[…] our private health insurance system is purely parasitic; it is useless; it exists solely for the purpose of rental extraction from its host, the body politic. Abolish it, and you bend the cost curve to look like Canada’s. If single payer had been adopted in 2009, and given a year to implement (like Medicare) the country would already have saved a trillion dollars, and several thousand people would not be dead. That is the cost, the harm, of the tapeworm that is the health insurance industry. Not science fiction; sober fact. (Because Canadians are always sober!) And ObamaCare seeks to fasten that tapeworm’s hooks and suckers to our body politic’s gut. Forever.

Lambert Strether “Krugman, on ObamaCare, Gets the Wrong Worm”

[…] our private health insurance system is purely parasitic; it is useless; it exists solely for the purpose of rental extraction from its host, the body politic. Abolish it, and you bend the cost curve to look like Canada’s. If single payer had been adopted in 2009, and given a year to implement (like Medicare) the country would already have saved a trillion dollars, and several thousand people would not be dead. That is the cost, the harm, of the tapeworm that is the health insurance industry. Not science fiction; sober fact. (Because Canadians are always sober!) And ObamaCare seeks to fasten that tapeworm’s hooks and suckers to our body politic’s gut. Forever.

I rent. I am not middle class (I’m in the top 20%, and hey, I only need a 30% raise to get to the top 10%, and a 70% raise to the top 5%, and a 330% to leave you plebes behind and join the 1%), but the upper class is making sure that I’m never going to get near them or threaten their power.

Remember, though! Every [real estate] market is unique!

(via Saying goodbye to the California middle class. California least affordable state in the entire country as renting class expands. » Dr. Housing Bubble Blog)

I rent. I am not middle class (I’m in the top 20%, and hey, I only need a 30% raise to get to the top 10%, and a 70% raise to the top 5%, and a 330% to leave you plebes behind and join the 1%), but the upper class is making sure that I’m never going to get near them or threaten their power.

Remember, though! Every [real estate] market is unique!

(via Saying goodbye to the California middle class. California least affordable state in the entire country as renting class expands. » Dr. Housing Bubble Blog)

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