Why would it make the lower tier worse? You still have to pay your taxes whether you use the public health service or not. In fact, the more people who opt out the better, because it reduces waiting lists (although I doubt it’s significant).
In the short term, yes. In the longer term no. The more people that opt out of the single payer system, the more it changes from a universal feature of society into a welfare program for *those *people.
And once enrollment declines past a certain critical level not far from 65%, it becomes politically unsustainable and is defunded or shut down.
Essentially all the opposition to Obamacare is the same thing operating in the other direction. IOW : If *those *people get care, it’ll cost *me *too much. So we can’t extend the system to *those *people.
Social Security is in a similar boat. We could solve the SS funding challenge by capping benefits for the well-off and charging the full SS tax farther up the income scale. But doing so would undermine the political support which is based on “Everybody pays; everybody gets.” Once it becomes “You pay; *they *get.”, support would collapse within a couple election cycles.
He’s going to have them dragged into the alley.
Trump supporters are claiming fraud in the Iowa caucuses … but in the Rubio vote, not the Cruz vote.
What, fucking Microsoft?! Windows '95, and now this!
Scott Brown endorses Trump:
It’s interesting how Trump seems to be popular with moderates and xenophobes alike.
Am I the only one who thinks TD resembles Roman Polanski in that photo?
You do know that photographers pose their subjects, don’t you? I doubt very much that either Trump or his daughter had any idea how that photo would look at the time it was taken.
I don’t watch or listen to Rush Limbaugh (Fox either, for that matter) but this turned up on my Facebook feed today and I thought it bears repeating:
Food for thought.
What if, instead of “looking” at them, you actually listened to what they were saying? You know, the actual substance of what they’re campaigning on. Seems to me that “lack of diversity and closed-minded bigotry” along with a generous sprinkling of hate and paranoia is the central campaign message coming out of Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.
Who gives a fuck? Excepting the Donald, all of them are just shills of one stripe or another.
It’s not even looking at them. Ted Cruz is Hispanic in exactly one sense: part of his lineage is from a Spanish-speaking country. He does not speak Spanish. He is not Latino. He did not grow up in a Hispanic community. He does not publicly identify as Hispanic. Viewing him as bringing diversity to the Republican party means you don’t have a fucking clue about the value of diversity.
Well you have to look at them the right way … like the apartment that has a view of the lake … so long as you stick your head out of that window and stretch just right. 
But, but, guys…they’re brown and black people!
Now if you don’t like their politics that’s one thing, but the lie is that Republicans hate black and brown people…and women. And yet women, black people and brown people have been shown not only to be welcome but strongly supported provided that they’re simply fellow Republicans.
It would be more honest of you guys to claim that Republicans object to Democratic brown and black people and women and those who vote for them. But as for brown, black and female? No problem at all!!
Nor can you pair Cubans with other Hispanics from a political sense. Cruz is to Hispanic as Carson is to Compton.
And mind you Rush and people like him told us people only voted for Obama because he was black - and that we should look at their values and ideas and not their skin color. VOMIT
Well, as it was pointed out to me in an earlier thread, Cubans DON’T COUNT, because some have voted Republican, and they’re not Hispanic enough, or something…
No, they aren’t. Carson is black. I don’t know if Rubio would be considered “brown” (he’s certainly Latino), but Cruz is white. 1950’s white.
Robert Young wasn’t that white! Cruz makes Norwegians look like n-words! Cruz glows in the dark! Cruz is of the Pillsbury Dough-Boy race! (Is America ready?!)
No, better rethink that. Actually Republicans seem to have quite a lot of problems with women and minorities.
Republican problems with women:
The rising number of women in Congress can obscure another trend: The number of Republican women has remained roughly stagnant for more than a decade.
Although women in both parties have increased their numbers in Congress during the past 25 years, the share of Democratic women — now nearly 33 percent — has continued to climb, while the Republican female share has leveled off since hitting 10 percent during the mid-2000s.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/upshot/gop-women-in-congress-why-so-few.html
Republican problems with minorities:
CHART: Actually, Most Of The Diversity In Congress Comes From Democrats
You know some folks who are immigrants themselves or first-generation, from Mexico and Central America? Ask them.