Zhao says having data on how people who did get the money actually spent it is something she thinks will help counteract stereotypes, increase empathy and potentially get skeptics and the public on board with the idea of providing cash transfers.
Now that the study is complete, the plan is to replicate it and expand it to other cities in Canada and the U.S.
It was shocking to me to find out that not only are most bankruptcy cases related to medical expenses, but that of those cases, most in fact did have insurance (in the USA).
My spouse has just had a two week stay at a local hospital due to a difficult to diagnose issue that started as “pain in leg” and escalated to “can’t walk” in the space of a month. We have regular insurance, and the hospital bill after insurance so far is $4,000 but we know it’s going to probably triple or more by the end of the entire process. The yearly “Maximum out of pocket” on our plan is $14,000 but there are many ways in which the OOP can be exceeded by, say, a doctor being involved who isn’t in network, or a treatment the insurer doesn’t cover.
We are “lucky”, we have ways to cover the inevitable bill. If it had happened ten years ago, when my daughter was still an infant, when our finances were bleeding, my job was barely covering our debt payments, raised in part because of disorganization during the birth, etc, there’s no possible way we could cover the bill that’s coming.
I know people don’t like the ACA being criticized because it’s considered a well meaning attempt to fix the health care system, but here are the problems with it:
For most people, it had a net negative effect because of the skin-in-the-game mandate. This is a principle the ACA’s writers signed up to early on to try to get right wingers to support the bill by massively increasing copays and deductibles. Suddenly an ER visit was no longer $100-500, but $1,500 or more. Doctors visits are up from $10 to $50-100. Specialists from $25 now to $75-100. These increases aren’t inflation based, they’re intentional policy. For a software developer like me, I can afford them. For someone working two low income jobs to support their family, a real “hard working American”, it basically makes healthcare unaffordable and unreachable. And all because some swivel eyed ideologue thinks that when you’re lying unconscious bleeding out on the pavement in front of the car that hit you, you’ll save the system money by using your smartphone to call the lowest cost ambulance service in your area.
The ACA mandated a “maximum profit” as a percentage of premiums insurance companies are allowed to make, while coupling it with no effort to make insurance companies non-profits (ie not beholden to investors.) The result is that insurers have to intentionally negotiate higher healthcare prices with their providers! No, seriously! Because regular public companies like health insurers have to increase profits every year, and the only way to increase profits if you can’t increase margins or customer base is to increase your supplier costs so you can increase your own prices.
And the cynical part of me says they knew this but didn’t care. The two obsessions were with “pre-existing conditions” and “bankruptcies”, but these are both sides of the same coin. People were facing huge medical bills because their insurers didn’t cover them and bankruptcies were the result. And bankruptcies hurt… banks. And banks seemed to be what they cared about most of all in 2009-2012. They did nothing to stem the foreclosure crisis, for example. Maybe, ultimately, what the ACA was about was protecting banks, creating an environment not where bankruptcies wouldn’t happen, but where those bankruptcies would be about debts in the region of $14,000, not $1M. Something much easier for banks to handle.
That’s the cynical part of me. Part of me hopes that the majority of Democrats who voted for the ACA merely thought it was the best they could do. But those two flaws need to be fixed. Get a Public Option in so there’s at least one non-profit insurer, and abolish the high taxes on “cadillac” plans - the plans that, like pre-ACA plans, had token co-pays and reasonable deductibles.
As a Canadian this is what I fear for my American friends. While I have heard lots of people whine about how people “die on wait lists” in the Canadian system that really hasn’t been my experience. While yes things like joint surgeries and electives can take a while I have had relatives of friends flown via helicopter ambulance from small towns for month long stays for serious stuff at the drop of the hat at no cost to the family.
Anything seriously life threatening has gone into treatment immediately. Hospice stays are mostly covered so compassionate end of life facilities cost half of what a dirt cheap hotel does. The cost to the taxpayer for healthcare is, determined by tax bracket is tiny. If I make $80,000 it costs me about $350 for the year.
Because it’s a drain on the government’s bottom line there’s a lot of harmful food additives that are banned in Canada because the ethos is that it is unlawful for businesses get to make profit at the expense of consumer health if people can not be easily informed of the health risks. The Covid Vaccine was also given a lot more push society wide because the beggaring and allotment of resources away from the healthcare system for preventable incidents directly effects everyone.
Deciding that healthcare is a right has society wide advantages. People will do anything to stay alive a little longer including beggar themselves so it makes sense that adding business interests into that market to jack up the prices for profit is just unethical imo.
My boss told me something that will always stay with me. I’ve never known him to lie, so I have no reason not to believe him - but nevertheless this is still a personal anecdote.
Anyway, he told me that when he was a teenager, his family had gotten to a point where they moved out of a bad neighborhood and into a rather affluent one thanks to some luck from his parents. He said he went to the store one day and a homeless person was outside the store, asking for help getting back on his feet. My boss, being the asshole teenager he was, told the person to, “just get a job.”
He said the person humbled him immediately, and told him in a very respectful, but firm manner, that he lost his wife and son due a car wreck the year before - that he went bankrupt and eventually homeless paying for their medical bills while they lived, and for their funerals when they died.
My boss tells this story to our new-hires when he can. He typically says that all this person needed was for someone to believe in them and give them another chance, because no one truly helped them when they needed it most.
I read the beginning of your post and was expecting some life changing story. Had my full attention just to be disappointed. Nothing special or profound about your bosses story. Thats routine USA. Perhaps i have become desensitized. I wouldn’t repeat that story again, it means nothing. I certainly didn’t have an epiphany.
Who are you to say it means nothing - I find value in it, so I will share it. The point is to not judge someone at face-value because of the circumstances you are seeing them in. Everyone is going through something, so we should all try to help others when we can - just as we will need help with something eventually.
The point you are missing is this is common sense and goes without saying.
The point you are missing is that you are wrong. This is not common sense and does not go without saying. It should be, but isn't.
This story was life changing for the other person, just because you're an asshole doesn't mean their story has no meaning to them or didn't change their life and how they view the world.
Actually, yes. This is one of the best health plans I have used. It could be better, it could be cheaper, but I am more than pleased with it and had a few different options to choose from.
90% of sob stories you get from gas station bums are absolute bullshit. Some of them are incredibly good liars because their cash supply depends on it. I’m sure some of them are “just trying to get back on their feet” so I’ll give out food to people who need it, but I will never give out cash.
Maybe, maybe not. I can’t control what others do, but I can control what I do. I don’t want to enable someone, but I also know for some that money is exactly what is needed. So, I do my best to judge the situation and act accordingly.
I view it as performance art. Someone could play music or perform Shakespeare on the street to make me feel something, and I would throw money in their hat. In this case, the feeling is altruism, and they’ve earned their money with the performance.
I heard a lot of them when I lived in Toledo. It’s especially disappointing when the same guy forgets your face and feeds you a completely different elaborate bullshit story
And you think folks even know stereotypes they don't care about? The stereotype only exists as a thing in the minds of People that want them to be true.
Those are sterotypes you care about. I said nothing about incentive to be true. Perhaps keep your words in your own mouth rather than claiming they are in another's? The ones wanting it to be true are the ones you learned them from and only because you cared.
Wtf are you talking about? No they aren’t, yes you did, and how about you learn to communicate properly instead of getting mad when people interpret your unreadable word salad the wrong way?
Fair point. However one of the driving factors for addiction is loneliness. For a lot of drug 7500 dollars is to much drugs… So what to do with the rest? That’s where the change begins. Once someones perceived basic needs are met higher level needs can be focused on including human interaction. With human interaction other forces come into play and get the person back on track.
An interesting statement, I can’t say if it’s true or not. Human psychology is a strange thing, and frankly I don’t have the life experience to say if that is true all the time.
If nothing else, A fact I can say Is “diversity Is both a strength and a weakness. For every Lead liver person, there is someone that gets drunk one one beer. Who is right In there opinion of alcohol? Each knows what is right for them, and that is all you can worry about, what is right for you”
I am surprised it led to only 99 days fewer in homelessness compared to the control group that didn't receive money. But I suppose it just shows how fucked the current housing market is.
You can see how that money can disappear after a few months, not because the person made bad choices but because of how predatory corporate landlords are. These are tiny apartments, in what was previously the affordable area of town, (which is still a sketchy area but now also unaffordable).
That is true… and also until recently I didn’t know how crazy expensive even just moving yourself is, either.
A bus from Vancouver to Lethbridge (where it’s $1000/mo rent in places more spacious) is $250. Probably could barely get half of that in a month of begging… There is hitchhiking and walking, and for one homeless guy I met he told me it took over a month to go that distance.
Most homeless people have employment lapses that make it hard to find work, even with an address and fresh clothing. Aswell as possibly still having debts that led them to lose housing in the first place.
In other words, $7,500 is a great start, but as you said, $7,500 doesn’t go far with recent cost of living inflation. And as I mentioned, getting back on your feet isn’t easy because employers aren’t quick to hire the recently homeless.
Flips page… alright the next experiment for a potential solution is whipping anyone that misses a rent or mortgage payment, but also installing outdoor hot-tubs on streets.
Have you heard about this place called Europe? Look it up. And while you’re at it, look up how they handle policies related to financial equality while keeping high productivity and very prosperous societies.
The problems you mentioned are created by the welfare system itself.
Welfare cliffs are what disincentivizes work. It’s not that “having welfare disincentivizes work”, its “getting a few more hours, or accepting a small promotion, makes them ineligible for thousands of dollars of benefits”.
Did you miss up above where I asked you for a source for this?
This whole interaction is hilarious.
We did a study of what happens when you do X.
No, that’s wrong. X never works. What is your study? Why do you say that? We did a study and it worked.
Because it is known. X never works.
Honestly, I would be 100% open to it if you made some kind of argument for why some specific social program is actually making things worse when you study it, because I do think that happens. But, just falling back on thought-terminating cliches like “Welfare never works” and “Democrats only ever have one solution” and refusing to examine them further is not going to bring you any better ability to understand the world, and now you’re over here trying to export those malfunctioning thought patterns to other people, and surprise surprise, they’re not being friendly to your efforts.
Nice deflection to a different topic. This whole story is about Canada, nothing about the US Democratic party. If for some reason you do want to talk about the effectiveness of “Democratic” fiscal policy versus “Republican” fiscal policy, I’m happy to do that.
Like I said, I’m actually fine having a good-faith discussion about either one of these topics if you’re into that, but if you’re just interested in tossing little one-sentence quips at me and ignoring relevant things I’m saying or questions that I’m asking, then IDK what the point would be. Surely you can see that, right?
The core issue isn’t complicated. No advanced Lemmy required. Giving money to people who have none, as a way to make the world better, either (a) works always, or (b) works when done some ways but not others, or (c ) never works. I say the answer is (b) and I’m happy to show sources and studies; to get to the truth of the matter you have to be open to looking at how things play out and examining evidence.
If you’re planning on saying over and over again that it’s (c ), then you’ve done that! Mission accomplished. If you want to dig a little into the reasons why someone would say one thing or the other, and examining evidence from the real world which might or might not agree with you, we can do that too.
I’ve read at least 8 of your posts on this topic. Not one time have you put out any ideas that you think would work. You keep saying that throwing money at it doesn’t work (without any citations) and that democrats are bad. Not once have you put out a different idea or said anything that WOULD help.
I can tell you from very personal experience that the welfare system does help people and makes lives better. You aren’t interested in that, though. You just have an agenda and will dismiss any story as an anecdote and will dismiss any study as biased or incomplete. You won’t actually link to anything that supports your position or even state a position outside of “welfare bad.”
What kind of source do you need? Welfare was created to get people on their feet and off of welfare, not for a quasi-UBI program that it’s turned into.
If welfare was working, you’d see less and less people receiving it. That’s not what’s happening though. There are more people on welfare now than there was 50 years ago.
The war on poverty has been a failure. Time for a new approach
Why would I put more than the minimal amount of effort into any post on lemmy, knowing that 100 communist teenagers are just going to reply “lol wrong, you fascist” and downvote?
If you want to debate me, I’d rather do that in real time on another program like discord. But lemmy is just a left wing commie shithole
Hey, substantive statements! Okay, I can rock with this.
“Welfare” is a very broad term. It can refer to anything from unemployment benefits, to SNAP, to this story about one-time aid specifically for homeless people in Canada (which is very far removed from anything resembling “welfare” as it’s commonly implemented in the US), to section 8 housing or housing assistance, and lots more. There are so many goals and implementation details with varying levels of success that I don’t think it makes sense to apply any kind of blanket logic to the whole collection, let along to apply the logic of “this one-time homeless benefit is welfare -> welfare never works -> end of discussion.”
Why would I put more than the minimal amount of effort into any post on lemmy, knowing that 100 communist teenagers are just going to reply “lol wrong, you fascist” and downvote?
Yeah, I 100% agree with this, having been on the receiving end of it myself plenty of times. I don’t think I’m doing that to you in any regard, but I do get the frustration with the overall state of discourse here (including from “the left”) and reluctance to start any kind of real discussion. All I can say is if that bothers you, you gotta be part of the solution instead of starting to do the same thing yourself.
If you want to debate me, I’d rather do that in real time on another program like discord.
Lol not interested. You’re on Lemmy, and you said specific things on Lemmy, and I replied. If you’re suddenly not interested in having a discussion on Lemmy, then I won’t try to force you into it I guess.
Can you guys do a comparison between personal welfare and corporate welfare?
Specifically how Corporations are people, yet the welfare they receive is substantially disproportionate to that given to personal welfare (state/federal programs).
I'm interested to see the discussion when it comes to throwing money at companies to fix the problems of underpaid workers and profit-driven inflation.
Also how corporations intentionally have policies that make the taxpayers subsidize the workers? When you start at Walmart, the first thing they do is tell you how to apply for food stamps. There are a ton of places that arrange things so that you're never a full-time employee who therefore gets benefits - permanent use of "temps" from "temp agencies", repeatedly extending "initial probation periods", setting impossible goals then downgrading hours when they're not met, simply refusing to ever give 34 hours a week.
Huh, I looked through your article. It didn’t mention anything about people staying on food stamps in order to not work. Given that grocery costs have sky rocketed in recent years, I hardly think that the $300 some odd makes people want to not work, especially coupled with the fact that non-disabled people are required to take any reasonable job and work 30 hours a week. Interesting source for your comment.
In general, most Americans ages 16 to 59 who aren’t disabled must register with their state SNAP agency or employment office; meet any work, job search or job training requirements set by their state; accept a suitable job if one is offered to them; and work at least 30 hours a week. Failure to comply with those rules can disqualify people from getting SNAP benefits.
In addition, nondisabled adults without dependents must either work or participate in a work program for 80 hours a month, or participate in a state workfare program. If they fail to do so, they can only receive SNAP benefits for three months out of any 36-month period.
We all know how this works out in reality. 40+ million people are on food stamps and the graduation rate is much lower than the 80-100% that everyone expects from programs like this
LOL. You present evidence, someone quickly reads the citation and shows you it proves the obvious. So you throw your own evidence under the bus for an "everyone knows" argument. How pathetically transparent.
I’m not going to convince you that throwing money at things doesn’t solve any of the problems it promises to. That’s a journey you’ll make on your own as you grow up and start realizing this as you get into adulthood
Since it allowed the single mom of a very close friend of mine to feed her kids, one of whom was able to study and get into college, who got a great job and is now rich.
I agree, and I would also add that depending on how it’s done, it can actually benefit the economy (“make people richer”) quite a lot. I thought about replying to them with this whole typed out explanation of how the social safety net of the New Deal, over the next few decades, transformed the US economy from one in which a handful of people kept all the money and everyone else was starving into a hugely more powerful economy where the people involved in running the whole operation were invested in the whole operation’s success and permitted to share (a little bit) in the fruits of that success. I’d call that, in the specific way that it was done, a pretty defining success that impacted the whole arc of the 20th century.
Honestly the devil is in the details, and it’s also possible erect what was supposed to be a social safety net which actually makes things worse, and if someone wanted to make a coherent argument for why this or any other specific thing was an instance of that, I’d be fine to talk about that. But I’ve been progressively learning on Lemmy that when someone gives a one-sentence non sequitur partisan response, taking it at face value and trying to be detailed and factual in your response is a mug’s game. The number of people who would genuinely be interested in that conversation seems pretty upsettingly small.
I don’t disagree that building a system that creates dependence and de-incentivises personal responsibility and opportunity can be a bad thing, however, I do feel that raising the floor can only be a good thing. I read some study a few years ago about how simply providing childcare and healthcare for people in a bad situation immediately changes their entire situation- suddenly they can work a normal job, not pay out the ass for childcare, and begin to actually better their lives and start saving money. People can then begin to be real contributing members of the economy instead of being trapped in endless “never enough to pay the bills” cycles.
A family member of mine had to quit a job because of harassment years ago and found herself ineligible for any kind of unemployment or welfare benefits because she received $50 a month in child support from an ex husband- the paltry amount of social service she would have received would have been just enough to pay rent and food for her two kids, but nope, that $50 meant she could get nothing. I can’t imagine how stressful that must have been trying to borrow money from family and wondering how she was going to eat and ever get a job to pay it back.
It worked out in the end because family helped out, but what if she was like many and had no one to lean on like that? She could have been homeless.
Yes, agreed. The current system in the US is so far from economic justice that it’s hard to even talk about particular details of how to improve it, because the whole thing is such a gilded-age disaster.
I sorta sympathize with this dude who’s railing against “welfare,” because there is a good point there. I don’t think the goal should be just giving money whenever they seem like they need it. However, your point is equally well-taken; if someone’s just fucked, then turning them out on the street maybe along with their family definitely isn’t the answer. I keep bringing up the New Deal because I feel like that’s pretty close to the answer. You can have a job if you want to work. The government is going to out-and-out create a whole bunch of jobs doing stuff that really badly needs doing, and if you want one of them, let’s fuckin’ get to work. Having a system where the majority of “jobs” are pretty low paying, miserable on a day to day level, and not doing much of anything for anybody involved, is the problem. Then on top of that, if something outside your control changes, you might get turned out on the street, or maybe we give you this minimal handout. Doing that handout seems, to me, better than not, but the problem goes a lot deeper.
There’s a bunch of work to be done. We need to improve education in this country, we should be trying to mitigate the apocalyptic damage that climate change is going to cause, we badly need to fix the roads and bridges and electrical infrastructure, stuff like that. There’s no shortage of real problems to work on. The problem is that the system doesn’t do anything to match up the huge population that wants to have a worthwhile job, with the massive piles of resources (wages) our technological efficiency makes available, with the massive amount of work to be done. It seems like we want everyone to just keep going to their office admin or retail jobs or whatever making $11/hr until we all sink into the boiling sea.
The study ignored people with addictions, people with mental illness, and street entrenched (chronically homeless with nowhere else to go) individuals.
I think what they did was good and is encouraging, but it kind of dilutes its own message that “Homeless people are not what you think!” by ignoring the people who are what everyone thinks of.
Yeah, it’s already hard enough not to struggle with mental health as is, even in materially good conditions, and then you add onto that losing everything and being forced to live on the streets with everything that brings? Maybe without even having any form for food security?
You are in a straight up survival situation. And it may be especially painful because you’re not alone out in the wilderness…
You’re surrounded by people. Many of whom are very well off. You are surrounded by people who have a home, food, luxuries, and everything, and you cannot have any of that. You’re not allowed to, by society.
It’s a goddamn nightmare. No fucking shit people struggle or just straight up break. I would too.
It’s important to note that a housing-first approach is the gold standard for care. Getting people off the street into a safe, stable, living environment then allows everything else to follow.
If handing out cash gets that to happen, hey, it’s money we’ll spent. But I’m guessing… just handing a wad of cash doesn’t help as much as we might think- even if that is a few months rent.
It’s a multifaceted problem and will require multiple solutions to address. Those are always the most difficult solutions because they’re expensive up front and may not show results immediately.
At the same time, is isn’t fair to say all homeless people are the same and lump someone who lost their job then had a medical emergency and can’t dig out with someone who is severely mentally ill with no access to the kind of mental health services they need. There are different reasons that people might be homeless and the way they handle an infusion of cash will sometimes differ. Yes, a person with a heroin addiction might spend money on heroin. Does that mean we should just let all homeless people rot?
Not at all. I think a good program would include financial assistance and social worker involvement for all homeless people, along with addiction resources for those who struggle with it.
“Still, Zhao says having data on how people who did get the money actually spent it is something she thinks will help counteract stereotypes, increase empathy and potentially get skeptics and the public on board with the idea of providing cash transfers.”
right, but its kinds weird to say "lets give these almost-destitute people money in the hopes that it will create empathy to help those that are actually destitute'... like, were So close!
and honestly, watching these programs for a bit now... its not necessarily the exact resources (money/shelter) you give people with these problems. its the social support network you create around them that really lifts them up. the only way out of these pits are continual, supportive human contact
I think the study seemed to want to change the stereotype so I think the parent comment has a point. I would be interesting to see what percentage of people make up those excluded groups. The study mentions it is low but don’t provide numbers. Also, the opposition to current social service argue that the recipients should get drug tested and have jobs to receive them so this seems to support that argument. It would be interesting to hear what Zhao used to exclude people from the study and what could be done to help the outliers.
“People in general don’t trust those in homelessness. We think that when we give homeless people money they’re going to squander it on drugs and alcohol. That’s a deeply ingrained distrust and I think it’s unfair and it’s not true,” Zhao told CTV News
I just wanted to say this is the kind of comments that make Lemmy better than reddit! I had to dig to the very bottom of the reddit post for someone to point this out versus this being the top comment on Lemmy.
Note: I am all for helping homeless people, but excluding information in the title makes this seem like ‘if we give every homeless person $7,500 we can solve homelessness!’ I wish that was the case, but homelessness is a much more complicated issue
I think what they did do in the study was great. They found that the vast majority of homeless people are there because of temporary circumstances, and that money is a direct fix for many people.
But the conclusion they drew is a bit simplistic. Presumably they will need to try other interventions in the groups not studied - such as addiction programs for those struggling with addictions - to fully serve this population.
Here’s the thing … we don’t actually do anything to help unhoused people so why not try something like this? Too bad for us that we make money more important that human life.
40+ years ago some economists got together and created a study on guaranteed income. It worked, but unfortunately no one continued it because we’ve become so entrenched in the ideology of Reagan/Thatcher (article here).
They also mention that the majority of homeless aren’t that. So this is a nuanced story I think. We may be able to help the majority of the homeless simply by giving them money and/or housing. But for the ones suffering from addiction, mental illness, or entrenched homeless, this won’t be a magic bullet. It will probably take drug and mental health counciling. It probably won’t completely get rid of homeless, and the ones it won’t help are the most visible and most problematic.
But we can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. And we already know our current approach is not even to the level of good.
I feel like we are killing ourselves trying to solve the “few bad breaks but totally capable of participating” type of homelessness so that we can ignore the “I will never fit into your society” type of homeless. The solutions for the latter are much harder, both morally and financially.
It’s also politically expedient. The right loves the “worthy homeless bootstrap story” and the left loves that you can blame that homelessness on failures of capitalism. Nobody likes involuntarily committing people to long term inpatient care at public expense.
Some people get a really bad dice roll. Ignoring that doesn’t make it go away. It isn’t fair and we like stuff to be fair.
Or they focused upon what they could potentially help with the resources they had as opposed to larger systemic issues which their resources pale in comparison to. One of those two.
Add comment