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Post by
gamerunknown
Nah, this is a vestige of the Thatchet administration. Blair got burned for this too and he was almost certainly complicit. Hell, it's damn near impossible to get elected without palling up to Murdoch, so I'd honestly chalk it up to mismanagement if Cameron wasn't involved in quid pro quos with Brooks and others.
Post by
334295
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
557473
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
The
US Supreme Court hears case
involving healthcare, specifically:
Is it constitutional for the US federal government to require individuals to purchase health insurance, and penalize people who do not?
The provision of the constitution that the Obama Administration has broadly used to produce this mandate is:Article 1 of the Constitution gives Congress the power "lay and collect ... taxes to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States" and to "regulate commerce ... among the several states."What is remarkable to me is that the US government has decided that laying and collecting taxes to provide for general welfare of the United States, can be directly translated to requiring me to purchase things that are for the general welfare of MyTie.
Post by
91278
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
gamerunknown
The individual mandate was proposed by the Heritage foundation in 1994, appeared in the Wyden-Bennet plan and Nixon himself crafted a version of universal healthcare that was opposed by the Dems for not being sufficiently similar to other, working systems.
Now that the Dems have chased the Pubs so far to the right that they have no wiggling room, they're going to have to jump off the deep end and rely on the SCOTUS. Or organise some giant melee involving every citizen to cull those undeserving of healthcare.
Post by
Squishalot
MyTie is a subset of the United States, no? Unless I'm mistaking your argument, but that sounds like an argument against any taxation ever.
Taxation isn't a commercial product to be purchased. There's a difference between levying a health insurance tax, and forcing people to buy health insurance.
The way Australia deals with the situation is to prescribe a levy for those who don't have private health insurance. The cost of the levy is fairly similar to the cost of taking up health insurance after subsidies. In that respect, you avoid the constitutional issues whilst obtaining decent insurance take-up rates, but without quite getting to 100% coverage. That, however, is mainly because our levy only applies to people earning over $X. I think if the levy applied right down to the last person, take-up rates would be significantly higher.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Squishalot##DELIM##
Post by
334295
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
gamerunknown
"The federal government dominating a market": kinda like how there's no competition over judiciaries or constabulary?
Edit: The government also compels people to pay taxes and attend a school. They don't dictate which school though and parents can even homeschool.
Not to mention that there's one school of thought that everyone in the US belongs to the militia and one of the key elements to keeping them organised and regulated is keeping them healthy.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
It's not that insurance needs to be cheaper- it's that the pricing of health care needs to be determined by what people can afford to pay, and not what insurance companies can afford to pay. the worst thing that ever happened to health care was the invention of insurance. In the beginning, it sounded good I'm sure- it's just in case something big happens you can't afford, so you can still be taken care of. But what it did was knock health care into it's own private economy, that had little or no relation to how much people could actually pay or how much the materials and labor on the supplies actually cost.
The best fix would require a time machine. At this point, I don't know that there's any way to fix it without the government becoming involved. I'm not normally one for spending money we don't have, or a whole lot of regulation, but medical insurance has broken the system, and it's going to take outside intervention to fix it. I'm sure that if you look at the cost of what it actually takes to create medical supplies that we've already invented (not to fund research, but to be able to create what we already know how to create), a large portion of the basics for common medical problems (gauze, antibiotics, asthma medication, ect.) could be made and distributed very economically.
There are certain projects and services that are currently under the government's control and funding- firehouses, police, roads, mail, etc.- because they are important in terms of keeping the country running and/or they could easily be exploitative because of how much is at stake when people need these services. "Oh you need us to put out a house fire. Ok- 10,000 bucks. Surely your house is worth that much to you, right?" "Oh, your daughter is being raped. We might have a squad car out there in an hour. However, if you were a widows and orphans fund donor- of say 3,000 dollars- you'd be put at the front of the line." I think at this point, that's kind of what we're seeing with health care- maybe not as crassly, but when someone says it will cost you a year's salary for 4 hours worth of surgery and a few meals and a bed to sleep in while you recover, it's not far off. And I think it may be time to re-classify it into service that's too important to allow it to be left in the private sector any longer.
EDIT: Also, I'm not saying it should be a free service- just that it should be charging to cover the actual costs.
Post by
557473
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Azazel
I <3 public healthcare. I'd rather pay more taxes than let human lives go to waste.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
There are certain projects and services that are currently under the government's control and funding- firehouses, police, roads, mail, etc.- because they are important in terms of keeping the country running and/or they could easily be exploitative because of how much is at stake when people need these services. "Oh you need us to put out a house fire. Ok- 10,000 bucks. Surely your house is worth that much to you, right?" "Oh, your daughter is being raped. We might have a squad car out there in an hour. However, if you were a widows and orphans fund donor- of say 3,000 dollars- you'd be put at the front of the line." I think at this point, that's kind of what we're seeing with health care- maybe not as crassly, but when someone says it will cost you a year's salary for 4 hours worth of surgery and a few meals and a bed to sleep in while you recover, it's not far off. And I think it may be time to re-classify it into service that's too important to allow it to be left in the private sector any longer.
EDIT: Also, I'm not saying it should be a free service- just that it should be charging to cover the actual costs.
This is why I think healthcare should be provided by government. I am not against private hospitals, it just that government should run most of the system and use taxation to pay for it. It is not free that way, but you don't have to worry about costs, when you get sick, since you paid your taxes and stuff.
Except we then run into the issue that, right now, we take in much, much less than we spend as it is. If we're going to add programs, they need to be somewhat self-sustaining, or it will just be one more thing nice we tried to do before the government collapsed under the weight of its own debt. It would be nice if we could afford to give everything away free, but we don't have the money. We need to be cutting programs and finding a way to make them accessible to those of lower income brackets, but still sustainable- right now, the clock is ticking on how long the government is able to provide anything to anyone, and we're not doing anything to slow down and try and fix it.
I agree that when people are getting fleeced by a system that forces them to choose between financial hardship and death, the government needs to step in. I don't agree that means they need to give everyone everything for free, because it's unrealistic, unsustainable and destroys work ethic.
Post by
gamerunknown
It would be nice if we could afford to give everything away free, but we don't have the money.
The US spends more on healthcare than any other country and has results tied with Cuba, a country with 1/14th of the expenditure.
Norway has a public healthcare system, is ranked at least top 3 in the HDI from what I can recall and was the only country in the world to break even recently... What's that about destroying work ethic?
Post by
Monday
It would be nice if we could afford to give everything away free, but we don't have the money.
The US spends more on healthcare than any other country and has results tied with Cuba, a country with 1/14th of the expenditure.
Norway has a public healthcare system, is ranked at least top 3 in the HDI from what I can recall and was the only country in the world to break even recently... What's that about destroying work ethic?
Define "more."
Do you mean more per capita, or just more? Because the US also has more people than most countries, so obviously they're going to be spending more money.
Post by
gamerunknown
Sorry, per capita. Here's a
chart
.
Here are
two other
lists from my bookmarks.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
Norway- I'm glad they found something that works. I imagine it helps that they have a little higher per capita income than we do, but it's not that much higher. Also, Norway has a flat income tax, doesn't it- all income is taxed at a flat 28%? If everyone is paying in, and everyone is sharing in the benefit, then I can see how it would create less animosity and less of a class divide. If decisions made are affecting everyone who is working, then they are going to be healthier more group oriented decisions. That seems to support my argument that people are providing for themselves- no one is getting a free ride, and so it doesn't affect productivity for them to pool their resources for things like healthcare and public services, because no one is actually getting it for free. There is an incentive for everyone in the country to look for a balance.
Currently in the US, 47% of households pay no income tax at all. That means that almost half of the people voting on the laws have no personal stake in increasing the taxes, and contribute nothing to the social programs they want the government to provide. It really is a free ride for them. And as a result, we are now 15.5 trillion dollars in debt, and we are going to spend 1 trillion more this year than we take in in taxes. The people who are using these programs want us to raise taxes, and not cut anything, because higher taxes don't affect you when you don't pay anyway. Many of the people who are paying taxes feel that it's not fair for them to be contributing to government programs they won't use when the people using them don't contribute anything to the government. Not that they don't contribute as much, but that they contribute nothing at all.
Right now, what we're doing doesn't work. There is no incentive for people who are in that 47% to vote to moderate spending because it doesn't cost them anything. There's no incentive for the higher tax brackets to want to contribute more because most services are geared at the 47% that contribute nothing, and it doesn't feel like a communal effort- it feels like a handout.
In Norway, everyone contributes, everyone benefits, and no one wants to unbalance the system because raises in taxes will affect them too, and the selection of social services is more widely used by the majority of the population. In the US, there is no balance and no compromise. Half the people don't put anything in, and so have no problem raising taxes as high as they can and voting for as many free programs as they can because it costs them nothing.
I don't think Norway proves me wrong- I think that Norway doesn't have the problems we have BECAUSE no one is getting anything for free- they're all paying in.
Post by
557473
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Patty
@Elhonna (Can't be bothered quoting that) - the tax threshold in Norway is allegedly being raised to 750,000 kroner, according to
this
. I'm afraid that I couldn't tell you what proportion of Norwegians have an income of less than/equal to that amount, but it's not
all
income, it's all income > 750k kroner.
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