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On May 21 2017 11:19 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2017 10:33 Yurie wrote:On May 21 2017 10:11 ticklishmusic wrote:
i would be interested if the single payer proponents actually put forward a practical, deficit neutral-ish plan instead of blaming inaction by the people who actually get shit done because of corporate interests/ dark money/ neoliberalism/ etc. alas, in the tens of thousands of posts here that has not occurred. Nationalize negotiations and guidelines. Don't pay for medicines that are uneconomical on a societal level if it would go over budget to fund them. Basically decrease the top level treatments being paid for and promote check ups to treat things before those are needed. Make medical treatment and drugs cheaper by lowering prices and don't pay for treatment that isn't necessary. We understand that. That is the goal, not how we get there.
By not having a president that goes into meetings with big pharma intending to lower drug prices and comes out giving them tax breaks.
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On May 21 2017 11:19 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2017 10:33 Yurie wrote:On May 21 2017 10:11 ticklishmusic wrote:
i would be interested if the single payer proponents actually put forward a practical, deficit neutral-ish plan instead of blaming inaction by the people who actually get shit done because of corporate interests/ dark money/ neoliberalism/ etc. alas, in the tens of thousands of posts here that has not occurred. Nationalize negotiations and guidelines. Don't pay for medicines that are uneconomical on a societal level if it would go over budget to fund them. Basically decrease the top level treatments being paid for and promote check ups to treat things before those are needed. Make medical treatment and drugs cheaper by lowering prices and don't pay for treatment that isn't necessary. We understand that. That is the goal, not how we get there.
How do you determine if treatment is necessary? That sounds like an enormous problem.
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On May 21 2017 10:33 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2017 10:11 ticklishmusic wrote:
i would be interested if the single payer proponents actually put forward a practical, deficit neutral-ish plan instead of blaming inaction by the people who actually get shit done because of corporate interests/ dark money/ neoliberalism/ etc. alas, in the tens of thousands of posts here that has not occurred. Nationalize negotiations and guidelines. Don't pay for medicines that are uneconomical on a societal level if it would go over budget to fund them. Basically decrease the top level treatments being paid for and promote check ups to treat things before those are needed.
It isn't economical to provide medical care for those who have retired from the work force. I feel like there's better ways to define that. Also, most medical expenses come at the end of a person's life.
If the government were able to bargain to lower drug prices for things besides medicare and medicaid that would certainly help. That is basically just a hop away from single payer though.
The fact is that employers actually go super fucking far out of their way not to hire workers who would qualify for benefits. Rather than working 35-40 hour a week job many people now work two part time jobs because their employers refuse to even consider benefits. A method of providing health care provided by the government rather than by employers word probably be one of the best things to happen for many smaller employers.
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On May 21 2017 12:03 Monochromatic wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2017 11:19 Plansix wrote:On May 21 2017 10:33 Yurie wrote:On May 21 2017 10:11 ticklishmusic wrote:
i would be interested if the single payer proponents actually put forward a practical, deficit neutral-ish plan instead of blaming inaction by the people who actually get shit done because of corporate interests/ dark money/ neoliberalism/ etc. alas, in the tens of thousands of posts here that has not occurred. Nationalize negotiations and guidelines. Don't pay for medicines that are uneconomical on a societal level if it would go over budget to fund them. Basically decrease the top level treatments being paid for and promote check ups to treat things before those are needed. Make medical treatment and drugs cheaper by lowering prices and don't pay for treatment that isn't necessary. We understand that. That is the goal, not how we get there. How do you determine if treatment is necessary? That sounds like an enormous problem.
And now we are full circle as to why the even the House Progressive Caucus won't run single payer in the People's Budget. There are concrete fixes to ACA that must be made first. Put more money into Medicaid. Get the exchanges working as they should have worked. Undo all the Republican sabotage. Bring back risk corridors. Subsidize high risk insurers to keep them alive. Reform how medicaid buys drugs. Rewrite ACA so that the medicaid expansion can hit all 50 states.
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On May 21 2017 04:48 JW_DTLA wrote:
When you don't like the news, just make stuff up.
This was so crazy, I took a look at Hannity's recent twitter feed. I am genuinely shocked. I never thought he was a super smart guy, but I thought he was reasonably intelligent. Judging from his latest tweets, Sean's brain is melting out his ears.
https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/866016183815942144
And he retweeted this:
The really important thing to keep in mind here is that he's saying all this AFTER getting sued by the family of the deceased for his conspiracy mongering. Nevertheless, he persisted.
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Canada13431 Posts
The fact its so ridiculous and stupid and keeps having random people spread it on social media is the exact reason people think its real.
We should stop posting that kind of fake uncorroborated stuff -_-
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Twitter was a mistake. Jesus.
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On May 21 2017 13:34 Plansix wrote:
Twitter was a mistake. Jesus.
Definitely one of the underappreciated stories of the Trump disaster. We've legitimized the most constricted and aimless form of internet communication into what is now perhaps the country's standard political forum. That's not a good precedent.
That it lets our President circumvent the entire efforts of his multi-million dollar team of political, marketing, and legal consultants, to tell it like it is, is both a blessing and a curse.
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On May 21 2017 12:03 Monochromatic wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2017 11:19 Plansix wrote:On May 21 2017 10:33 Yurie wrote:On May 21 2017 10:11 ticklishmusic wrote:
i would be interested if the single payer proponents actually put forward a practical, deficit neutral-ish plan instead of blaming inaction by the people who actually get shit done because of corporate interests/ dark money/ neoliberalism/ etc. alas, in the tens of thousands of posts here that has not occurred. Nationalize negotiations and guidelines. Don't pay for medicines that are uneconomical on a societal level if it would go over budget to fund them. Basically decrease the top level treatments being paid for and promote check ups to treat things before those are needed. Make medical treatment and drugs cheaper by lowering prices and don't pay for treatment that isn't necessary. We understand that. That is the goal, not how we get there. How do you determine if treatment is necessary? That sounds like an enormous problem.
Yes, for treatments, it is not easy, but there are things like medication to prevent possible future illnesses, that has almost no upper limit to what some people would call "necessary".
The bigger issue is tests, though. You can triple the amount of tests without achieving anything in terms of better treatment. People like to take them to "feel secure", but a lot of them just cost money for minimal benefit.
Then there are inflated drug prices, insurance company, complicated billing system causing buerocracy etc. all contrubuting to the worlds most expensive (but not best) healthcare system.
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On May 21 2017 11:19 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2017 10:33 Yurie wrote:On May 21 2017 10:11 ticklishmusic wrote:
i would be interested if the single payer proponents actually put forward a practical, deficit neutral-ish plan instead of blaming inaction by the people who actually get shit done because of corporate interests/ dark money/ neoliberalism/ etc. alas, in the tens of thousands of posts here that has not occurred. Nationalize negotiations and guidelines. Don't pay for medicines that are uneconomical on a societal level if it would go over budget to fund them. Basically decrease the top level treatments being paid for and promote check ups to treat things before those are needed. Make medical treatment and drugs cheaper by lowering prices and don't pay for treatment that isn't necessary. We understand that. That is the goal, not how we get there.
Sure, that different question is a bit harder to answer though. There are many workable paths that doesn't carry enough political capital to get carried out. So I don't see a viable path there quickly, just slowly change one thing after another and change people's opinions.
One path I can see is remove the focus from company insurance and just put a national yearly average insurance cost with expected cost of treatment and methods set with it, basically remove the insurance companies as anything except administrative centres of government policy. If cost goes above 10% of that the hospital has to submit a report on what complications there were. In the insurance include 2 free yearly visits per person for check ups without a known or suspected condition.
The problem with that is that you would end up with paying for a majority of people from the government. Costs could probably partially be taken from changing taxes on companies from the benefits they no longer pay for.
Another way would be to remove the insurance centric path and hospitals directly asking for money from the government for treatments. The government then locally and regionally negotiate with them for labour, equipment and locale costs. They separately negotiate with the makers of drugs and machines for prices for the hospitals to make the costs predictable and being able to exclude too expensive drugs from the market until the patent expires.
Both solutions would increase government spending on the issues but likely decrease the cost as percentage of GDP. So should be possible to rearrange things in the economy to fit it.
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The weird thing is that currently, the US still pays more government money for healthcare than most other countries which have universal healthcare. Despite all of the employer policies and the people having to pay for their own insurance, your government still pays the same amount that the governments of countries with universal healthcare do. You just get less for your money. And then you pay more out of your own pocket to still get less.
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https://www.usafacts.org/
Steve Wozniak created this site to show the American people where our taxes are going. It's really good.
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NYT had a nice infographic on certain major events in the Trump administration. Whether or not you agree with it (I have a few places where I think they misjudged), I have to say it's an interesting read - especially because each of these events, important or not, were followed by mass media hysteria.
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On May 21 2017 20:43 Simberto wrote:
The weird thing is that currently, the US still pays more government money for healthcare than most other countries which have universal healthcare. Despite all of the employer policies and the people having to pay for their own insurance, your government still pays the same amount that the governments of countries with universal healthcare do. You just get less for your money. And then you pay more out of your own pocket to still get less.
When this topic comes up it becomes easier to realize just how much people have fallen for the BS rhetoric coming from both sides about why we have to pay more for a shittier system/results than any other OECD country.
We don't, politicians could figure this out, have it get majority support, and get it passed, but the reason they don't isn't much of the crap that has been spread here, it's that there's billions of dollars of profit that would evaporate and those people want to defend their ability to profit off of sick people. Which means they pay hundreds of millions directly to the campaigns of the politicians they need to keep feeding people the lies they repeat to defend insurers profits (whether they realize that's what they are doing or not).
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On May 21 2017 20:43 Simberto wrote:
The weird thing is that currently, the US still pays more government money for healthcare than most other countries which have universal healthcare. Despite all of the employer policies and the people having to pay for their own insurance, your government still pays the same amount that the governments of countries with universal healthcare do. You just get less for your money. And then you pay more out of your own pocket to still get less.
I find this really mind boggling. In Portugal we have a public system that is nearly free for everyone and a private system where insurance costs between 30-65€ per month - the higher tiers include dental plans. Most drugs are also subsidized so they tend to be affordable. And yet the public expenditure in health is 8.3% of GDP in the US vs 6.2% in PT, while the population over 65 is 15% in US vs 21% here. Meanwhile, the US government also spends more than the OECD average on education as % of GDP and yet they're mediocre inn the PISA rankings and tertiary education costs a fortune.
This also reminded me of a recent article (Economist) about how the costs per mile of building a subway line we're much higher in the US than in other countries and it all came down to public governance. Are Europeans just better at building more efficient public institutions? If so why?
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On May 22 2017 03:07 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2017 20:43 Simberto wrote:
The weird thing is that currently, the US still pays more government money for healthcare than most other countries which have universal healthcare. Despite all of the employer policies and the people having to pay for their own insurance, your government still pays the same amount that the governments of countries with universal healthcare do. You just get less for your money. And then you pay more out of your own pocket to still get less. I find this really mind boggling. In Portugal we have a public system that is nearly free for everyone and a private system where insurance costs between 30-65€ per month - the higher tiers include dental plans. Most drugs are also subsidized so they tend to be affordable. And yet the public expenditure in health is 8.3% of GDP in the US vs 6.2% in PT, while the population over 65 is 15% in US vs 21% here. Meanwhile, the US government also spends more than the OECD average on education as % of GDP and yet they're mediocre inn the PISA rankings and tertiary education costs a fortune. This also reminded me of a recent article (Economist) about how the costs per mile of building a subway line we're much higher in the US than in other countries and it all came down to public governance. Are Europeans just better at building more efficient public institutions? If so why?
Because Europeans do not have a massive distrust for anything related to government. Because we don't have half our political system dedicated to getting rid of government? (unless it concerns your bedroom).
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I also think it's easier to have a smaller, more efficient government when your country is much smaller too in both land mass and population.
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On May 22 2017 03:12 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On May 22 2017 03:07 warding wrote:On May 21 2017 20:43 Simberto wrote:
The weird thing is that currently, the US still pays more government money for healthcare than most other countries which have universal healthcare. Despite all of the employer policies and the people having to pay for their own insurance, your government still pays the same amount that the governments of countries with universal healthcare do. You just get less for your money. And then you pay more out of your own pocket to still get less. I find this really mind boggling. In Portugal we have a public system that is nearly free for everyone and a private system where insurance costs between 30-65€ per month - the higher tiers include dental plans. Most drugs are also subsidized so they tend to be affordable. And yet the public expenditure in health is 8.3% of GDP in the US vs 6.2% in PT, while the population over 65 is 15% in US vs 21% here. Meanwhile, the US government also spends more than the OECD average on education as % of GDP and yet they're mediocre inn the PISA rankings and tertiary education costs a fortune. This also reminded me of a recent article (Economist) about how the costs per mile of building a subway line we're much higher in the US than in other countries and it all came down to public governance. Are Europeans just better at building more efficient public institutions? If so why? Because Europeans do not have a massive distrust for anything related to government. Because we don't have half our political system dedicated to getting rid of government? (unless it concerns your bedroom).
Maybe. While that is still under debate, making the system more efficient becomes a secondary problem. I wouldn't exclude the democratic party from scrutiny though - the reason public governance is often poor is due topolitical capture by corporatist interests like teachers unions. Unions are amongst the main donors of the democratic party.
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On May 22 2017 03:21 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On May 22 2017 03:12 Gorsameth wrote:On May 22 2017 03:07 warding wrote:On May 21 2017 20:43 Simberto wrote:
The weird thing is that currently, the US still pays more government money for healthcare than most other countries which have universal healthcare. Despite all of the employer policies and the people having to pay for their own insurance, your government still pays the same amount that the governments of countries with universal healthcare do. You just get less for your money. And then you pay more out of your own pocket to still get less. I find this really mind boggling. In Portugal we have a public system that is nearly free for everyone and a private system where insurance costs between 30-65€ per month - the higher tiers include dental plans. Most drugs are also subsidized so they tend to be affordable. And yet the public expenditure in health is 8.3% of GDP in the US vs 6.2% in PT, while the population over 65 is 15% in US vs 21% here. Meanwhile, the US government also spends more than the OECD average on education as % of GDP and yet they're mediocre inn the PISA rankings and tertiary education costs a fortune. This also reminded me of a recent article (Economist) about how the costs per mile of building a subway line we're much higher in the US than in other countries and it all came down to public governance. Are Europeans just better at building more efficient public institutions? If so why? Because Europeans do not have a massive distrust for anything related to government. Because we don't have half our political system dedicated to getting rid of government? (unless it concerns your bedroom). Maybe. While that is still under debate, making the system more efficient becomes a secondary problem. I wouldn't exclude the democratic party from scrutiny though - the reason public governance is often poor is due topolitical capture by corporatist interests like teachers unions. Unions are amongst the main donors of the democratic party.
Don't see why Unions would be a major factor in the US compared to many EU nations. From Wiki it seems the US is much less unionised than most other Western nations.
By 1989, that figure had dropped to about 16%, the lowest percentage of any developed democracy, except France. Union membership for other developed democracies, in 1986/87 were:[1]
95% in Sweden and Denmark.
85% in Finland
Over 60% in Norway and Austria
Over 50% in Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Over 40% in Italy.
Over 30% in West Germany.
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On May 22 2017 03:19 Mysticesper wrote:
I also think it's easier to have a smaller, more efficient government when your country is much smaller too in both land mass and population.
Which still doesn't make sense when so much of what happens in a state is governed by the state and more and more gets pushed to the state level or private sector.
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