I look forward to the obsessive, bloated reactionaries making fools of themselves over one U.S. representative. If they could just teach little missy a lesson…
There are loads of Republican congressmen who say stupid shit all the time that gets ridiculed by Dems; not sure why Republicans can’t have their own punching bag who says something dumb and gets called on it.
I do not quite follow this. A yearly budget of 700 billion is 0.7 trillion . It seems that at this rate the US would have spent 21 trillion over 30 years. Now admittedly 700 billion sounds a bit high, I’ve a general feel for it around 500 billion. But I do believe it is down these days. Is this a “not adjusting for PP changes” thing?
Defense spending today is far higher than before. At the time of 9/11, it was only around $300 billion, I think, not adjusting for inflation. Even in the Reagan era it was below $300 billion.
The notion that US military spending is bigger than US healthcare spending is actually one I’ve run across several times on forums and social media. It seems to be a natural fit to the narrative that destruction is prioritized by the establishment over social spending. A lot of people simply don’t seem to grok how large US healthcare spending is.
I am assuming the 21 T number is over 10 years. It sounds roughly accurate that way. Which does mean that the statement from Vox “That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” is, strictly speaking, accurate.
Current Medicare spending is 0,7 T, with current military spending being 0,7 T that is 1,4 T or 66 % of Medicare for all.
The catch is that to do this, the entire military would have to be decommissioned and shut down, which is very far from being any kind of good thing. But yes, you could get up to 66 % that way.
Anyway, thinking about it, 2.1T per year for medicare for all, that seems high. Just back of the envelope thoughts, Medicare currently costs 0.7T. But the US system is excellent at sluicing the less profitable patients over to the public purse, and over-65s are about four times as expensive as the rest of the population. Now, Medicare currently covers about 15 % of the population, the most expensive 15 %.
So we’d expect medicare for all to cost 2.25 times what the current system does. 1.6T, just about half of current health care total costs. I don’t think its coincidence that its pretty much the same as comparable nations spend on healthcare, adjusted for population. Same economic laws for everyone.
Oh and by the way, Charles C.W. Cooke detailed some factors that were baked in to the cost estimate in order to reach the $32 trillion price tag over ten years:
[ul]
[li]Force every doctor and hospital in America to accept Medicare reimbursement rates for all patients — these are 40 percent lower than the rates paid by private insurance — while assuming that this would have absolutely no effect on their capacity or willingness to provide services[/li][li]Raise taxes by 10 percent of GDP[/li][li]Explain to the 150 million people with private insurance that the rules have been changed so dramatically that (a) they can no longer keep their plans, and (b) henceforth, tens of millions among them will be paying more in taxes than they were previously paying in both premiums and out-of-pocket costs[/li][/ul]
In short, things that will never happen for $32 trillion, Alex.
They probably can’t, but that 32 trillion figure is misleading too.
Roughly 60% of medical bills are paid by the public sector in the US. Around 20% are paid by the insurance industry, and about 20% are paid by individuals out of pocket.
Keep the 60% paid by the public sector (keep the taxes and funding).
Of the remaining 40%, since medicare for all is cheaper that may only be 30% (could be lower, especially over time. A study on Vermont found if they had adopted single payer, their health system would’ve been 25% cheaper after 10 years).
Anyway, that means we have to pay for 30% of our health care system ($900 billion a year) in a medicare for all system.
If you assume about 200-300 billion is still paid out of pocket (which is far less than is paid out of pocket now), that leaves 600-700 billion a year.
That can be funded with a mix of payroll taxes and progressive taxes on the wealthy. I’ve seen various figures, but a 6-8% payroll tax split between employer and employee combined with some new taxes on the rich should fund it.
Easy peasy.
But no, the military budget can’t cover it unless we convert the entire military budget to medicare funding.
To that point, it often seems that the case against universal health care boils down to: “It is cheaper to let poor and middle class people die than to have them see doctors.”
And almost NO money for the Ministry of Silly Walks!
Yeah, I can’t defend this gaffe. Does everyone realize that the OP linked to a Vox article, not Breitbart?
Have you no sense of perspective? Trump is just the leader of another banana republic heading downhill; his gaffes are hardly newsworthy. In fact he was chosen because his constant lying showed an Understanding of a Higher Truth. Ocasio-Cortez, OTOH, is a Member of the Sole Superpower’s House of Representatives, one heartbeat away from being the 434th most senior Member of that esteemed Chamber. Surely her words matter more than those of a janitor, a reactionary fool, or a banana gaffer-in-chief.
Is there a real discussion here.
The OP was a rant. Off to the Pit.
Well, yeah, it does.
There are two different ways to interpret her statement: one that makes sense and one that doesn’t. And you are insisting the one that doesn’t make sense is what she actually meant. This is a tactic that is only used to try discredit an opponent when you can’t discredit them directly.
It’s not remotely uncommon, even on this board. I’ve had it used against me so many times it’s ridiculous. I say something with a good, rational meaning, but also there’s this one way of looking at it that makes it seem stupid. And so what do my opponents do? They accuse me of meaning the stupid one.
This is a tactic that is unnecessary if what the person is saying is actually wrong. You can just prove it wrong. You don’t need to cherry pick an interpretation.
All Ocasio-Cortez is guilty of is being unpolished. Her brand is outspoken, but she lacks the experience in how to guard things so that the stupid interpretation doesn’t make sense.
You’re all going after her for the trivial, not her ideas. That means you’re scared of her. It’s like when people went after Obama for the 57 states remark.
You think Matthew Yglesias, cofounder of Vox and the author of the article, considers her an opponent to be discredited?
Which is why all these threads are stupid from the start. Nearly every other country manages to pay for it; but for the US to do it would take astronomically more money than has ever existed (or something).
This article has some good info about the math of funding medicare for all.
Ocasio-Cortez is the new Hillary, and they just can’t help themselves.
I don’t even know what makes sense about her statement. Like I said earlier, you sort of have to fill in the gaps to make sense of it. I think she believed that the $21 trillion number was an actual total of wasteful spending, and jeez you guys, that money could be better spent elsewhere!
I can’t claim to read AOC’s mind but based off of “that could have funded 66 percent of Medicare for all” (a crucial window into her thinking,) I think she DID believe that there was a cumulative $21 trillion in defense spending over the years that could have been better diverted elsewhere.