One Big Beautiful Bill

Author: Double_R

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#91
fauxlaw
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@Proletariat
1. 
Nobody truly pays “only for themselves” in a capitalist healthcare system.
Nobody? In a truly capitalist healthcare system, since I have owned my own business on which I am the sole proprietor, and your sole proletariat, too, so I pay all the premium, and I still have a co-pay out of pocket. And, my private money still pays for my social security and medicare, so that is entirely self-funded, too for those benefits. I've been around the block. No, your FICA payments on your paycheck are not a Marxist system, boyo.  If I went through the rest of your list, I'd probably find issues there, as well, but I don't have the time.
#92
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@Umbrellacorp
How old are you if you don't mind me asking?
@LucyStarFire is easily upwards of 40 years old but with mind of 4 year old 
#93
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@Skipper_Sr
After looking at what he/she posts on youube i feel sorry. I am gonna be nice from now on.
#94
Proletariat
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@fauxlaw
You’re absolutely right that as a sole proprietor, you’re paying both the employer and employee side of your premiums and taxes. But that doesn’t prove you’re “only paying for yourself” — it actually highlights the exact opposite. The premiums you pay into a private insurance plan still go into a risk pool shared across every other policyholder in that plan. That’s how insurance works — even in a “pure” private capitalist setup, your money is still subsidizing others, and theirs is subsidizing you if and when you need it.

Private health insurance doesn’t hold your premium in a vault with your name on it. You’re not prepaying for future services. You’re participating in a market product that distributes risk across a customer base — and where the company profits by keeping your care costs down, not by giving you everything you paid in. So even when you “pay your own way,” that money still becomes part of a collective structure. That’s not socialism — it’s capitalism, sure — but it still involves other people’s money going toward your care and vice versa.

“My private money still pays for my social security and Medicare, so that is entirely self-funded.”

Again, this is a misunderstanding of how those systems work. Social Security and Medicare are not personal savings accounts. Your FICA taxes don’t get stored away with your name on them. Today’s workers fund today’s retirees and Medicare recipients — that’s a pay-as-you-go system, not individual investment. You paid into a system others benefit from, and others will pay into it for you when you retire. That’s intergenerational redistribution by design — a social contract, not self-funding.

Even the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, acknowledges that Social Security is a transfer program, not a savings program:

“Social Security is not a savings program; your taxes are not put away for you in an account.”
— Cato Institute, 2021

As for Medicare, it is massively subsidized. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average beneficiary receives $3 in Medicare benefits for every $1 they paid in over their working lifetime. That’s not self-funded — that’s publicly funded and deficit-backed.

“Your FICA payments on your paycheck are not a Marxist system, boyo.”

No one said they were. But FICA is a redistributive system — and redistribution of wealth is a feature of socialism. It’s not full socialism, of course, but it’s a far cry from the Ayn Rand version of capitalism people like to romanticize. In fact, the entire foundation of capitalist healthcare — employer-provided insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, VA hospitals, the ACA marketplace subsidies — is a patchwork of market forces blended with government regulation, tax funding, and collective risk.



Bottom line:
You can work hard, own a business, and pay your way — and still be part of a system where your money helps others and others’ money helps you. That’s not an insult to your independence — it’s just how healthcare, taxation, and insurance function. The problem isn’t that we pool resources — the problem is that in the U.S., we pay more than any other country for that pooling and get worse results.

You’re right that the system isn’t Marxist — it’s not even functional capitalism. It’s privatized profit skimming built on the myth of self-reliance. And while you may feel like you’re carrying the full burden yourself, I promise you: when the bill comes due for catastrophic illness, no one truly goes it alone.
#95
Proletariat
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@Debunker
Except… no, not debunked. That’s a misleading apples-to-oranges comparison based on bad math and worse assumptions.


1. 
Total tax burdens include much more than healthcare.


The figure you’re citing for Canada’s 44% “total tax” rate includes everything — income tax, sales tax, property tax, payroll tax, gas tax, etc. But guess what? So does the U.S. 30% figure.

The problem is, in Canada, those taxes actually pay for things like:

  • Universal healthcare
  • Lower prescription drug prices
  • Subsidized education
  • Childcare benefits
  • Longer parental leave
  • Less out-of-pocket cost for long-term care


In the U.S., that 30% tax burden doesn’t get you those things — so you pay more out of pocket for healthcare, childcare, college, and elder care on top of your taxes.


2. 
Your “$6,000 average yearly U.S. healthcare cost” is nowhere near the full cost.


Let’s clarify what Americans actually spend on healthcare annually:

  • The average per-person cost of healthcare in the U.S. is over $13,000/year (CMS, 2022).
  • Families with employer insurance pay over $6,500/year in premiums, plus $5,000+ in deductibles and copays.
  • That doesn’t even include out-of-network charges or uncovered services.


Meanwhile, Canadians pay almost nothing out of pocket for hospital visits, surgeries, childbirth, specialist care, or emergencies.



So no, Americans don’t “save $5,900.” They often pay more when you factor in insurance premiums, medical debt, and denied claims.


3. 
Millions of Americans delay care because of cost — Canadians don’t.


  • 1 in 4 Americans skip needed care because of cost.
  • Over 60% of bankruptcies in the U.S. are tied to medical bills.
  • Zero Canadians go bankrupt from hospital visits, cancer treatments, or ambulance rides.


If you’re calling this “debunked” because of a narrow tax math gimmick, you’re ignoring the real human impact of a system where care is rationed by ability to pay.


4. 
Canadian healthcare isn’t perfect — but it covers everyone and costs less.


Canada spends about $6,300 per person per year on healthcare. The U.S. spends over $13,000. Yet U.S. life expectancy is lower, infant mortality is higher, and administrative costs are three times higher because of the private insurance bureaucracy.


So the real math is this:
Canadians pay more in taxes, yes — but in return, they get universal care, lower total cost, and better outcomes. Americans pay less in taxes, then shell out more in premiums, deductibles, surprise bills, and prescription drug prices — and 30 million are still uninsured.



TL;DR:
This wasn’t a debunk. It was an oversimplified tax comparison that ignored reality. If higher taxes buy you better healthcare at lower total cost, that’s not a loss — it’s a bargain. Americans are paying more and dying younger because they believe freedom means bleeding out in the ER while arguing with a billing office.

#96
Proletariat
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@LucyStarfire
Thanks for your reply — you raise a fair point, and I appreciate the chance to explore it further.

You’re absolutely right that Medicare and Medicaid are public programs, and they do represent forms of government-managed care within our mostly privatized system. But they exist because the market failed to provide adequate coverage to the elderly and low-income people. In other words, they were introduced as fixes for the gaps capitalism left behind — not examples of capitalist efficiency. Even now, they are more efficient than private insurance: Medicare spends around 2–3% on administrative costs, while private insurers spend 15–25% — often even more when including executive bonuses, marketing, and profits.

As for Switzerland, it’s true they have private insurers — but their system is nothing like the U.S. model of capitalist healthcare. Here’s why:


1. 
Swiss healthcare is heavily regulated, not free-market.


  • Insurance is not optional. Every person is required by law to purchase basic coverage — it’s mandated and standardized by the government.
  • Insurers cannot profit off of basic health plans. That’s a legal rule.
  • The government sets what must be covered, how much providers can charge, and limits on out-of-pocket costs.
  • If you can’t afford insurance, the government subsidizes your plan — in fact, about 30–40% of Swiss residents receive subsidies.


That’s a very different model than the U.S., where insurers deny claims, raise premiums freely, and profit off medical need. Switzerland may use private companies, but they are strictly constrained — closer to a market socialism in healthcare than to unregulated capitalism.



2. 
Capitalism’s logic is still present — and still causes problems.


Even in Switzerland, where outcomes are better than the U.S., healthcare costs are still high compared to many other countries — because profit incentives still exist in hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and supplementary insurance. Costs in Switzerland have been rising steadily, prompting political debate on price controls and reforms to reduce the capitalist influence further.

So even the best version of “capitalist” healthcare depends on strong government regulation, mandates, non-profit limitations, and universal inclusion — all of which the U.S. system resists.


3. 
The U.S. system is the most capitalist — and the most dysfunctional.


  • For-profit insurers
  • No price controls on hospitals or drug companies
  • No universal requirement or guarantee of care
  • Millions uninsured or underinsured
  • 500,000+ medical bankruptcies a year
  • Worst outcomes of all wealthy nations


That’s the real-world result of letting the market run healthcare. If capitalism worked for medicine, we wouldn’t need Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, or the ACA marketplace at all. But the truth is, every functioning healthcare system in the world relies on some degree of collective protection, planning, and regulation — which capitalism alone doesn’t provide.



In short: I agree that government healthcare isn’t automatically better just because it’s public — it depends on how it’s structured. But the Swiss model isn’t a free-market success story — it’s an example of how limiting capitalism and building strong public oversight can produce better outcomes. And that’s the key point: healthcare works best when it puts people over profit.

#97
Skipper_Sr
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@Umbrellacorp
After looking at what he/she posts on youube i feel sorry. I am gonna be nice from now on.
You shouldn’t be sorry. He’s accepted the consequences for his actions like a big boy and naturally asserts being a 13 yr old girl with mind of 3 year old 
#98
Debunker
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@Proletariat
debunked
#99
MayCaesar
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@Proletariat
That’s the real-world result of letting the market run healthcare. If capitalism worked for medicine, we wouldn’t need Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, or the ACA marketplace at all. But the truth is, every functioning healthcare system in the world relies on some degree of collective protection, planning, and regulation — which capitalism alone doesn’t provide.
First, the US healthcare system is anything but capitalist: government spending on healthcare in the US is the highest in the world (as a fraction of the total spending), and by a large margin. 40+ years ago, when the spending was much lower, it was also much cheaper.

Second, the fact that there is Medicare and Medicaid does not mean that "we need" it (who is "we" anyway? I am not on either of these programs and never plan to be). It just means that the politicians have convinced enough taxpayers that they do that they can draw trillions of extra dollars from them in order to fund these.

The anti-free market rhetoric always relies on the same small set of logical fallacies and misobservations. The vast majority of services in capitalist countries is provided by the market, and it does not cross anybody's mind (thankfully) to have the government develop Windows, produce iPhones, make Snickers and grow potatoes... But those services that the government has successfully taken over are now thought to be only providable by it. This is completely backwards.

The idea that capitalist works for some services and does not work for other services is not rooted in any logical reasoning: it is just an assumption of people who do not have enough imagination to imagine that not everything has to work the way it currently works. People who 10 years ago would have said that something like ChatGPT can never exist, because it did not exist then.
#100
Proletariat
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@Debunker
You haven’t debunked anything, and even when I broke down your cherry picked data, your only response was “debunked” which indicates to me that you don’t have much of an argument against me. But I’ll respond to your other comments. The “bloated bureaucracy” and “trained seal” line — classic. But let’s actually unpack the logic, not the slogans.

“Put people over profit” isn’t a feel-good illusion. It’s a simple statement about priorities. When the goal of a system is health outcomes, not shareholder returns, then the structure naturally shifts: price controls are introduced, profit margins shrink, and resources get redirected to care, not marketing, bonuses, or executive stock buybacks.

You say removing profit leads to “endless waitlists” — but the data doesn’t support that.
• In countries like Germany, the Netherlands, or France (none of which are Marxist utopias), wait times are comparable or better than the U.S.
• In the U.S., over 25% of adults delay care due to cost — is that not a waitlist?
• In Canada, yes, some specialties have longer waits — but nobody goes bankrupt, nobody is uninsured, and everyone gets care eventually. The U.S. has shorter waits if you’re wealthy, and no care at all if you’re not.

Source: Commonwealth Fund 2023

And about bureaucracy — the most bloated healthcare bureaucracy in the world is in the U.S.:
• Private insurers add hundreds of billions in administrative overhead.
• Physicians here spend more time with billing staff than with patients.
• U.S. healthcare providers spend 4x more on billing than Canadian counterparts.

Source: JAMA, “Administrative Costs in the U.S. Health Care System,” 2020

So ironically, the “efficient” capitalist system is drowning in paperwork created by private profit-seeking — not public service.

As for the “Marxist nightmare” line — I’m not arguing to replace capitalism with Stalin’s central planning. I’m pointing out that in the context of healthcare, profit as a motive actively undermines health. If you truly believe health should depend on ability to pay, just say so — but be clear that means rationing care based on income, not need.

And lastly — yes, taxes are real. But in systems that pool resources, everyone contributes based on ability, and receives care based on need. That’s not tyranny. That’s solidarity. And it works — just not for investors.

#101
Debunker
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@fauxlaw
 If I went through the rest of your list, I'd probably find issues there, as well, but I don't have the time.
He got debunkred.

Oh, how noble. “Put people over profit!” What a beautiful slogan until you realize it’s the perfect cover for bloated bureaucracies, endless waitlists, and zero accountability. Because when profit’s off the table, guess what replaces it? What it means is a handful deciding what "the people" deserve, while the rest of us clap like trained seals because “at least it’s not for profit.”

Proletariat is for the marxist nightmare where people lose all of their work (taxes) thro those with control and power just because he thinks the top in control puts "people first"

When the goal of a system is health outcomes, 
That's never the goal of the people in charge of "the system"

talking like "the system" has a conscience, like it’s some benevolent machine designed purely for human good.
Systems reflect the motives of the people running them, and "health outcomes" are not what keeps those people in power.


#102
Proletariat
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@MayCaesar
Thank you for the thoughtful reply — I appreciate the time you took to lay out your position. I’d like to respond point by point, not to argue for the sake of it, but because I think we’re working from fundamentally different definitions of capitalism, market function, and public need.


1. 
“The U.S. healthcare system is anything but capitalist.”


You’re right that public spending on healthcare in the U.S. is enormous — more per capita than any other country, including those with universal healthcare systems. But here’s the problem: most of that spending goes to pay private companies.

  • Medicare contracts with private hospitals, clinics, and now with private insurers through Medicare Advantage.
  • Medicaid does the same — it purchases care from for-profit providers.
  • The ACA marketplace is literally a public subsidy for private insurance companies.
  • The VA is one of the only fully government-run systems in the country, and it consistently ranks as one of the most efficient and cost-effective healthcare providers in the U.S.


So yes, the government spends money — but it does so within a for-profit market structure, with limited price controls, no universal regulation, and high administrative overhead from billing fragmentation. That’s a capitalist system — just one with some public dollars trying to paper over the gaps.


2. 
“Medicare and Medicaid exist because politicians convinced taxpayers they need them.”


This one I have to push back on more strongly. These programs were created because millions of people were either dying, suffering untreated illness, or going broke because they were uninsurable in the private market. Before Medicare’s creation in 1965, half of Americans over 65 had no health insurance, and nearly 1 in 3 lived in poverty. The private market refused to cover them because they weren’t profitable.

The same goes for Medicaid — it wasn’t idealism, it was necessity. The idea that these programs exist because of some mass delusion ignores both the suffering that led to them and the widespread public support they continue to have.

And yes, “we” means all of us — because even if you personally don’t use those programs, your society, your emergency room, your hospital system, and even your premiums are shaped by whether or not others have access to basic care. Healthcare is interconnected. It doesn’t work like buying a phone or a candy bar.


3. 
“Most services are private, and nobody wants the government making iPhones or Snickers.”


Exactly. And that’s the point — healthcare isn’t a Snickers bar. It’s not a luxury good or a convenience product. It’s a universal, life-critical need that every person encounters eventually, often under emergency conditions, with highly asymmetrical knowledge and no real consumer choice.

You can shop for shoes or laptops. You can’t “shop around” when you’re unconscious in an ambulance, or comparing cancer treatment plans, or watching your child spike a 105-degree fever at 3 a.m. Markets rely on informed, optional decision-making — healthcare doesn’t work that way.

And when markets meet desperation, we get exploitation — not efficiency.


4. 
“The idea that capitalism works for some services and not others is a failure of imagination.”


On the contrary, recognizing that different services require different structures is a mark of thoughtful design, not lack of imagination.

  • Capitalism works best for competitive goods — things you can choose not to buy, or easily substitute.
  • It works worst for essential goods with no substitutes — healthcare, education, water, energy, infrastructure.
  • That’s why every country in the world — including the U.S. — already regulates these sectors, subsidizes them, or provides them publicly in some way.


If a profit-maximizing company can increase profits by denying care, raising prices, or excluding unprofitable patients, it will — that’s capitalism working as designed. That’s not a bug. That’s the logic of markets applied to the logic of life, and it’s incompatible.



Final thought: You mentioned ChatGPT as something people couldn’t imagine 10 years ago. That’s a great point. But the takeaway isn’t that capitalism can solve anything — it’s that technology evolves, and we decide how to use it. AI could be used to improve healthcare access globally — or to sell more ad space and lay off medical coders. It depends on who controls it, and what incentives they follow.

“Putting people over profit” isn’t a slogan — it’s a design choice. And history shows that when healthcare is organized around care, not capital, people live longer, spend less, and suffer less.

#103
fauxlaw
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@Proletariat
“Social Security is not a savings program; your taxes are not put away for you in an account.”
Your sources goes to a "page not found." 

So is the rest of your out-of-the-back-end-of-a-bull.
#104
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@MayCaesar
when someone speaks as if “the system” has noble goals, they’re either:
uninformed, thinking the machine is moral because the signage says “Public Health” or deliberately deceptive, cheering centralized control in the language of compassion for ulterior goals


#105
Proletariat
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@fauxlaw
@Debunker
I apologize that some of my sources/links are in error, I’ll have to double check them. However, I also see myself that some of them are also working, so stating they’re all broken is incorrect. If you’d like sources, I’ll give them. I checked each one of these before putting them in. As for debunker, thanks for sharing your view — but I think this kind of framing says more about your assumptions than it does about the reality of healthcare systems.

When someone hears criticism of for-profit healthcare and immediately accuses the critic of “cheering centralized control with ulterior motives,” that tells me they’re reading intent where there’s only evidence. I’ve been clear from the beginning: I’m not arguing that “the system” — any system — is moral just because it says “public health” on the door. I’m arguing that some systems are demonstrably more effective, more humane, and less exploitative than others.

If you think that pointing to global data on outcomes, costs, wait times, and access is “cheering for control,” then you’re reacting to the idea of public infrastructure — not to the actual results it produces.

Let’s be real: every healthcare system is a form of control. The question is: who controls it — and for whose benefit?
• In the U.S., private insurers control access to care, and their legal obligation is to maximize shareholder profit.
• In public systems, the controls may still be flawed, bureaucratic, and uneven — but the goal is population health, not dividends.

That’s not a fairy tale or a utopia — it’s a design difference with measurable outcomes. And no amount of suspicion about motives changes the fact that the U.S. has:
• the highest costs per person in the world,
• millions uninsured or underinsured, and
• worse outcomes than nearly every peer country — despite spending more.

Source (since it apparently needs repeating):

You don’t have to believe the system is noble to believe that basic access to care should not depend on income or insurance status. That’s not “deception.” It’s just what the numbers show. If the only way to preserve the logic of free markets is to assume anyone criticizing them must be secretly authoritarian, maybe the problem isn’t with their motives — maybe it’s with the system you’re defending.

Social Security: Not a Savings Account
• Cato Institute – “Social Security’s Financial Crisis: The Trust Fund Myth”
• Cato Institute – “Rethinking Social Security from a Global Perspective”
• Cato Blog – “5 Reasons Why Social Security Is an Income Transfer Program”

⸻

Health Insurance Costs (KFF 2023 Survey)
• Kaiser Family Foundation – 2023 Employer Health Benefits Survey (Main Page)
• KFF – Section 1: Cost of Health Insurance (Breakdown of Premiums & Deductibles)
• AHA Summary – “Premiums in 2023 Employer-Sponsored Coverage Rose 7% on Average”

⸻

U.S. Healthcare Spending vs. Other Countries
• OECD Health Statistics (U.S. spending compared internationally)
• Wall Street Journal – “The U.S. Spends More on Health Care Than Any Other Country”
• The Times UK – “US Health Insurance CEOs Make Millions While Americans Struggle”

• Commonwealth Fund – U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2022
(The most recent comparable edition; offers updated 2021 data)
• Commonwealth Fund – Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System
(Conclusive analysis showing the U.S. ranks last among peer nations)
• Commonwealth Fund – High U.S. Health Care Spending (Oct 2023)
(Breakdown of what drives American spending higher)

⸻

Additional Insightful Resources
• OECD Health Statistics (Per-capita spending and % GDP, global comparison)
• Wall Street Journal – “The U.S. Spends More on Health Care Than Any Other Country”

I will also make it clear right now, I do not support or like liberal sources such as WSJ, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Fox, Newsmax, or any other mainstream liberal media. Your reaction to these being called liberal will offer me a good way to gauge what kind of community I’m dealing with.
#106
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@Proletariat
I’m not arguing
That's because you got debunked.

 liberal sources such as ...Fox, Newsmax... or any other mainstream liberal media.
What? You must be a Trumper. Typical man.
#107
LucyStarfire
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@Skipper_Sr
You shouldn’t be sorry. He’s accepted the consequences for his actions like a big boy and naturally asserts being a 13 yr old girl with mind of 3 year old
I dont have mind of a 3 year old. My mental age is 13. I just act like a 3 year old. Get your facts right!
#108
MayCaesar
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You’re right that public spending on healthcare in the U.S. is enormous — more per capita than any other country, including those with universal healthcare systems. But here’s the problem: most of that spending goes to pay private companies.

  • Medicare contracts with private hospitals, clinics, and now with private insurers through Medicare Advantage.
  • Medicaid does the same — it purchases care from for-profit providers.
  • The ACA marketplace is literally a public subsidy for private insurance companies.
  • The VA is one of the only fully government-run systems in the country, and it consistently ranks as one of the most efficient and cost-effective healthcare providers in the U.S.
So yes, the government spends money — but it does so within a for-profit market structure, with limited price controls, no universal regulation, and high administrative overhead from billing fragmentation. That’s a capitalist system — just one with some public dollars trying to paper over the gaps.
What is important here is not where the money goes, but where it comes from. On a free market (which defines capitalism in Adam Smith's original interpretation) the producer chooses what to produce, and the customer chooses what to buy - and unless two people have agreed on a voluntary exchange, no transaction occurs. The government first collecting the money from the individual by force and then transferring it to private companies is not the same mode of economical exchange as the individual voluntarily paying said companies for their services. This is not a capitalist system "just one with some public dollars": this is a distinction that makes all the difference.

What happens when someone is unhappy with the service on the free market? They go to a different provider - and there will be a provider soon (probably already is), for the unfulfilled demand creates a great opportunity for enterpreneurs. What happens when someone is unhappy with the service on the corrupt market like the one we have in the US? Well, I cannot go to a different government - and I have already paid this one for the healthcare "services". So now I deal with marvelous tooth extractions costing $5,000, because bureaucrats have a very strong incentive to inflate the prices so they can get an ever bigger cut off my hard-earned salary.

If you oppose this system, then we are in agreement. But you seem to oppose it in that it is not sufficiently controlled by the government. Well, in the nearby Canada my aunt had to wait for over a year to do a tooth implant... I am not up for that kind of a service - forced on me, to add to the insult.


This one I have to push back on more strongly. These programs were created because millions of people were either dying, suffering untreated illness, or going broke because they were uninsurable in the private market. Before Medicare’s creation in 1965, half of Americans over 65 had no health insurance, and nearly 1 in 3 lived in poverty. The private market refused to cover them because they weren’t profitable.

The same goes for Medicaid — it wasn’t idealism, it was necessity. The idea that these programs exist because of some mass delusion ignores both the suffering that led to them and the widespread public support they continue to have.

And yes, “we” means all of us — because even if you personally don’t use those programs, your society, your emergency room, your hospital system, and even your premiums are shaped by whether or not others have access to basic care. Healthcare is interconnected. It doesn’t work like buying a phone or a candy bar.
Health insurance was not as essential in 1965 because the healthcare services were much more affordable: you did not have to pay an equivalent of today's $2,000 for a bottle of insulin. With googling, I find that the life expectancy in the US in 1965 was 70.21 years, while in France it was 70.81, and in Canada 71.87 - negligible difference. Today, with all these programs in place, life expectancy in the US is 79.40, versus 83.39 in France and 83.26 in Canada. Of course, many other factors are involved here - but what one can confidently say is that the governmental control over the healthcare in the US has increased significantly more than in those two countries, yet the outcomes appear reverse. 

I am not sure I understand the distinction you draw between healthcare and a phone industry. What choices others make shapes the price of an iPhone as well as it shapes the price of an insulin bottle. The difference is, I am not forced to subsidize other people's iPhones: I use Android myself, and how much my purchasing choices affect other people is of little concern to me for I buy products for myself, not for them. Steve Jobs was able to find a way to make a mutually beneficial trade with me and hundreds of millions of people worldwide without appealing to someone's morality, and - crucially - without forcing someone else to pay for anything and dealing with every customer one-on-one. There is no reason for healthcare or anything else to work differently.


Exactly. And that’s the point — healthcare isn’t a Snickers bar. It’s not a luxury good or a convenience product. It’s a universal, life-critical need that every person encounters eventually, often under emergency conditions, with highly asymmetrical knowledge and no real consumer choice.

You can shop for shoes or laptops. You can’t “shop around” when you’re unconscious in an ambulance, or comparing cancer treatment plans, or watching your child spike a 105-degree fever at 3 a.m. Markets rely on informed, optional decision-making — healthcare doesn’t work that way.

And when markets meet desperation, we get exploitation — not efficiency.
If a Snickers bar cannot be outsourced to the government because it would botch it, then how can something as important as healthcare? Well, it botched it, as we can see from the US example - but people's solution is to treat poison with more poison, apparently.

You absolutely can shop around for the cases when you are unconscious. You cannot shop while you are unconscious, sure - but you also cannot shop when you are dead from malnutrition, yet there is no federal program that sends Snickers bars to people who are about to die of starvation. That is why we have heads on our shoulders: we can think and plan ahead.

I cannot think of anything more exploitative than someone taking my money against my consent. Of course, when my need for something is great, the providers are going to upcharge me - and that is only right: what they have to offer is of a tremendous value to me. This is not exploitation, but basic human behavior. Conversely, I may happen to have something that they desperately need and make a profit off it. Not doing so is a matter of personal consciousness, not a matter of the police or the government.


On the contrary, recognizing that different services require different structures is a mark of thoughtful design, not lack of imagination.

  • Capitalism works best for competitive goods — things you can choose not to buy, or easily substitute.
  • It works worst for essential goods with no substitutes — healthcare, education, water, energy, infrastructure.
  • That’s why every country in the world — including the U.S. — already regulates these sectors, subsidizes them, or provides them publicly in some way.
If a profit-maximizing company can increase profits by denying care, raising prices, or excluding unprofitable patients, it will — that’s capitalism working as designed. That’s not a bug. That’s the logic of markets applied to the logic of life, and it’s incompatible.
This argument fails in the face of the fact that, in case of the government intervention, a structure is forced on everyone. If you believe that the service should be provided via one structure and I believe that it should be provided via another, then we can voice our desires and shop accordingly. But if you believe that the government should run healthcare and I believe that it does not, then you can force me to pay for your preferred structure, while I am not trying to force you to pay for mine.

If you do not believe that capitalism can provide you with particular services, then you can search for other means of obtaining them - peaceful ones. Find like-minded people and build a mutual fund with them, so you can support each other. Forcing others to pay for you playing with your theories is not thoughtful - it is violent.


Final thought: You mentioned ChatGPT as something people couldn’t imagine 10 years ago. That’s a great point. But the takeaway isn’t that capitalism can solve anything — it’s that technology evolves, and we decide how to use it. AI could be used to improve healthcare access globally — or to sell more ad space and lay off medical coders. It depends on who controls it, and what incentives they follow.

“Putting people over profit” isn’t a slogan — it’s a design choice. And history shows that when healthcare is organized around care, not capital, people live longer, spend less, and suffer less.
Capitalism does not "solve" problems: people do. Capitalism merely assures that you solving your problems in your garden does not result in my garden being destroyed. You may find a way to bioengineer an unbelievable garden that produces a ton of tomatoes every day - cool! But if for that you have to hire an army of thugs that will take over all the gardens in the village, then you are not solving a societal problem - you are just robbing other people.

#109
Proletariat
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@Debunker
You have to be trolling at this point — it’s hard to take this seriously anymore.

“Debunking” isn’t a magic word you get to declare to end a conversation. That kind of one-word dismissal, repeated over and over, isn’t debate — it’s just a tactic to shut down real discussion. It’s the same strategy Roy Cohn taught Trump: never engage honestly, just repeat yourself louder and claim you’ve won.

I already replied to your first “debunked” with facts, sources, and data. You ignored all of it. That shows this isn’t about engaging — it’s about steering the conversation in a loop where you control when it ends and how it sounds. That’s not productive.

For that reason, I won’t be replying to you further. It doesn’t feel like there’s any genuine engagement here — just repetition, deflection, and an aversion to real dialogue. I’m here for discussion, not performance. As for other individuals, since it seems there is a genuine discussion going on, I will keep responding to them when I have the time.
#110
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@MayCaesar
I appreciate the philosophical framing, but the real-world consequences of relying solely on voluntary exchange in healthcare are already well-documented — and deadly.

You’ve built an elegant theory. But healthcare isn’t a theory. It’s a reality — and that reality breaks the market model the moment someone gets hit by a bus, diagnosed with cancer, or priced out of insulin. In theory, voluntary markets protect freedom. In practice, they restrict care to the highest bidder. And that’s not freedom — it’s triage by income.

Let’s start with the foundation of your argument: that coercion (via taxation) is morally worse than any result it produces — even mass suffering. That’s a bold moral claim, and one you haven’t justified. You suggest that as long as no one is forced to participate, the system is just — even if people die preventable deaths or suffer lifelong illness because they were priced out of care. But if a system allows suffering that we could have prevented together, that’s not moral purity — it’s calculated neglect.

You argue this isn’t capitalism because money is collected through taxes. But this ignores what kind of system those taxes are funding. The U.S. has one of the most privatized healthcare markets on Earth. Most government healthcare dollars go to private providers, insurers, and hospitals, with no price controls, fragmented billing, and zero universal coverage. That’s not socialism — it’s capitalism with a bailout. And it’s failing.

You say people should just “shop around” for better care. That doesn’t work in emergencies. It doesn’t work when provider networks are closed. It doesn’t work when patients don’t have price transparency or medical expertise. And it doesn’t work when you can’t afford anything on the shelf. This is not a free market — it’s an exclusion market, where the sickest people are the least profitable and the most expendable.

You invoke your aunt’s wait time in Canada — but ignore the fact that every Canadian is covered, no one goes bankrupt from medical bills, and their outcomes are better across the board: higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, fewer preventable deaths. If delays in elective procedures are the cost of covering everyone, most people consider that a better deal than a system where people ration insulin or skip chemo because they can’t afford it.

You also compare healthcare to iPhones and candy bars, as if these are morally equivalent. But healthcare isn’t a consumer good — it’s a universal, life-dependent necessity. No one chooses to get cancer. No one shops for ambulance rides. You say it’s “only right” that people pay more when their need is desperate — but that’s not right. That’s exploitation, and we ban it in every other sector where life and safety are at risk. It’s only in healthcare that we normalize it — and call it freedom.

Now, about the garden metaphor. You said capitalism ensures I don’t trample your garden to fix mine. But what happens when your garden is thriving and mine is on fire — and you own all the water? In that case, your right to withhold becomes a death sentencefor others. A system based entirely on consent sounds peaceful — until you realize consent is a luxury that not everyone has the power to exercise. That’s the flaw in your worldview: you’ve mistaken privilege for fairness.

Finally, you said: “Capitalism doesn’t solve problems, people do.” And I agree — but people built these systems. They chose to profit off pain. They chose to let prices rise while coverage shrinks. They chose a model where denying care increases shareholder value. That’s not just an unfortunate side effect. It’s the market logic, applied to human life.

“Putting people over profit” isn’t utopian. It’s been implemented all over the world — and it works better. Countries that treat healthcare as a public good spend less, live longer, and suffer less. The data is clear. The alternative — a market that lets you live only if you can afford it — isn’t just inefficient. It’s inhumane.

So no — this isn’t about crushing your garden. It’s about refusing to live in a society where people watch others burn while insisting the fire hose would violate property rights.
#111
Debunker
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@Proletariat
 liberal sources such as ...Fox, Newsmax... or any other mainstream liberal media.
What? You must be a Trumper. Typical man.

You invoke your aunt’s wait time in Canada — but ignore the fact that every Canadian is covered, 

You are definitely an American. We don't get dental, eyecare, prescription drugs, mental health, physical rehab, and lots more.

Debunked.
#112
Skipper_Sr
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@LucyStarFire
You shouldn’t be sorry. He’s accepted the consequences for his actions like a big boy and naturally asserts being a 13 yr old girl with mind of 3 year old
I dont have mind of a 3 year old. My mental age is 13. I just act like a 3 year old. Get your facts right!
Ah, you’re right. I had it mixed up. Why is your personality so confusing? 🫠
#113
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@LucyStarfire
^^^
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#114
Double_R
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@fauxlaw
A decision between Trump and Kammycakes is a logic pretzel?
No genius, the reason you offered to back up your decision - as in the one where you tried to paint the democrats as objectionable because of their lack of adherence to the principals of democracy while voting for the insurrectionist - is a logic pretzel.
#115
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@Double_R
I love me a salty hot bretzel for breakfast.
#116
MayCaesar
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@Proletariat
First, I have not made any moral proclamations: everything I said is about physical reality. Morality is subjective, and I have no business making the argument that freedom is objectively more moral than tyranny.

Second, nothing breaks the moment an emergency happens. Your argument depends on the assumption that a part of a functional system is the guarantee for public support in case of an emergency - smuggling in word "public" with no justification. In turn, this relies on the assumption that humans are fundamentally responsible for each other's well-being - one that I reject, and one that reeks of tyranny. Collectivism is fundamentally tyrannical, for it proclaims that one can only justify their existence by supporting others. I do not like tyranny; I prefer freedom.

In the real world, when a human needs something and cannot acquire it by himself, he has to obtain it from others. Obtaining it is possible in two ways: via peaceful negotiation, or via violent coercion. This is the dichotomy that matters in this discussion, and while you can justify violent coercion by any moral considerations or "higher goods" you like, in the end you are simply endorsing banditry.

You are engaged in defense of the same kind of social engineering as communists did (and you might be one, judging by your nickname, which would explain your position). See, humans get cancer, and have gotten cancer for hundreds thousands of years - but now, for the first time in the history of mankind, humans have learned to treat it... And, based on no explicit reasoning whatsoever, you assume that now everyone who has cancer should be treated regardless of what value they have to offer in exchange for the treatment. I will ask a very simple question: why?

You complain about people exploiting others - but you have gotten it exactly backwards. See, without those "exploiters" there would be no cancer treatments in the first place. So someone has developed a new service and offers it for an understandably high price - and they are somehow the villain? Of course they are profiting on other people's suffering: other people's suffering is the only reason anyone has ever done research in medicine to begin with. Providing people with a relief from suffering at a high price is better than not doing anything at all. What have you done to improve cancer treatment? Nothing? Then, perhaps, you should not tell those who have done a lot how to use their invention.

The Canadian system has decided that my aunt does not need the implant as much as someone else needs something. Imagine if you go to a grocery store tomorrow, hungry, and the store owner refuses to sell you anything, because he thinks that someone else needs the food more... Well, you will go to a different store and never come back here again. The kicker is, with the government-run healthcare there is no different store. You are just screwed.

You agree with me that the grocery store example displays an unforgivable behavior on the part of the seller. BUT if the seller is elected by the mob, THEN it changes! Sorry, but this makes no sense whatsoever.

But it does make sense in the collectivist assumption that, on some level, humans own each other's lives. That, by nature of me living on the same piece of land as you, I owe you more than just letting you be: I owe you help any time that your situation becomes dire. That is a relatively new development - government-provided welfare programs were not a thing until a century and a half ago in the Western world - but people now treat this development as some kind of groundbreaking discovery.

Meanwhile, a lot more people in the US die of obesity than of rare diseases with astronomically expensive treatments. So fit people like me end up subsidizing slackers munching chips and watching Netflix all day. At least the US does not have such extensive welfare programs as, say, Germany does where one can never bother to work at all. That would be the logical conclusion to collectivism: just guarantee everyone with exactly identical living conditions regardless of their life choices. I find it a disgusting idea, even aside from the fact that, every time anything approximately similar was tried, millions of corpses would litter the ground.
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#117
Double_R
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@WyIted
How does it strip the poor of their healthcare to cut wasteful spending in that program
Because the poor who are Medicaid are the very people being deemed wasteful spending.

so it's more sustainable long term and can help more people?
Adding another $3T to our debt is what makes programs like this unsustainable. The idea that any individual program has to be cut for sustainability is ridiculous. We can spend the national treasury however we want, the only question is what are our priorities? In this bill that question is answered; tax cuts for the wealthy and a national police force to get rid of the brown people. That's what you voted for.
#118
Debunker
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@Double_R
Why are Americans so obsessed with skin color? Do they teach that in your schools?
#119
WyIted
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@Double_R
Because the poor who are Medicaid are the very people being deemed wasteful spending.
So let's take social security for example. The goal here is to find obvious cases of fraud like 300 year olds on it and then stop cashing those checks. 

The reason we cut taxes on tips and overtime which Democrats voted against was to help the working class, ideally we could improve the healthcare system and access to healthcare by completely eliminating these subsidies, but we all agree ripping that band-aid off in the short term would be too painful to be politically viable though it is the best long term play so what we do now is try to mitigate the damage from over spending to help these programs exist for longer. It doesn't help the country if we go the direction the left what's to go and turn into Venezuela so we are just trying to make the social safety net stronger and streamline processes. 

We don't have like unlimited money. I know it's nice to thing "well we should just give everyone everything for free" but the reality is that harms society look at societies that have attempted it, so the goal is to just be reasonable. 
#120
n8nrgim
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The usa actually has worse wait times to see doctors than other countries in general. That's because we have a shortage of doctors compared to most other places. We do generally better with specialized care but we aren't at the top. Canadians don't flock here... some come sure. But Canada has worse wait tines cause they have even fewer doctors. Public Healthcare don't go hand in hand with wait times. That's a myth. There's some connection but it's very loose