Healthcare

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healthcare

Title text: Sorry for the serious comic. It'll be back to butt jokes tomorrow. This has been a thing that's been stressing us pretty bad for a few weeks, so I thought I'd share. Apologies to all people who are not from the US, and who are shocked and/or baffled.

Votey

Explanation

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Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts should also describe what happens in each panel.

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Zach. I want to tell you about something that happened to us recently.

Quiet college town in western virginia. I recently attended an emergency meeting of local freelancers and small business owners

A

The reason for the meeting? The price for health insurance increased about 240% in our county this year that's a precise figure because there is literally only one provider for individuals.

Km

Just to stick some numbers on that - a plan that was $13,000 a year is now $31,000 a year we've read of people whose plans will cost $50,000 a year if you count their out of pocket costs

People were pretty desperate seriously considered that I could save money by divorcing my husband so the kids and I would get subsidized.

Another person had been told that you could hire someone in order to get group insurance, then fire them but she didn't think it was ethical or legal for that matter) that seems like collusion to me/

Another woman had been told. In seriousness, that she ought to have a baby to secure a lower rate

Number of people were simply planning to doless work, artificially lowering their income, in order to qualify for subsidies. Not a stellar economic policy

It's not the birth story you imagine telling your kid one day

We discussed possible strategies and alternative forms of healthcare for over an hour, with no good solution in sight

The one moment of levity came when one person suggested "taking a cyanide tablet as an alternative to paying for emergency care without insurance.

This wasn't a room full of people trying to cheat the system it was people who were living the american dream running small but successful businesses and trying to decide whether to strangle their dreams in favor of stability

To be clear, this isnt going to turn into me asking for money zach and I have had a lot of good vears thanks to all of you

But we like to think one of this countrys strengths is how we value individualists, oddballs, and eccentrics, for better and worse

Healthcare like we have here effectively cuts those people out it says that if you're doing something interesting that people like -whether it's unpopular political commentary or being an interior design consultant - you'd better do it within someone elses corp-orate structure, or you'd better make no money doing it.

Right now it costs about $10,000 per american to provide healthcare that's not per family it's per person. It's a lot more than any comparable country which suggests it's at core a policy problem

Honestly, we dont know the solution we arent healthcare experts all we know is that the current healthcare system is starting to strangle our demographic

Were lucky our jobs are portable we can move to get a better rate if we have to. A lot of people cant. And. If they cant afford health insurance that costs more than rent. They'll have to choose between closing up shop or simply going without

Our county is basically ground zero for sudden huge increases on very small business but if insurance premioms continue spike like this, a lot more self-employed people in your town are going to start considering their options

These arent just borderline shut-in artists like us. They're the guy who runs that great used book store or the lady who planned your wedding

To

So, were basically asking politicians activists, or anyone with the power to effect change can we please have a healthcare system that works for small businesses?

Pretty please?

Votey Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts should also describe what happens in each panel.

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Thanks for reading. geeks.

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