Republicans not the only ones nervous about radical ideas of AOC

lets try this, what is the total cost of medical care per year in the usa? now remove all forms of payments and insurances because medicare will take it over... the total spent will still be the same, except when more people are born and immigrate then total expenses will increase accordingly...

so, again, what is that total, in dollars, that medicare will assume? i havent looked that up yet...

 

We spend almost six times that amount on healthcare.

Yes. American healthcare professionals get paid the most, the majority of medical R&D happens in the United States, and Americans need healthcare more than other Westerners for social reasons.

 

No, it won't be the same for a few reasons.
1- no insurance company profit
2- Medicare cost controls.
3- Single point of contact.

 

Total for all is 3.5 trillion a year.

 

Nothing.

Okay. What's getting cut? R&D or medical staff salaries?

Minor.

 

funny, because thats what i said in my earlier post, 3.5 trillion , so the 2014 stats are good measuring stick... i guess thats not too bad if it reflects true total costs... somehow i think it'll cost us more...

now, dont get me wrong, i might be conservative but i've always been for total healthcare for our citizens, especially after seeing first hand how terrible our seniors are 'mistreated' ... they've paid their dues and deserve better in their senior life...

 

When your talking about so much money. Nothing is nothing.

Under the MLR rules, insurers that sell individual and small group health insurance coverage must spend at least 80 percent of premiums on medical claims and quality improvements for members. No more than 20 percent of premium revenue can be spent on total administrative costs, including profits and salaries. And for insurers that sell large group coverage, the minimum MLR threshold is 85 percent. Insurers that fail to meet these guidelines (ie, they spend more than the allowed percentage on administrative costs, for whatever reason) are required to send rebates to their members. In the first six years of the MLR rule implementation, insurers rebated $3.24 billion to consumers.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/health-insurance-companies-unreasonable-profits-1738941

An increased Medicare fee schedule should work.

Really? How many people in your doctor's office aren't doctors, but clerks.

 

No, in the big picture insurance company profits are nothing.

Should work for what?

A lot. And there are more administrators outside of the doctor's office, too. It's an important aspect, but it's still minor.

When it comes down to it the money ultimately goes to two places: Medical staff and medical researchers. The United States funds global medical R&D, and it costs us.

 

Let's see 13% of 2 trillion 260 billion. I got it. Chickenfeed.

Fees.
About 220 billion saved.

1. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine examined data from 1999 to project administrative costs of health insurers, employers' health benefit programs, hospitals, practitioners' offices, nursing homes and home care agencies. The study found administration accounted for 31 percent of healthcare spending in the U.S., compared with 16.7 percent of healthcare spending in Canada.

So a paltry 290 billion. More chickenfeed.
Notice we haven't touched R&D.

I'm pretty sure we can get to a trillion since we haven't talked about prescriptions yet.

 

Wanna source that?

Right, so who's losing the money?

I don't know why you're honing in on this point when I agree with you. Administrative costs can and should be cut. Great. That's a decent chunk. Cut that out, and we're still the most expensive, by far.

I've touched it. R&D is massive. Wanna cut it? I'm skeptical, but willing to hear you out.

 

This is probably a good summary, in which case I'm a little low.

Would the U.S. really save $500 billion with a single-payer system?
Sanders cited Woolhandler and Himmelstein’s article estimating $504 billion in savings from converting to a single-payer system. But the article’s authors admitted that "any such estimate is imprecise" and cited other research placing the number closer to $383 billion.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...ing-administrative-costs-private-insurance-a/

Doctors and hospitals. But don't feel to sorry for them they will have millions more customers and they will all pay.

I think we need to look next at Drug costs. Probably another 100 billion laying around there.
Right now we charge our citizens more than other countries. That's just not right.

I'm a believer in R&D so no, I don't see a big cut there.

We will forevermore be on the high side, but we can stop the ever increasing pain.

 

What a perfect example of exactly what I was talking about. The rightists going off on wild tangents about tyranny and being shot and the Berlin wall and anything else that they can to throw diry at someone like AOC other than actually addressing her platform or policies. It' s fantastic.

What has the Berlin wall or any of the other tropes you bring up in this post have to do with her actual platform?

Her two main planks are universal healthcare and progressive tax reform. How do these lead to tyranny and anyone getting shot?

If what you say is true then almost every country with universal health care and higher tax rates would be merrily marching their citzens off to the gulag.

Finland has healthcare, free education and some of the highest taxes in the world yet it is regularly considered one of the best governed and most egalitarian countries on Earth. Denmark and Norway report having the highest happiness indexes despite having standard democratic socialist policies for over half a century.

Even in your country, tax rates were far higher than now in the post war era and that was in what was arguably the greatest era of human prosperity in history.

The notion that democratic socialism leads to somehow leads to despotism just doesn't stand up to the facts.

In fact, it is unfettered capitalism that always leads to the kind of inequality and concentration of wealth and political power that we are seeing today which is dangerously eroding democracy across the Western world. This was true in the 1890's, it was true in the gilded era, it was true in 2008, and it is true today.

What freedom of thought are progressives trying to impose on you? Could you be more specific. I was talking about the right-wing reflexive frothing at the mouth with insults and vitriol rather than actually discussing someone like AOC's platform without her being called a brainless bimbo or crackpot as has been demonstrated many times on this forum and which you have aptly demonstrated again. If you are talking about pc, well maybe you have to examine which ideas of yours are condidered socially unacceptable. You may be frowned upon but you are free to say what you want. Likewise, others are free to react to your statements with disaproval.

Fantastic hyperbole! While their certainly have been failures of socialist regimes, it's as if brutal right-wing authoritarian dictatorships never existed. No Branco in Brazil. No Rhee in SK. No Pinochet, no Shah, no Suharto and no Marcos. And that's not including the really vicious ones in the world wars. A classic right-wing myopia that only sees socialist dictators as evil but completely disregards the right-wing monsters. No awareness at all of how democracy is being undermined in their own country by extreme conentration of wealth and political power through corruption of the political process.

But what does this have to do with democratic socialism, taxation policy or universal healthcare which exists in some form in every other developed country but the US?

As I said, if it was true that democratic socialist policies always led to these outcomes, Canada, Finland and Norway would be police states with secret police and gulags.

In fact you show a lack of understanding of what socialism or communism really is. Workers never owned the means of production in the Soviet Union which is what is meant by communism. It was actually a form of state capitalism where the state assumed ownership of production.

But even so, China, while not the best governed country in the world, has used a similar state capitalist system with mixed private ownership to lift 500 million people out of poverty in the last few decades and has been the real driver of the global economy since 2008.

So the idea that even your erroneous ideas about what you call socialism without actually undersanding what socialism is, is always doomed to failure as you have tried to say by using the Soviets as an example is just not true by any measure. China may surpass the US as the world,s leading economy in the near future especiallt with a charlatan like Trump running the place into the ground.

Insatiable lust for power and control, you say? That would never happen with the unfettered capitalist system in the US. The Koch Bros., Mercers or Dick Cheney would laugh at the thought. I suppose you think that the corporate/military/political class in the US wants nothing to do with power and control but is all about bringing peace, prosperity and democracy to the masses?

Socialist crackpots and failed ideas, huh? This from a country with third world levels of inequality and the most expensive and inefficient healthcare system almost the entire developed world.

But we can't discuss alternatives because then we'd be marched off to the gulag or tied to trees and shot, right?

 

I'm not contending that the United States will save with a single-payer system, I'm contending that it won't be the windfall many think, and it comes with real sacrifices.

Okay, so medical staff will get paid less. That's a loss, but at least the consumer is saving. We can agree that this is a win that comes at the sacrifice of some of the population, yes?

We also fund most of the world's R&D. These two facts are related.

I doubt it. When you get into the weeds, single-payer cuts R&D. Now, maybe it's a fine sacrifice, I don't know, but it is a sacrifice that would be made.

 

Wild tangents about tyranny? Moi?

You were the one who rode off the rails with your talk of "verboten thoughts" and sacrilege, as if AOC was the victim of some sort of persecution instead of being the object of ridicule. I don't know what country or planet you're living on, but this is the United States of America - not Europe or Canada - people are free to think and speak what they want to think and speak, no matter how ridiculous or offensive it may be, and that right is enshrined in the FIRST Amendment of our Constitution. What many of you on the Left can't handle, obviously, is that with that this right doesn't shield you from criticism and ridicule.

What does the failure of socialism have to do with her socialist platform?

A better question would be why do "progressives" try to erase the history of socialism's failure and the crimes associated with it? Why do socialists make a deliberate effort to blind themselves and others to the repetition of those mistakes in places like Venezuela, where dissidents are being jailed and basic necessities such as food have vanished on account of the government's failed collectivization schemes (as has happened over and over again in other socialist countries)?

The fact is, socialists rely on this blindness for their bankrupt ideology and failed policies to endure. They rely on people's ignorance of how their socialist nationalization/collectivization schemes have repeatedly destroyed the economies of the countries where their programs have been implemented.

As Congressman Steve Scalise could tell you, it's her totalitarian ideology that leads to people getting shot. As to how government power and control over our healthcare, property, and every other aspect of our lives that collectivist-statists want to control leads to tyranny one need look no further than History for examples, if simple observation and logic won't suffice. Of course, this tyranny can vary in its scope and degrees from country to country depending on the extent it has embraced socialism.

Obviously, the mixed socio-economic programs one finds in Europe permit more individual freedom and enterprise precisely because they are mixed.

As for what the people in those and other countries want to do with themselves and their governments that is up to them.

Yes, tax rates were much higher in this country after World War II, and being as how the United States was one of the few industrialized nations that wasn't reduced to ruins during that war it is little wonder we enjoyed such prosperity. However, as those nations' economies were rebuilt and competition was restored the advantages we enjoyed vanished but the responsibilities we assumed didn't. Permit me to remind you that it was a Democrat - John F. Kennedy - who spoke to the ruinous effects of those tax rates and how they had to be reduced, and reduced they were.

Just as what works in other countries won't necessarily work in America what once worked in this country won't work today.

The fact is, democratic socialism in Venezuela did lead to despotism and the rest of the problems that the former nations in the communist/socialist bloc encountered during the 20th Century - the failure of the economy, the bankruptcy of the government, acute shortages of basic necessities, from food to medicine to energy.

I don't dispute that unfettered capitalism led to inequality on many levels, and of course socialism didn't solve those problems, but unfettered capitalism doesn't exist in anywhere in the Western world, so how it could erode democracy is a mystery. In fact, there is an argument that can be made that the increasing level of socialism and the statism that comes with it has eroded democracy and certainly our individual freedom.

I'm going to break this post into two parts, so I will continue in the next post...[/QUOTE]

 

The cup is half empty.

 

The government closes down and instead of negotiating, the house speaker vacations in Hawaii and then goes to Afganistan?

 

(continued from Post #39)

I referred precisely to the freedom of thought that "progressives" are assaulting, and it's not limited to the accusations of "racism" and whatever else LWers hurl at their opponents in order to silence them and their legitimate arguments and positions on social and policy issues.The attempt to silence free speech has led to rioting, attacks on protesters and discrimination against RW speakers on college campuses. For example, the University of California at Berkeley recently paid a $70,000 settlement to the conservative Young America's Foundation for discriminating against its organization and its speakers.

Historical FACT is "fantastic hyperbole"?

Talk about fantastic.

This is the kind of negation and revisionism that I was talking about earlier.

What makes you and your comrades think you can get away with that dishonesty? There's a mountain of documentary evidence to support everything I posted. If I need to detail them for you and everyone else I am more than willing and able to do so.

Where have I denied the existence and crimes of RW dictatorships?

Furthermore, most of us on the Right are well aware of how our individual freedom and self-determination are being undermined by corrupt and powerful elites, which is why we seek the decentralization of power, particularly in government. "Progressives", on the other hand, are busily attempting to centralize ever more power in the government, which is only going to lead to more corruption and the erosion of more of our individual freedom and rights.

It has to do with your talk of "verboten thoughts".

I've addressed that.

Not only do I understand what socialism and communism is on a theoretical level, I understand its application in the real world by real socialists and communists who attempted - and failed - to impose their utopian fantasies on others. The fact that these attempts never fully achieved their goals is an indictment on socialism and communism and how it can never work in the real world with real people.

True, China has somewhat opened up its economy, which has primarily benefited the leaders in the Communist Party and People's Liberation Army, but let's not pretend that Mao and his comrades were capitalists and their social, political and economic programs didn't cost millions of human beings their lives and freedom.

I understand socialism quite well, thank you, and as I pointed out the failure on the part of socialists to implement their theories in the real world is an indictment of socialists and their ideology.

As for China, it should have had the world's largest economy decades ago, and the communists who have been running that party are largely responsible for retarding its progress.

As for what's running this country into the ground, I used to live in it: Washington. If we don't stop expanding the size, scope and expense of the federal government our country and its people are doomed.

That's what I said. The only things "progressives" truly care about are power and control.

I don't labor under the delusion that the elites in this country - whether they be the Koch Brothers, Tom Steyer or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - aren't pursuing their own interests and I don't look to them to pursue mine. That's my responsibility, not theirs.

Yes, we do have inequality in this country and one of the lies that socialists have told us throughout the centuries is that they can and will get rid of it, and they never have and never will. What they will create, however, are their own hierarchal systems with their own elites and own political and economic inequalities, but the problem is that it costs individuals more freedom, power and control over their own lives (and government).

As for our HC system, the care I've received over the years has not only been affordable but much more efficient than the government-run systems in Europe. Furthermore, we already have a government-run HC system in this country and it has failed our nation's veterans in spectacular and disgraceful fashion. What we've learned from the failures at the VA is that our government is incapable of running a HC system for even a small percentage of our population. Only a fool would wish that on everyone.

Does that mean our current private system is perfect? Of course not, but handing control over to the government is obviously not a rational and practical solution - it is an ideological solution on the part of the collectivists in this country who want more power and control over people's lives.

I never said we couldn't and shouldn't discuss alternatives, but everyone participating in this discussion is open to criticism, along with their ideas, motives, ideology and everything else that is relevant.

 

What I meant is that it has been verboten in the US to discuss democratic socialist policies which may be enacted to mitigate the worst excesses of capitalism - at least until Bernie brought it into the open and showed that there was widespread interest in such policies. And ridicule of AOC, who is quickly becoming a social media phenomenon as she shows she can give back as good as she gets, is just another example of how the right refuses to take any of this seriously and uses ad hominem to attack anyone they think does not tow the conservative talking points they are so fond of trotting out verbatim when anyone dares suggest that there are alternatives to the current policies of the ruling elites.

And it is the right who gets all hurt feelings when people criticize or ridicule their positions from mocking Trump which is now supposedly a mental disorder despite the fact he so richly deserves mocking, to calling out racist or sexist language such as Steve King, Jason Spencer or even much of the commentary in Breitbart routinely display.
That is PC as many rightists cry out when their feelings are hurt and gnash their teeth over censorship or something . So who is it that can't handle criticism again?

Why do you think people in Europe and Canada cannot speak what they want to? Because democratic socialist policies have turned them into dictatorships with gulags? You don't travel much outside the US do you?

Nobody is denying that socialism has struggled with mixed results especially in countries without a strong democratic tradition. But so did capitalism as is evolved out of Feudalism during the industrial revolution.The better question is why the right denies that there have ever been bloody, murderous right-wing dictatorships that have destroyed countries and made off with the nations wealth? The now common canard of using Venezuela as an example of the failures of socialism while ignoring the economic and political crisis that is overtaking the right-wing, reformist government in Argentina which opened the countries economy to neo-Liberal principals and speculation with disastrous results, has become a transparent talking point on the right whenever the discussion of healthcare or tax comes up. It is this ignoring of anything that does not fit the unfettered capitalist narrative that is the hallmark of the right-wing adn those who have been seduced by it's winner-take-all, market fundamentalist ideology.

If you want to look at Venezuela, let's really look at the record. The big problem is that they tied their economy to a single commodity and when the price of that commodity tanked, largely due to Saudi Arabia's aggressive overproduction as a means to outsupply thier rivals, Venezuela was in big trouble. They were hardly alone. Alberta is still suffering and Russia was hurt very badly but they had other commodities and more robust economies to survive the downfall.

Let's look at Chavez's 14 years in power:

"Using data gathered from sources such as the World Bank, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Reuters, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime(UNODC), the US Energy Information Administration (eia), the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, we have been able to gather a variety of key indicators that show how Venezuela has changed since 1999 when Chávez first assumed office. We've used the most recent data where possible."

Unemployment dropped from 14.5% to 7.6%, GDP rose from about 4,000 percapita to almost 11,000,poverty decreased from 23.5% of the population to 8.5%.

Infant mortality fell, literacy rose, enrollment in secondary education rose. As well, he was democratically elected winning 15 popular elections by between 10 to 20 percentage points:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/04/venezuela-hugo-chavez-election-data

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8133

Chavez was democratically elected and did a lot to relieve poverty and illiteracy in Venezuela but died before the oil price collapse and the rise of a terrible leader who has now taken over and used the fall of oil as an excuse to seize power. But the record of socialism in Venezuela has not been all a failure except in the myopic eyes of right-wingers who want to use the countries suffering as political hay to paint someone like AOC with the same brush as Venezuela's current leader - as if there had never been any right-wing dictators who had seized power in the world.

Can you name one person who has been shot because of AOC's totalitarian ideology? How has government involvement in the economy led to tyranny in Canada, Denmark, Finland or Sweden? Why do you ignore extreme right-wing juntas that have seized power in places like Chile, Indonesia, El Salvador or the economic problems being suffered in Argentina alongside those in Venezuela?

If you really look at history with honest and clear eyes, there are many examples of democratic socialist policies such as AOC is promoting leading to economic progress, equality and the benefit of society. This is true from Canada and Scandinavia to China and New Zealand. You could even include Cuba, which while not being democratic, still has maintained free education and has a far more efficient health care system with better outcome than the US and this is all while enduring decades of unfair ideological blockades and sanctions from the US.

That is what democratic social policy calls for mixed socio-economic programs as a replacement for the unfettered system that enriches and empowers a small decreasing minority of America's wealthiest people and corporations. Why is democratic social policy successful in other places but leads to tyranny and people being shot in the US?

Why won't it work in America today? It worked in the past and a majority of American's polled support some form of universal healthcare and higher taxes on the highest earners - the very policies AOC is promoting.

Yes, you've used the Venezuela talking point already as have many others on the forum. Venezeula's suffering is noted as a well-used talking point on the right.

[/QUOTE]

Unfettered capitalism certainly exists in the US and many of it's vassal states and if you cannot see how increasing wealth and power of a small minority is corrupting the political process and eroding democratic institutions through the power of big money to purchase legislation that serves only the few then you are willfully blind to what is happening in your country today, which is rapidly becoming an oligarchy with a thoroughly corrupted political system. And using the examples I have already mentioned as well as noting how democratic socialists policies helped relieve some of the suffering during the great depression, another example of the systemic crisis's capitalism unchecked is prone to, without leading to tyranny and people being shot, I have shown that far from undermining democracy, in well governed states such as the Nordic ones, democratic socialism can lead to prosperity, economic growth and greater equality.

Ask yourself why the US is the only developed country were there is no form of universal healthcare or why it has third-world levels of wealth disparity? Also understand that in several polls and surveys, including a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll, over 70% of Americans support universal, user pay healthcare and higher tax rates for the highest earners.

How democratic is it that the majority of American's have virtually no chance of having their interests taken seriously and that the only candidates willing to take them seriously are mocked and derided by supporters of the corporate state's corrupt seizure of the political process through special interests and lobbyists who increasing own politicians and use that ownership to uphold their own undemocratic hold on the institutions of the state?

 

I'm tempted to say that the Democratic Party will be divided in a good way and the Republican Party in a not so good way come 2020, but at least the American people will be largely united in reversing the tragedy that was 2016.

 

Can't spend any more time on this today but it is probably worth answering your post as you bring up many of the talking points in American politics that are worth challenging and examining and you have managed to do it without to many of the ad hominems and personalizations on this that most posters who reflexively attack people like AOC are so fond of.

Seems to me our biggest disagreement is the role of government in public policy and economics - well that and your reflexive hatred of policies that have been shown to work in other countries but which somehow lead to tyranny and gulags and people being tied to trees and shot in the US. You also show a willingness to actually discuss ideas instead of just dissing the young lady.

So I'll attempt to answer this post later when I get back. I wish I could get you to see that many of your ideas about government and socialist policies that have worked alongside capitalism to mitigate it's contradictions and excesses in other countries are rooted in a deep-rooted system of disinformation and propaganda that has it's roots in McCarthy era reflexive fear. A fear which actually goes further back to an era when industrial capitalists were deathly afraid of and hostile to the idea of worker rights and that some of the bloodiest labour battles in the world were in the US.

With the loss of manufacturing jobs and the rise of automation, alternatives to the current system need to be explored or the instability that led to Trump and the politics of identity and class we are seeing could tear the US apart and bring it to it's knees.

 

Shouldn't that be Pelosi and Democratic members of Congress tried to go to Afghanistan and then spend a couple of days at a luxury resort hotel in Brussels during the government shutdown that is all about that illegal aliens and open borders are more important than government workers and Americans on food stamps ?

 

As if the soldiers want to hear from an anti-military old hag.

 

Except for primary care physicians. When my mother and father (both on Medicare with Advantage plans) tried to change doctors, it was almost impossible to find a doctor who would take new Medicare patients.

 

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, even if I disagree with all of them.

By the way, don't feel obligated to respond in a point-by-point fashion - if you'd rather respond in more general terms or even wander off the ranch a bit that's fine with me. I'm not concerned with form.

I realize that you're not familiar with me and my thinking, so I'll excuse your characterization of my position(s) as some form of "reflexive hatred" when, in fact, they are the product of decades of careful consideration formed through years of copious personal experience, observation and research. Another thing you don't know is that I used to be a "progressive" myself, which is why I am as familiar with the Left, its theories, policies, agenda, history, etc., as I am.

Furthermore, my positions are informed by the fact that what works in other countries isn't necessarily going to work in our own, which also happens to be $20+ trillion in debt. I'm well aware of our capabilities and limitations and what makes our country, people and government different than those of other countries. There are no cookie-cutter solutions to issues such as healthcare.

I'm familiar with the history, and to be honest, I'm not dogmatic about these things. LIke the vast majority of Americans I don't want to live in some Dickensian nightmare, so I'm not interested in cutting down our nation's social safety nets. However, I firmly believe that those programs must be run in an efficient and responsible manner so that they are sustainable and benefit those who are legitimately needy.

As for socialism, you're going to have to learn to accept that everyone's aversion/opposition to it isn't based on "a deep-rooted system of disinformation and propaganda" and "reflexive fear". What we have are rational, fully-informed moral and intellectual differences with socialists about fundamental issues such as individual freedom, equality and the role of government in our society and lives.

The advance of technology and automation has always posed a challenge to human beings and that's not going to change. The question is how do we adapt to those changes and jettisoning capitalism for socialism hasn't worked in the past and it's not going to work in the future. We need more creative, agile and flexible solutions that are driven by the people, not government.

As for what led to Trump, I think Larry Elder hit the nail on the head: Barack Obama's legacy is Donald Trump. In other words, the rejection of "progressive" overreach, government-centric policies and identity politics are what led to the popular dissatisfaction that Trump rode to the White House.

 

Because the US has more minorities than any other western nation. No other western nation has more than 10% minority population. The US is 35% minority. We're barely a western nation anymore, we're rapidly becoming a 3rd world shithole like Brazil. That socialist idiots like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can get elected to office is just more evidence of the degradation of our country.

As for spending, we spend two trillion dollars a year already on Medicare, Social Security, and welfare, while the military gets a fraction of that at $880 billion. https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_budget_2018_4.html And as the world's sole superpower, the spending is well justified. My only concern is whether we're spending that money wisely, like are we getting killer robots or gold-plated toilets?

Edit to add: the 50% figure comes from the marginal tax rate, currently 49.6% for the highest income earners, and exemptions are phased out at higher income levels, making more of the wealthiest people's incomes taxable at that top rate.