What lessons? USSR had free childcare, education, and healthcare. And I think there was paid maternity leave (with job security), something like 16 weeks in the 30’s and either 1 or 1.5 years in the 80’s. It’s still more than a year in most former republics. Maybe WE could learn from THEM.
AND… people were more free (using your and jcohen’s definition of freedom), because I think the legal age for drinking, smoking, and procreating was just 16! Though military service was also mandatory around the same age for most men.
Kinda funny to hear that from people looking at it from their ivory tower. As someone who lived in an eastern Europe communist country until my early 20s, I can safely say that you don’t know what you’re talking about if you associate the freedom to do destructive behavior (smoking, drinking, teenage pregnancy) with actual freedom.
Reality is there were lines to buy basic necessities (you know bread and such), no regular supply of imported foods (bananas say), country was years behind in tech products available, no availability of decent (western) products unless you are from the party, no free press, radio, or TV, plus airwaves scrambled on other channels, no private enterprise, mandatory annual community service starting from age 12 (had to go help on farms or some factories), military service for men, cannot travel freely abroad unless you get rare exceptions - and then your family has to not all go with you to serve as pseudo hostages-, etc…
Now stuff to keep the populace mind-numbed like alcohol were sure readily available. Healthcare was shit as well. Dental work especially was way behind. It did not particularly pay to go to (free tuition) med school because your salary was state-mandated anyway. Oh and your specialty was also indirectly assigned to you. You could not have your own practice. You had to work at a facility designated for your area based on needs. My dad was a MD. His pension would have been the same as my mom’s (Ph.D chemist retired from working at patent bureau) currently is $400/month for working 35 years. So yeah picture perfect that communist freedom, especially looking from very very far from it. I wonder why the people would ever want another system and broke that wall back in 89.
I believe that was jscripta’s point. The definition of “more freedoms” being used is absurd (for businesses to encourage destructive behaviour, for individuals to engage in destructive behaviour that affects others as well as themselves), and it’s obviousely NOT preferable to have been in the USSR.
Secondhand smoke in all public places and rampant drunk driving and public intoxication is not “freedom” that has been lost. Neither was the EPA trying to ensure cleaner air for the public through reducing harmful pollution and regulating coal plants.
You exceed personal “freedom” when you encroach on other people’s freedoms. The government should be there to step in and prevent that.
I thought it was his point until the last sentence. IMO the main thing to learn from the USSR and that painful experiment is that extreme socialism is a proven failure. We are currently VERY far from anything remotely looking like it thankfully. Anyway, we’re pretty far from topic so let’s get back to healthcare costs as part of early retirement planning.
I think my preferred solution would be a bit like what Shinobi described which is some kind of affordable universal catastrophic health insurance and then you take care of the more minor stuff out of pocket. The catastrophic insurance plan would have very high deductibles but would allow for HSA savings. This setup for me ensures you can budget for moderate health expenses (using HSA for smoothing out the bumps in the road) but your whole plan is not gonna be affected if you need unpredictable extensive treatment.
But even assuming only catastrophic health insurance, the cost would vary in time. Say you retired at 35 or 40, sure then it’d be cheap but you have to assume the cost would ramp up considerably say from 50 to 65 and can signup for Medicare. I just find it hard to know in advance how much that catastrophic health insurance would cost 20 or 25 years down the road if you retire really early.
For those like Shinobi who did it, how much variation was there in premium for that insurance between the time you retired and the time you filed for Medicare? Just to get a ballpark number?
This was jcohen’s definition, not mine. The rest of your comment it does not apply, I never said it was better, I only chose a very narrow example to pick on jcohen.
И вообще я прекрасно знаю о чем я пишу. Get off my ivory tower .
Please read the post I was responding to and then my response. The post suggested that the cold war era soviet commies could learn a lesson from the current democratic nominees. The major issues the democratic nominees talk about is education, healthcare, and childcare, which was already free in USSR during the cold war. So I was not joking when I asked “what lessons” could the soviets have learned from the current nominees.
I was following the thread, and presumed your comment was facetious.
I undertsood @shinobi’s comment to mean that if the Russian government class had the skills of the current Democrat candidates, they would not have had to use tanks, fences, walls, guns, threats, and spies to keep their non-government class in the country.
Upon further reflection, I believe that @shinobi got it wrong. If the current Democrat non-government class was more like their Russian counterparts, the Democrats would have to change their tune in order to get votes.
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