My best friend, through no fault of his own, lost his job after 9/11. He did what he was supposed to, got his Ivy League degree, got a good job, and then the whole industry (publishing) contracted. While he was unemployed and thus uninsured, he lost control of his car in a rain storm. He was badly injured in the accident. He made a full recovery, but had to declare bankruptcy to pay for his hospital bills. This could happen to just about anyone, conceivably. I don’t know why people don’t think it could, and dismiss health care coverage as a luxury. I know my friend didn’t consider it so, when his pelvis was broken and one of his vertebrae was crushed. He couldn’t have just walked out of there and toughed it out or anything. This doesn’t even take into consideration the over 8 million uninsured children…
I wish people would stop referring to Randroids as “libertarians.” The word libertarian was coined to describe Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, considered by many to be the father of anarchosyndicalism. He would cheerfully have beaten Ayn Rand (and Rand Rover) to death with a clawhammer while singing the Marseillaise. It was the Amerikan Libertarian Party which hijacked the term. If you absolutely must use the term Libertarian to describe Rand Rover, at least capitalize it to differentiate.
To quote Errico Malatesta on people like Rand Rover, “Individualism is, in theory, a kind of Anarchy without cooperation. It is therefore no better than a lie, because liberty is not possible without Solidarity, without cooperation. The criticism which Individualists pass on government is merely the wish to deprive it of certain functions, to hand them over virtually to the capitalists. But it cannot attack those repressive functions which form the essence of government, for without an armed force the proprietary system could not be upheld.”
"What’s wrong with a hospital making a profit??
Do you work? Do you make a profit?"
Did you read the whole post? It sure doesn’t seem like it.
Why not have a for ‘profit model’ for your police and fire services? I mean, they could be making you some money. Don’t they deserve to make a profit?
Disingenuous and foolish comeback, in my opinion, to the point raised.
The Mayor of Macdougal Street, A Memoir is the late Dave van Ronk’s story of old times in Greenwich Village. He was a folksinger back when most of them were leftists of some kind. (He considered Pete Seeger a Stalinist, although he loved him as a friend.)
He joined the Libertarian League:
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Must you spell America that way? My issue isn’t political, or national, it’s pedagogical. It’s really fucking stupid to choose to misspell a word. There is no purpose other than to appear as retarded as possible.
True they calculate need based on household income. I think the important point though is we do have a system in place to see to it people here are fed. Healthcare can be just as vital as food. Telling the poor they have to suffer and die is beyond cruel and people advocate against healthcare are savages. Relics or a more brutal and savage time.
This brings up the third thing about UHC that really chaps my hide: Lots of people use the terms “health care” and “health insurance” interchangeably. They’ll say “poor people don’t have health care.” Well, do the particular poor people you are talking about have a medical need at the moment? Or do you mean they don’t have health insurance? Or do you mean they don’t have access to *free *health care? It’s so obnoxious.
Because quite often they’re one in the same. Do you have healthcare if you can’t afford it, nor have insurance for it? My mom’s medicines cost about 2x as much as she makes. If she wasn’t covered would she couldn’t afford those medicines. Pretending financing isn’t part of healthcare is disingenuous.
Or, as one Republican congressman said, as long as there are emergency rooms, the poor have healthcare. Nice.
It’s the dumbassery of the phraseology of “having healthcare” that I’m objecting to. Right now I am sitting in my family room typing on the computer. I have really good health insurance. There is currently no doctor examining me or performing any sort of medical procedure on me, nor am I under the care of a doctor for any long-term ailments. But because I have health insurance some people say I “have healthcare.” That’s weird.
Only to you, RR; only to you.
As a question of syntax, he has a point. We may very well have to concede this utterly trivial and meaningless point. Score one for RR!
The OP has already specified in the title that we’re all motherfuckers, so it’s his mom who’s on the table, so to speak. Which is fine with me–I like loose pussy.
:rolleyes: You are acting as if I had trumpeted my revelation as the greatest thing ever, when I did no such thing. So take your faux congratulations and shove it up your ass.
43.4% is almost half, IMO.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=2276&DocTypeID=7
My doctor friend works with the Department of Homeland Security on planning the response to just such a scenario. Few phrases as chilling as “society level triage”.
Where the hell have you been since September 11, 2001?
Dear Lord, what a clod!
Another bleeding heart pussy idea. This is America. Fuck them both.
With UHC, can I still pay ridiculous ammounts of money to moustache-twirling guys ready to deny me any treatment?
Well, sure, you can still go to your S&M club.
Thanks. Looks like it changed for 2009:
If you’ll click on through (the table in your link) to the updated table the estimate is 46.9% (as of July 1).
I found this other table to be of note (Distribution of Tax Units with Zero or Negative Tax Liabilty by Cash Income Level). 12% of units in the 100-200 k income range have no tax liablity - interesting.
Also, a ‘tax unit’ isn’t necessarily one person. It might be a ‘head of household’ or a married couple, for example.