Trump demands a new election in Iowa due to Cruz vote fraud.
Nm. Didn’t see the “read more” button.
That is awesome! It must be true. He couldn’t lose fair and square, right?
ETA: BBC News says that Trump deleted his original tweet. Yahoo News may have looked for it too late.
I was addressing the argument that some people make that it’s not possible for the US to do if because we’re different from those other countries in some way or other.
Do we want to is a different question. Certainly a good number of us do.
And it’s certainly not fair that we have to forgo it so that other countries can spend less on their military. In the same vein, it’s also unfair that we have to pay higher prices for drugs in order to support research while other countries get the same drugs from the same companies at prices that by themselves would not support that research.
Well, it depends how much more revenue you want to generate. If you, say, increase the income tax as a percentage of GDP from 8% to 9%, that seems like a pretty piddling increase, but in fact, it raises about $170 billion, which is a decent chunk of change.
Again, a few percentage points of GDP is quite a lot of money.
If you look at what happened when Reagan lowered taxes in the 1980s, the result was a decrease in personal income tax revenue from 9.1% in 1981 to 7.5% in 1984. (Yes, there was a deep recession in there, but I think we had pretty much recovered by 1984…and certainly by 1985 and 1986.) It increased a little after that but still remained around or below ~8.0%.
Then in the latter part of Clinton’s term, when taxes were increased again, it climbed up to above 9%, in fact reaching as high as 9.9% in one year. Then, with Bush’s tax cuts, it dropped down to 6.7% in 2004. It recovered some after that, but never got above 8.1%.
So, I see quite a bit of evidence that tax rates and revenue raised as a % of GDP are positively correlated, especially for taxes on the wealthy. (I think for taxes on the lower and middle class, there is a stronger case to be made that tax cuts are stimulative and tax increases are anti-stimulative because those folks are really going to spend the extra money that you give them, just as the government does. But if you raise taxes on the wealthy and then use that money to spend more or give more to people who will spend it, I don’t think that is likely to be anti-stimulative at all, in fact, in net it is probably stimulative. That I think is one of the great ironies of the current situation of extreme inequality that we find ourselves in now in the U.S.: I am willing to admit that at some point, there is a tradeoff between reducing inequality and maximizing GDP, i.e., if you reduce incentives enough then you will reduce GDP…although I would still argue that such a tradeoff can still be desirable, e.g., because it can still lead to increases in median incomes, albeit not mean incomes. However, in our current situation, the inequalities are so destructive that they may in fact be hampering our GDP growth and hence there may be no tradeoff at all! This certainly could be some part of the explanation as to why economic growth has been so much stronger over the past decades under Democratic Presidents than Republican ones [e.g., Opinion: Lucky or not, the economy does better under Democrats - MarketWatch ]. I know a lot of this may be attributable to other factors or just plain luck…but there certainly isn’t much room in the data to claim that Republican Presidents are better for growth than Democrats and, since the only claim that Republicans can make is that they “raise all boats” then if they can’t even do this, there is no rational justification why anybody except the very well off should support their economic policies.)
Sure, if you raise taxes 1 percentage point across the board, you’d get a lot of money. Doing it just on the top two brackets, not so much, especially since tax avoidance increases as taxes go up.
You do know that taxes aren’t optional, right? Even for the rich?
They are for legislators, who can insert new tax breaks into bills to shield themselves and their friends from the tax increases they just passed. Of course, this being America and all, such tax breaks cannot be limited only to favored political constituencies, they are available to all who technically qualify under the rules. Almost every hated tax break was passed to help a popular constituency. Those tax breaks the oil companies take advantage of were intended for manufacturing companies, for example.
My sister and mother are Canadian citizens. I used to boast about the same kind of thing vicariously based on their experiences. My sister had two pregnancies and C-sections that seemed to go very smoothly, and she was very happy with her care.
But then she blew out her knee snowboarding, and learned she would have to wait something like eighteen months to get surgery. She didn’t want to do wheelchairs and crutches for that long, so she dug into her savings and went down to Seattle (from Vancouver) to get it done. That very much shook my faith in the Canadian single-payer model.
However, it should be noted that my mother, who lives in Ontario, says this is because the B.C. provincial government is more conservative and starves the system. She claims that the Ontario version is much more robust, although she hasn’t had the exact experience my sister did so I don’t know how she can be sure. But even if she’s right, this means people need to stop talking about “Canadian single payer” and acknowledge that it is a patchwork of different provincial systems that are not all so great.
After all this, and doing a lot of reading on health care systems around the world, I have come to very much doubt that Bernie’s free lunch programs would be so painless. I think it really would come down to everyone in the middle class and up taking a small but noticeable hit so the working class and poor could have their lives dramatically improved. I would be all for that, mind you; but he’s not IMO pitching it honestly, and unfortunately I can understand why: because a lot of people would *not *be cool with it.
How many times does it need to be pointed out that the venerable expert Nate Silver has said that these kinds of trial heat polls are worthless? Zero predictive power.
You’re not the only one who’s confused. I have read this post at least five times and I just can’t parse it. What am I missing? There are phrases that make sense, but in combination with the others, it comes across like word salad. I don’t think I’ve had a stroke, LOL–I actually checked some other content and it was perfectly legible.
This is getting a bit off topic but I do have to respond to it, at least as best I can, since I’m in Ontario and not BC.
You’re right that since the different health care systems are provincially run, there are differences, but I wouldn’t call it a “patchwork” because they all come under the auspices of the Canada Health Act which sets out principles and standards, such as coverage of all medically necessary procedures with no extra-billing (i.e.- the patient must never be charged any amount at all if it’s medically necessary). But because of these different administrations, funding levels are different and some minor coverages may be different – but funding levels are obviously the critical determinant to wait times.
Wait times are the most talked-about bugagoo in single payer, but it’s all about resources and resources are always all about money – it’s not a problem that money can’t solve magnificently well and at far lower cost than any private insurance. Here in Ontario it’s not perfect either but having looked after aging relatives for a long time – and some of my own friends are not exactly spring chickens any more either – I’ve been especially impressed by the triage process that gets immediate care for time-critical cases, and by the thorough and compassionate care for the elderly.
So to some extent your sister’s story surprises me. A wait is to be expected for elective knee-replacement or hip-replacement surgery, but it’s surprising to see it for accidents. The wait time for elective surgery for entire knee replacement in Ontario is around 1 to 7 months – this is typically the kind of surgery that older people elect as their joints deteriorate and that they know they’ll need years in advance. Some friends of mine went through it and I think they just waited a month or two. Elective knee arthroscopy is even sooner.
But the consequence of accidents is normally quite different. I know someone who had relatively minor orthopedic surgery due to an accident and he was in the hospital immediately and had two consecutive orthopedic surgeries within a week – there wasn’t any wait time at all, the time between the surgeries was for further diagnosis and assessment.
I don’t really understand how your sister’s condition was assessed but I agree that the way you described it, it sounds pretty screwed-up. This is not the kind of thing I’ve ever seen and I wish I could get a fuller explanation from all concerned including the BC health system. All I can say is after long experience with health care for myself and others I have no real complaints. I shudder to think of having to pay monthly premiums for it or having to deal with the vermin at insurance companies to get payment – I’ve had enough experience with employer-provided dental insurance to last ten lifetimes! Like having to cough up major real money because the insurer would only cover a portion, or having a claim denied for entirely stupid reasons including mistakes by the dentist. It would be unconscionable to have my major health care run this way.
I went back and dug up my email exchanges with her on the subject (man, Gmail search is awesome) and it was pretty brief (we must have discussed it more in person or on the phone), but see if this helps you understand any. I don’t think I entirely understood at the time, but I didn’t really pursue the point. This was in 2014, and it is interesting to note that she was still bullish on the general idea of universal coverage:
Thanks for the additional info. IANAD, so I can only go by a few things I could Google …
An ACL tear reconstruction is hugely different from something like knee replacement surgery, and is generally given lower priority. I know from other sources that many accidental joint injuries, especially something like a broken hip in an elderly person, can lead to serious complications and is generally treated as a time-critical emergency, hence my comment – aside from personal observation – about the prompt treatment of accidental orthopedic injuries. An ACL tear is generally regarded as somewhat minor because many people can function well and even continue to engage in sports, and may often not require surgery at all vs. physiotherapy and natural healing. However it seems that there are different severities – different kinds of tear, multiple tears, etc. There also seem to be conflicting reports on the benefits of early (within 12 weeks) reconstruction vs. later reconstruction, but most reports seem to indicate no observable benefit with earlier surgery.
My best guess is that SlackerSis was diagnosed as having a minor and not serious condition and not urgent but this may have been a misdiagnosis in her specific case and maybe she should have been more aggressive with the people she was dealing with. One thing I’ve found about the medical system – any medical system – is that being a knowledgeable and politely but firmly aggressive patient advocate either for yourself or someone else can work wonders at getting things done. You can’t get things done any faster just by insisting on it, but you may well be able to show that something was missed or you’ve been slotted into the wrong urgency category.
Sorry to hear about your sister’s experience. I can’t say this sort of thing never happens, but it’s really rare and I’ve never personally seen it.
But what about this whole business of paying to get prompt service? Sounds to me like truly low income people are ending up sliding down into a category not that much better than what they get in the U.S.
I think it’s obvious that she couldn’t do that in Canada (or at least in B.C.), or she wouldn’t have gone to Seattle for the surgery. Perhaps coming down to the U.S. is what she meant by “paying for prompt service”.
No, absolutely no, it’s the exact opposite. The idea is to have first-class service for everybody, and for the most part that’s achieved, and I say this as someone with much more than average experience with the system, at least the system in Ontario, as a former caregiver to several elderly individuals not to mention my own personal and family experiences. The triage system for time-critical care has always been first class in my view, and such complaints as there are relate to wait times for elective services, which is in part due to sometimes insufficient funding and in part just a function of queuing efficiency.
Your suggestion is backwards because the proximity of Canada to the US already has private providers and health insurers from the US howling and pulling at the leash and trying in various underhanded ways to insinuate themselves into the Canadian health care market, sometimes in legally gray areas and sometimes in downright illegal ones that violate the Canada Health Act. If they could actually offer full services legally it would be like taking the lid off a pressure boiler – an explosion of American-style moneygrubbing health care providers that would happily offer medical practitioners twice or triple their current fees to build their sordid businesses. And with the emergence of a two-tier health care system, guess where all the best doctors would end up? Then the low income people would be really and truly fucked.
Public-private tiers exist in Germany, the UK, and many other countries, but they’re not right next door to the US and they have a long tradition of valuing the public health care system – in the UK most doctors are strongly in favor of the NHS – and the private tier is a very small and limited one. They don’t have predatory wolves howling at their borders.
I believe that you unwittingly exposed the flaw in your (side’s) argument. By definition, there can never be first class service for everyone. What is the baseline “normal” service and the lesser “poor” service that you are comparing your “first class” service to?
Long waiting times for anything is not exactly first class service.
What Canada actually achieves is solid emergency services for all, better than nothing non-emergency services. Assuming that the person in question can get a family doctor.
My impression in reading back over this is that she had initially thought she was going to Seattle but then just paid out of pocket and had the same doctor in Canada do the surgery but just several months earlier by paying for it. Almost like those expensive tickets you can buy to jump the line at the Sears Tower and go to the top right away.
I have no idea what she did but that is specifically prohibited by the Canada Health Act, for the understandable reasons I previously stated.
ETA: If you have some rare condition that can only be treated elsewhere, like in the US, or must be treated there for whatever other essential reasons, then it’s actually endorsed and paid for by the public system. But no, queue jumping for the sake of convenience isn’t legal.