Thread

DoorDash Spent $1.4M Trying to Stop Mamdani from Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why

349 points · 189 comments · vrganj

dzonga · 1790195655 · focus · HN ↗
services like door-dash are literally built on a concept of a sucker pays more. you order a meal that costs $10. total charge comes to $25. then delivery worker made $5 on that order. + the delivery worker expects a tip.
which means the company sees both the delivery worker and the person who ordered as suckers. no wonder ride-share companies jumped onto food-delivery.
1. robomartin · 1790198078 · focus · HN ↗
  > services like door-dash are literally built on a concept of a sucker pays more
  Strongly disagree with your entire narrative, one that it demonstrably disconnected from reality.
  Nobody is forcing anyone --at all-- to use these services. Not one person. Not one company. Not a single law or mandate. If I want to use it and you don't, that's perfectly fine. If I, for whatever reason, want to pay a premium and you think it's stupid, that's fine too. Don't use it. I will. Simple as that.
  What's the opposite of that? Obamacare. Mandated and forced on everyone. It's shit. It's three times the cost of the insurance we were all promised we could keep if we wanted to (and we could not, because Obamacare killed those plans). Etc.
  See the difference there?
  1. someonebaggy · 1790199054 · focus · HN ↗
    Sounds like you agree that suckers pay more.
    robomartin · 1790387662 · focus · HN ↗
    Sounds like you failed English Reading and Comprehension in school.
  2. mandeepj · 1790200713 · focus · HN ↗
    > Mandated and forced on everyone.
    Nope. It's a marketplace. Your above argument is perfectly applicable to it as well.
  3. moate · 1790200819 · focus · HN ↗
    If you think "high earners with company subsidized plans"(where I assume you fall based on the general demographics of this site, but correct me if I'm wrong) were the target audience of the ACA, you're right to be pissed. It was for the un/underinsured, and people with preexisting conditions.
    But your comparison is wrong, because you can...elect to not use the service. You could pay less for less coverage (so like, buying food without paying for a delivery fee because you don't need the convenience). Also, the individual mandate was killed (sucking funding out of the whole program), so you could opt out of the service entirely.
    Nobody is forcing you to have insurance (at a federal level).
    See the difference there?
  4. rootusrootus · 1790203102 · focus · HN ↗
    > Obamacare. Mandated and forced on everyone. It's shit. It's three times the cost of the insurance we were all promised we could keep if we wanted to
    In a sense, I agree with this assessment, and I think it should be corrected. We should allow people to have the older, less expensive plans with their lifetime caps and preexisting condition exclusion. We'd need to work out the details on whether or not we would allow someone choosing those plans from coming back to the ACA plans in the future, though. Maybe for the right price it could work out. Definitely adds complexity, however.
    robomartin · 1790321316 · focus · HN ↗
    There should not be anything of note between you and the doctors and services you choose. The layers of complexity and interference in our system a both nonsensical and costly, both in dollars and lives or outcomes.
    I have over the years become a believer in the first payer concept. When I pay for goods and services, I get better goods and services. It's that simple.
    We should, of course, help and support the less fortunate (weather that means for financial or health reasons). That should not mean that you screw everyone else to the wall with a disaster of a system that causes such distortion that you can actually find yourself at a doctors office in the US that is worse than a third country clinic. I have seen it with my own eyes. That's just insane.
  5. preg_match · 1790222945 · focus · HN ↗
    Your previous plans were subsidized by the insurance company stealing money, basically. As soon as we said “you can’t steal” then surprise! Your plan is more expensive.
    They stole through denying claims, denying coverage, and more. The reality is that if Obamacare didn’t exist, I would be uninsurable. Yes that might bring your price down. For a bit, until you also become uninsurable, then you’re also fucked.
    Yes insurance can be very cheap if you only take on fit, healthy clientele who will never use your insurance. But yeah, for society that sucks so we stopped doing that.
    robomartin · 1790321048 · focus · HN ↗
    > The reality is that if Obamacare didn’t exist, I would be uninsurable. Yes that might bring your price down.
    There's nothing whatsoever wrong with covering everyone by having everybody contribute a bit more for those who might need more care. I am 100% for that.
    That does not mean that a family's health insurance costs should TRIPLE or more. That's theft. Particularly when you barely use it. A couple hundred bucks a month, sure. Triple or quadruple? No, that's just wrong. Take that extra cost and multiply it by ten years. It's a shit-ton of money. They take away from retirement, kids college, etc.
    What you cause it what a friend of mine has done for ten years: No insurance. If he needs something important he travels to Latin America, gets excellent care and at a reasonable cost that is LESS than the cost of insurance here in the US. Actual care costs less than paying for insurance. Go figure. And, on top of that, you get doctors who will spend 45 minutes talking to you rather than 5 minutes looking at a chart and see you next visit.
    The only reason people accept the dumpster fire that US health insurance has become is because they have not been outside the US to understand how else it could be. This does not at all mean socialized medicine (which is, in general strokes, a disaster).
    preg_match · 1790354611 · focus · HN ↗
    All the countries that the US is compared to have socialized medicine. I think it’s obvious socialized medicine just works better. The only reason you can even travel to get care is because of:
    - currency exchange
    - socialized medicine
    Some countries, like the UK, also have private plans. What people miss is that the reason the private plans are so cheap is because of socialized medicine. When you have to compete with low cost or zero cost, then your price goes down. The US is the worst of all worlds, and a fully socialized system would work better.
    robomartin · 1790387620 · focus · HN ↗
    The part you are missing is that these people are going to Latin America and paying for care, not using socialized medicine...which isn't the best at all.
    Socialized medicine is another fantasy that has infected the minds of those who have never had to actually live under such fantasies.
  6. Edman274 · 1790265935 · focus · HN ↗
    Even before the penalty for non enrollment was set to zero, you could have still paid the $700 tax penalty and then had whatever plan for health insurance you wanted. If the market decided that there was no demand for those non eligible plans, then it means that the market collectively decided that keeping the old plans + 700 dollar additional annual cost was not a good value proposition compared to what replaced them. The net effect of everything taken together was that you would have to pay additional taxes.
    You know, tariffs and gas prices going up have the effect of raising taxes. When the things you buy and the gas you buy costs more, you have to pay more in real dollars in sales and gas tax on those items. The tariffs and the gas prices also have the effect of killing industries locally, which might be more impactful nationally than predatory insurance plans that basically only cover going to the doctor's office for checkups. If you have an objection to things being forced on people, do make sure you're thorough.
    robomartin · 1790320584 · focus · HN ↗
    > Even before the penalty for non enrollment was set to zero, you could have still paid the $700 tax penalty and then had whatever plan for health insurance you wanted.
    Nope, the net effect of the ACA was to make all those plans evaporate. No longer available. We tried. It was impossible to keep our plans and doctors.
    You mention "the market" a few times. The ACA forced a paradigm shift, there was no market left. Not as it was pre-ACA. We have several doctors and medical professionals in our family. Believe me when I tell you that they all say the ACA is shit and it destroyed US healthcare. This is not to say it was perfect before the ACA, but it certainly was not this bad.
    After a few experiences I concluded that the system the ACA has created is now worse than the DMV. I never thought I would find something that would top the DMV.
    We had one horrific experience that I will not recount here in detail. My son tore his ACL. It took WEEKS to get his care sorted. It was incredible to witness the dysfunction and horrifically low quality of care we experienced.
    I have friends who will travel to different countries in Latin America for medical care because of what the ACA did to their healthcare in the US. I was talking to one today over lunch in fact. He has been without US health insurance for a decade now. When he needs anything important he goes down to Argentina, gets better care and at a lower cost.
    > If you have an objection to things being forced on people, do make sure you're thorough.
    The list of government abuse is long and wide. Don't get me started. My post was not intended to be a compendium. That said, yes, we have much to question...and if people ever got their heads out of their asses, we would.
    Simple truth: Both major political parties deserve a solid spanking. They have caused more damage to the US over the last, say, 50 years (pick a number) than one could express in a simple post. Politics in this nation has become so disgusting it inspires projectile vomiting.

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