Well, forgive us for being human. And also for surviving* thanks to the government help in the past for me to be able to tell you that I will still be there in the future when my economy gets better with a new job and wife coming. So, in the future and now, we will both pay our taxes for your retirement and (until the law is repealed) we will gladly pay the taxes so others will survive for them to most likely become people that will benefit society.
You are welcome even if you want to ignore it.
It is still true that without Obamacare I would not be here to tell you this, last time you did dismiss it and even wanted to bet on the outcome of Obamacare while I was almost a goner.
Sound statistics and research should drive policy.
Sad stories, however, are important to put a face on the statistics, to remind you that these are real lives, not just numbers, that you are are effecting with your actions.
Out of my own curiosity, how do you feel about the rollback of the Medicaid expansion? The system in place for Medicaid seems to fit within the framework of Federal Government gives money to the States and they provide the benefit that you seem to agree with. And it seems that rolling back the expansion would definitely hurt people on the poorer side of things. What are your thoughts on it?
I don’t much care whether you do or not, but I’d note that the last several Predictit transactions I have made I posted about well ahead of time: that is, when I bought Handel at .42 I posted that I had done so; it was clear to anyone that this was the correct current price. Similarly, I announced Gianforte well ahead of time. So the last couple are independently verifiable.
Shouldn’t it be called RomneyCare, since the ACA was based on the plan Massachusetts adopted when Romney was governor? Or is Romney too tainted with the loser brush?
If Medicaid is cut and/or eliminated, who is going to pick up the tab for the nursing home care? Trust me–it’s not the kind of care that most family members are capable of giving. Been there.
Hard to do that with a disabled child on a ventilator. Are we going to tell him to “get a job”? Lecture him about the beauty of federalism and small government?
All taxation is by it’s very nature redistributive. Unless you are an Anarcho-Capitalist, you believe that some level of taxation is acceptable. Everyone seems to agree that it’s ok to spend tax money on roads, police, fire fighters, the military, K-12 education, Medicare, and Social Security. I have yet to hear a good argument for why it’s ok to spend money on the former things, but not on universal healthcare.
Hey, I’m a mathematician by training, and a statistician and all-around number cruncher for a living. I’d love it if people made decisions based on the numbers and analytics rather than on the basis of stories, but I’ve long since had to accept the reality that we’re still basically jumped-up plains apes, and that people see the world in terms of story much more than in terms of numbers.
The most I hope for is that the stories will be used to flesh out the numbers, but I’m honestly not sure I can hope for that. Too often, it seems that the story of one person out of a set of one is just as likely to move people to action as the story of one person out of a set of 22,000,000. It’s why Obamacare opponents kept on trying to find stories of people who fared worse under Obamacare than they did before, no matter how sparse those stories were. (And how quickly most of them were debunked.) Stories work.
It isn’t about numbers, it’s about who we are. Some of us think that life and health are precious, that catastrophes can happen to anyone, and we all need to take care of each other. Some of us think some antebellum concept of constitutional interpretation is more important than that. But the former cannot convince the latter by reference to the former’s standards.
I agree with your opinion on those arguments but frankly, I don’t see a lot of conservatives making them. I know that’s how they really feel. But they aren’t telling their constituents that they think it’s philosophically wrong for the government to extend financial help to individuals.
Instead they have resorted to outright lying about what they are proposing, probably because they know even their supporters wouldn’t be onboard with the truth.
I would actually like to see the conversation shift to the positive effects that a healthier workforce and a population with more discretionary income would have on society, the GDP and the economy and the positive effects of lots of new good jobs in healthcare. It isn’t like the money the government would spend is being poured into some black hole, it’s going right back into the economy. Because it’s not all about someone that’s not you getting a handout, it’s about the health of the country in general
You could also make a fiscally conservative case for UHC. Other countries spend less than the U.S. per capita, and have better health outcomes. That extra money we spend could easily go towards other things. We currently spend about 17% of GDP on healthcare. If we got it down to around 12% (which is around what France has, and is rated one of the best healthcare systems in the world), that’s 5% of the GDP we could spend on other things. Even tax cuts for the rich, or increased military spending!
I think President Trump is working to get it “down to around 12%” right now. And I think he wants to increase military spending and give tax cuts to the wealthy too, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. So … we’re already doing that.
For most of them, it’s far more superficial than that. It’s “Keep your damn hands out of my wallet!” regardless of the consequences to others.
That’s why they want small government, think health care is a product, and make the plainly disingenuous bootstraps argument. It’s all just smoke to cover up that initial fact. Civic responsibility is owed to them; it’s not something that they owe.