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@Greyparrot
do you have any citations on your trillion dollar claim?
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@Greyparrot
i read that americans spend around a hundred and fifty billion on tax preperation
i realize there's more to it than just tax prep if you are including fraud and such, but i think this gives us a rough idea about what we are dealing with. it's not much compared to the twenthy some trillion dollar debt. the fact remains that you are talking about something not too relevant
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@Alec
u should start a thread about open borders. there is a lot of strong sentiment against that idea
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@Greyparrot
if you reduce the debt by cutting spending, to also make a flat tax doable, you didn't reduce the debt by creating a flat tax. you cut the debt by cutting spending.
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@Alec
how would you feel if the government teamed up with private charity, gave money to the charity to help people? at first i was against the idea, cause for a lot of problems, it shouldn't be a charity's problem. like i dont think it's the problem of charity to make sure healthcare is affordable. but, i do see your point that a charity isn't tied up with beurocracy and can direct people in a smarter way. i may be open to the government/charity team up for practical purposes if anything.
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@Alec
a lot of your arguments are about why people on welfare should just pull themselves up from their bootstraps. the problem is that your original argument is that they would be better off if we didn't help them. you are changing the goal post.
let's face it. a lot of low wage people are just stupid. a lot of the jobs u mentioned are for smart people. somebody's gotta work low wage jobs, and it's often just stupid people who get stuck with it. i realize they aren't the severely disabled, but they are lacking in ability. not assisting them doesn't help them more, your original argument.
and why should someone work two full time jobs to pay for their healthcare? healthcare should be affordable for anyone who works full time, at least. it's out of reach to many. so why complain if people choose to forgo material wealth for help with healthcare? it's something they should get help with, and they are sacrificing too, so.
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@Alec
also what's the big deal if some people choose to not get ahead as much as they can when they are in such a bad situation? if all you get if free food and healthcare, you get no material wealth. very little welfare is about material wealth. food stamps these days are limited in time with work requirements. healthcare is so exoribantly expensive, it may make little sense to try to pay for it yourself. for one reason or another, people are in a bad situation if they are around the poverty line. if they choose to stay that way they may have a decent reason, and it's their choice. why make a fuss about it?
again, i know there are non government alternatives. but you are talking about this as if they would be better off if we didn't help them. as if they didn't realize they could get ahead themselves or something
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@Alec
it's one thing to say there are alternatives to the government out there. but that's not your original argument. your argument is that the government helping them makes them worse off. that can't be said for everyone who gets help.
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@Alec
some disabled people are too severely disabled to find ways to be better off.
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@Alec
bob is a schizophrenic homeless man. he is struggling with starvation. but giving him food stamps makes his situation worse?
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also it's ridiculous to say poverty would have been eradicated. what about disabled people? as jesus said, we will always have the poor with us.
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@Alec
it sometimes keeps people poor. it also sometimes gives food and healthcare to people who need it.
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so giving food to people who are struggling with starvation,is counter productive sometimes, therefore it shouldn't be done?
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i personally believe too much debt is bad. but this guy below has another argument. it's over my head. i think there's some truth to what he says, but i don't know. i know there are a lot of people smarter than me here, so maybe one of ya'll can argue with what is posted below.
Is the natinoal debt and deficit bad?
Nowhere do these CRFB folks define what the National DEBT is.They don't know.Yet, they screed about it as if they do.Our national debt is comprised of Treasury securities purchased by individuals firms and governments domestic and foreign who wish to preserve the value of their dollars.Ergo, the transfer their non-interest bearing dollars from checking accounts to purchase interest-bearing Treasury securities.The dollars used to buy the T-securities go into reserve accounts at the Federal Reserve and the T-securities are kept in security accounts at the Federal Reserve.In no way can these purchases (exactly like your purchase of a CD) be construed as debt.Interest is credited to T-security accounts by debiting the aforementioned Reserve accounts. No tax dollars are ever involved in paying interest on these SAVINGS ACCOUNTS.The DEBT CLOCK on 6th Ave, NYC is pure fraud. It does, however, record all the dollars that have been spent by the Federal government since 1778 and not yet taxed. The $20 trillion-plus represents our National Savings.Government debt is a private asset. You and I do not OWE government debt, we OWN it. Indeed, the only source of net dollar-denominated financial wealth is Federal government T-securities.Here's a solution. Once the federal T-security sales reach $21.1 trillion, the Treasury would be prohibited from selling any more bonds. Treasury would continue to spend by crediting bank accounts of recipients, and reserve accounts of their banks. Banks would offer excess reserves in overnight markets, but would find no takers—hence would have to be content holding reserves and earning whatever rate the Fed wants to pay. But as Chairman Bernanke told Congress, this is no problem because the Fed spends simply by crediting bank accounts. (L. Randall Wray) https://goo.gl/m9hdQWAs for the Federal Deficit, they WRONGLY believe the Federal deficit is a bad thing.They are completely unaware of the fact that wherever there's a deficit there's a surplus ... balance sheets must balance. A sovereign government deficit is nothing to fear. It is simply the mirror image of the non-government sector's saving. As the US private sector retrenched to rebuild its balance sheet, the government's balance moved toward deficit. There is an unrecognized identity at work. Domestic Private Balance + Domestic Government Balance + Foreign Balance = 0.In the case of the Federal budget deficit, it is equal to the penny to net financial surpluses in the non-government sector.That's money in our checking accounts.When the gov spends that becomes income to individuals and firms in the private sector. It's the new money that enters the economy interest-free and is essential in its contribution to economic growth. https://goo.gl/Fq9fKD
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the walls that are currently there stop up to ninety percent of people crossing in some areas. people just go where there is no wall. it stands to reason if you had that sort of wall the whole border, it would stop some people as it currently does. people say if you build a thirty food tall wall, they will just make a thirty one foot ladder. but it's far fetched to think there will be hundreds of thousands of ladders to aid the current hundreds of thousand that currently cross per year. migrants from south america would probably just stop coming a lot, instead of assimilating with mexico enough to get ladders. parents won't bring there kids over. some people just won't try cause it's hard. if you make it too easy, people will just run right through. it's far fetched to think one hundred percent of people who want to cross will still find a way
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you have things like the church contradicting itself on whether the sun goes around the earth. i dont know how offical those teachings were though, the magic hat allows for that possibility. plus that is an issue of science, not faith and morals per the strict definition of infalliblity.
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the church has to officially teach something for it to be considered unchangeable dogma. of course, the church teaches its teaching can and won't change, that it's never contradicted itself. what do the facts say?
you have the old catechism that says the death penalty can be used along with the consensus of theologians and at least unofficial pope teachings, but a new catechism that says otherwise. that's what the magic hat allows for cause who knows what's official.
you have the idea that noncatholics can't be saved taught in definitive language. then you have new catechisms and at least unoffical teachings that they could be saved. the magic hat allows for the possibility that the old teaching is still true. it's a stretch to pretend the new teaching is recocilable with the old stuff.
then limbo which was pretty offical but now it's not considered official, that unbaptized children go to hell.
you have teachings that popes can unbind official teaching. i dont know how offical those teachings themselves are, but the magic hat says it's possible those are flawed teachings.
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@Greyparrot
i think you are right. people don't like change. doesn't mean the change is wrong though. just like, people didn't like obamacare when it came out, then once they got use to it, they didnt want it changed. medicare for all is too ambitious to act like it's gonna happen. incremental change is more realistic. something like a public option, so people have options. tinker with medicare's age eligbility. find a way to cover the currently uninsured. things like that. i think even you said you might be open to a public option for the poor? one of you conservative guys said that.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
i have too much faith in the american economy to think masses of people would be relegated to unemployment permanently. why is it when there are inefficiencies elsewhere conservatives are quick to want to do away with them and figure out the rest later? also, if we kept medicare as it is, insurance wouldn't even be outlawed, so they would just adapt to different dynamics. there might be some downsizing, but like i said, the economy will adapt to a higher priority and more efficient outcome.
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@Greyparrot
canada is the only exception to better quality that i know of. in that commonwealth study, it showed they were the only one that had worse wait times than the usa. not surprisingly, they also have less doctors than us, where we already have fewer doctors than everyone else. politicians in canada want to be able pay for their own doctor so they dont have to have wait times or other problems. canada is truly single payer where healthcare is outlawed. the thing is, medicare for all in the usa doesn't have the problem of being single payer technially speaking, and we dont have the doctor and wait time problem as much as they do.
i mean, you focus on the one country who might be a bad example. id expect you next to compare us to the VA or UK where it's actually socialized medicine, when that's not anything anyone is even promoting.
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@Greyparrot
no one is saying it's better, just adequate. politicians want the full service. they dont want copays or deductible, and they want things covered like long term care which isn't covered with medicare.
it's hard for someone to be against something they dont know anything about. if every other country does it, this deserves a person to be educated about it before judging it. the link in the opening post is a good place to start, but google will work wonders if you dont know basic healthcare policy.
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here are some interesting facts that can help someone do thought experiments.
healthcare costs three and a half trillion in the usa.
employers cover half the costs currently
the average income in the usa is around forty or fifty thousand for a person
the top ten percent of tax payers pay half the income taxes and of course the rest of people pay the rest
the richest people pay a trillion in taxes and the rest pay another trillion
almost every other developed country pays half as much as the usa does on healthcare
healthcare costs ten k in the usa per captia and half that elsewhere
using thought experiments, we could assume employers would cover half the costs of healthcare in a universal system, or 1.8 trillion. that means if we doubled minus a bit people's taxes, we could cover the rest. of course, if it was possible to get our spending down to the level in the rest of the world, we wouldn't have to increase income taxes at all, as businesses could cover it all. or, you can do your own thought experiments to determine how much proportionally each segment of society would pay.
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@Greyparrot
if every other developed country provides affordable healthcare that is almost always better, why do you think the usa would be an exception?
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@Greyparrot
i don't trust anyone. i know i don't trust the free market to provide for everyone. the government is often incompetent, but i trust it enough to provide a basic threshold for the necessities. i figure, every other developed country has affordable healthcare that is almost always better quality than us, so what makes us different? how would you answer the question of what makes us different? what about who do you trust?
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if we did it as i said in my last post, the only people who would be uninsured would be people who are healthy and make a lot of money but dont want health insurance. they only pay for the extra taxes it takes to fund mediciad. medicare is more self sufficient, though unfortunately general taxes do make up a lot of the revenue for it.
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it might be best to just expand eligibility to medicaid and medicare. put people on obamacare on medicaid, increase the amount they can earn, and cover everyone who is on the poorer side. then lower medicare's age eligbility to 55. if we did these two things, we'd cover everyone, and people can keep their existing health care if they want. if you make 50 k, taxes might have to go up to cover medicaid more, but i dont think it'd be such a monumental shift as medicare for all that it would break the bank.
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@Greyparrot
well if you can show a free market way to provide healthcare to everyone at reasonable costs, we're all ears.
didn't you once say you thought a public option for poor people wasn't such a bad idea? that's where i might end up thinking is best.
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@oromagi
even if the tax was thirteen thousand that's still a lot of money if it falls on a dude making 50k. i think i read that someone making that much pays 12k in income and payroll taxes. if you add another thirteen on top, you're bringing their take home down to 25k. that's gonna rub a lot of people the wrong way, and id wonder about all the poor people who don't pay taxes basically ending up the same as someone making 50k.
plus you're assuming we could get down to 13k in taxes as germans etc do. the thing is, they regulate costs, all developed countries do, to get their costs down by a half of what the usa pays. i dont think we can regulate costs as much as everyone else, because healthcare businesses need to make enough profit to innovate and exist. these companies can afford to pay knock off countries less because they make their real money in the usa.
but it would make sense that a family of four in the usa would pay 40k in taxes, cause per capita healthcare costs are ten k each. i think your numbers at 25k make sense only if we assume the top ten percent of payers are going to pay half the costs, proportional to how it's done now.
so anyways, i think we're talking about somewhere between 13 and 25k in taxes. still a lot of money. a lot of pissed off people, for sure.
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@dustryder
well, i agree someone making fifty k can afford to pay a little more in taxes. i'm not sure how much that extra amount would be, though, and that matters. if the average cost in the usa is seven to ten grand a year, that's a hefty extra tax, unless the businesses of the country do enough to bring it down, along with all the other cost saving measures.
but even if you and me agree, it would piss off a lot of people. if we can jam medicare for all down the throats of the country, that's fine by me. but what if the problem of the extra tax, along with all the other winners and losers means for political practical purposes that we can't just cram it down people's throats. public option might be best?
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@Greyparrot
well as dust was arguing, none of the people who are affected by estate taxes are poor. they might be a family farm, but they are a wealthy family farm.
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@Greyparrot
how exactly would an estate tax suppress the poor? you say a lot of cockamamie, off the wall, deflective stuff
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@dustryder
very well argued. you get an A+
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we can have universal care that is cheaper than it is now, with better quality and shorter wait times.
but if we did medicare for all, how would our tax system transition?
i'm coming at this from more of a conservative angle, and would like to debate or discuss with a medicare for all proponent.
take someone who makes 50k. they are average. one would think we would take obamacare's basic structure of taxing businesses that are large enough. but wouldn't that person making fifty k also get taxed? what if they in the current system make fifty k and get free healthcare from their boss? wouldn't the transition make that person end up getting a tax they otherwise wouldn't if things stayed the same?
i mean, if we were starting from scratch, this is a no brainer that medicare for all is best. i'm just worried about the winners and losers in trying to get to that point now. kinda makes me think some sort of public option would be better, for practical purposes, or at least political purposes
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why doesn't the debris just float around the planet everywhere? how and why does it form a ring?
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would you rather be taxed on money you earn now, or money after you are dead? that's obvious. even if we had to lower income and other taxes to make up for an estate tax increase, either way we should increase taxes on estate taxes.
it should go without saying, we need to do something to keep our debt manageable and this would help, especially if we didn't offset increasing estate taxes with lowering other taxes.
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most indicators say we are slightly polygamous in our natural state anyway, so why do we discriminate against multiple partner marriages, if we are willing to allow for gay marriage? i actually support gay marriage, but id say we shouldn't limit ourselves.
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in 1974 the minimum wage was 2 bucks. if it kept up with inflation, it would be almost twelve dollars today. if you want to see with your own eyes what i say is true about inflation, check out this link and use a compound interest calculator to determine today's value.
as to the old argument about whether we should have a minimum wage. it's a fact that we live in a demand economy. the economy is mostly stimulated by increased demand. it's mostly effective with the middle class spending, because they spend on such a wide range of products and services. it's reasonable to think if the wage is not below poverty that it would stimulate the economy.
my theory is that the minimum wage is like the laffer curve. the laffer curve says government revenue increases with increasing taxes up to a point, then decreases with too much taxes. minimum wage is probably similar. the economy improves with increasing wages but at a certain point too much increase is bad.
i can't say 1974 was the magic number year. but i can say if we got rid of the minimum wage, it would hurt the economy almost surely. and, 1974 was the beginning of some of the most economically vital times in history. if it's good for our past, it's good for our future.
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this method to stimulate human evolution would work to cause speciation.
a new society is created. perhaps it's on an island or on another planet. it consists of new born to 30 year olds. only the best and the brightest 500 people from society are picked. intelligence and physical attributes. they do genetic testing on the people to ensure diseases and problems indicated by genes and family history are rooted out.
eighteen to thirty year olds are permitted to breed.
then the population of five hundred would be permitted to expand to five thousand. then by the time it got to five thousand, five hundred of the best are picked out to breed. this method of expansion and retraction would be put on repeat. i'm not expert but i'm assuming these numbers would work. i'm sure the experts can pick ideal numbers to cause this stuff to happen. when a parent shows that it later develops a disease, that can disqualify the offspring as well.
eventually, this would lead to speciation.
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@Tradesecret
what are your views of the noah story as posed in this thread? i ask cause you seem like a smart, learned christian, so i'm curious.
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on the cost point here are a couple highlights from the copy and paste above....
-the non-partisan committee for a responsible federal budget gives some examples of reforming Medicare, without cutting benefits, where major savings could be established and medicare become sustainable
would universal care starve research and development, innovation? this article says not, and it says that we spend around a hundred bilion per year on reseach and development. you can see it's just a fraction of what we spend on our trillions in healthcare. we could double our R and D spending and still cover everyone.
-is the problem malpractice costs? if you count premiums and the amount paid by insurance malpractice companies, and the cost of defensive medicine where doctors use procedures they otherwise wouldn't to avoid lawsuits, the amount comes out to less than fifty billion dollars. again, this is a small fraction of the trillions we spend in healthcare.
-A, or 'the', major problem we have five percent of patients that cause half our healthcare expenses. this could potentially be regulated by creating a "high risk" category in the industry, where reimbursement is lower. If we reduced that category of expense by half, we should reduce the overall cost of healthcare by a quarter. (think of the GDP numbers, instead of 18 percent, we'd be closer to other countries) Think of the bigger picture- the average that is spent on each of those patients is $40,000 per year. You could hire a doctor to take car of just five of them and his salary would be paid for. Trying to manage care like that is easier said than done though. So what happens is we end up having the healthcare industry milk each procedure and charge too much overall.
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i think having more billing clerks than nurses might just add to our bloated system. reducing the billing invovlved would do a lot to reduce the administrative costs.
as you know, a third of healthcare costs are just from administrative overhead.
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-none of the existing proposals are the only methods. some free market types have posited that we could have universal catastrophic care (covering care above a certainly yearly deductible), and something for the poor. the free market would drive down costs for everyone else on non-catastrophic issues that arise. A variation on this theme is they could outlaw non-catastrophic insurance and promote health savings accounts that already exist. Another variation, if lawmakers wanted to play twisted with poor tax payers, they could give them subsidies before their catastrophic coverage kicks in that they can pocket if they don't use to discourage overuse. (this wouldn't be politically popular and has questionable ethics, too)-France is rated number one by the world health organization and has an esteemed tort reformed system. (not that this is the major driver of costs)-a universal system probably wouldn't be like the VA, especially in the USA. most countries aren't either. that is where the government is employer of healthcare workers. most universal care proposals only rely on the government at most as an insurer, not as taking over everything. government as employer like the VA is only the case in the UK, but they don't have significant problems there anyway. the VA isn't as bad as it used to be either as most veterans are happy with their care.Would the USA suffer in the time we wait to see a Doctor?:-the idea that we have to wait longer in a single payer system is mostly a myth. according to the Commowealth for most procedures the usa is well below average in wait times. for some specialized care, the usa is towards the top, but still not best.-a libertarian who supports french healthcare: "For a dozen years now I’ve led a dual life, spending more than 90 percent of my time and money in the U.S. while receiving 90 percent of my health care in my wife’s native France. On a personal level the comparison is no contest: I’ll take the French experience any day. ObamaCare opponents often warn that a new system will lead to long waiting times, mountains of paperwork, and less choice among doctors. Yet on all three of those counts the French system is significantly better, not worse, than what the U.S. has now."-the idea that canadians come here because of wait times is mostly a myth. only 20 for every 18,000 canadians come here on purpose for healthcare. it's not clear why they choose to do so (maybe there's a wait issue, maybe they respect the USA more given its reputation for quality in some areas of healthcare), but it's clear the numbers are miniscule. the atlantic article above does say canada is the only country worse in wait times, so there could be that, so a slight extent. the only reason canadians are worse, though, is because they choose to not fund healthcare as much as other countries or the usa does- a political decision that can be remedied here, and isn't a problem any where else.What can we conclude on wait times?:
-wait times is mostly a red herring- if we want decent access to doctors we shouldn't limit the supply of doctors like we have in the usa. let the free market work more in this regard.
-every other developed country is either single payer or has some sort of government involvement majorly. and they all are almost half as costly. most countries to save money by regulating costs. this is probably why specialized care wait times has been hurt some in other countries. but the fact that the usa is not the best in that regards, shows that it can be done better than here and with government involvement that covers everyone. and, all it means is we shouldn't be too gung ho on over regulating specialized care.
-other countries are like us. to the extent that there are wait times, it's mostly for people who dont need urgent care. the more urgent your situation, the faster you get seen. that's how it's done here too. any delay to the less urgent isn't significant enough to justify all the good points of single payer or a government involved method.
-there might be some limitation to access if we open up access to doctors to the remaining ten percent of uninsured just by demand going up some, but ten percent more people would not cause a significant shift in outcomes, and most states have less than that uninsured. There would be no lines under a universal health care system in the United States because we have about a 30% oversupply of medical equipment and surgeons, whereas demand would increase less than 10%. and, is it all that moral to make your own care better by denying it to someone else? especially when you can just find a way to take care of them that doesn't really affect you, but you simply choose not to?
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-universal care doesn't have to be single payer or some form of a public option. switzerland does it like obamacare, yet it's affordable. the main way, as has been discussed, is because of regulating and negotiating with the health industry on costs.-would universal care starve research and development, innovation? this article says not, and it says that we spend around a hundred bilion per year on reseach and development. you can see it's just a fraction of what we spend on our trillions in healthcare. we could double our R and D spending and still cover everyone.-is the problem malpractice costs? if you count premiums and the amount paid by insurance malpractice companies, and the cost of defensive medicine where doctors use procedures they otherwise wouldn't to avoid lawsuits, the amount comes out to less than fifty billion dollars. again, this is a small fraction of the trillions we spend in healthcare.-If we keep health insurance to any extent, we need to make them non-profit organizations. Because health insurance in this country is for profit, they are going to do everything in their power to avoid paying your healthcare. Their main motivation is higher profits, not your well-being. Denying claims is just one clumsy way of saving money though; the main way is by avoiding unhealthy people altogether. In other countries, any surplus funds are directed towards lowering premiums. Some of the countries have a health system like our current Medicare, where basic dental and eye health along with some luxurious arraignments are only covered through supplemental insurance beyond the government basic coverage.
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Insurance companies spend thirty percent on the dollar on profit and administrative costs, while Medicare spends only three percent on administration. For every doctor, it is not uncommon to see two staff people just to take care of billing. There is also the marketing and legal departments, other issues that are redundant among insurance companies that run up administrative costs."We have 900 billing clerks at Duke (medical system, 900 bed hospital). I'm not sure we have a nurse per bed, but we have a billing clerk per bed... it's obscene." Reinhardt, Congressional Hearing on Healthcare Reform.-The main reason we spend so much is because the healthcare industry charges so much for any given procedure. The last link lists some things that are not the main problem that are commonly cited, as is also listed later on this page.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/upshot/united-states-health-care-resembles-rest-of-world.html
https://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20180407/NEWS/180409939-Hospitals are a bigger bad actor than insurance companies because they are prone to excessively charging simply because they can.-Doctors and other healthcare professionals salaries are included to some extent in the excess. There is an artificial restriction on the supply of doctors and they earn significantly more than their counterparts in other countries. There are fewer physicians per person than in most other OECD countries. In 2010, for instance, the U.S. had 2.4 practicing physicians per 1,000 people — well below below the OECD average of 3.1.-A, or 'the', major problem we have five percent of patients that cause half our healthcare expenses. this could potentially be regulated by creating a "high risk" category in the industry, where reimbursement is lower. If we reduced that category of expense by half, we should reduce the overall cost of healthcare by a quarter. (think of the GDP numbers, instead of 18 percent, we'd be closer to other countries) Think of the bigger picture- the average that is spent on each of those patients is $40,000 per year. You could hire a doctor to take car of just five of them and his salary would be paid for. Trying to manage care like that is easier said than done though. So what happens is we end up having the healthcare industry milk each procedure and charge too much overall.-half of people get their insurance through their jobs. a lot of people are satisfied, but not all of them. and there is a general awareness of the waste involved.-here is a public option plan that could cover anyone wanting to join and includes allowing employers to join. this plan, Americare, achieves savings through all the means mentioned above and makes healthcare universal and affordable.-here is a dude proposing public options through expanding medicaid and medicare. this sort of pragmatism hasn't been in the media a lot in recent years, but it's slowly becoming more mainstream. the second link illustrates some of the politically infeasible aspects of trying to get to single payer. the last link argues for a medicaid public option.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/05/bernie-sanders-single-payer-universal-coverage-the above link shows a slight majority of americans support universal care. there is an even higher support when you raise the proposition that it can be cheaper that way too.
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@Mage-CPA
here is the link to the info and following that is a copy and paste
Affordable Universal Care Information"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."
-Martin Luther King Jr.-Every other developed country besides the United States has affordable universal healthcare in some fashion. They have differing degrees of government involvement in the process along with private insurance to various degrees in some countries.-we spend 18 percent of our GDP on healthcare. every other developed country spends not much more than ten percent. if we ran healthcare like any of them, the difference amounts to over a trillion dollars a year. that's the equivalent of cutting people's income taxes in half. you can also look at the break down per capita and come to the same conclusions as bernie always does.
-Highlighting the need for reform: medicare and other government healthcare in the United States are running out of money, despite the common thinking that our payroll and other income taxes will pay for it all. The problem is so big, that healthcare is the only thing that could potentially bankrupt the country. The debt clock shows that our current GDP and debt is around 20 trillion, but future unfunded liability from healthcare is around 120 trillion.-There is speculation on what will happen when Medicare runs out of sufficient money to pay its bills. We might reform the system, put it on our debt, or print money to pay for it.
-before obamacare, a commonly cited statistic was that over forty five thousand people died a year without healthcare. after obamacare, that number fell. the exact number is disputed by some, but the consensus is that the number is tens of thousands. for instance, there is no shortage of stories of insurance companies that deny or battle coverage while someone is dying of cancer.-Despite paying more than other countries, we have significantly worse health outcomes compared to them, even beyond high death rates.Fact One: The United States ranks 23rd in infant mortality, down from 12th in 1960 and 21st in 1990Fact Two: The United States ranks 20th in life expectancy for women down from 1st in 1945 and 13th in 1960Fact Three: The United States ranks 21st in life expectancy for men down from 1st in 1945 and 17th in 1960.Fact Four: The United States ranks between 50th and 100th in immunizations depending on the immunization. Overall US is 67th, right behind BotswanaFact Five: Outcome studies on a variety of diseases, such as coronary artery disease, and renal failure show the United States to rank below Canada and a wide variety of industrialized nations.Conclusion: The United States ranks poorly relative to other industrialized nations in health care despite having the best trained health care providers and the best medical infrastructure of any industrialized nation-The current healthcare industry causes people to go bankrupt. One in four of your grandparents will go bankrupt trying to pay for healthcare in this country. Before Obamacare, half of bankruptcies were healthcare related. If an insurance company fights to pay for your cancer care, for instance, you will face not just the prospects of death, but won't receive any government assistance until you're lifetime saving from hard work, become depleted.-The primary way these countries save money is by negotiating and regulating costs (such as drug costs) but some also take out the insurance middleman to reduce administrative costs.https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSjGouBmo0M-Medicare spends twenty percent less than insurance for any given procedure, and Medicaid reimburses a third less than Medicare. (consider the bigger picture. if we spent a third less than we do now overall, we would be much closer to other countries spending rates)-the non-partisan committee for a responsible federal budget gives some examples of reforming Medicare, without cutting benefits, where major savings could be established and medicare become sustainable-
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the main way other countries save money is by regulating cost. nobody ever talks about it, but if you read a lot about this issue, you will find that to be true. also, other developed countries have on average thirty three percent more doctors than we do.
on a general note, remember that we have only ten percent of people without health insurance. would opening up care to them make us suddenly too expensive, or make the lines too long? no, not at only ten percent. especially if we do the logical thing and get more doctors and nurse practitioners, and regulate costs around the edges.
in the next post i will post a long page of healthcare policy in a nutshell. you can find other cost saving measures in there, along with points about how other countries can provide healthcare to everyone, at half the cost, with less wait times and better quality.
(on the wait times point, we have fewer doctors, and as the Commonwealth study says, longer wait times than almost all the other developed countries)
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a third of people blame democrats in congress for the shutdown. that means a third of people have no principles. of course this is trump's shut down. and secondly, the republicans. if bernie was president and shut down the government for single payer healthcare, then he'd be to blame on that. the issue here is the wall, trump's pet project. of course it's trump's fault. congress wants to override him, but mcconnell and many republicans won't let that happen. this is so painfully obvious that a third of people are just wrong. this is coming from someone who wants a wall. trump and presidents can't just circumvent checks and balances whenever they want something.
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@3RU7AL
no wall or fence is going to be so cheap that you can cut through it with tin snips. and the walls trump was proposing go into the ground to greatly reduce those who try to tunnel. the only way past it will be a ladder and rope. but the wall at least would greatly assist border patrol with technology in slowing down crossers.
so do you think zero percent of potential crossers will be deterred from trying to cross a wall? throw out a percent, i'm curious.... what percent of people will be deterred from a wall?
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if all a person was worried about was mexican stealing jobs, the better alternative to a wall would be enforcing the law with teeth, that says employers must check citizen status before hiring.
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