b_m_b_m_b_m

Next week

This is how virtually every school in the US should be.

So who could even have standing to challenge this in court? 

5 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

Like, I'm trying to keep up with his logic. 

Found where you fucked up

5 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

New study shows white Americans love government support programs — that is, if they’re the beneficiaries

And this gels exactly with what I'm saying in the berniecare thread. 

16 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

I am not advocating where to start or a poltical strategy. I am telling you what I think should be policy. 

 

As for the working middle class, I imagine that the government policy would be far better than what most working people get now.  

 

 

For what it's worth, the policy is shit. It's yet another upper middle class attempt to seem reasonable, but not understand the plight of the poor and working classes, and how the dynamic you propose further perpetuates the antagonism between the two groups. What is a reasonable copay? Or deductible? Can someone making $10/hr working 60 hour weeks afford that if they break a leg and can't work, let alone be able to take off a few hours of hourly labor (with no job protection mind you) in order to make it to the doctor that they still have to pay 2 hours of their labor in a copay?

The upper twenty percent have gotten virtually all the wage gains in the past ~50 years. They are the ones who have money to fund their 401ks and IRAs and other tax advantaged ways to realize that gains in the market far outweigh  wage gains in the long term. They should be the ones who pay for the vast majority of healthcare for all, and it shouldn't be another "fuck the middle class" where they make too much to get good subsidies, and make to little to afford it outright.

2 hours ago, Massdriver said:

It also makes everyone think about going to seek care or not. The poor can be helped with programs targeted at the poor. What other countries do matters in so far as them creating a successful healthcare program. The more expensive a single payer plan is, the harder it will be to maintain and sell to the public. The end result will not be a Bernie plan. The end result will be something more like I have proposed, and cost will enter the picture.

So the working and middle classes gets a tax hike and the "undeserving poor" (in the eyes of many working and middle class people) continue to live high on the hog and get severely subsidized health care? What working or middle class person would get a tax increase and still be ok with being on the hook for a """reasonable""" deductible? What do they get out of it, besides yet another expensive program for lazy poor that they get nothing from? 

Maybe the end result looks something like what you are proposing. But you fall for the trap that Democrats have for years: starting from watered down shit, and continue to water it down.

1 hour ago, Massdriver said:

I would need to see evidence that copays and deductibles only decrease demand by pricing the poor out. My guess is they also decrease demand from the middle class and I also would guess that they would cut unnecessary healthcare visits.

 

There are other ways to control costs, but I don't know if the U.S. has the stomach for it.  The government can step in and can further control the number of physicians and their pay, prevent expensive new equipment from being bought, negotiate drug prices down, etc. Some of this may require a public healthcare delivery system to stand next to our private one, or it could just mean a  lot more regulation.

It prices out the middle class as well, just to a lesser degree. Remember, 2% of the population of the US lives on less than $5.50 a day.

Ultimately, so what if other countries do or do not charge deductibles and copays? It doesn't mean it's right. 

1 hour ago, Massdriver said:

A payroll tax is a form of taxation on employing people. Employers get taxed for hiring people. I saw mclumber's idea as basically a payroll tax, and yes you're right, it isn't ideal, but it is convenient and employers are already having to pay for each employee's health insurance and are trying to minimize the payroll and taxes. As for your hatred of deductibles and copays, Switzerland and Japan both use them if I'm not mistaken. Singapore also used copays and coinsurance to control demand. It should lower the price tag and make healthcare spending more efficient.

 

 

Just because they do it, doesn't mean we should. As a counterpoint, Canada largely doesn't have user fees, and is far cheaper than Switzerland, and health expenditures are growing at roughly the same rate.

Adding costs via copays and deductibles doesn't decrease demand for health care, it just prices the poor out.

A per employee tax by employers is the dumbest funding mechanism I've ever heard.

You're taxing companies for employing people. To minimize taxes....cut payroll, squeeze remaining employees, and make automation an even more attractive and cost effective option. Increase efficiency. Kill jobs. Politically stupid.

Just tack on x% to the corporate tax rate, in addition to capital gains taxes being increased, and employee payroll taxes increasing on a progressive scale (employee hike being less than corporate rate increase) and then increase top marginal rates.

If we're increasing taxes, and you still have to pay a fucking deductable, it's a worthless system, and dead politically. I can already hear it: if I'm still on the hook for some ivory tower decided "reasonable" deductible, how exactly is this a better system for the average person? Deductibles are probably the biggest reason people fucking hate the system we have now!

18 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

Zoning regulations need to be modified or just need to go. It's really sad.

I've come to realize that the issue with changing zoning is that we've been told that a house is a store of wealth that continuously goes up in value, not just a place to live. So for homeowners, zoning is a way of protecting your investment, and an increased housing supply could potentially not maximize your return. This wouldn't be so intense, except where people expected their home to be their retirement plan, have no other savings, and wages have stagnated for decades. Add in that in many places, there often are few people who want to buy some homes, and in order to "retire" they need to sell their home and buy a new one, and you've got a national situation where potentially lowering the price of housing can throw the financial situation for many borderline middle class people up into disarray.

It's easy to say that what they did was dumb, but when they make a big chunk of politically motivated people on this issue,it makes it much harder to make any positive changes.

Damn

Can't wait until "the president can lie to the FBI your boss lies to you all the time" line of defense.

NRA can't monetize this, that's why they don't care.

But they shook hands. that means something to Trump

1 minute ago, Spork3245 said:

At least they're not using a fucking flag of the Soviet Union

2 minutes ago, Signifyin(g)Monkey said:

Cool.  I think my personal inflation adjustment will involve using 1865 prices as a baseline.

Nah, you have to be fair and use the baseline of when the state your corporation is incorporated was admitted to the union.

Like my two year old daughter, Trump has trouble with object permanence

Let's have the government collect premiums for health insurance through a payroll deduction on a pre-income tax basis. We could even make it progressive so that as you earn more, you pay more taxes on each marginal dollar.

Seriously though. How will we pay for it is fucking simple. It's taxes. Just like with social security and roads and police and firefighters. Maybe we could bump the tax rate for investment/capital gains tax to be equal to the tax rates as regular income for starters.

Then perhaps we should have a population wide insurance pool, which can then leverage it's buying power to keep costs in check, while eliminating administrative overhead (including advertisitng, profits, and stupid high private sector health administration salaries).

People can't afford a $400 emergency today with our insurance system of "personal responsibility" and real income hasn't moved in decades for the bottom 90% of earners. A "reasonable" deductible or copay for one is a choice between medical care and other necessities for another. Don't forget we have a higher level of poverty than other Western countries you try to compare to.

We're the wealthiest country on the planet. It's a fucking joke that we can't give everyone a fairly robust form of health insurance or care. 

36 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I know people with (crappy) insurance who don’t go to the doctor when they should because it’s still too expensive. I think an universal care system would instantly see us with a massive shortage of medical professionals. But waiting a few weeks for care instead of forever seems like a decent trade off for a lot of people.

I think initially we would see some waiting, but once the backlog of 'people who had been putting off necessary care' is taken care of, waits will come down. It will vary from state to state, because some states are better than others when it comes to uninsured and under insured rates.

Millions don't have any form of insurance(let alone affordable insurance), and put off getting necessary or even prudent health checkups at all primarily due to cost. Some of whom end up going to the ER with far more serious problems, at a far more serious cost.

But we're worried about over utilization. Top kek.

14 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

But Paul was doing his usual song-and-dance of pretending he was going to vote no.

A cry for help/attention. 

Trump always struck me as a hungry hungry hippos kind of guy

27 minutes ago, Scape Zero said:

 

I don't understand how people can still believe that.

Think of the average* voter. Half the people are dumber than that.