Paying less is not necessarily a good thing. I can choose to pay less for a car if I want a lesser car. Also, countries with UHC do not get “better results.” They do have healthier populations, which does not show that their health care system is better. The economic numbers for countries with UHC are worse than those for the US.
Yes, like your existence.
Really? Each and every one? Wow, sorry I missed it. Will it be included in your “greatest hits” release?
Your "refutation’ in that thread was laughable, and your cites consisted of so much goalpost moving that I’m surprised that you didn’t give yourself a hernia.
Bottom line is: The Canadian economy is doing just fine, thank you very much, and is showing no signs of imminent collapse, despite our horrid socialist UHC policies. It’s been over 60 years now - when is our economy going to tank anyway?
Your theory that UHC will cause irreparable harm to a countries economy is proven false by examples across the world - You’ve had this pointed out to you by posters from a variety of countries, yet you continue to deny reality.
You’re a parody of what a blinkered ideological libertarian would look like.
Actually, yes, yes it does, that is pretty much the very definition. Even more so because the nations are so diverse. Its not because the Germans eat sauerkraut, or the Japanese eat sushi. Its not because the Mexicans are Catholic or because the Swedes are Lutherans. The identifiable common factor amongst these groups is health care.
Now, if for some reason, this only worked in countries where people ate a lot of fish, or in places that God favors because of their correct theology, you might have a point. It isn’t, so you don’t.
EP, I never predicted imminent collapse. I predicted prolonged stagnation and permanent high unemployment, both of which are evident from the unemployment figures, the fact that people are clamoring to get away from countries with large social programs, their low GDP growth, and their high public debt to GDP ratio.
But if you want to continue to deny the facts and adhere to your ideology, you go right ahead.
Like I said luci, stick to the one-liners. That whole “reasoning” thing is not for you. There are a lot more factors that go into how healthy a population is besides the quality of the health care the population receives.
But if you want to continue to deny the facts and adhere to your ideology, you go right ahead.
Assuming that is actually the case - so what? Defense spending and effectiveness is also lower in those countries. Does that mean Europe should start buying tanks?
And yet, oddly, you seem reluctant to devastate our argument with examples. How very kind of you!
Of course there are such factors. The point was that its a very good bet that such factors vary from culture to culture and nation to nation. And if something works pretty much the same regardless of those factors (which vary), then its a very good bet that that “something” (in this instance, UHC) is the dominant and most effective factor.
Any other factor to explain the results would have to be equally prevalent, near universal, now wouldn’t it? That is to say, it would have to be the same in Germany as in Mexico, France as in Australia, and so one and so forth.
Ah, I see. Prolonged stagnation, except for right now, when it is not occurring in Canada.
Permanent high unemployment, except for now, when it is better than the US.
People clamoring to get away from Canada, except for the fact that they are not.
Low GDP growth, except for right now when Canada’s is expected to be equal or better than the US’s
High public debt to GDP ratio, if you don’t look at 12 years of debt repayment in Canada, leading to lower debt to GDP ratios.
You’re not too good with the facts, there, are you my delusional friend?
All of the cites I posted in that other thread flatly refute all of these points, and yet here you are, spewing the same bullshit. And you accuse me of being an ideologue who won’t pay attention to facts.
So, in other words, you are making the argument that correlation does in fact equal causation. These countries have healthier populations and UHC, so it must be UHC that causes their populations to be healthier. I imagine even you can see the big steaming pile of fail in that analysis.
Your “cites” did nothing of the kind and you know it. The Canadian economy is doing just fine, and is arguable better than yours is at the moment. We’re going to be raising interest rates this Summer because the economy is growing faster than expected, and inflation needs to be kept in check.
You are looking more and more pathetic by the post.
Go and ask noted Left Winger 
Sam Stone how crappy the Canadian economy is doing.
I love how you keep discussing the Canadian economy v. the US economy RIGHT NOW (i.e., toward the end of a huge depression) while I’m discussing (and providing cites for) high permanent unemployment and long-term stagnation. The unemployment cites, in particular, show that Canada has had around 10% unemployment for decades while it took the biggest depression since the Great one for the US’s unemployment rate to get there.
Well, after 60+ years of UHC, how come we’re doing so well NOW?
When exactly is this slide into economic collapse going to happen due to our horrid socialist policies? Another 60 years? 150 years?
It was a depression? Really? I thought it was supposed to be a recession. I hope it’s at the end. By the way, wasn’t this the depression brought about by the under- to un- regulated financial model that the conservatives espouse and the Republicans created?
It’s also not true. Canada has had two four-year periods of over 10% unemployment that coincided with the two recessions in the 80s and 90s (when US unemployment also spiked) but has otherwise sat around 8%. In the last decade it’s trended below that. Cite.
I wonder if you could point me at least to the post where you refuted my point that Canada has a solvent government pension plan (unlike your social security).
You see, the The CPP is funded on a “steady-state” basis, with its current contribution rate set so that it will remain constant for the next 75 years. Canada has a non-political chief actuary, who submits a report to Parliament every three years on the financial status of the plan. The reports are public and freely available and it is not in dispute that the CPP is in great financial shape, even after the recent stock market meltdown (the assets are back up to more than they were before!)
check the cites to the reports at the bottom of the wikipedia article
Well, this is just planly a lie. The unemployment rate has not been as high as 10% in seventeen years, and that was an outlier. Only twice since the Great Depression has Canada’s unemployment rate reached 10%; for a few years in the early 90s, and for a year or two in the early 80s. So it’s been above 10% for a total or four or five years, at the very most, in the last seventy years.
(I see Raygun had made a similar point, though he claims two period s of four years at the same time as the periods I see two year spikes - I guess we have different graphs - but it’s pretty much the same conclusion.)
Where are you getting your facts, Rand? Glenn Beck’s Talking Points For People Afraid To Travel Abroad? I mean, have you BEEN to Canada? It’s remarkably wealthy for a place that’s allegedly stagnated all these decades.
Don’t thank me for anything. (I never thought the US was in any way ‘backward’, just that they had gone too far down a path where business and government had become lifetime fuckbuddies and there was nothing anyone could do about it anymore).
In fact, I think the Health Care bill signed was a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster that failed to address the main issues, and could still be a disaster for the USA.
It’s quite simple Rickjay: Rand Rover starts with the premise that countries with government programs must have stagnating economies. He then concludes that Canada must have high permanent unemployment.
Simple, eh?
Now you can look forward to some future time when Rand Rover posts the same crap again, and then tells you that he already refuted your points.