Yeah, that’s not at all contradictory. New math!
Yes, it is contradictory. So this allegation
must be wrong.
So is this -
because the massive tax increases won’t pay for it. Glad we cleared that up.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, why is America so hapless? Why are we unable to do something that has already been done to great success in many other countries. What makes America so inferior, in your eyes?
Ooookkkkaaayyy… Probably you shouldn’t have posted it then?
I want you to go home and think about the specific way that this statement is “contradictory.” I think that, after you have had a good long hard think, you will realize your mistake (Let me know if you need help).
Clearly, if reducing our expenses by two trillion dollars will increase our taxes, then, logically, increasing our expenses will reduce our taxes.
Hey, you just figured how to pay for Trump’s wall! And the more expensive the better! Let’s make it out of gold.
Your system comes in at 29th worldwide*. Canada comes in 14th.
You spend over twice as much per capita on healthcare as Canada**
So what is it. Are Americans so fucking witless that it will cost them twice as much to do something as a Canadian, yet still not achieve the same results?
Or, you know, apocryphal story about how long your relatives have had to wait for a procedure, then some meaningless shite about decreeing costs, if you reckon that works as a persuasive argument.
*https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)30994-2/fulltext
**How does health spending in the U.S. compare to other countries? - Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker
Would paying a premium or co-pay have changed the number of medical visits you made? Most people don’t like going to the doctor, but since you implied that out-of-pocket expenses might have changed your behavior, I thought maybe you made extra trips because you find it enjoyable.
The sad thing is that for every poor bastard up there who has to wait an extra 6 weeks for their knee replacement, there’s some poor bastard down here who’s getting used to limping instead of seeing a doctor.
I guess Folacin loves burning PTO/vacation time (remember when they weren’t the same thing?) on medical visits.
This.
Not me - I’m a classic guy who only goes to the doctor when my wife makes me or my esophagus is blocked. It just looked to me like **Slacker **was making unnecessary trips since they didn’t cost him anything, so I was trying to figure out why.
You know, when you don’t recognize your own quotes, that’s not a good sign.
I don’t need any help, thanks.
That word - I do not think it means what you think it means.
I am beginning to understand why Ms. AOC resonates with the innumerate in her party. You don’t have any more idea of what you are talking about that she does. And you can’t even dance.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, the innumerate: those who don’t realize that saving two trillion dollars is somehow a bad thing now.
Serious question: When you decided you were a conservative did you ever imagine you’d be in the intellectually bankrupt position of arguing that saving two trillions dollars was somehow bad, simply because that was what the party now required you to believe?
On your downward slide from “I believe in fiscal conservatism” to “we shouldn’t take actions that would result in saving two trillion dollars,” did your brain ever say “hey, buddy, maybe we got on the wrong ride”?
Anyway, I’m certainly enjoying your explanations of how reducing expenses by two trillion dollars is going to blow up the deficit. I wonder how bad the deficit would blow up if we saved three trillion dollars? Guys we can’t keep reducing expenses like this!
We’re hapless because the ones pushing this Medicare for All know darn well that it would require massive tax increases on everybody, including the middle class. There’s just no way around it. $32 trillion is a stratospheric number. But this is political suicide, as I stated earlier when this discussion began. If this reality ever hit home, the populace would balk. So the message is about those super wealthy who just aren’t “paying their fair share” (never mind that the top 20% of income earners pay 87% of all federal income tax), because this is a popular message.
My best guess is that they want to boil the frog. Get people excited about “free” healthcare, ease them into the idea, begin with hitting the rich, then once the fruits of that labor begin to appear, some Frankensteinian version of M4A has risen from the table, bemoan that we need more money to keep this good thing moving forward. Progress! But we need more money. Slight increase in taxes that people will gladly pay for to keep this wonderful “free” healthcare. Slowly ramp up as years go by, borrowing to keep the shortfall at bay. By then it’s too late. The water will be boiling.
How much are we spending now?
Compared to that number, is $32 trillion more, or less?
Do you think people currently get healthcare for free?
I have so many questions.
-
$32 Trillion would be more, by a substantial margin.
-
No, they do not. They pay premiums and co-pays, or other out-of-pocket costs. As explained earlier, if these were eliminated in favor of this $32 trillion M4A behemoth, tens of millions of middle class Americans would find themselves paying much, much more in the necessary taxes that nobody pushing this wants to talk about than they were paying in those premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
Above, it should be noted that my answer to #1 is federal spending. Overall healthcare spending in the US is about 5 trillion, iirc. Might be off a trillion or so.
Edit: It’s $3.5 Trillion. $3.5 trillion x 10 years = $35 trillion. Seems more? But we’ve explained how they came to the proclamation that it would be cheaper, but that horse has been beat to death.
We can always reduce the deficit by cutting taxes on the rich some more, right?
Yeah, your last answer was hilariously wrong.
So you are now saying that healthcare costs will decline by 3 trillion dollars under a “Medicare for all” plan, but that’s bad because money is the root of all evil, and the less that people have of it the closer they are to god?
Or by increasing healthcare costs, apparently, by **Shodan **math.
The U.S. would do a lot better on many of those rankings if they compared like to like: how well does a U.S. population adjusted to match Canada’s or other OECD countries in terms of race, income, etc. do healthwise compared to those countries. Still, we pay too much and it’s wrong to have millions uninsured. I should know, because I was one of the ranks of the uninsured for well over a decade. And then I rejoiced at the passage of Obamacare, but soon learned was not eligible because I fell into the “family glitch”. That was a rough day, a moment when my otherwise stalwart faith in President Obama was shaken: Hillary Clinton promises to make sure my kids and I get health care. Why won't Obama do the same?
“Meaningless shite” is in the eye of the beholder. “Apocryphal” is not: the story about my Canadian mother and sister is factually accurate and therefore not apocryphal. That doesn’t however make it more than an anecdote. So how about a cite or three?
One more:
But those stories are all apocryphal, right? :dubious: (BTW, this story in particular matches perfectly with my sister and mother: they describe these insane wait times, I act appalled, they then defensively express a fierce pride in the Canadian health system overall, as I listen skeptically.)
And that idea that it’s all about need rather than ability to pay is not quite so either:
Look at my “apocryphal” sister, for example. She didn’t wait months to get her knee fixed: she did what any other middle class Canadian in her situation would do—go to the U.S. and pay out of pocket. (In case you’re wondering, she’s middle class because she and her husband are both veteran teachers, not because of any independent wealth.) So there’s a de facto situation of “poor people’s health care” when it comes to these kinds of surgery: poor people have to go on crutches for several months (probably exacerbating their poverty, making child care difficult, etc.), and middle class or wealthy people take care of it right away.
The upshot: We need to do better by our citizens and make access to health care universal. But we need to stop saying Canada is the model to follow. It is not. How about France instead?