US Politics Mega-thread - Page 760

On January 04 2014 05:22 Derez wrote:

These healthcare discussions are bizarre reading from a dutch perspective. I'm a starter in the dutch market, I pay a healthcare coverage of 86 euros a month of which I get 60ish back in the form of a subsidy. My own risk is 360 euros (any GP visits fall outside your own risk and are free), which means I'll never pay over 700 euros over the course of the year. The dutch government pays less than 2/3rds of what the US govt pays in terms of GDP. You then come to this thread and read about the horrors of government regulated healthcare and the communist nature of 'socialist medicine'.

The problem with the free market ideologues is that they fail to see at what point free markets fail to have the desired results. With the degrees in deregulation we've seen across the western world that question does not really seem like a theoretical fact when it can be established empirically pretty well.

On January 04 2014 05:36 farvacola wrote:
Are you simply ignoring Danglars' posts or what Jonny?

On January 04 2014 05:36 farvacola wrote:
Are you simply ignoring Danglars' posts or what Jonny?

On January 04 2014 05:55 Nyxisto wrote:

Well there's not much more you can do at this point. I mean, virtually every developed country that is not the US is doing very well with a highly regulated "single-payeresque" system. How in the hell can your fist thought be "Hey we have problems with our healthcare system, what about uhh deregulation?"

It's not difficult to find out how to fix the problems of the US healthcare system, the hard part is just implementing it because the industry has successfully lobbied against it up to the point where the demographic that would profit most from universal single - payer healthcare(low income and low education) is actually opposing it. If you tell people often enough that public run healthcare is bad and that deregulation is awesome they'll believe it, although every bit of empirical evidence points into the opposite direction.

On January 04 2014 06:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Side note - I'm not sure why you're figuring that low income / low education voters are opposed to single payer healthcare. I haven't seen that statistic.

On January 04 2014 06:47 Nyxisto wrote:


I was mainly referring to the surprisingly large group of "working class whites" that seem to root with the Tea Party or other Libertarian groups, or the Anti - Government agenda of the Republican party(which from a foreign perspective seems what they have been shifting towards). I am aware that lower income voters generally tend to favor the Democrats, but given the fact that the country is nearly split in half while the agenda of the GOP is basically putting 90% of the people at disadvantage is astonishing to me.

On January 04 2014 07:43 KwarK wrote:
Because politicians do not feel a part of the 90%, they are largely not drawn from them and the 90% have little to offer them, both in campaign donations and the business of making law. The 90% are not won over by self interest, they're won over by the media which is paid for by the 10%. If it's any consolation I'm happy to conclude that the Democrats are just as guilty of this as the Republicans.

The last three decades have seen the proportion of total income paid in tax by the rich in America fall sharply while their importance in politics has grown. If you think anyone is working for the advantage of the 90% you haven't been paying attention.

On January 04 2014 08:06 KwarK wrote:

You're measuring the wrong thing and if you aren't doing it deliberately then you're being willfully ignorant. The rich don't get paid in salaries, you need to look at capital gains.

On January 04 2014 07:59 Gorsameth wrote:

Gz you can link pictures, tobad this has been discussed to death and they dont actually pay that much.

On January 03 2014 21:08 Danglars wrote:

It is a radical idea to let people know how much their procedure will cost; we need to banish the thought from our minds. It is a radical idea to let people choose their health insurance for their time of life and situations in life. It is better to remain ignorant and let these wizards of smart tell us how much it should cost actually just banish greed and make it free! We've seen clearly the masses are too dumb to choose it for themselves, they must be forced into the right choices. Freedom is overrated.

On January 04 2014 08:24 IgnE wrote:


Hey jonny let's see that graph beginning from 1960. You have conveniently chosen the starting date of the great neoliberal evangelism.

Kwark's point (I think) is that you should be looking at wealth inequality. 99% of the population is experiencing little to negative growth in wealth while the top 1% is getting it all. I suppose you don't think that public policy has anything to do with that? That politicians haven't enthusiastically aided and abetted the top 1% (which bracket they themselves reside in) from reaping all the gains in the last 30 years?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Rand Paul says he is filing suit against the Obama administration over the data-collection policies of the National Security Agency. And on his website, he's urging Americans to join the lawsuit, in his words, "to stop Barack Obama's NSA from snooping on the American people."

In an interview Friday night on the Fox News show "Hannity," the Kentucky Republican says he believes everyone in the U.S. with a cellphone would be eligible to join the suit as a class action.

Paul says that people who want to join the suit are telling the government that it can't have access to emails and phone records without permission or without a specific warrant.

On January 04 2014 00:52 mcc wrote:

And yet it can work well. You are living in black-and-white illusion. You try to paint everyone in those systems as bureaucrats, thus stretching the meaning of that word beyond reasonable use. There is difference between professional organizations, scientific organizations and state bureaucrats. Well setup system relies on bureaucrats as little as possible. As much of the system should be set up by experts, and they actually know better than you do. The rest of the system should be set up based on society's demand. Bureaucrats should have as little power as possible and only as much as necessary for the system to work. In reality they of course have more power than that and keeping them down is constant struggle, but that does not negate the fact that those systems still work if there is enough work put in making them function.

Krauthammer, isn't that the guy that had once interview with John Stewart and showed he is prime example of what KwarK described in the post starting this discussion ? He has absolutely no idea about anything outside US and was just making shit up, not very good for someone trying to publicly discuss the issue.

On January 04 2014 02:12 Falling wrote:
Also public healthcare is not synonymous with centrally planned public healthcare by the public healthcare. I think in this way, the Canadian system is a better parallel due to US's value on State's rights. Our fathers of Confederation planned for a much more centrally controlled government in reaction to the blown apart States during the Civil War, but we wound up pretty decentralized just the same.

At the federal level you have the Health Canada Act which lays out the guidelines of the minimum requirements that that provinces must meet.

5 Criteria
+ Show Spoiler +

And because provincial governments gave over a lot of their taxation power years ago, the federal government transfers money to the provinces. But it does not run day to day operations- that would be far too inefficient as Canada (similar to the States) is super spread out and regionally diverse.

So it is the provinces that actually have control on how the healthcare is delivered, but it must meet the Canada Health Act if they want the funding. But much of the real decisions are actually made at the regional level


The major distinction is publically funded and for the must part, privately delivered.

Two major branches:
I) Public funded-
1) Public Delivery- Public Health, Provincial psychiatric institutions, Home Care in some provinces
2) Private Not-for-Profit Delivery- Most hospitals, addiction treatment
3) Private For-Profit Delivery- Primary health care physicians, Ancillary services in hospitals (laundry services, meal prep & maintenance), Labs & diagnostic services in most provinces, some hospitals

II) Privately funded-
1) Public Delivery- Enhanced non-medical (private room) & medical (eg fibreglass cast) goods and services in a publicly owned hospital
2) Private Not-for Profit Delivery- Some home care and nursing homes in some provinces
3) Private For-Profit Delivery- Cosmetic surgery, long-term care, extended health care benefits such as prescription drugs, dental care and eye care in some provinces, some MRI and CT scan clinics, some surgery clinics

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/prb0552-e.htm

The point is not that this is a perfect system, but I think it is a system that is at least comparably applicable to the American situation (ignoring American exceptionalism that makes everything inapplicable.) But when people say government is inherently inefficient, I suspect what they actually tend to mean is the federal government is inherently inefficient- unless they are of the libertarian into anarcho-capitalist brand. But if the federal government's role was bloc transfers and criteria to meet to get those bloc transfers, then doesn't that fulfill the rather common American desire to keep State control over most things including healthcare?

Furthermore as it is the doctor who handles insurance claims against the provincial insurer, it generally cuts out government bureaucrats from deciding whether you get funded or not.

It's too simplistic to say that public healthcare is inherently inefficient when there is such a multitude of ways to deliver healthcare while funding it publicly (and privately.)