Does this mean that the premiums will be set as if the government was not paying the subsidy, or that they will be set taking into account the government's expense in paying the subsidy?

I think the first one.

eta: Everyone pays the premium, and the program breaks even. The subsidy is just to help out lower income people in paying the premium.

Right?

The other way makes less sense to me....

eta2: It's the 'net of the subsidy' that's confusicating....

It's not too rude for me, tommy, but it's a long involved sort of answer. Short version: first child was a surprise, though we vaguely intended to have children someday. Second was planned, with factors in the decision including desire for first to have a sibling, general feelings about family size, really loving the first one and feeling we wanted another, I had an easy pregnancy and birth the first time and could hope to have the same again, plus (on the negative side) the environmental factor and the Apocalypse factor.

mr. flea really wants a third at some point; I run warm and cold on the topic. I think most people probably place their personal desires above their concern about the planet (if any). Tragedy of the Commons, yeah?

I think the idea would be like college tuition and scholarships?--if all 100 students paid $5K a semester, you'd get $500K. Or you could say tuition is $10K, and give half the students full ride scholarships. And then you'd still get $500K.

But maybe I'm mistaken.

I have nothing to add to the current topics.

I am currently in the same room as Edward Albee.

Is he wearing pants?

(Also, I assume this means he is not dead, which I had sort of assumed he was, without actually thinking about it. And now to Google.)

There are pants and no dead bodies.

The phrase "net of the subsidy" is what throws me. See if the premium does not include the subsidy, than the program seems more fair because non-subsidized enrollees don't get penalized by the increased costs in subsidization. However, it doesn't reflect the true cost of the program either.

I think the idea would be like college tuition and scholarships?--if all 100 students paid $5K a semester, you'd get $500K. Or you could say tuition is $10K, and give half the students full ride scholarships. And then you'd still get $500K.

Right, so logically you'd say that the school estimate cost including scholarships. But I'm not sure this program is trying to do that.

I intended to have kids when I got married, but we didn't live in a place or situation that would have made kid-having anything other than a burden. Hubby kept hinting about kids, but he didn't push the point to crisis. I said that if we weren't in a situation where kids wouldn't make life difficult by the time I was thirty, then I didn't intend to have kids. By the time I hit thirty, I was pretty much convinced that kids weren't going to be part of my world. People kept saying "Oh, the Lord will provide, you could always go on welfare, that's why they make foodstamps, etc." However, there are few days that go by when I don't think Diety that I decided to forego reproduction.

The environmental reasons figure into why the SO & I have chosen (to date) not to have children.

But it's certainly not the only reason, and probably the personal ones trump that. Up until now, we've been vagabonds, and have chosen a lot of nontraditional paths for our lives. I would not have wanted to try to care for an infant, for example, during the time when I regularly didn't have power or water. For the SO & I, that was a choice we could make for ourselves, but one we did not wish to make for any putative children.

Our lives are changing right now, so we'll see if the relative stability of our new lifestyle changes any of our attitudes.

The bit that amuses me is that we used to have lots of childless couple friends; those who had not yet had kids. Then for a while it was really difficult, because most of our friends had kids, and their lives were just so different from ours. But now we're hitting the point where our friends' kids are out of the house already. So we may be hitting the point of less societal pressure again, where people just assume we've already had kids.

Albee quote:

"Writing should be useful. If it can't instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness there's no point in doing it."

Interesting. Two issues come to mind: What are the "responsibilities of consciousness" (nice phrase) and what does he mean by consciousness? (which maybe is just me, as I've been reading about that lately).