Politicians vs Science & Math

[Gravekeeper]

I don't believe for a second that wouldn't happen.

Honestly, at this point, Congress is pretty much a lost cause. One side is a cult of personality. The other side is arguing with itself over whether or not doing something good for people would be going too far.

Only consolation is the Democrats at least aren't little more than a hyperpartisan cult of personality.

Ya sure about that? They might not mandate it, but they can certainly heavily incentivize it. Just like they can incentivize it if you're at what they deem to be a healthy weight.

Did you know that a lot of very in shape pro athletes are considered overweight and/or obese, based upon what they "should" weigh?

The moment you attempt to mandate or incentivize something it isn't universal healthcare anymore is it?

I'm certainly not in any kind of good mental or physical shape. But neither my disability pension or the 8 pills a day I have to take are dependent on me doing sit ups.

[mjr]

The moment you attempt to mandate or incentivize something it isn't universal healthcare anymore is it?

There was universal healthcare in Orwell's 1984, I believe. Everyone was mandated to exercise by "The Party".

Aside from that, even if they make it where everyone has to have insurance and pays a small premium (or maybe a tax bill according to income), that could be affected, couldn't it?

I'm certainly not in any kind of good mental or physical shape. But neither my disability pension or the 8 pills a day I have to take are dependent on me doing sit ups.

That may well be true. But if the Canadian government (I believe you're in Canada) decided to do that, what would the people of Canada do?

[Gravekeeper]

There was universal healthcare in Orwell's 1984, I believe. Everyone was mandated to exercise by "The Party".

Aside from that, even if they make it where everyone has to have insurance and pays a small premium (or maybe a tax bill according to income), that could be affected, couldn't it?

Again, every first world democracy except America has universal healthcare. None of them has collapsed into an Orwellian state as a result of it. In fact, most countries in the world have universal healthcare.

It isn't a mystery. It's not some kind of crazy untested plan. There's no reason that the richest and most powerful country on Earth can't pull off something even Botswana does.

That may well be true. But if the Canadian government (I believe you're in Canada) decided to do that, what would the people of Canada do?

Throw that party out of parliament because this is, you know, a democracy.

[mjr]

It isn't a mystery. It's not some kind of crazy untested plan. There's no reason that the richest and most powerful country on Earth can't pull off something even Botswana does.

While that may be true, you've often criticized the U.S. government for not doing the right thing, correct? If the decision makers in the government aren't to be trusted, by default, how can we trust them do do something like this?

[Gravekeeper]

While that may be true, you've often criticized the U.S. government for not doing the right thing, correct? If the decision makers in the government aren't to be trusted, by default, how can we trust them do do something like this?

Hence why I say it can't be done has a half measure otherwise it will be rife with problems. It has to be universal from the get go and America has it's pick of the little of different models it can draw off from other countries.

However, difficulties in dismantling the system of for profit healthcare is a far cry from your suggestion that somehow universal healthcare will lead to an Orwellian state.

[jackfaire]

What is "greed" in this context?
What makes a corporation greedy?

"I could pay my employees a wage that means they can buy a house, at least one car, and send their kids to college. It wouldn't negatively affect my bottom line it would just mean taking and cutting the pay of those at the top of the company to a more reasonable amount....nah fuck em"

That's corporate greed when you care more about personal profit than making your company sustainable in the long term or ensuring you have employees who have no reason to leave.

Competition is all well and good when it encourages people to do better but our current climate of "profit over sustainability" encourages worse and worse products with worse and worse performance and ever decreasing survivability for employees.

When a company becomes a vacumn designed to suck up all the money that's corporate greed.

Those same people then spend a lot of time telling others "You can't let the government force me to make sure my employees can live or it will supposedly put me out of business I mean really it just means less money in my pocket"

Seriously contracts that demand a company screw over most of their employees to get rid of a toxic CEO before he blows up the company should be illegal.

Forcing people to only work part time should be illegal.

Paying people less than what they need just to live in their own homes should be illegal.

If people are making the same amount of money their parents did and yet suddenly can't afford to live in the communities they grew up in something is very wrong.

Greed is very simply wanting more than you need when it's actively hurting others for you to get it.

I'll give you that. Consider, though, Unions have healthcare. Congress has cushy healthcare. Do you think that either of those groups is going to want to give that up?

I do not remember which of them it was as it's been a long time. There was a man elected into congress who said he refused to use the same heath insurance congress provided to him until it was also provided to his constituents. Yes I believe politicians will do what's in the interest of the people. If they don't the don't re-elect them.

Don't make excuses for why it's okay they screwed over the people they represent don't shift blame to the people suffering because of their decisions. Just don't re-elect the shitty ones.

If someone is against raising taxes thoroughly look at the tax they're against raising.

"I don't want to raise taxes on the middle class. I do not approve of (insert tax that would only affect the objectively rich)"

These are two sentences that have literally nothing to do with each other but politicians will say as if the second is part of the first. They didn't lie they just implied heavily that the measure will screw over a different set of people than it actually affects

I'm non-partisan. My primary issue with a lot of Republicans has nothing t do with party lines it has to do with politics. If a senator was in office and for the impeachment of Bill Clinton but is against the one for Trump they do not belong in office.

Anyone of either party trying to defend Trump to me will not get my vote. I researched him before he was "suddenly a Republican" and ran for office. He was trash.

He spent 8 years openly and with every racist bone in his body attacking our duly and by popular vote elected president. When he failed he ran for office with two obvious missions, 1) Self aggrandizement and 2) A serious attempt to undo anything good that was done by the first black president as the very idea that anyone other than a white male president should exist offends him to his very core.

He is a garbage person. We all know this. Yet people stump for him because "he's Republican"

This is the problem with that party they care more about the party than they do about the American people. That is wrong.

[Gravekeeper]

2) A serious attempt to undo anything good that was done by the first black president as the very idea that anyone other than a white male president should exist offends him to his very core.

That's giving him too much credit. Its not the colour of Obama's skin it's that Obama A) Is a better person than him and far more loved and respected + B) Obama made a joke about him once.

Ultimately, Trump is about Trump and everything he thinks and does is based on how can Trump get more money / attention. Racism is just icing on the shit cake.

[jackfaire]

That's giving him too much credit. Its not the colour of Obama's skin it's that Obama A) Is a better person than him and far more loved and respected + B) Obama made a joke about him once.

Ultimately, Trump is about Trump and everything he thinks and does is based on how can Trump get more money / attention. Racism is just icing on the shit cake.

I don't disagree that Trump is all about self aggrandizement but his racism has always been active rather than passive. The government had to step in when he wouldn't rent any of his properties to people of color. And before they did they warned him multiple times to knock it off. After that he was all "oh well they went after a lot of realtors in that case"

Yeah they went after only two the other one being his father. So I agree it is a large part money/attention but the racism is definitely a driving force for him.

[Gravekeeper]

I don't disagree that Trump is all about self aggrandizement but his racism has always been active rather than passive. The government had to step in when he wouldn't rent any of his properties to people of color. And before they did they warned him multiple times to knock it off. After that he was all "oh well they went after a lot of realtors in that case"

Yeah they went after only two the other one being his father. So I agree it is a large part money/attention but the racism is definitely a driving force for him.

Active, yes, but how do I put it? It's still tinged with self serving sociopathy. He doesn't have the capacity to empathize with others even in regards to racism. When he's racist its always in terms of simplistic stereotypes. There's no broader ideology to it. No active hatred. The world is people he thinks he's better than and people who he insecurely fears are better than him that he tries to tear down to prove otherwise. Obama was the latter.

You can really see it in how he's treated people of colour over the years. On one hand you have the obviously racist and racially insensitive things he has done. On the other hand you have him palling around with notable people of colour or hosting the NAACP. So he can brag about how good he is to "those people" and use them as props.

He's aware that not being racist is perceived as a virtue but doesn't, you know, understand how not to be racist because he's a malignant narcissist who believes everyone else is beneath him anyway. Hence he points to things he's done to "prove" he isn't racist. ( "How can I be x when I did y" ).

White supremacists mistakenly believe he's somehow standing up for the white race or whatever nonsense. When in reality he looks down on them too they're just more useful to him right now than people of colour.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Hence why I say it can't be done has a half measure otherwise it will be rife with problems. It has to be universal from the get go and America has it's pick of the little of different models it can draw off from other countries.

This is pretty much correct. The problem that privatization has been unable to solve (or is unwilling to solve) is the perpetual market failure that results from monopolistic pricing. It's not a traditional monopoly, it's just such an inelastic good "pay or die" that there is zero price pressure with most new treatments setting prices without restriction. It's similar to the cost plus model the government uses which is how you get the several thousand dollar toilet seat (even if that example itself actually is an oversimplification).

I did a study on prices a while back as I'm wont to do and what astounded me was that if you take the price index for health care it tracks back to 4% annually since the 70s. That doesn't seem that suspicious but when you consider 4% used to be considered textbook and no other industry has kept pace with it as automation, scale, price wars, and globalization has flattened things for everyone else it raises more and more eyebrows.

Until we focus on the fact healthcare is an example of a captalistic market failure (where the amount willing to be provided and the amount willing to buy are never arrived at because profit is maximized at a higher price level), we'll continue to have these (at this point), silly political discussions. The problem is you just can't have the discussion.

The other option here is price controls which introduces a similar potential for market failure with the prices being set too low. Alternately you can go with the universal option which at least puts the US in the same bargaining position as similar countries and might get you closer to an equilibrium but won't be perfect either.

When we think about people with Union, or elite private health care, its true they may not want to give it up. But that's largely because as every other organization that DID provide it stopped or severely in a race to the bottom of costs while the health care industry set its own prices without a mechanism to check it, I think it's ultimately a problem that will work itself in time.

Unless whatever system they implement is terrible, and that's actually a larger concern as "Starve the beast" is such dogma at this point, every government agency gets really dysfunctional as a result of starve/gorge/starve/gorge/starve/gorge. It's really, really disruptive. It's also why pensions and social security are such crapshoots. While a fund is actually stupidly simple in theory, trying to repay someone else's "tough cuts" 10 years late breaks the model. Just one presidential/congressional administration can cause wild implications for the following one. And since there's such political capital or short term profit to be made there it's an extremely tempting target.