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Should Obamacare Help Pay for Housing? (Here it comes...)
The Atlantic ^ | October 27, 2014 | Alana Semuels

Posted on 10/27/2014 11:54:32 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Since January 1 of this year, James Barnes has had pretty decent health care. He gets insulin for his diabetes and the needles to inject it, blood pressure medication, access to a psychiatrist and counselor and optometrist, and frequent visits to the doctor, all for free.

Barnes lives in Maryland, one of the dozens of states that expanded Medicaid to people with incomes at or below 138 percent of the poverty level as part of the Affordable Care Act. For Barnes and thousands like him, that expansion has meant access to services like physical therapy, mental-health treatment, x-rays, dialysis, hospice care, eye exams, substance-abuse treatment, podiatrists, and oncologists.

What Barnes does not have, however, is a place to live. Since getting out of jail a year and a half ago, he’s stayed at half a dozen homeless shelters in Baltimore as he’s looked for work. He carries his belongings—and his insulin—with him in two plastic bags, the type you’d get at CVS.

Being homeless doesn’t exactly help Barnes, who is 51, become healthier. When he first started living on the streets, he’d have to borrow a few dollars to buy food to keep his diabetes in check. Even now, he isn’t allowed to bring food into the homeless shelters, so he doesn’t often eat produce or healthy food, instead relying on the starchy, heavy food at soup kitchens. He avoids taking any of his medications that could make him urinate frequently, since it’s so hard to find somewhere to go to the bathroom, and people at homeless shelters often steal his needles and medication....

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 0carenightmare; communism; gibsmedats; housing; obamacare; socailism; welfare
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

This article almost illustrates the need for mental illness hospitals and live-in wards for those who cannot manage their own lives.


41 posted on 10/27/2014 12:50:47 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: QuisCustodiet1776

“Let’s just give everyone a million dollars a year - everyone on the planet - and be done with it. We will all be rich and infinitely happy....”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Reductio ad absurdum is so much fun.


42 posted on 10/27/2014 12:50:51 PM PDT by RipSawyer (OPM is the religion of the sheeple.)
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To: goldstategop

How long to you propose that Obabacare pay for a 51 year old man’s housing?


43 posted on 10/27/2014 1:01:21 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
That’s led many advocates for the homeless to wonder—if we’re spending so much money through Obamacare to expand health coverage for poor people, why not spend it to house some of them, too?

This might sound good in the short run, but it will lead to perversity of result in the long run.Forcing some people to give others the unearned, the undeserved, and something for nothing is an assault on justice, and is tantamount to abolition of causality in the receipt of income.It also leads to punishing productiveness and rewarding non productiveness.Eventually everyone would have the incentive to do as little as possible, and society would become less and less free.This would result in transforming America into a hellhole.

44 posted on 10/27/2014 1:07:14 PM PDT by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: goldstategop

Perhaps the solution lies in, not making life easier for more people, but in making it hard enough that they have some motivation to WORK THINGS OUT FOR THEMSELVES. They have a choice of trying to improve their lives by making the effort to be self-reliant, or they have the choice of trying to improve their lives by asking the dwindling number of us who pay taxes to pay MORE.

Your posts would indicate that you have eliminated the whole first option from the available remedies. And that makes it a liberal argument, not at all related to “economics 101”.


45 posted on 10/27/2014 1:08:45 PM PDT by NEMDF
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To: C. Edmund Wright

Dollars and cents is economics.

You miss the point.


46 posted on 10/27/2014 1:11:12 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: NEMDF

They should. However, we live in a society in which housing gets more expensive.

And if we’re not going to raise wages to make work more attractive, we still face the problem of cost-shifting.

Its not going to go away because taxpayers sooner or later foot the bill.


47 posted on 10/27/2014 1:15:09 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: goldstategop

My, what a concept! Provide housing and care for the homeless and mentally ill. Seems like we used to do this. There were state hospitals that took care of such people. Then the liberals decided all these people needed to be “free”.


48 posted on 10/27/2014 1:33:56 PM PDT by Himyar (Sessions: the only real man in D.C.)
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To: NEMDF

Two hundred years ago, even one hundred years ago, people worked to provide for themselves or they starved. Family or community charity might provide a rudimentary subsistence existence for the aged, physically or mentally disabled, as well as widows and orphans but anyone capable of doing menial labor chose between working or starving. The weak and lazy often did not survive.

Today progressives are steadily increasing the burden on the productive class by increasing the number of people supported by the community as well as the standard of “subsistence” to which the unproductive are entitled. At some point the burden will become too great and the economic system will collapse.

Leftists throughout history have consistently demonstrated a willingness to kill off millions of people in order to achieve the goals of the state. In an economic collapse scenario, where resources are insufficient to support the population, a leftist dictatorship will not shy from eliminating unproductive citizens rather than take measures to return to free market prosperity. The elderly will be the first to go followed by the sick, the disabled, and ultimately the lazy. The children of today’s welfare parasites are likely to experience a rude awakening during their lifetime. Today’s benefactors, the liberal elites, may one day be their worst nightmare.


49 posted on 10/27/2014 1:37:38 PM PDT by Soul of the South (Yesterday is gone. Today will be what we make of it.)
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To: goldstategop

My housing is getting more expensive.

My wages have not changed in years.

But I do not look to the government to fix either of these situations. I can look for less expensive housing. I can ask for a raise, find a different job, or find an additional job.

But I cannot just say, WOE IS ME, the government is going to have to do something for me.

You are advocating that as the “only” solution.

How about we NOT raise wages, but we CUT the social/welfare benefits? So the recipients of these handouts are forced into working to improve their lives.

Taxpayers should NOT sooner or later have to foot the bill. The people who “need” all these social services should sooner or later have to foot the bill, and/or they should contribute to the tax revenues.

For the working, tax-paying minority to continue down this road of providing more and more for people who refuse to help themselves - it is a dead end road. When do you think it is enough of my income to pay for someone’s living expenses, who just refuses to work, because collecting benefits is so much easier?

What is the threshold beyond which TOO MANY benefits actually hurt the so-called poor?


50 posted on 10/27/2014 1:39:43 PM PDT by NEMDF
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To: goldstategop

you are so wrong and so out of your league - your analysis is shallow and sophmoric - and again, based on your assumption of liberal tenants.

Again, I don’t expect you to understand.


51 posted on 10/27/2014 2:11:21 PM PDT by C. Edmund Wright (www.FireKarlRove.com NOW)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Hmm...author doesn’t mention that the money used for these programs first had to be taken from taxpayers under threat of force.


52 posted on 10/27/2014 2:19:13 PM PDT by Eagles6 (Valley Forge Redux. If not now, when? If not here, where? If not us then who?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Ah, socialism. It's not just for health care anymore!

The problem is too much freedom. If everyone had to live in government barracks and eat government-approved meals everybody would be healthy and happy. And we'd all be rich, too, because the government would just give us money! Why didn't somebody ever think of this before?

53 posted on 10/27/2014 2:36:28 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: PGR88
A collapse of the US dollar and debt default would ultimately be a very good thing for maintaining individual liberty in this country

I have , basically, come to the same conclusion.
54 posted on 10/27/2014 2:45:25 PM PDT by 98ZJ USMC
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To: 98ZJ USMC
I have , basically, come to the same conclusion.

Me too. But they're going to go the hyperinflation route, impoverishing us all.

55 posted on 10/27/2014 2:46:30 PM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas ( Isaiah 22:22, Matthew 16:19, Revelation 3:7)
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To: GraceG

I ran a homeless veteran program out of a YMCA that resembled that in several ways. We paid for their room at the Y, we had a vendor bring them two meals a day which were placed in a freezer to be microwaved later, we bought them tools, work clothes, bus passes, gas cards and such for their jobs and we counseled them on finding a job while the Y’s man counseled them on mental health.


56 posted on 10/27/2014 2:47:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: SoCal Pubbie; goldstategop

57 posted on 10/27/2014 2:52:56 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Obolacare is going to bankrupt us as it is, so we better expand it to include housing. /channeling progressive think. Obolacare is not even fully implemented yet and the progs are looking to expand it. Give it ten years and it won’t be 1/6 of the economy it will be 100% all encompassing law. Thanks Chief Justice Roberts.


58 posted on 10/27/2014 3:15:20 PM PDT by VTenigma (The Democratic party is the party of the mathematically challenged)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Dialysis has been an entitlement for a very long time - Obamacare has nothing to do with extending its reach, and may in fact curb availability as funding decreases in out years.

Next it will be free servants, all to take care of you, cook your food, and make sure you get to the doctor on time. Sheesh.


59 posted on 10/27/2014 3:23:35 PM PDT by WarEagle (My President is supposed to protect me from terrorism, not ranch dressing.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Government already has healthcare as a gun to force people to go along with it. Why not control housing for the same reason?


60 posted on 11/02/2014 3:39:11 AM PST by RWB Patriot ("My ability is a value that must be earned and I don't recognize anyone's need as a claim on me.")
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