StrangeSox

related to the government-provided health care access, Kaiser has a paper on Medicaid's impact if you're interested. http://kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/what-i...n-the-evidence/

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:52 PM) Interesting - so there are cabinet positions that need confirmation, but also further "cabinet level" positions? Even goofier than I thought. Some departments are defined as cabinet level by law (Sec. of State, Defense, etc.) and are in the list of succession and others get 'elevated' by a President to Cabinet-level. I don't know why exactly, though.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:51 PM) If we are starting over lets just go to an American Idol system where people can vote directly. I can make uninformed knee jerk decisions just as well as someone in Washington! direct democracy on a local level is good but I don't see why a parliamentary system should be compared to American Idol?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:46 PM) Here's the trend since 1990 (older graph, obviously still trending upwards): Not good. But man i'm glad poor people can now pay just a little instead of nothing to get their free healthcare. Uh yeah we should expect a pretty constant increase in the total number of "people not in the labor force" as our population grows. You could point out instead that the labor force participation rate is down. That's a much more meaningful number than just the total. Which, again, isn't 90 million unemployed able-bodied people. It's every person 16 and over who isn't employed for whatever reason.

You are literally the Bogey Man and Frankenstein's Monster combined

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:31 PM) That's a good start. But I still believe the executive should be able to act more like one, in terms of how his/her departments are filled out, and running the agencies (within the confines of legislated authority). If we were starting from scratch, I'd prefer a parliamentary democracy over a presidential one. Majorities get to govern, and because they can implement their policies, can actually be held directly accountable for the outcomes. As it is here, the President is the public face of the federal government and the major focus of news coverage and election campaigns while a majority of those in the House go completely unnoticed. When there's a governmental split, both sides can point at the other as the problem. We do sometimes get a more direct accountability, e.g. the 2008 wave that led to Obamacare that led to the 2010 backlash.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:28 PM) EPA isn't a cabinet level post though. Also, what the EPA can do is limited by legislated rules and laws as boundaries, and further by legal wranglings if they act in a way that is perceived to be outside those laws (see the lawsuit now pending about certain CO2 regulations). The EPA doesn't make its own laws - it sets guidelines and rules within the confines of their legislated authorities. I wondered about that too, but apparently it is! There's Cabinet and Cabinet-Level, and both require Senate confirmation. A new EPA director was confirmed this year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_McCarthy

I also don't know why BLS numbers are supposedly intentionally scary?

That is a very peculiar definition of fairness.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:31 PM) From the Bureau of Big Numbers That Are Intended to Scare People But Are Actually Not Scary (aka Labor Statistics) http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/10/22/more-...orce-new-record That 90 million number includes an awful lot of non-able-bodied people.

I think many government branches work well. Perfect? No. I think some, especially social welfare ones like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, have worked extraordinarily well. I see no reason to believe that an expansion of Medicare to all Americans would be some gigantic, disastrous thing. We also don't need a clean slate or to scrap entire departments to address whatever issues there are with Medicare. If you believe that basically any government program is inherently doomed to failure, well, yeah, you're going to support market-based solutions even if we have plenty of real-world examples of effective government health access programs and plenty of real-world examples of the failures of our system. Hell, you don't even necessarily need to go to a single-payer system, you could do something more like Germany or the Netherlands. But absent any kind of government program (including the tax incentives our employers get to provide you and I with insurance), health care access for tens of millions, maybe even a majority if you dump Medicare and Medicaid because they're so terrible, will be non-existent.

"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread."" Add "buy literal get-of-jail cards" to that list. There's nothing fair about a legal system where the wealthy can openly and legally buy themselves exemptions from the law.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:18 PM) When it's the government dealing with 300 million people, absolutely. Medicare is a nightmare to deal with, and I only do it from the legal side. I've heard horror stories from doctors bout the fights they have to have just to get paid for services they rendered 6 months ago. The biggest driving force in our economy is a company wanting your business/wanting to not lose your business. The government does not have that concern. But literally every other part of the civilized world doesn't have our clusterf*** of a system and typically gets just-as-good-if-not-better healthcare for substantially cheaper and with comparable or better wait times (even if you exclude the infinite wait times for people without health care access). Even if the current Medicare system is less than ideal, there is no reason to assume that a Medicare-for-all expansion could not include improvements to the billing process.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:15 PM) At least with the private insurance model you have options - you can buy into a higher plan if you know that you're eventually going to have heart disease issues or obesity or whatever because of your family. You can plan for that. I did that with my kid. My wife and I paid for a better insurance plan because we knew we would be starting a family, so guess what, we paid a little more and got better coverage. I don't get that option when the only person paying my bills is the government. I don't know how many countries completely forbid private insurance (or private care if they've nationalized care e.g. NHS), but I'm not aware of any that do. If you have the means, you can always pay for luxury items. But everyone is still guaranteed health care access as a baseline. Tens of millions of Americans can't just buy into more expensive plans--they might not be able to afford any plan at all. Certainly, those covered by the (partial, thanks CJ Roberts!) Medicaid expansion certainly couldn't. The people who are going to rely on the Obamacare subsidies to close the gap and get affordable insurance can't.

That would completely undermine the legitimacy of the legal system. Why should I have any respect for a system that openly allows the wealthy to buy indulgences? Where is the sense of justice when I'm punished for a crime and you're not simply because I'm poor?* *not that this doesn't apply to our current system, but it's at least de jure equal.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:05 PM) That'd be another huge problem. Accurate billing and corruption would be a nightmare. Would billing be more or less of a nightmare going to a single source versus having to go to multiple different providers with dozens of different plans and options?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 03:05 PM) The point remains that one party could hold the other party hostage during a negotation, and/or both parties could simply agree, to lower funding which would end up resulting in you not getting X treatment you may need. This is already happening although not with life/death care. But in this country today, millions of people could be without any healthcare at all, millions more would not have any without Medicare and Medicaid (and other programs like SCHIP), and most of the rest of us could be in a pretty s***ty healthcare situation today if our bosses decided to fire us on a whim. The non-governmental alternative, abandonment of the employer-based health insurance system, would leave millions more uninsured than we have now because unsubsidized individual plans are pretty ridiculously expensive. edit: and even for those of us with health insurance, private insurance companies motivated by profit and not social welfare get to decide whether your treatment or doctor or facility is covered and how hard they're going to fight to deny your claims. Every objection along these lines to a socialized health care system already exists in the private system.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 02:22 PM) And that is really where sin tax needs to go if you want it to be successful. Allow rich people to pay to break the law. Id pay for that. Id actually want to make more money if my money could be spent doing what I want to do. When you say "break the law" do you mean 'sin' taxes for certain goods or allowing people who are wealthy enough to legally and legitimately buy their way around the law?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 02:33 PM) Given the CURRENT issues with Medicare I just don't see how any intelligent person could say this and not laugh at how ridiculous it sounds. 300 million+ receiving care paid for by the government would be the biggest clusterf*** in the history of the civilized world. The entire rest of the civilized world doesn't have our previous clusterf*** of a system, nor do they have our new slightly-less-clusterf***y system. Private insurance companies are a leech on our society, extracting rents while adding no value that could not easily be replaced. Well, the UK's NHS system is quite a bit different from a Medicare-for-all single-payer system or a public option. Also given that it's the Daily Mail I have to say I'm skeptical of the accuracy of what is reported. Additionally, the liberals in the UK lay the blame for the NHS's current problems and potential future funding problems at the foot of the Thatcherite Tories who have worked to privatize everything they can and undermine the NHS itself. The Daily Mail editorial staff would be included in that group as it's basically the UK version of the WSJ editorial pages. But right now, moronic executives seeking to maximize their own bonuses get to decide my health care decisions. We already have "death panels."

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 02:34 PM) To push businesses to hire more people. We all know the companies are sitting on profits. They COULD hire more people, but they're not. So give them an incentive to do so. Confiscate their capital and turn it over to workers' collectives!!! Their incentive will be to avoid the gallows. Seriously, though, isn't that a pretty big flaw of our modern economic system? We've got untold amounts of idle capital and idle labor, but the people that control the capital won't let labor back to work unless they get to widen the wealth gap even more. What a waste of human potential and an enormous amount of additional human suffering through prolonged employment and impoverishment.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 02:28 PM) Normal people dont get as much services as rich people. And really really poor people, dont need things like "police protecting their money in a bank" or "federal insurance on deposits up to X amount". But remember, 99% of the people who fight the most vehemently for rich people, arent actually rich themselves. I theorize its the idea that they themselves will one day become rich, so they are trying to prevent the laws from impacting their future selfs. Id say that you should just worry about yourself today (thats what rich people do) and you cross the "Im making 7 figures and worried about the top tax rate" when you get there. paraphrase of Steinbeck:

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 02:26 PM) It absolutely is theft, born of of greed, envy or whatever you want to call it. That has to be it!

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 02:18 PM) it doesn't matter how he makes it, as long as it is legal. He made it, not you or the Feds. he pays taxes as part of an implied social contract that we all pay our share of running the government. But when his share dwarfs everyone elses, it because punishment of his success. His share dwarfs ours because his wealth dwarfs ours, and his wealth wouldn't exist without the legitimacy of a government-backed IP system. He is in no way "punished" by paying higher taxes on his wealth that dwarfs the mean net worth of a majority of Americans by about five orders of magnitude. The wealth gap in this country has grown substantially over the past several decades; of course those at the top are going to be paying a substantial portion of total taxes when they hold a substantial portion of total wealth/income.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 02:18 PM) Most of Obama's claimed jobs programs were just more government spending without cuts. That was never going to fly. And then Obamacare didn't help. Had he supported a bill of increased short-term federal "investment" and huge tax breaks/cuts for small/medium sized business, businesses that kept (or increased) jobs in America, and/or businesses that simply hired full time employees, I would have fully supported it. Why should a jobs program to get people back to work be tied to "huge tax breaks" for businesses?

I agree, instantaneous Medicare-for-all would have been substantially less complicated and better for society as a whole than this ham-handed market-based solution. But, again, you can't have the pre-existing condition part without something like an individual mandate. And I really am struggling to see how Republicans would be less opposed to the substantial Medicaid expansion than they are to the individual insurance mandate.