Oh, as for the rest of the world ‘managing the transition’, you might want to check again. NO ONE has the kind of sweeping health care the main candidates are promising. Here in Canada we pay for our own prescription drugs, dentistry, and a whole host of other health care services the government won’t cover. And some of the covered stuff takes so long that many Canadians go to the U.S. for treatments, all on their own dime. The last time I drove to he U.S. there were billboards across the border for medical clinics offering knee and hip replacements to Canadians.
Where are you Americans going to go when you’re told that you either can’t have a certain treatment, or that you can have it but not for several years?
You have it backwards. It’s the rich people who can afford to pay for super-expensive drugs and expensive research that enable the poor to get them as well.
Did Mercedes owners cause hardships to people who can’t afford a Mercedes? On the contrary, the existence of people willing to pay high premiums for safe cars funded the development of ABS, air bags, rear-view cameras, stability control and other advanced tech too expensive for the poor and middle class. But once that stuff was developed, the price came down because he rich subsidized the R&D.
None of us would have cell phones today if it wasn’t for the rich people who initially paid thousands of dollars in fees to subsidize the cell infrastruture.
In all these cases, the existence of rich people that could fund expensive R&D did not hurt the people below - it helped them tremendously. If some socialist idiot had mandated that cars cost no more than $20,000 to ‘help the poor’, we’d all be driving shit boxes without any of these advancements. There would have been no money to pay for it.
So why is health care different? Who is going to fund a drug to te tune of a billion dollars if there are no people around anymore who can pay $1500 per shot? What incentive does te government have to research drugs that, if they work, will simply drive up the government’s costs?
Another way to look at it - rich people pour a lot of money into the health care system. Set one price for all, and all that money goes away. The economy is not a zero-sum game, where every resource used by one person is a resource taken away from another. But turning health care into a government run system WILL make it zero sum. To your detriment.
In Sanders/Warrens plan, which is called MFA but has no relation to Medicare at all, there would be no private insurance at all. No supplemental plans. IIRC Warren went for Sanders plan.
Mexico. But most people don’t have the resources to go elsewhere. If I can’t have a treatment, I’d rather it be because more urgent cases are prioritized than because I’m poor so screw me.
My Canadian grandfather did drive down to the Mayo clinic for optional care. My American uncle had to declare bankruptcy and lost the family farm because his wife died at age 61, too young to qualify for medicare, and the medical bills were too much. (And he is a veteran who is mildly disabled from the Vietnam War, too—go USA!)
Anyway. Just a couple of anecdotes. Canadian grandpa and grandma made it to 90 despite their terrible healthcare. American grandpa and grandma managed 69 and 67 respectively. Some of that is down to life choices but there is currently about a three-year difference in life expectancy between the US and Canada, and it can’t all be down to gun violence. cite
It’s not all down to gun violence - it also that Americans are fatter and less healthy than Canadians. Stop subsidizing your food. The last time I was in the U.S. a restaurant gave me a food order that could have fed the entire table.
In my opinion, the key reason why Canada’s health care plan continues to work (albeit inefficiently and often unfairly) is that the MDs are the gatekeepers to the system.
Except for things like emergency and trauma care, most transplants, and most cancer care, you won’t get to a specialist without a referral from another doctor (whether from your family doctor or from a specialist who’s involved in your care). To a large extent, in Canada, your doc decides what you’ll get done and the consultant/specialist when it gets done.
I have serious doubts that a cohort of doctors trained and matured in the US system where the patient dictates his care (or much of it) could ever adjust to, let alone embrace, the role that Canadian docs play, that of the gatekeeper. In any case, would it even be Constitutional to outlaw all purchase of health care?
Yeah, and altho the USA’s murder rate is high compared to Canada, it’s a drop in the bucket when comparing life expectancies.
My Canuck relatives are way less stressed than most Americans I know. More polite, more happy. But they aint much lighter, they tend to be big eaters too.
When Nixon, who had become a pariah, was forced to resign in 1974, these were the economy numbers:
Unemployment: 7.2% (nearly double that in 1973)
GDP growth: -0.5% (it was 5.6% in 1973)
Inflation: 12.3% (up 4% in 1973)
When Jimmy Carter, who is basically regarded as an ethical person, was voted out in 1980, his numbers were nearly identical to Nixon’s in 1974:
Unemployment: 7.2%
GDP Growth: -0.3%
Inflation: 12.5%
When Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998, these were his numbers:
Unemployment: 4.4%
GDP Growth: 4.5%
Inflation: 1.6%
I look at George W Bush’s re-election as reference point, considering that we were increasingly divided over the War on Terror, Iraq War, tax cuts, and some of the issues we’re debating now. Bush/Cheney’s war was increasingly viewed as a foreign policy disaster. Bush was viewed as ignorant and Cheney as villainous. And yet, in the end, they beat Kerry and Edwards. The economic numbers:
Unemployment: 5.4%
GDP Growth: 3.8%
Inflation: 3.3%
Historically, people vote the president into office or out of office based on how their feeling about their own lives. They do not care if their president is lying, having sex with porn stars, buying people off, or whatever. Most elections are about how optimistic people are, and most times, that comes down how optimistic they are about their future careers and/or their retirement.
The elections of 2000 and 2016 were somewhat anomalous in that voters changed parties despite the fact that the party that ‘held serve’ in the White House was voted out of power despite having relatively good, stable economic numbers. My conclusion is that these were a combination of “I’m kinda bored; let’s shake things up” and “culture war” elections.
I think Donald Trump is not in good shape because his personality is historically repulsive. He will pay a price among some voters for that, but he might get just enough to win because it’s hard to convince people to vote against an actual incumbent when their economic situation is relatively stable, and when they know (or assume) that Trump will leave office in 4 years anyway. It’s the assumption that it’ll all be over anyway that might be what keeps people from going all in on an impeachment now. In Nixon’s case, they were so fucking mad at the state of their country that while they could have ignored the tapes, they didn’t ignore it, and they made it clear in polls and demonstrations that they didn’t want to wait until 1976. It’s a little different now.
Trump will win in '20, but it doesn’t really matter. His election was the end of the US as we knew it and it’s just going to get worse form here. There is no coming back from the fact that this country made Donald Trump president.
Pretty much this. There will be no return to normalcy or civility regardless of the outcome of the next election. Our political system, government and institutions are irreversibly broken. A President Biden or a President Trump or a President Warren or a President Pence in 2021 all still lead us to the exact same inevitable collapse. Just wait until climate change really starts cooking up the horrors it has in store for us too… Imagine the dystopian presidents we’ll have to look forward to then! People will be nostalgic for Trump just like they’re nostalgic for Dubya these days lol.
Trump’s chances go down significantly if he has to face Deval Patrick or Michael Bloomberg. The Dems will be crazy not to run a moderate in what should be a very winnable election.
If those guys are really good at politics, then they can try and win the primary. That’s what the primary process is for. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best way we have to evaluate the political skill and ability of the candidates.
Tentatively saying no. I suspect the tipping point will be the debates, where his rambling, incoherent word salad will reach a wider and more casual audience. Will it lose him his base? I doubt anything could at this point. But they’re a minority, and I’m optimistic enough to think that anybody’s who’s managed to stay independent will vote for the more competent (sounding) candidate.
And that seems like a best-case scenario for him. I can honestly imagine him having a fullblown meltdown - or even a stroke - onstage.
Gawd, I hope not. The guy is a p*ssy-grabbing, cheeseburger snarfing, cranky, cruel, insecure, ignorant, ethically- and morally-challenged walking disaster. And those are the “nice” things that I could come up with about him.
I’ve been thinking the same thing, though I could still see him showing up for a one and done debate in which he snarls and interrupts his opponents.
As we saw plainly during the debates with Clinton and against his primary opponents, Trump doesn’t debate; he makes up shit and then leaves his opponents scrambling to explain why he’s lying. It’s an impossible tactic to overcome. Trump’s objective was to throw his opponents off balance, not to debate anything based on substance.
Personally, I don’t think Trump can be defeated or seriously impacted in a classic one on one debate, and I wouldn’t mind it if the Democratic challenger instead opted for a town hall format instead.
It is certainly true that, traditionally, the performance of the economy is an important predictor of an incumbant’s electoral success. But it is actually three things that usually track together: Electoral success, Strength of the Economy, and approval rating. Since they are all correlated its hard to argue which drives which, but logically it makes sense that Good economy leads to high approval leads to electoral success. In the past pundits have focused on the economy as a measure of success because it was much easier to use various factors to predict the future of the economy than it was to predict the future of the presidents approval.
Trump has turned all of this on its head. His approval rating is based entirely on partisanship and is almost completely decoupled from economic indicators or anything else for that matter. No matter what happens some 40-45% of the country will approve of the president and some 50-55% of the country will disapprove. This is true now and will be true on election day. The only question will be what the approval rating will be for the Democratic challenger after the inevitable Republican smear campaign heats up, whether that gap is large enough to overcome the structural advantages put in place by the electoral college, and Republican disenfranchisement/dirty tricks.