Forum Replies Created
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bearishgurl
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl][quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl]
I feel that the probable reason for United Health backing out of offering plans on CC for 2016 was that Hispanics have a high rate of diabetes and high blood pressure as do members of Native American tribes and CA has the biggest population of any state in the nation of both of these races/Nationalities.[/quote]
I get that you hate brown people. But that doesn’t give you the right to make shit up. Your feelings don’t allow you to makes shit up without being called on it. If you have actual facts, share them. This isn’t an opinion thing. There may be a factual basis. Or it could be your racism. It’s one or the other.[/quote]I just saw this and it doesn’t even deserve a response except to say that (1) that it is NOT meant to be derogatory but it is simply a true statement, and (2) you don’t know a damn thing about me … not my race, my nationality or that of any of my close relatives …. nothing. So you can stop making insults directed at me now.[/quote]
It is not simply a true statement. It is a bigoted made up fantasy from someone who is either terrified or hateful of brown people. I don’t need to know anything about you to judge your words. Your words are racist. Full stop.
And this is how absolutely stupid your words are. Native Americans are exempt from the coverage mandate under the ACA. There might be some that are covered under exchange plans. But none of them have to be. None of them are subject to a penalty for not having coverage. So the likelihood that genetic predisposition to diabetes in Native American populations is even a tiny piece of the reason that an insurance company backed out of participating in an exchange is zero. But you “believe” they’re responsible. Because it’s easier to blame a brown person. Idiot.[/quote]I happen to know for a fact that Native American tribes are encouraging their members to enroll in a bronze plan through their state exchanges with a subsidy (if possible). They (and the IHS who partially funds them) desperately need to be reimbursed for the often comprehensive services they provide to NA’s at their own clinics and hospitals.
Participant[quote=carli]I have many years experience in executive positions for large health insurance companies, including those mentioned in this post (try not to hate on me because of it). I can tell you from direct experience working with senior actuaries and their very detailed claims data, being involved in many board room discussions where management is analyzing this data and debating whether or not to pull out of markets, that basically everything SK in CV is stating is accurate and most everything bearishgurl is stating is completely inaccurate, false and made up in her own mind with no apparent basis in fact whatsoever.
Bearishgurl, I guess if you like spending your time posting your random opinions and made-up speculations, you’re free to do so, but please either clarify that these are your opinions, not facts, or stop posting about the health care/insurance/CC topic because your statements couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s a huge disservice to readers who see your posts on this important topic, especially if they’re unfamiliar with the details of the subject (as most are, since it’s such a complex one) and may mistakenly view your speculations as facts. Please stop. Thank you.[/quote]My main beef has always been with the state exchange and how it operates, NOT with the carriers themselves. In CA, it treats its enrollees horribly. If you have no experience being a customer on Covered CA and live in CA, then you cannot possibly know what we go thru on a monthly (and even weekly) basis. If you have coverage through work, you cannot possibly know what it is like not have choice because your state individual marketplace has been decimated by the inception of the ACA.
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl]
I feel that the probable reason for United Health backing out of offering plans on CC for 2016 was that Hispanics have a high rate of diabetes and high blood pressure as do members of Native American tribes and CA has the biggest population of any state in the nation of both of these races/Nationalities.[/quote]
I get that you hate brown people. But that doesn’t give you the right to make shit up. Your feelings don’t allow you to makes shit up without being called on it. If you have actual facts, share them. This isn’t an opinion thing. There may be a factual basis. Or it could be your racism. It’s one or the other.[/quote]I just saw this and it doesn’t even deserve a response except to say that (1) that it is NOT meant to be derogatory but it is simply a true statement, and (2) you don’t know a damn thing about me … not my race, my nationality or that of any of my close relatives …. nothing. So you can stop making insults directed at me now.
Participant[quote=utcsox][quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl]In reality, CC does not exist to place individuals and families in plans they like (or can live with) who are willing to pay the monthly premium for. CC does not care if it signed up 1M enrollees into “marketplace plans” or just 200K. CC exists solely to gather financial information from its unsuspecting enrollees to be culled and re-culled from month to month and year to year for possible forced Medi-Cal placement. [/quote]
1.7 million Californians purchased qualified healthcare plans on the exchange.[/quote]
I think 1.7 million is the goal. Total registration is at 1.575 million according to this article below:
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/feb/04/covered-california-2016-enrollment/
[/quote]Preliminary Obamacare enrollment data released Thursday shows that California may have lost its top spot to Florida, which reported about 1.7 million sign-ups through Monday compared with about 1.5 million in the Golden State.
According to an estimate released on June 30 of last year, Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, had about 78,000 more enrollees than Florida before Obamacare’s third open enrollment period started on Nov. 1. Both states entered the latest sign-up season with more than 1.3 million enrolled residents.
A Covered California spokesman said one possible reason for Florida’s enrollment surge since Nov. 1 was its decision not to expand Medicaid. That means some people who enrolled in Florida’s health exchange would have qualified for the already-expanded Medicaid program in California, which is called Medi-Cal.
(emphasis mine)
DUH!
Last year, I HAD considered “retiring” to a state which did NOT adopt Medicaid expansion after I found myself constantly hassled by CC and Medi-Cal to “prove and re-prove my income.” But I was worried that the state I moved to could adopt expanded Medicaid in the future and I would be right back in the same place that I started (back when I lived in Cali).
Choosing a state for “retirement purposes” simply because they don’t currently have “expanded Medicaid” is one sorry azz reason to feel like you have to move in order to keep a healthplan and not have to worry if it will be taken away from you behind your back after you already paid your premiums!
ParticipantTo get us started on Medi-Cal statistic data diving, here’s a Feb 2015 article from the SJ Mercury News:
….At least 1.2 million Californians have signed up for a private insurance plan since enrollment began in October 2013 under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. But it’s Medi-Cal that has witnessed the largest growth — 2.7 million since the controversial law opened the program up to many more recipients in January 2014.
By mid-2016, more than 12.2 million people — nearly a third of all Californians — will be on Medi-Cal, state health officials say….
(emphasis mine)
http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_27481258/obamacare-medi-cal-waiting-game-many-low-income
Gosh …. it seems as if there may actually be 8x the amount of people on Medi-Cal by this summer as there are enrolled in an exchange healthplan! And growing? Who woulda thunk it??
If this article is anywhere near accurate, I wonder how many of those new Medi-Cal enrollees as of mid-2016 were former CC exchange plan enrollees, most of whom were “force-placed” into Medi-Cal? And will the exchange plan enrollee population shrink in tandem with the growth of Medi-Cal enrollees (which almost zero providers want to participate in)? That’s such great policy? Who dreamt it up?? Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens here! I’m on pins and needles!
Well, I sure hope the AG’s office is winding down its “hiring blitz.” It seems as if they have had more than enough time by now to be properly “lawyered up” for the all the new “lien placing” and “estate recovery” duties they’ll be getting on account of CA’s new and expanding Medi-Cal enrollee group, mostly consisting of asset-rich boomers with low(ish) incomes, LOL.
I see a HUGE windfall for the Golden State! Get busy mining it!! Thar’s GOLD in them thar hills!!
Not so much, though, for those unfortunate folks who have been newly placed on “expanded Medi-Cal” since there seems to be a dearth of providers and a long waiting list to see one :=0
I’ll see if I can find some more “official” stats later. Any assistance in this regard is welcomed :=0
Participant[quote=bearishgurl] …. Ditto for the rest of the states….[/quote]
Changed to read, “Ditto for the rest of the states which elected to expand Medicaid.”
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl] The dirty little secrets of how the ACA really works on the ground are never mentioned, including the fact that a large portion of those signing up on exchange plans WERE previously covered prior to the ACA but their plans dropped them (even if they were “grandfathered”) in the wake of “obamacare.”[/quote]
Every plan was grandfathered. No plan had to be cancelled because of Obamacare. Not a single one. Fact is, almost no insurance plans ever survived more than 2 years. Insurance companies constantly change them. And that goes for both the individual market and the employer market.
Your experience with the ACA is not representative of most people. Fortunately, actual facts aren’t affected by what you think. Most people like their exchange plans. But then, most people aren’t as bitter and racist as you either.[/quote]
I had the exact same plan for NINE years until it disappeared when my carrier left the state and I am NOT ALONE. Not by a long shot. Those six carriers I mentioned LEFT CA at the end of 2013 PRECISELY BECAUSE they didn’t want to sell ACA-compliant plans in the state! In other words, the inception of “obamacare” was the catalyst for these carriers leaving the state! This happened in other states as well, leaving their planholders in limbo to scare up another open market plan or sign up for a plan on their respective exchanges.
I never stated I “didn’t like” my plan. I said it was 3x the cost of my old (pre-ACA) and that 3 of my longtime providers left the CA exchange plans. I’m not happy with the way CC treats their enrollees. I think they are grossly incompetent and their way of “doing biz” is utterly disrespectful to their enrollees.
I would MUCH RATHER deal directly with my carrier and NOT with the incompetent exchange middleman but I don’t currently have any CHOICE of PPO plans out on the open market to even consider purchasing! Do you not understand that?
The rest of your wildly inaccurate assumptions about me don’t even warrant a response.
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl]In reality, CC does not exist to place individuals and families in plans they like (or can live with) who are willing to pay the monthly premium for. CC does not care if it signed up 1M enrollees into “marketplace plans” or just 200K. CC exists solely to gather financial information from its unsuspecting enrollees to be culled and re-culled from month to month and year to year for possible forced Medi-Cal placement. [/quote]
1.7 million Californians purchased qualified healthcare plans on the exchange.[/quote]Yeah, I think it’s time to take a little “data dive” to find out how many CC signed up into Medi-Cal. Add in the new Medi-Cal signups which occurred “in the field” since the the last quarter of 2013 via “Medi-Cal outreach efforts” plus all the new signups done by county social workers who combed their SNAP and other aid databases for potential signups and you will likely have 2-4 times as many Californians who have been enrolled in Medi-Cal since 1/1/14.
Ditto for the rest of the states.
So this makes the ACA “successful” because it managed to get so many more people “covered” into “expanded” Medicaid/Medi-Cal :=0
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl]They have their OWN interpretation of the ACA. The bottom line is, you sign up on Covered CA for a non-MediCal plan and accept a subsidy to help pay the premiums (no matter how small), there are a whole lotta of strings attached to that. In short, CC owns your a$$. Not only MUST you file your tax returns on time and NOT file any extensions (as with ALL healthplan exchanges across the country) but your plan’s carrier has absolutely NO SAY whatsoever in whether they get to keep you as a customer the entire 12 months … or not. [/quote]
You can’t continue too make shit up without being called on it. Nobody is bound to accept subsidies. Anyone can pay full price for their insurance and never share any tax info. Furthermore, even if subscribers do accept subsidies, their tax returns must be timely filed. That means including extensions. You’re just wrong on this. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I have no idea what that last part of the last sentence means about carriers having no say in whether they keep you. They do. Insureds contracts are with the carrier. And only with the carrier.
Additionally, if someone wants to get a premium tax credit and doesn’t want to share tax information with the exchange, whether it’s California or any other state, they don’t have to. Ever. They do have to pay 100% of their premiums up front, and then take the tax credit on their tax return.[/quote]SK, I’m not going to beleaguer this point any longer with you but healthplans don’t have any say on whether they can keep exchange enrollees, or not. They have absolutely no control on whether they will be allowed to accept exchange enrollees future premiums within the same plan year … or not. In CA, the carriers have no control whether their planholders are dropped by CC or Medi-Cal and no control as to the start and end date of a customer’s plans. This is because the planholder is actually a customer of CC and not the plan itself. When a CC enrollee is dropped from their plan by CC or Medi-Cal, it takes 4-9 months for them to receive a refund from their carrier of their premiums paid for all the time they paid a premium but weren’t covered, IF they receive any refund at all. Most of these cases have to go through the appeals process because the carrier argues that the planholder was dropped through no fault of their own. And a lot of “gypped former CC planholders” don’t have the time, energy or expertise to appeal.
I truly believe that you may have studied the (voluminous) ACA during the time it was passed into law. But my last post described how CC does business in a very rudimentary fashion. There is much, much more.
You live in AZ, right? Perhaps you may be unfamiliar with how CC operates because you have never enrolled with CC yourself, have never assisted anyone enrolling with CC and with their various problems with CC subsequent to that enrollment because you don’t live in CA.
I can see here that you cannot possibly put yourself into another person’s shoes who has been repeatedly dumped from their (health exchange) plan after making timely, automatic premium payments every month and can’t fathom that this is actually happening. But it does happen very frequently in CA. The traditional “grace period” of yore means absolutely nothing to CC, Medi-Cal or the exchange carriers.
Thank you for posting your last paragraph. I am going to independently verify it with CA experts in the field. If it is true and there are no other plans to choose from in SD County this fall, I will renew my exchange plan for 2017 and drop my request to receive an APTC up front every month and pay my premiums upfront in 2017. I wouldn’t mind at all to just let the IRS refund me any excess premium paid out of my pocket using whatever formula they use and will encourage others to do the same. That’s what I thought WAS going to happen when I first signed up on the exchange in late 2013. I had no idea at that time that CC and the county would constantly be in my business and repeatedly canceling my plan and neither did anyone I assisted with enrolling and renewing on CC. None of us want to continue with the uncertainly of being repeatedly dropped from our healthplans behind our backs and/or force-placed into Medi-Cal. We all want SB33 to get signed into law by the governor this year but we have no control over whether this happens or not.
Participant[quote=joec]In CA, I think United Healthcare has the smallest share of customers out of all the exchange insurance companies…
If they left, maybe they lose 1% of customers? It could also be a cost cutting move since they aren’t really playing in the state anyways…
That said, I think Blue Shield made the most in 2014 from a latimes article I read…so some companies were able to make money, of course, Blue Shield and Blue Cross/Anthem are bad IMO.[/quote]Yes, joec, Blue Shield has the most planholders out of all carriers who offer plans on Covered CA. That is likely because they offer the only PPO on the California exchange and people (like me) who lost coverage due to the ACA wanted to keep their doctors and most of the good ones only take PPOs. Blue Shield of CA has between 20% and 30% market share of the exchange customers who selected a plan (those not on Medi-Cal), depending on region. (SD County is the last region of 19 or “Region 19”). BSoC’s PPO also has nationwide coverage through the nationwide BCBS provider roster.
IIRC, United Health just reappeared back in the CA individual (exchange) market in October 2015 stating that they were going to offer coverage (not sure what type – HMO, EPO or PPO) starting 1/1/16 on Covered CA in about 3-4 NorCal regions or “test-markets.” However, in November 2015, they backed out, citing “unprofitability in the CA market.”
I feel that the probable reason for United Health backing out of offering plans on CC for 2016 was that Hispanics have a high rate of diabetes and high blood pressure as do members of Native American tribes and CA has the biggest population of any state in the nation of both of these races/Nationalities.
However, United Health won a 5-year contract to administer the Federal government’s Tricare Standard and Prime programs for the Triwest Region (incl CA) beginning 10/1/12. Millions of CA residents are eligible for and currently using Tricare in CA.
On 12/31/13, CA lost six major healthplan carriers from its individual market. Those were Aetna, Wellpoint, Humana, Pacificare, United Health and Cigna. All of the people with individual healthplans from these carriers were dumped onto Covered CA because by the end of 2013, the only individual plans offered in SD County were through Covered CA except possibly a few Bronze Plans (2-3) and “Cadillac” plans still offered through the open market. Those particular (non-ACA compliant) Bronze plans were all canceled at the end of 2014, dumping the planholders back on the exchange. In November of 2015, Cigna came back to SD County, offering two Bronze plans on the open market (one an HSA plan). I’m waiting to see what new carriers (if any) will offer plans on the CA individual market this fall.
I understand that SK resides in AZ and he was able to buy a suitable off-exchange plan for 2016 there. But CA is a completely different animal. Covered CA (and their partner in crime, Medi-Cal) run the exchange and all the planholders on it (as well as all the Medi-Cal recipients) as if we’re in the wild west. They have their OWN interpretation of the ACA. The bottom line is, you sign up on Covered CA for a non-MediCal plan and accept a subsidy to help pay the premiums (no matter how small), there are a whole lotta of strings attached to that. In short, CC owns your a$$. Not only MUST you file your tax returns on time and NOT file any extensions (as with ALL healthplan exchanges across the country) but your plan’s carrier has absolutely NO SAY whatsoever in whether they get to keep you as a customer the entire 12 months … or not. Paying your premium on time has nothing to do with it. If CC orders your carrier to drop your coverage on the 5th of the month (AFTER they rec’d your portion of their monthly premium thru automatic payment as well as received your subsidy from the Federal Govm’t to pay the rest of your monthly premium), they most certainly can and will drop your coverage. Neither they, nor CC have to tell you first that they are doing this, and usually do not. This could happen multiple times per year without your knowledge, folks. CC also follows orders from Medi-Cal, who wants as many people on Medi-Cal as possible as soon as possible. County Medi-Cal offices are under the gun to get the HUGE group of CC enrollees over the age of 55 enrolled in Medi-Cal (due to a large percentage of them now out of the workforce and thus no longer have access to employer-provided coverage) for the express purpose of placing of a “placeholder lien” on any real property they own for ALL Medi-Cal managed care premiums paid on their behalf for each month they are placed on Medi-Cal between the ages of 55 and 65. Since the inception of the ACA, there is no longer any “asset test” to qualify for Medi-Cal so many, many “asset rich” boomers are now prime targets for forced placement into Medi-Cal!
SB 1124 was introduced in 2014 to eliminate the incentive for CC/Medi-Cal to “target” their over-55 enrollees for forced-placement into Medi-Cal for estate recovery purposes. The CA Legislature DID pass the bill last year but Gov Brown refused to sign it, stating that he wanted to see significant improvement in CA’s general fund before agreeing to it.
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB1124
http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/09/11/54356/calif-lawmaker-pulls-medi-cal-asset-recovery-bill/
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB33
http://canhr.org/publications/newsletters/NetNews/Feature_Article/NN_2015Q2.SB33.htm
▪ Health policy debate will continue in budget hearings and on bills to cover California’s remaining uninsured regardless of immigration status (SB 10 by Sen. Lara), and to limit Medi-Cal estate recovery (SB 33 by Sen. Hernandez), which discourages patients from enrollment and potentially risking losing family home.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article53523005.html
The whole CC/Medi-Cal debacle (practical interpretation of the ACA by CA’s PTB) is greatly exacerbated by the dearth of plans now offered on CA’s open market. In essence, what has happened in CA is that we HAD a lot of choice as to healthplans and carriers on the open market, prior to when the ACA became law but now there really isn’t any choice at all. If one can’t obtain an employer based plan, has Tricare or VA eligibility or is offered an “affordable” plan through their union or retirement association, then they are essentially “stuck” with the plans CC offers.
In reality, CC does not exist to place individuals and families in plans they like (or can live with) who are willing to pay the monthly premium for. CC does not care if it signed up 1M enrollees into “marketplace plans” or just 200K. CC exists solely to gather financial information from its unsuspecting enrollees to be culled and re-culled from month to month and year to year for possible forced Medi-Cal placement. It traps a “captive audience” into the “CALHEERS/Medi-Cal system with the lure of “subsidies” to assist with monthly premiums (which are 2-3 times higher than the vast majority of the monthly premiums of pre-ACA plans and rise 6-20% per year). The “subsidies” are to “cushion the shock” of the massive increase from the enrollee’s old (pre-ACA) healthplan premium to CC’s current premiums so they “don’t feel it as much.” Once trapped into the “system,” CC enrollees’ financial info is manipulated and used against them for possible Medi-Cal forced placement, knowing that the vast majority of them have no other choice in healthplans.
The only reason that “obamacare” is called a “success” by its “supporters” is because far more people were placed on Medicaid/Medi-Cal than in actual “marketplace healthplans.” Obamacare’s proponents are using those Medicaid/Medi-Cal enrollee numbers to state that so many more millions are people are now “covered.” That doesn’t mean there are actually any providers willing to care for all these extra Medicaid/Medi-Cal enrollees in their respective regions. All it means is that these millions of new (willing and unwilling) Medicaid/Medi-Cal enrollees are now used by “obamacare proponents” for “statistical purposes” to tout how successful the ACA has been in getting the “uninsured” covered. The dirty little secrets of how the ACA really works on the ground are never mentioned, including the fact that a large portion of those signing up on exchange plans WERE previously covered prior to the ACA but their plans dropped them (even if they were “grandfathered”) in the wake of “obamacare.”
Participantjoec, for the record, PLENTY of Asian families reside in SD South County (and to a lesser extent, East County). Tens of thousands (perhaps close to 100K). I’ve heard MANY comments on this board on how Piggs don’t want their own kids going to school with hundreds of kids crossing the border every day. Nor would they be happy about having their kids in classes filled with ESL students (elem school). I believe these are the primary reasons for Piggs not wanting to purchase a home in South County, even though many of the listings around here are large SFRs with often much larger lots than their “target areas” and listed for $200-$600K LESS and a good portion of South County’s public schools are rated very highly. Although, distance to high-tech jobs is listed as another reason for discounting South County as a viable place to live, it isn’t that far to those job centers from many points in East County.
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl] I’ve lived, breathed and worked in the situation I’m describing here for 30+ years.
[/quote]
That’s exactly my point. You know your experiences. You know what other people tell you. What you don’t know is actual facts. You have no idea what goes on outside of your little, tiny, miniscule world. You hear of 3 women crossing the border to have babies and think every woman is crossing the border to have babies. You hear about a few families that live in Mexico and send their kids to school in the US and think it’s happening thousands of times. Your experience is not the rest of the world. Your experience may not the slightest resemblance to the rest of the world. You have “opinions” about why hospitals might close. No actual facts. Every little brown kid isn’t out to steal your milk money. You, and Trump, are railing against the wrong boogeyman.[/quote]Again, SK, you’re being recalcitrant, here. I DO have longtime contacts in the medical field around here and have been around these folks all of my adult life. I NEVER STATED here that hospitals could close. I stated that SOME ( a few) of the local public SCHOOLS could close if all the “illegal” students and those “anchor baby” students who were current residents of MX suddenly stopped attending them every day. This would only happen if they were unable to cross the border every morning to do so. I don’t HEAR about anything. I SEE it, my kids have SEEN it and we have SEEN it all with our own eyes. In addition, I am a local criminal justice retiree. You can’t take that experience away from me. The difference between you and me is that you apparently lived in a “bubble” when you resided in SD and obviously didn’t realize these things were going on to the degree that they actually are. And that’s okay. There are a lot more of you out there so you aren’t alone :=0
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl]My point, SK is that many/most? older illegal immigrants initially housed in the US by younger family members were supported by US taxpayers.
It it was known by the family member(s) who brought them over to live with them that they wouldn’t have been eligible for any benefits as an “illegal immigrant” and would not be able to be treated at US hospitals, ask yourself if the older family member would have decided to come to live in the US under those circumstances.
In short, the US laws and lack of immigration enforcement made it easy for illegal immigrants to come over and take advantage of us.[/quote]
Just stop it. You have no f’ing way of knowing what this woman did or didn’t do. And Senator Graham didn’t assume he did either. She’s brown, you assume she must have done something horrible, because you know someone who knows someone who told a story about something. I don’t think sneaking across the border and having children, and raising them to be fine participating members of society is horrible. You apparently do. So you jump to every possible bad conclusion without actually knowing anything. Neither legal nor illegal immigration is ruining this country. Giant corporations that don’t pay a living wage are. Wall Street, that sucks more than a trillion dollars a year out of the economy while providing absolutely nothing, is. Every brown person isn’t stealing your milk money.[/quote]Re: the bolded portion of your post, I have no idea WTF you’re talking about. I’m not jumping to ANY conclusions. I’ve lived, breathed and worked in the situation I’m describing here for 30+ years.
I agree with the italicized portions of your post.
Consider that on the very few occasions on this board that I have suggested to a prospective buyer-poster a beautiful, large SFR listing for $200K to 600K LESS than what the same listing would cost in the Piggs’ seemingly “most popular” areas of the county (but located in South County SD and usually situated on a much bigger lot), the response is always, “You couldn’t pay me to live down there for any reason,” or similar.
SK, you’re a SD native. Put your thinking cap on and tell us why you think this is so?
And, btw, all “Hispanics” are not “brown.” Only a portion of them are … as are a portion of “Caucasian” people.
Participant[quote=ltsdd]No difference than the complaints about manufacturing jobs going overseas and at the same time wanting everything to be cheap. It’s really a catch-22.
How much more are people willing to pay for products that are made here instead of in countries across the pacific?[/quote]Well, I’m not a big consumer and use my clothes, household and personal items for many years. However, I don’t care if the stuff I DO occasionally replace (jogging and exercise clothing and shoes, for example) is made in Taiwan or Bangladesh or the USA. If it meant more jobs for hundreds of thousands of idle American workers, then I would have no problem paying up to double for my running shoes.
I’ve been to some of these areas of the country with high unemployment and long-shuttered stores and strip malls, have seen it all multiple times with my own eyes and can tell you that it’s not pretty. It is often a “food desert” in these areas, as well, due to lack of choice (ie Family Dollar Store vs truck stop convenience store for what nearby food is actually available).
I totally sympathize with the people who have lived in these areas their entire lives and can’t easily relocate (family ties and prohibitive cost). I don’t feel it’s right that the factories which once provided the residents of these regions decent living wages have vanished to other countries, thereby enriching their foreign workers’ lives at the expense of American workers.
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