It amazes me that people are so up tight overthe possibility of "government-run healthcare" when it already exists. There's the VA, which, as a veteran, I could use, but don't, and it ought to serve as the model of how health care should not be run.
And then there's that other gub'mint healthcare program, Medicare, which is so untouchable that it's called the third rail of politics - touch it and die. If everyone had Medicare and the existing premiums we now pay went to that program, would that work? I wonder.
'If everyone had Medicare and the existing premiums we now pay went to that program, would that work? I wonder.'
Hubert Humphrey and Ted Kennedy thought so.
The Johnson administration originally intended Medicare to be gradually expanded to include everyone. Teddy Kennedy offered 'Medicare for All' on the Senate floor since the Nixon administration.
It works in Sweden, where the health care system is a mix of public and private providers but nearly 90 percent of the health care costs are paid by taxes... the only reason it isn't one hundred percent is because Sweden does have a private insurance system for anyone who wishes to make use of it (most don't) and because certain purely elective procedures are not covered by the government plan.
"Swedes are already burdened with the highest taxes in the European Union, paying 50.1 percent of gross income in 2006, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/ne...zc&
refer=europe
All in favor of paying 50% of your income in taxes?
All in favor of paying 50% of your income in taxes?
Like we did when Eisenhower was president?
To live like they do in Sweden?
Absofuckinglutely.
Lucky for you SB you are within your rights to voluntarily pay the 50% rate if you wish (I am sure you already do this as a good citizen right?). Unfortunately, you will have to get enough officials elected to force all of us to give away that much of our money though. I have a hard time believing anyone will run on the platform of setting the tax rate at 50% for all.
We can't start forcing people to purchase medical insurance. This idea is insane on the surface. We can only hope they plan to take it out of the final bill. This could be the end of freedom as we know it. What's next? The Stasi? A complete file and every person from their birth? How do they spend their money? Where does that money come from? Are they involved in any criminal enterprise? What do their neighbors know about their lifestyle? This is a bad road we do not wish to go down. Part of freedom is just the freedom to be an American. Fuck the rule of law. That's for squares like Washington and Eisenhower. I place my faith in John Adams and the bill of rights. One thing the founding fathers saw as a possibility was unjust, oppressive or tyrannical laws. That's why we have a bill of rights. To avoid prosecution that would occur in a totalitarian state.
Again I ask: If 30% of my income goes to a medical insurance premium whose amount of increase will be predictably much higher than inflation every year, and which provides limited coverage with high co-pays and high deductibles, as mine does now, with another 20%, say, going to taxes, how is that in any way better than 50% taxation and a more efficient healthcare system that won't leave me with the same high level of out-of-pocket expenses? In either case, it's half my paycheck gone. Why is it better for most of that to go to a privately-run bureaucracy which refuses care when it can get away with it, and uses my money to pay executives huge bonuses and, by the by, pay Congresscritters what functionally amounts to huge bribes?
All in favor of paying 50% of your income in taxes?
Like we did when Eisenhower was president?
To live like they do in Sweden?
Absofuckinglutely.
Then please move to Sweden
" We can't start forcing people to purchase medical insurance. This idea is insane on the surface."
Actually, you are already purchasing medical insurance, paying premium into a pool that covers all persons over 65. It's the medicare tax, and it buys insurance for all our seniors. I don't mind that so much; but what I do mind is forcing people to pay a much higher amount to a private insurance company, without allowing me to choose, if I prefer, a not-for-profit option which is actually accountable to me as a taxpayer.
As common a tactic as it is, I fail to see how telling someone to leave the U.S. is an answer to a legitimate question, or a valid counterpoint to an argument.
'As common a tactic as it is, I fail to see how telling someone to leave the U.S. is an answer to a legitimate question, or a valid counterpoint to an argument.'
It's not. It's based in a faulty notion that a specific argument or position is 'patriotic' and anyone arguing against that position or expressing dissent from that argument is 'un-American.' This is generally embraced by people who are either not intelligent enough or too intellectually lazy (and there is a thin line between the two) to actually consider why they believe what they believe or to respond to a counter-argument on its own merits.
For that matter, the 'do you want to pay 50% of your taxes like they do in Sweden' argument is much the same.
American taxes (especially in the top bracket) are artificially low. As people on this blog and others have noted more than once, tax rates have been falling since the Reagan Era while spending has been increasing at tremendous rates and has been fueled primarily by borrowing. Tax-cuts without coinciding spending cuts (especially in the area of defense and law enforcement, where budgets are spiraling out of control with very little in the way of practical return for the money) have turned the US into the largest debtor nation in the world.
The most 'fiscally conservative' era in recent history was during the Clinton Administration, when the president sided with deficit hawks in both parties to attempt to undo much of the damage of the Reagan Era. This was surprisingly successful, and it was completely undone by the combination of Republican President and Congress during the majority of the W. Bush Era. Bush was Reagan on steroids.
The problem is that a time of economic crisis is a very bad time for fiscal conservatism. The government is often the only institution able to pump liquidity into a contracting economy. Economic stimulus and health care reform are ways to do this...
But even without them, when the current economic situation gets better, taxes are going to have to go up. It will be the only way to pay off the debt that the GOP has rung up. The ironic way in which conservatives now try to blame the new administration for high deficits after blowing the budget out at the seams and ruining the economy is irresponsible and wholly partisan.
The simple fact is that we are likely looking at a 50% tax rate at some point in the future with or without socialized medicine. I'd rather it came with socialized medicine.
There is, of course, an alternative to inevitable tax hikes...
The end of America as a great power and its transformation in a third world hellhole on the model of 1960s India. That's where conservative policies are taking us.
I really believe that if all us contrary progressives moved to Sweden or elsewhere leaving the conservatives with their free markets and golden values they'd still find a way to be unhappy. Peaceful coexistence and psychological serenity just aren't in their DNA.
She said she wants to live like they do in Sweden.
Saying she should move to Sweden to enjoy that lifestyle is a perfectly rational response.
Randy - You assume that "conservatives" are actually fans of free markets, which is demonstratably false.
Where were you during the Bush years?
"Saying she should move to Sweden to enjoy that lifestyle is a perfectly rational response."
Which is why it causes such raised eyebrows. The part about it being "rational", I mean.
I you say you like corvettes a perfectly rational response would be for me to say "OK, go buy a Corvette."
Same thing. Perhaps you need me to link to the dictionary definition of rational?
Mikey:
Reading comprehension fail.
That WAS a rational response, which is somewhat atypical of your responses in general.
If I tell someone I like their haircut, the "rational" suggestion is for me to cut my own hair in a similar fashion. A suggestion that I shave my own head, forcibly remove the other person's hair and place their hair on my head is not rational.
If, in a discussion about what could be done to reform our nation's healthcare situation, I remark that I admire the way such matters are conducted in Sweden, the "rational" suggestion is that we attempt to incorporate such methods in our own approach. A suggestion that I move to Sweden is not rational.
Perhaps you need me to link to the dictionary definition of assweasel?
Awe Look, another person who can't do better than to call me names because she can't handle debate.
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