Repeat after me: “Most undocumented migrants are performing work that American workers don’t want to perform for minimum wage”
If you want lettuce or berries that are grown in California, this is the only way they will ever get to market.
Well, your perception of all this is undercut by your assertions that there is no more room in America. Your perception that someone feeds immigrants and provides them jobs is equally not from this planet, much less this country.
And yet, somehow we manage to have universal health coverage for senior citizens, the most costly segment of society.
How are your Googling skills, Urbanredneck ? Try some phrasings like “Do immigrants contribute more to the tax base than they consume?” Or “Do immigrants increase or decrease the average prosperity of Americans?”
Give us a brief report when you’ve completed the research.
Or don’t. Maybe your news source — Sean Hannity? — has already done the research, so you already know the answer.
Your points lack truthiness. What’s the point of research like this when we all know that reality has a liberal bias?
Then how come all those European nations with more immigrants per head can do it?
Or Canada, which has a higher immigration rate than the US?
Oops, my bad. I thought you were saying Americans were using forged documentation to procure medication. I had no idea that Americans were using forged documentation to get health care. That’s ballsy.
Or desperate.
But how much of that fraud is people trying to get services that they are not entitled to, because of the restrictions on who can use which program? If everyone is entitled to medical care, most of the fraud never happens.
No. Think of it as an investment that increased productivity overall, rather than just some zero-game with finite resources. More college graduates means more productive citizens down the road (think of the effects of the G.I. Bill, for example) and single-payer health care means a good-sized fraction of your middle- and working-class populations will not be put on unproductive paths to bankruptcy if they have a medical emergency.
Similarly, having police departments and money-losing mass-transit systems and fire departments in large cities might appear like expenses that don’t generate profits, but they and other services make the cities more livable for the residents who are generating profits, because they can live and work and spend in the city while not having to divert a large portion of their resources for personal protection (because there are no cops) and travel (because they can get around without having to maintain their own vehicles) and not losing everything (because their neighborhoods burned down). It’s a libertarian fantasy that the private sector can supply all of these more efficiently and if they can’t, then society will be just fine without them. That kind of short-sighted thinking decreases wealth for everyone, *including *the rich.
Actually , I believe most of the fraud is on the other end - doctors and other providers billing for services that either weren’t needed or weren’t provided. I am certain there are *some *individual people trying to use someone else’s Medicare card, but it appears that sort of fraud is insignificant enough that it isn’t even listed in articles about Medicare (or Medicaid or insurance fraud). Literally everything I found is about the providers and lots of it is multi-million dollar frauds. The only mention of individuals is those who get kickbacks for providing their Medicare number to providers who then use it for fraudulent billings. Universal coverage is not going to eliminate fraud on the provider end.
I have never read a comprehensive analysis of how much it would cost to have a totally uneducated population, without available health care.
Bloody hell.
a) Nothing is free if it requires resources or labor, granted
b) Many of us want to be taxed and then the tax money used to make something available in a uniform, coherent, planned fashion. The interstate highway system, the postal service, and the public school system are examples of doing it this way.
c) Not everything is better when centrally planned, I’ll grant that also. I would not wish to see the apparel industry nationalized, for example. Yeah, each manufacturer seems to have a different notion of “size 12” but overall I appreciate the diversity a whole lot more than I resent the peculiarities and disparities.
d) Health insurance could conceivably have been in the same camp as the garment industry, but that’s not how it has gone down. It’s a sprawlingly complicated nonsystem. It’s fucking awful. When I’m sick or worried about my physical health, I don’t want to have to worry that the doctor isn’t covered, that the facility the doctor refers me to isn’t covered, or that the medication the doctor prescribes isn’t covered. Even when I’m healthy and have time on my hands I don’t want to wade through hundreds of self-serving descriptions of this and that health insurance policy and still not have a clear understanding of what I’d be acquiring for what price. When I’m paying my deductibles out of pocket and amassing a ludicrous pile of “THIS IS NOT A BILL” statements, and trying to sum them up and compare the latest to what I already freaking paid, I never have a single comprehensive accounting for what services I received, what the real charges were (not the imaginary charges that the insurance company denies), and how much of that I owe and when the insurance is gonna kick in and pay the rest. I end up sighing and saying “please don’t cheat me” and just paying whatever they say I owe, and by the end of the year I’ve paid for all my medical treatment and I’ve also paid for health insurance and I keep wondering WHY?!?
This is not a system. I want a system. Raise my taxes. Give me health care and don’t make me wade through that swamp. Don’t hassle me about insurance or copayments. I’m a taxpayer. It should be like the interstate.
e) College could be like the apparel industry too, I suppose, but here in particular we don’t want people to not get educated just because they can’t afford it. The entire country benefits from having an educated populace. And it’s not a new idea. There have been many times in history when if you qualified academically you didn’t have to pay tuition at least for in-state public colleges.
Ivanka might say, “Let them eat carrot cake.”
My system doesn’t like me googling, “What would lack of public education and healthcare cost the U.S.?” <time passes> Ah, five minutes later, I receive… no clear answers. A study is needed. Can we get a grant?
I know a society like that, but the only person smart enough to write up their analysis got beat up in private school and died a month later of sepsis.
I don’t know enough about the subject to offer an informed opinion but am just pointing out that the existence of a middleman does not necessarily mean that there is an inefficiency that can be rectified.
Looking at costs and life expectancy. I find it surprising that politicians in Europe are heading down to Greece to find out how to replace their systems with the better Greek one.
The government does not provide food or cars but most people are able to get around and not starve. If the government completely abandoned healthcare and education those sectors would not go away.
Ahem. Food stamps? Public transportation?
No, the health industry and the education industry would not go away, but lots of people would no longer be able to afford any healthcare, and lots of parents wouldn’t be able to send their kids to school.
That your idea of paradise?
Nobody needs health care in Libertopia because they all get good exercise walking everywhere.
Crosswalks. We don’t need no steenkin’ crosswalks.
Does keep the population down. Plus the average libertarian thinks that if a car hits him, the car will lose.