Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
Tweet is from around February 2022; I’m not visiting that cesspool to find the exact date.
Americans pay more for healthcare than any other country, for worse results than any country with universal single-payer healthcare. Moving to the same model as Canada or the UK would mean paying less for healthcare, and getting better healthcare.
Which is obvious once you understand how private health insurance works.
Hold on, not all my money goes to healthcare in my for-profit healthcare system??
My friend, you've been sold a story about Canadian healthcare that is a complete lie. It's a province-based system that is in complete shambles. Just look at what Doug Ford, the premier (equiv. to governor) of Ontario has done: https://www.ona.org/news-posts/20221124-healthcare-union-sos/
What would likely work the best in the US is a system akin to Australia's. It's federal-based, and is a combination of public and private. Private health insurance still exists to cover "gap" fees and similar, but, similar to medicaid, low/no-income earners don't pay. America is already doing most of this, but nationalising most hospitals would be required, as well as forcing private health insurers to divest ownership of other medical clinics. This would be to eliminate the inane "in-network" crap, which we don't have in Australia (for the most part).
Doctors here aren't employed by the government like with the NHS in the UK either. They're able to run private clinics, and can charge above the government "bulk-billing" rebate. That government rebate is set nation-wide for all services in a master price-list, and is always paid out for those services whether the patient has private health or not. Then the provider and insurance negotiate for what is paid above and beyond that only. This gap fee can be paid directly by the patient, or by private health insurance. Clinics generally waive these fees for both disability and aged pensioners.
It's far from perfect, but I think the US would need to follow a system like this. Otherwise doctors, used to a certain wage and lifestyle, would likely revolt in some fashion.
Its not the doctors who are reaping the benefits its the insurance companies and hospital administration that make most of the money
This take really completely misses the point of my comment. US doctors still make much more money than UK ones who work under the NHS. Obviously insurance companies and hospital administration make the vast majority of it. They can safely be ignored if you were transitioning the system, as they provide literally no value. If you try and pay all the doctors less though, and they revolt, you won't have anyone to do the actual work.
Funny how Reagan ran on fiscal responsibility, gutted social programs and then spent all that money on military crap and subsidies for industrialist pals. It's never been different. Even the tea-party was miserly about social programs but happy to give the military everything it wanted (but not to improve the DVA and things to improve the lives of soldiers were right out.)
And yet somehow who's going to pay for it is regarded as a valid argument even though these social programs would be a tiny fraction of what we spend on our toys for killing people.
You can also take a fairly selfish view and come to the same conclusion. Like, I don't want to see homeless encampments, or really sick and untreated people, or panhandlers, or (...) while I'm walking around in my city. I can solve this problem by 1) moving to a nice suburb, or 2) having my tax dollars go to fix a problem that affects me. 1) is off the table because I want to live in the city, and 2)
while it helps the greater good
also helps me directly. (2 can also be addressed in a draconian fashion, which is not what I'm advocating at all.)
I think one problem is looking at things as zero sum. It's not. If you are healthy and housed and fed then you're not
to be very crass
an eyesore, you're adding to the fabric of the city. I want street musicians who are playing for fun, not because they're trying to make enough to afford dinner.
This is something I just don't get how so many folks don't seem to get it. Social safety nets make just a better overall environment to live in. Most people work jobs interacting with other people and have all sorts of things outside of work interacting with people. Ideally they are clean, healthy, educated, and are happy in the sense they are not worried about their prospects for basic necessities like food and shelter.
There is some percentage of people that simple can not think in any other way than zero sum games. Every transaction, interaction, etc needs to have winners and losers. They can’t see that some spending is good because it helps people which in turn helps them. It is a completely alien world view that I also don’t understand. They are the foot soldiers for fascism.
I was gonna joke that they must not have friends then, but that's actually a pretty common problem.
if I'm paying for the creation of skeletons, I expect to receive some in the mail.
A Doot will visit you shortly. Please be at home between 6am and 1pm
good, I will hang them an leave them on my front porch until thank giving
Man, why are Republicans so fucking stupid? Even the greediest toplofty would benefit more from universal healthcare than they'd lose.
The thing that really grinds my gears about neoliberal capitalism is that isn't even good at capitalism. It is just mathematical fact that healthy and happy workers make you more money, and are more than happy to work harder for luxuries (that, by the way, improve your consumerist economy) than stressing themselves into an early grave over necessities, all while breeding more workers for you to exploit.
That's not even getting into the kind of moronic system that rewards CEOs for selling off productive company assets and calling it record profits, bonus please!
I might not be a good lefty for saying it, but I've never been against capitalism at like a base level. I imagine it'd be perfectly fine in a species evolution didn't utterly fail, but example says we humans cannot have it and remain functional.
To be honest, politics aside, supporting a war with anything, when the war is basically just manic genocide that's been going for a full 100 years without any outcome while the people of your country are going poorer each year if not each month is plain idiocracy and a living proof that the world is just run by ЯTards.
Basically sums up what i said although instead of deleting just the R bomb that I dropped the mods deleted the whole thing 😞
If it is Feb '22 then that's an extremely prescient tweet, as the Palestinian Genocide didn't start until Oct '23.
Remember: nothing happened before 7/10/2023
7/10/2023? The date you gave was three days ago.
Also, obviously there is a bloody long history there. However this is still the only all out war since 2014. It just seemed like weird timing to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I do actually know a fair bit about the history of the conflict in Palestine.
This video by Middle East Eye is a decent summary of the reasons IMO.
Specifically the fact that Saudi Arabia was in the process of normalizing relations with the occupiers, but no longer is.
Wrong person? Also I'm not watching a 10min vertical video. xD
No, it’s for you, since you talked about the timing. I could have made that more clear though.
I’m not sure what the layout of the video has to do with anything, but yes, you don’t have to watch it.
Yes, whoops.
this band is very based from what I have seen
Ok, so I completely support universal healthcare. However, it still is true that you are paying for "someone else's healthcare". How?
Let's assume that there's a flat tax percentage - 30% for all. (Actually most developed countries have progressive tax systems, but let's ignore that for now). The more your income, the more tax you pay. Therefore, some people pay more tax than others. This means, that some people contribute more to fund the healthcare system compared to others.
Some people have pre-existing conditions. Some people may just be unhealthy due to bad lifestyle choices. I might be incredibly fit. The probability of me falling sick would be very less. If there were a multi payer healthcare system, then perhaps I might not need to spend much money on healthcare. A universal single payer system might be forcing me to pay more for others' healthcare. Therefore, saying that I'm paying for someone else's healthcare isn't inaccurate.
That being said, healthcare is a human right. Every human, regardless of financial status deserves timely access to good healthcare. That's why I support it.
Right now we pay for other peoples healthcare and we also pay some shitty middlemen who tell us what treatments they think are necessary. If we cut out the middlemen its literally cheaper than our current system.
We pay the middlemen, yes. I don't see how we pay for other people's healthcare. The private insurance that I've experienced takes many factors into account (age, quality of health, pre-existing conditions and so on). Thankfully because I'm both young, and don't have pre-existing conditions, I pay less insurance premiums than a kid born with diabetes.
Remember, we're talking about technicality here. We aren't talking about ethics. Strictly from a money standpoint, we're not paying for other people's insurance.
If you pay for insurance you are paying for other people's Healthcare. The whole reason to do insurance is that you have the ability to use more money from it than you ever put in, but will hopefully never need to. Otherwise it would make more sense to just have a health savings account.
What about the premiums though? Say the insurance premiums for x amount of coverage are 100 dollars. Doesn't matter if I'm a billionaire or if I'm homeless. The premium stays the same.
In a single payer universal healthcare system however, the premium would be a percentage of my income (collected via taxes). Suddenly, the 100 dollars becomes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Therefore, from my perspective, I am "paying for someone else's healthcare". This is the technicality that I'm talking about.
Now of course, fuck my perspective because fuck billionaires. This however, is out of scope of the discussion.
You also have to consider that the healthcare is worth a lot more money to the billionaire than the homeless guy. Just like the roads and the protection of the armed forces worth more money to him. I’m sure the billionaire is a fan of price discrimination too, conveniently enough!
Sure! The homeless guy is very likely uninsured. They might die in the streets because of this. The billionaire on the other hand would get higher quality healthcare. What would not be happening though, is the billionaire paying for the homeless guy's healthcare.
Now of course, a consequence of that is the homeless man dying. Ethically, this is an incredibly shitty system. THAT'S why we need single payer universal healthcare. However, a consequence of that would be the rich paying for the poor people's healthcare.
Yeah I didn’t comment on the “person A paying for person B” technicality because that’s always part of the deal. It happens with private insurance too. If the lowest paid worker at a company is healthy, and the billionaire CEO has a multitude of health problems, then if they’re using the same company insurance the poor person is paying for the rich person. It doesn’t matter that they’re paying the same premiums — the healthy poor person is getting less out than they paid in, and the sick rich person is getting more out than they paid in.
For some reason everyone thinks they are the healthy ones that don't and never will need healthcare, not like those unhealthy everyone else
True. I'm playing Devil's advocate here. These r arguments that I've heard that make sense technically, but not ethically. I'm not saying that real life me would want to give up my universal healthcare lol. It's a safety net that I absolutely want in my life (for selfish reasons as well)
To reply to your devil’s advocate
Agreed. The ethical argument for universal healthcare triumphs everything else, assuming that we value human life equally.
Except the US clearly has a stratified society, even when it tries to lighten that with myths of fair pay, opportunity and get-rich-quick schemes (all the old American dreams before the post WWII townhouse family.)
Part of the rise of fascist rhetoric (targeting minorities like trans folk and immigrants) is to distract from the failure of these myths. Millennials and Zoomers know they're probably never going to own a home, or get to retire well, which not only discourages the Protestant work ethic (see quiet-quitting) but also elevates civil unrest (see the Great Depression).
So the Republican response is to kill elections and install one-party autocracy backed by a police state. That way they don't even have to listen to fellow Republicans, after they realize getting benes from being party loyalists are not actually soon to arrive. This is literally a return to monarchy, as Representative and constitutional historian Jamie Rasken has observed.
Homogenate maybe more accurate