Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on November 8, 2012 at 10:31pm

Do those Dutch workers get full benefits for 80% workloads? Can they live on 80% incomes? The trend here has been for corporations to eliminate full time jobs for part time workers who get no benefits and can't support their families. My sister had been full time for a decade. But when she didn't want to work weekends, because she has three kids, she was demoted to part time and lost her health insurance. Had to start over with a new deductable in the middle of the year too for the new you-pay-everything insurance. This "Plenitude" Economy assumes the  part time people aren't starving, having their lights cut off, and losing their houses because they can't make ends meet. Do the CEO's work 80% and get 80% salaries too?

Permalink Reply by Grinning Cat on November 8, 2012 at 10:38pm

And why should health insurance be tied to jobs, anyway? If the purpose of insurance is to spread the risk, to make it manageable -- rather than to give away a third of the money to a predatory layer of unelected corporate bureaucrats and shareholders -- a universal single-payer system, where the entire nation is the group, simply makes sense.

Permalink Reply by Chris Breman on November 11, 2012 at 2:20am

Here everyone has got compulsory health insurance, from just born to not yet dead, to share the risks. And it works. Not easily: as always, where there are large funds there are also the parasites - they are hard to get rid of. And the economic crisis makes the system harder to maintain: once you could go to your GP and get a box of painkillers for free, but that is long ago. Now there are very many things not covered by the insurance, and the monthly payments go up and up, but the basis stands; you get most of the help you need for free.