Single. Payer.
NOW.

Remove insurance corps Death Panels* from the Health Industry.
And provide Health CARE for our Citizens.
WE are the Richest Country on the fucking Planet.
We can do this.

are YOU 'fully covered'?
Do you hope you never have to find out?

Thank you, Heidi. This is all the better to save Medicare Medicaid and Social Security with.
Here's a dumb question: Why do so many working class people employed by McDonald's and Walmart who earn the barest minimum wage and who stand to lose their healthcare through Apple Health / Medicaid--vote RepubliKKKan, the Party of None?

@1 kristofarian: Spot on. Single payer NOW!

How is it surprising that an employer with a large number of unskilled entry level positions has a high number of employees who qualify for government assistance with health care costs? I know that the Stranger is big on running stories on Amazon lately, but how is this at all newsworthy? If there's anything in the linked legislative report that's worth looking into, it's probably the fact that UW is at 24 on the list.

Shorter @4:

Entry level employees (in the company run by the richest man IN HISTORY) don't deserve a living wage, but those elitist akuhdemix sure do.

Are you telling us you won't complain when your taxes go up to pay for all those non-administrative University workers?

One subtlety to keep in mind here is that being enrolled in Medicaid doesn't necessarily equal "Medicaid dependence." You can still qualify for Medicaid if your employer offers healthcare, in which case it acts as secondary coverage and helps pay for deductibles and such. Sure, employees using Medicaid as secondary coverage is still a subsidy, but private insurance is still paying most of the costs and it costs the state vastly less than than people who have Medicaid as their only coverage.

Since most large employers offer SOME sort of coverage these days, I'd bet that the above is the situation to one degree or another with all the companies at the top of that list.

This is what everyone who bleats about capitalism wants, right? Unfettered, unregulated, rampant abuse of the system in worship of the all mighty dollar. FFS WE NEED TO GET A GRIP.

Taxpayer dollars used to create obscene billion dollar profits for companies (who pay as little in taxes as possible). Any corporation making a profit should not be allowed to have employees on public assistance. Period.

Every idiot in this country loves to vilify the poor - make them starve, live on the streets, go without education or health care, housing, living wages, clean water, air, and land - and god forbid they need any assistance, they get shamed and humiliated and debased and treated like the scum of the earth. Meanwhile corporations buy our politicians, use public money to boost their profits, pay as little as possible (in many cases nothing) in taxes, and demand and demand and demand all sorts of things in the name of "job creation" that never comes and is always funneled directly to profits and shareholders.

Enough fucking bullshit. When is America going to wake up?

The truth about Amazon that nobody ever seems to want to acknowledge is that those who benefit most and are most economically dependent on Amazon being located here are the region's wealthy.

Amazon creates a small number of high-paying jobs for a handful of elite job-seekers (compared to the total number of job seekers in the region) and rains down a cash bounty on the region's wealthiest,

The people who would be most negatively impacted by an Amazon departure from Seattle are sitting at the top of the region's economic pyramid, not anywhere near the bottom. In fact, Amazon is responsible for growing the numbers at the bottom.

@9: Please elaborate on your last sentence.

Hmm, near to Amazon on the list are Goodwill Industries, YMCA, Seattle Schools...certainly they deserve a scathing article too? The $30k median wage is a national average. Half baked, half-story kinda story. Your bias is showing.

shorter @4:

"Yeah but this is so common why are we even talking about it. Can't we just sweep it under the rug? Besides whatabout this other place I personally dislike?"

Amazon is a symptom of a larger problem - our overly complicated, expensive, inaccessible healthcare system. That is why I support Initiative 1600 - to give everyone access to affordable, quality, comprehensive benefits no matter where they work while saving money (for businesses and residents) and leveling the playing field for employers.

@15 That's the beauty of the initiative process. We really can have Universal Healthcare for Washington. We just have to get 260K people to take 10 seconds out of their lives to write their name and address on a petition, and then a majority of WA voters to fill in a bubble on a ballot. BAM. Healthcare Transformation. YES on I-1600.

@16, LOL, easy peasy!

@17. It certainly isn't easy for the hundreds of non-paid volunteers working their asses off to make this happen. Still, it seems more possible than waiting for legislators entrenched in the system.

@5 & @13, I don't know, when I saw that a public university which operates a large network of medical centers had a significant number of employees on Medicaid, it struck me as an interesting issue. I also found it surprising that several religious organizations placed quite high on the list as well.

Anyway, sorry to distract from the Amazon-bashing. Carry on.

@17
What exactly is your snark about? Initiatives get on ballots every year.

10 You're neither that dumb or naive (or maybe you really are). The "Amazon effect" has turned the cost of living in Seattle into a mechanism for sending many people to the bottom. What once was a salary that afforded a reasonable standard of living (and which many still are paid) now isn't nearly enough to keep a roof over one's head. There is a huge economic fault line in Seattle that didn't exist all that long ago. All that bullshit about a rising tide raises all boats, is just that, bullshit. Instead that tide is pulling more and more people under.

Now I suppose you're going to prove yourself to be an total asshole and say if they can't afford Seattle they should leave.

Bezos wants a thrid world neo-feudal economy in murica. He wants a few, to own everything like it was in the last great depression in america. He wants workers to have little or no medical or crappy medical, like medicaid . No unions. Unaffordable housing. Not paid enough money to get housing. That is so that, when a slave drone burns out, another slave drone is burned out, it will not make any waves and, a new one will be ready to take it's place.

Look at what they have done to teachers, workers, healthcare in this country.

Teachers are telling the truth though. As the evil bastard trump and his enablers like bezos, prepares to make war and waste trillions of dollars and millions of lives, teachers tell the truth.
Finally a journalist says the truth and calls the crash of 2008 for wat it is a great depression https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/08/teachers-class-struggle-defiance-inspires-millions/

"Contrary to the corporate media’s efforts to portray these teacher mobilizations as a reaction to Republican Party cutbacks, striking teachers have documented with mathematical precision that the most intense attacks on public education, social services, and teacher pay began with the Great Depression of 2008 and were implemented under the Democratic Party administration of Barack Obama."

@17. I didn't intend snark at all. Yes, initiatives often make it to the ballot, but it truly is an uphill battle with no funding. I'm one of those volunteers--we believe passionately in Universal Healthcare and work countless hours in addition to regular jobs to get the word out and get this option in front of WA State voters. Most everyone would save and have comprehensive coverage including vision and dental, and it wouldn't matter how much you made or even if you had a job. All these Amazon workers in WA state? They'd have high quality care without having to turn to Medicaid.

All you fucking bozos scream for single payor -- because you're never actually had to try and use a single payor system.

"But Canada....And Norway.... And Australia"....

Yeh, horse shit.

Their economies, geographies, histories and demographies are anomalistic with several recurring circumstances. (post-war modernized, young democracies, historically homogenous culture, vast natural resource economies, lacking significant urbanization.)

Rather, look at Ireland, England, France.... THERE's the system you'll get. Years-long waits to see specialists, increasingly poorly trained doctors, indifferent government-employed nurses, nights spent on trolleys in the hallways for lack of rooms, and ever-mounting private insurance requirements to cover an ever-growing list of exceptions. All paid for by at personal tax rate of 50%.

The same government intrusion in healthcare is causing the price spikes in university education. You're suckers for believing this.

@22 Bezos along with fellow plutocrats Warren Buffet and Jamie Dimon want to profit from America’s health care fiasco by taking over as much of the industry as possible. They plan to give “Doc in a Box” a whole new meaning starting with telephone medecin, but the final solution is robotic doctors and nurses who staff medical fulfillment centers.

http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2018/05/05/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-amazon-jmorgan-healthcare

"The same government intrusion in healthcare is causing the price spikes in university education. You're suckers for believing this." --Zok

Well, duh. Remember when, college education use to be fucking FREE?
Remember all those GIs, coming home from WWII -- the Big One?
They gave Hitler and Moussilini what for, and, as a reward, We, the people
SENT THEM TO COLLEGE -- FOR FREE. Economists guesstimate that for every dollar we invested in our Veterans, we got back SEVEN -- increased productivity, higher wages, meaning higher taxes, etc.

And then, and, admittedly, it WAS a long, long time ago -- in the Seventies, your Hero, Ronny Raygun, sick and tired (of hippies, rabble rousers and peaceniks) from all the protesting, said -- "fuck you. You want an Education? YOU can fucking pay for it yourselfs!

So, so much for THAT experiment.
We STILL haven't yet recovered from Ronny Raygun.
Lookit what he (and good Ole Ollie North) did to US, Jimmy Carter, Iran and Nicaragua.

15, 20, 30 MILLION United States Citizens currently either do not have, or barely have ANY Healthcare. Oh, right -- Emergency Rooms. Is that your answer?

So, Republicans are undermining our current "Healthcare" system ASAP.
See: "Gnawing Away at Health Care" by Paul Krugman

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/opinion/republicans-obamacare-health-care.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

As is obvious there is a lot to be said about Amazon. This article and the recent head tax are just the latest. However, what is to be said about the effect on Amazon's overall destruction of small businesses?

I was an early employee of Amazon - way back when it was only books. Subsequently Amazon's impact on the publishing industry and independent booksellers is well known. Does your neighborhood bookseller from a decade ago still exist? Perhaps but the reality is most went out of business. I know. I owned a bookstore before closing it and drinking the Amazon Kool-aid.

The Amazon motto: Work Hard, Make History. Sure we thought we were making history but never did we really know that what that history was and where it will go today and in the future. We had no clue it would eventually destroy the publishing industry and suck up other industries as well.

I am perplexed by the fact that we continue to use Amazon and I am perplexed by the fact that current Amazon employees buy into how Amazon is fucking everyone else in the ass.

If we had to define how culture is defined at the moment Amazon would be the #1 definer. That's really sad.

Oh, did I forget to mention Bezos is the richest man in the world? Seattle Amazonian's making $110,000 or more per year think they are doing great, distribution center workers make a pittance in comparison, and it all adds up to balance the books such that Bezos can own the Washington Post, own a fucking ridiculous mansion in DC and still not get a hair transplant. Go figure.

How many people at the stranger and affiliated companies qualify?

Let me tell you about Single Pay Health Care. This is what I know. I work at a Cap Hill grocery store. And, I get a lot of customers from Canada down here for medical procedures, operations, cancer treatments etc. About 10% to 15% of them are from Australia.

They have to leave their own country to get quality, timely, life saving treatment. That's what I know about Single Payer Health Care.

@26 What the hell are you talking about re: college? The GI Bill still exists (I used it when I left active duty in 2007), and the Post-9/11 GI Bill is even better since it has a location-based living stipend vs. giving you one lump sum for tuition+expenses. A lot of the men & women I served with were there specifically for the college benefits.

@30
And i know a lot of people going to Canada for affordable life saving medicines.
Maybe we can work something out.

@31 That the GI Bill continues to send Veterans to college is AWESOME.

That college is today no longer affordable for far too many Citizens in this Country, the Richest fucking Country ON THE PLANET IS A fucking CRIME. Student debt now exceeds credit card debt. If we don't invest in our Citizens, we may as well invest in more Prisons.

Oops -- those crafty Devils beat me to it.

Well grocery store mong with his anecdotal evidence has spoken! Single-payer? Total failure.

@30 Ah so you see rich people from other countries coming here to get better care because they can afford to do it. So I guess if we ever do get single payer all these people that currently go to the ER for their primary care (or don't go to the doctor) will have to fly to a rich country if they don't want to wait 2 weeks for their chemo treatment?