If benefits aren't graduated, then you can have a hypothetical situation where you can earn $25,000, and receive $5,000 of benefits, or earn $25,001 and receive $0 of benefits. In this hypothetical situation, every dollar you earn between $25,000 and $30,000 is extra work you have to do that doesn't net you any additional dollars.

There's a whole separate discussion to be had about what taxes should pay for, but I don't think it's abusing the system. I think there's no question the bartender would work full time at a job that paid enough to pay for all of the living expenses and the healthcare, but that's not one of her options. Her options, according to the anecdote, were to work X hours for X money, or to work X + Y hours for X money.

Isn't the system broken if getting a raise is actually the opposite? I'm in the same situation in Georgia: We actually have a pretty great program through Medicaid that provides free health insurance for kids 6 and under and a very low rate for kids older than that.

All 3 of my kids are on it. My salary is just under the limit for a household of 5.

I would love to make more money, but it would have to be a raise of about 20% to cover the difference in premium for my kids to be on my private insurance plan. I'm thankful for the program. Without it, I was forking over 20% of my salary to the health insurance company. It seems stupid to allow myself to fall in that margin, no?

It's clearly a flawed system when a person is incentivized to be a tax burden on other taxpayers instead of making more income.

It’s a flawed system when human individuals are treated like “tax burdens”

It seems like exactly the kind of system you get when people are more worried about who to blame for X than they are about how to make X better.

Hmm, but I also pay Georgia income tax. Indeed there are a lot of government programs funded by income tax that I do not take advantage of. I'm not sure if you're trying to make me feel like a tax burden or not, but... I don't feel bad.

I think the issue is that there seems to be some sort of health coverage cliff, where if you make too much money you aren't covered by government programs, but you still might not be making enough to pay for health coverage yourself.

15 years ago, we just did without health coverage, but we were young and healthy. Not everyone is as blessed.

Can you really blame her when the result of the system is being given these choices:

1) Don't take the pay rise (career stagnation)

2) Keep health care and advance her career (abusing the system, technically, yes)

3) Keep both jobs and advance her career (lose health care)

You don't need to be an expert on game theory to realise what the best decision to make in this situation is. I agree with you in principle that it shouldn't be right to do this, but the system is, well.. shit. What else could she have done?

I don't blame her and probably would have made the same choice.

Well designed programs don't have the feature that making more money means you get less.

The trouble with well-designed programs is that they just work, they don't allow politicians to grandstand. The fact that politicians can and will use "welfare-grifting barmaids" to score points is designed into the program, proof is that they passed the democratic process!

True but republicans will just straight up lie about social programs.

"Subsidy Cliffs" are a real problem. I implore everyone to help get rid of the insane situations they create.

Plug in some numbers for yourself with this Obamacare calculator. If you are, for example, a married couple, both 55 years old, you lose many of thousands of dollars of benefits from an additional $1 of income when your income crosses 400% of the poverty line.

To put some real numbers on the table: if this couple made $65800 of income, they get a $1098 per month subsidy. If they made $65900 of income, they get a $0 subsidy.

https://www.kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/

The problem is that social programs in the US are extremely [fragmented](https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/i...), and a well designed program has to work in aggregate.

Any solution to this has to be cooperative between federal/state/local authorities, but given that welfare programs are one of the most politically charged topics in the US, there's little chance that this cooperation will happen.

These programs have been designed this way for many decades. Given that track record, why would anyone trust politicians to implement single-payer healthcare or other "socialist" policies?

Well, distrust in the political system has been that way in the U.S. for decades. Single payer systems have been implemented auccesfully in many countries, all it would take is to copy from any one of those countries wholesale. For example, with the current money going into medicare and medicaid it would be possible to fund a universal healthcare system that was a copy of canada’s. They’re nice people, I’m sure they’d be willing to help set it up.

Yeah this is outrageous! I only trust them to design "capitalist" tax policies for large companies and billionaires.

One man's "abusing the system" is another mans "responding to incentives in the way that makes the most sense but happens to not create a flattering depiction of the system."

I agree with this completely. Welfare is not supposed to create incentives for people to earn less money, it's supposed to help the legitimately poor. But those incentives certainly exist, and happen commonly enough that many people are distrustful of the welfare system as a whole.

>Instead of working and paying for her own health care

There was no choice. She couldn't afford to pay for healthcare with the new job. What would you have done?

I probably would have made the same choice.

>The bartender in this case is somewhat abusing the system.

She's choosing to get healthcare, a reasonable choice, 100% legally. The other poster made it clear she could not afford the jump from medicare to the open market.

If you're worried about the policies I suggest you take a closer look as to who wants to limit how those systems work... time and again it's NOT people pushing "socialist policies".

It is legal, for sure. I said "somewhat abusing" because she is choosing to suppress her income in order to qualify for benefits. Nothing illegal about that, but perhaps it's a bit unethical to make less money on purpose to qualify for government aid?

What actually is unethical is to have healthcare systems that people working two jobs can't afford, don't you think?

Healthcare can potentially be a life or death type situation.

I have trouble throwing down questions of ethics on someone who wants to be healthy and live.