8267 says

- unit testing

I get this done at the free clinic

CaptainShuddup says

Dan you really need to get the hell out of Boca Ratton and the West Palm Beach area. You do realize that is where the worlds riches asshole go to live, and retire?

More reason to not want to prolong their lives at the expense of the young.

CaptainShuddup says

unit testing = developers idiot light

Hardly. Unit testing, when done right, is a valuable investment that
1. Demonstrates the use of an API.
2. Ensures that the API is designed well.
3. Prevents regression bugs.
4. With code coverage, increases the chances that you have handled all edge cases.

To poo-poo unit testing is simply foolish. Yes, there are costs associated with unit testing, and unit testing is bad if done wrong, but to say that unit testing is worthless is ridiculous.

Proper use of unit testing saves time in the long-run and ensures a higher level of quality.

Dan8267 says

CaptainShuddup says

unit testing = developers idiot light

Hardly. Unit testing, when done right, is a valuable investment that

1. Demonstrates the use of an API.

2. Ensures that the API is designed well.

3. Prevents regression bugs.

4. With code coverage, increases the chances that you have handled all edge cases.

To poo-poo unit testing is simply foolish. Yes, there are costs associated with unit testing, and unit testing is bad if done wrong, but to say that unit testing is worthless is ridiculous.

Proper use of unit testing saves time in the long-run and ensures a higher level of quality.

Unit testing can be useful if not done by the same developer who writes the code, ideally they should be written by a QA programmer. It is usually a waste of money to let a highly paid principal engineer write unit tests. The reason good developers are paid so much these days is that they basically do the work of four, one is they write code, two is they do most of the QA, three is they are essentially their own project managers (capture business requirements) and four is they have to do the initial operational setup/installation. Oh and five, they sometimes document as well. It's a demanding job though it's good to be high demand ;)

...then I'm usually called in to write the software, because while the API, and all of the technology that was used in the previous attempt was "COOL" vs "appropriate", at the end of the day, Rick, Marge and Steve still had to exchange excel files that were created by an ad hock manual process.

I'm actually in process of servicing two large Corporation's business units now at $75+ an hour, because their IT developers found it appropriate to develop the scope of the project for their Nerd peer audience instead that of the business units, which ate into the budgeted allotted time for the over all development.

1. Demonstrates the use of an API.

2. Ensures that the API is designed well.

3. Prevents regression bugs.

4. With code coverage, increases the chances that you have handled all edge cases.

I guess that's just the advantage of being the SQL developer as well as the back end an front end developer of every project you work on. I know damn well where in the three tiers of my application to check that every thing is wired up properly, before I I present my code for review, QA or release.

At least I don't have to write a duplicated yet totally disconnected and separate set of logic into a do nothing test project, to give me a false sense of accomplishment.

Do guys really think that the ACA site didn't get plenty of Unit tests ran on it? I bet that I as a tax payer paid over $10 million dollars for that dog and pony show.

CaptainShuddup says

Do guys really think that the ACA site didn't get plenty of Unit tests ran on it? I bet that I as a tax payer paid over $10 million dollars for that dog and pony show.

The ACA site was fucked up because the government is full of nepotism when it comes to contracting.

humanity says

I understand the point, but I see the boomers situation as due to circumstances beyond their control (i.e., inflation followed by massive drop in interest rates and then globalization). It was the globalization that caused the younger gen to be situated so much worse.

It's not a conspiracy of old against the young.

The fact that this sorry excuse for (more) universal health care, where everyone pays in, starts with now is also just a random circumstance not a planned fucking over of the millennials.

I just don't like the age warfare being added to the class warfare we already have.

I get it that there's an intersection between the two. But there's also a huge number of boomers that have no savings and are unprepared for retirement.

That is, in spite of the fact that they had better opportunities in some ways.

Circumstances outside of their control?

They didn't give a piss about keeping after their own health, and pissed away all their easy money on landfill fodder.

It certainly ain't my fault boomers have no savings for retirement.

Not that it matters. This whole fraudulent experiment with redefining the word retirement is going the way of the dodo. Soon enough as now, retirement will go back to meaning the same thing it always meant. Death

Dan8267 says

the enormous advances

You live in a Fool's Paradise, or rather, a Foo's Utopia, if you consider these "advances".

Archie search engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_search_engine

Veronica (search engine)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_(search_engine)

Dan8267 says

Furthermore, the jobs they are expected to do for their entire lives are
low-paying, manual-labor service jobs like literally wiping the asses of the
aging Boomer population in nursing homes.

And paying for the boomer care by witholding taxes.

Dan8267 says

The entire point of the Affordable Care Act is to force these young adults to
pay way the hell more for insurance than they can or should in order to allow
older, richer, stock-owning adults to pay less than their fair share.

But 1-3 lowpaying/min wage jobs would qualify them for a subsidy to pay for their health insurance.
Drop the $150-$200 per month cell phone bill and IPhone and take responsiblity for their own lives in case something catastrophic happens like cancer, or an auto wreck.

It's called priorities.

John Bailo says

You live in a Fool's Paradise, or rather, a Foo's Utopia, if you consider these "advances".

Wow, that's such a convincing argument backed with impeccable reasoning. I have no choice but to agree with you. Proof by snideness is irrefutable. That's why I always accept anything Jim Cramer says as the golden truth.

errc says

It certainly ain't my fault boomers have no savings for retirement.

I didn't imply that it was. My point is, human nature is such that many people do little more (or not enough more) than they must to survive decently, and therefore millions of boomers will have to work in to their 70s or as long as they are able to. Myself included. So generalizations about boomers having it so great are exaggerated, and they are generalizations.

When social security started, I'm sure many younger adults thought, "how is this fair ? I have to pay in to this for the next 40 years, but the guy who is 60 now can start collecting in just a couple of years ?"

IT's the random luck of timing. Nothing more. No conspiracy to fuck over a particular generation.

I do think it would be fair though, to make social security payouts based on income and or net worth (that is use "means testing"). Denying rich boomers their social security would be a good "back door" way to retroactively make taxes on higher incomes retroactive for the last 40 years.

Good commentary on SS:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/the-social-security-double-standard.html

Dan8267 says

I believe more Millennials would sign up if age brackets were enforced and part
of the law. Health insurance should be dirt cheap for the young.

This is true. But it is pretty cheap for most of them, 46% of the uninsured Millenials will now get insurance for less than $50 a month.

http://genprogress.org/voices/2013/10/29/22790/1-3-million-young-americans-can-buy-aca-insurance-for-50-per-month/

curious2 says

Also, you don't seem to have read any of the actual policies. You cite a
subsidized premium, but that's only the start of the cost.

Didn't have to, it was for the same plan I get through my employer. A fairly typical HMO.

curious2 says

jessica
says

a person over 19 now qualifies for Medicare.

No, a person has to be over 65 to qualify for Medicare, and there is talk of
raising that.

I meant Medi-Cal.

The bottom line to all of this is that, whether you're a Baby Boomer, Gen-X or whatever, expect to be screwed out of most of your life savings in the next ten years.

On the Baby Boomer menu, expect to see most of your retirement money and investments become worthless. Many of this group should also be prepared to wrap your heads around the idea of having to go back to work. For the healthy, this will be uncomfortable but necessary but for those who are sick or unable to work, use the last of your retirement money and invest in a cemetery plot and a will.

As for the Gen-X group, expect to never retire unless you are lucky and happen to be wealthy post-crash. Also expect to never live as well as your parents and chalk up those childhood memories as your parents were lucky to be at the right place at the right time when they were younger.

Also, know that if your parents are alive today, just like you, they too will see all that fake prosperity they enjoyed come crashing down around them so before you wish you were your parents financially, take a second look....

jessica says

curious2 says

Also, you don't seem to have read any of the actual policies. You cite a

subsidized premium, but that's only the start of the cost.

Didn't have to....

LOL - we have to buy it so you can find out what's in it. How do you know what's typical without reading and comparing? If the corporate logo is the same, is that the end of your analysis? You might want to read this thread on differences between Obamacare plans and ordinary commercial plans issued by the same companies, including fewer doctors accepting the Obamacare coverage. You might also want to look up the terms "allowable fee schedule", "balance billing", deductible, copayment, etc. You fixate on the subsidized premium, but that's only the price of admission to this particular theme park: all the rides cost extra. For all the talk of pre-existing conditions, America's pre-existing problem hasn't really been solved, merely transformed into an additional layer of revenue and power for the authors of the legislation.

The website has given more people a window into the design and effect of the program. Hundreds of millions of dollars in sweetheart contracts (without considering competitive bids) produced the disastrous roll-out, which required hundreds of millions of dollars more, primarily to the same company (UnitedHealth Group) that was responsible for most of the initial site. It's a program to maximize spending, and it's working as designed.

jessica says

But it is pretty cheap for most of them, 46% of the uninsured Millenials will now get insurance for less than $50 a month.

I don't believe that. There is absolutely no transparency in the system. If the people running the ACA website aren't willing to disclose all the data, I have to be skeptical. Even the article you linked to contained woefully inadequate information to draw any sensible conclusions.

I tried to run through the ACA website just to see what a 20-year-old with a decent job would have to pay for insurance. The website is so poorly implemented, that it does not even allow that. It also asks highly inappropriate questions like what your race is, something that should have no affect whatsoever on health insurance.

The sign-up process for the market place is so abysmal, I wasn't even able to see any health care plans, nonetheless get even a ballpark quote on a plan. That's such basic business that any insurance website should be able to provide.

Dan8267 says

It also asks highly inappropriate questions....

That is also by design. Of course, your personal information is always confidential: just you, the NSA, the IRS, the HHS, other federal and state agencies involved in the program, UnitedHealth Group and the other contractors building and maintaining the site (Hello, Booz Allen!), the insurance companies, and the corporate provider groups will have access to your information. Oh wait - actually, you might not have access to all of your medical information (e.g. many doctors won't give you lab results until you pay for a follow-up visit), but don't worry: those other entities will have it.

curious2 says

That is also by design.

Another thing I found highly objectionable about the site is the forcing of people to agree to give away their rights and their privacy. Since signing up for health insurances is mandated by the law, a person should not have to agree to any conditions whatsoever in order to comply with the law.

You should not be force into either giving up rights or breaking the law. That alone is extremely objectionable. As such, a person should not have to click any "I agree to..." checkbox at all.

jessica says

This is true.

I can't read anything you post because I always get distracted by that fantastic Marge Simpson hair-do.