[QUOTE=eirexe;49562706]I still don't understand how people can be against public health care in the US.[/QUOTE]
"Fuck the guy next door" politics, also libertarianism which has been slowly replacing conservatism over the last few decades actively opposes any sort of large scale for-all plans
[QUOTE=Sableye;49562775]Ha..right most people get their wealth from hard work...look at fucking Turing's former CEO, just a "middle-class " kid who happened to get a full ride to the most prestigious highschool in new York, then flunked out and somehow got an internship at Goldman Sachs who don't generally take highschool dropouts or anyone below a 4.0 GPA, then somehow he managed to bootstrap tens of millions in VC financing...all from hard work right? Not maybe because his family was wealthy, connected and he had every door opened for him. The quickest way to get wealthy is to have wealth already, just being a Harvard student or Yale student opens doors that non ivy league college grads don't get. Ya people still make money and success on their own but to get to leadership of a fortune 500 company you have to come from money
Plus since they write the tax code, CEOs who are mostly paid in stock don't pay the same taxes on their divadens as a normal worker pays on their income.at most, like 15-20% of a CEO's pay is cash, the rest is stock or bonuses, and then that's before you get into the many ways to avoid or defer paying taxes on that income through various schemes of which some involve tax havens, while others involve creative writeoffs[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure how this was a response to me. People still get their wealth by the things I said. A good education, a good internship, and some big loans don't guarantee financial success (as lotto winners will tell you).
I've never said that it's equally easy for everyone. In fact, it has nothing to do with the point I was making in what you quoted.
[QUOTE=wystan;49560959]You see nothing wrong with forcing the wealthy to pay more just because they're wealthy? How do you rationalize that?[/QUOTE]
Take another 5% out of their income and they can still roll around in solid gold humvees. Take another 5% out of my income and I suddenly can't afford to make the payments on a $4,000 car.
Not hard to see why taxing the wealthy is a better idea than taxing the poor, is it? [i]Someone[/i] has to pay taxes and it's more sensible to take those taxes from people that don't live paycheck to paycheck.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;49557123]I used to be a pilot, until the medical system failed me. I trained privately for the last two years of high school, and then joined the military so that I could rack up more flight hours than I could ever afford as a civilian, with the ultimate goal of a lifelong career in aviation.
Things went along fairly well until I transferred to Arizona, at a high altitude base, to begin flight training. I was doing perfectly on all the actual training, graduating second in my class, but I had a serious issue when it came to the physical testing. Numbness in my extremeties, chest pain, and severe shortness of breath was making it impossible for me to keep up during cardio training, like group runs. Worse, I was noticing these issues even during moderate activities, and sometimes during periods of rest. Concerned when I was still struggling as we approached the end of training, wherein I would be held back if I could not complete the run, I went to the doctor.
That doctor visit escalated into a year and a half-long medical evaluation, comprising regular and repeated tests, scans, and surgical consultations. It was discovered that I had a birth defect that had displaced my heart and severely stunted my lung function (40% reduced lung capacity and power), making functioning in high altitudes very demanding and dangerous. Thankfully, a relatively simple and highly effective surgery existed to correct the issue. It had been used for decades with a 98%+ success rate in correcting the physical abnormality, typically resulting in at least a partial recovery of lung function and an end to pressure-related chest pain from the displaced heart, so long as the surgery was performed within a certain age range.
Unfortunately, the military elected not to give it to me. I had completed my training, but because the health issues stemmed from a birth defect they saw no responsibility to repair the damages, and I was given a medical discharge with no additional benefits, and a lifelong restriction of operating aircraft. I was told I could pursue the surgery through private insurance if I so desired, and resume flying privately if it were successful.
This was before the Affordable Care Act went into full swing, and simply [I]finding[/I] an insurance provider who would accept me knowing about my condition proved difficult enough. I eventually had to settle on one with a very high monthly premium, a very high deductible, and under the explicit agreement that they would not cover healthcare costs relating to my birth defect. Useless. I looked into perhaps trying to finance the surgery privately, but due to the extensive recovery period (several weeks in the hospital, as much as six months off work) and the fact that I was an independent young 20-something from the lower class, it just wasn't possible.
By the time the healthcare laws had changed enough to make pursuing the surgery semi-feasible, I had outgrown the age range where there was a notable chance of recovering any lung function.
In a first world country, I discovered a birth defect was having serious impacts on my quality of life and threatened my entire future in aviation. A simple and proven surgery existed to correct the issue, but fixing it was time sensitive. A lack of access to proper insurance, and the sheer cost of our medical system, prevented me from getting necessary medical treatment. As a result, my life changed forever. I had to abandon my years of training as a pilot, start my adult life over from square one as a high school graduate with very little applicable work history (given that all my experience in aviation was now useless). To this day, my symptoms have only progressed. I am now regularly rocked with chest pain so severe I must stop everything I am doing and sit down until it passes. I can't even walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded.
I'm happy with my life right now, and I'm very happy with where it's going, but that never should have happened to me. I had a medical problem, a proven solution for that problem existed, and I wasn't able to receive treatment due to the cost of the procedure. Nobody should ever just be left in a horrible medical situation because they don't have enough money. Money should never be the barrier between being healthy enough to live your life or not.
The medical system in the United States is a failure. Too many others like me exist. Millions of people fall through the cracks, having to weigh the benefits of going to the hospital for an illness or injury compared to the risks of not when compared to the potential for lifelong medical debt. Nobody has taken drastic enough measures yet. The Affordable Care Act slapped a band-aid over some of the most offensive gaps, and indeed could have helped me dramatically had it been put into effect just a few years earlier, but it still only serves to uphold and reinforce the over-inflated medical monster that we've always feared, placing the fate of our medical service in the hands of for-profit insurance agencies. That is what needs to change. Medical treatment is a right and a necessity, not a privelege.
Any candidate who can promise sweeping overhauls of our medical system to lessen the insurance's role in the marletplace, thus driving down costs not only for consumers, but suppliers as well, is one who is going to be at the absolute top of my list. The medical system is one of the single biggest hurdles faced by the lower classes when it comes to upwards mobility, and thus fixing it will have a profound impact for them and us. Nobody loses in universal healthcare except the individuals who would have otherwise exploited it.
Go Bernie.[/QUOTE]
You should have asked help from friends/family, buy a plane ticket to Europe and get treated in Eastern Euroupean countries such as Romania. It would have saved you a lot of money and you could have done it in time.
Lots of foreigners come and get treated here especially for dental work.
[QUOTE=blah2;49563380]You should have asked help from friends/family, buy a plane ticket to Europe and get treated in Eastern Euroupean countries such as Romania. It would have saved you a lot of money and you could have done it in time.
Lots of foreigners come and get treated here especially for dental work.[/QUOTE]
No he shouldn't have to.
He really shouldn't have to.
[editline]19th January 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=sgman91;49561476]Yes, they pay less taxes because the US has the highest corporate taxes in the world. The companies would have to be absolute idiots to bring their money back into the US and pay an additional 30+% for essentially no reason after already paying taxes in the country that the money was made.[/QUOTE]
Two posts above this one you argued that companies already pay a lot back into the system and in this one you defend tax evasion, get real.
[QUOTE=wystan;49561495]I wasn't really trying to take a position on flat taxes I was just trying to illustrate how it isn't an "equal burden" because the nominal amount paid is crazy different. Was just an example, not my opinion.[/QUOTE]
So what you're arguing is that rich people should actually pay [I]less[/I] taxes (for it to an "equal burden") because they pay more in absolute numbers?
A quote comes to mind when it comes to this thread:
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
It still rings true.
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;49557451]I dunno, I really hate seeing these charts from both sides because it just screams "We could do this but understand I can do about a fifth of what I promise"
Like bernie or don't, he's gonna be fucked with a Republican control of both houses[/QUOTE]
Sanders will probably struggle to get these proposals through even a Democrat-controlled Congress, looking at the problems that Obama faced with his relatively-mild PPACA. Such a major reform of the healthcare industry will not be easily done. He will have to compromise, and I think there's actually a very reasonable compromise that could be made:
For instance, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA could all be replaced (reducing bureaucratic waste) with a new, opt-in program run by the federal government, essentially a public insurance plan running alongside of the private healthcare industry. In return for agreeing to a 10% additional tax on personal income, an enrollee would receive health insurance without extra premiums, with small deductibles or deductibles based on episodes-of-care, and maybe the odd co-insurance or co-payment. If someone earns $20,000 per year, they pay $2,000 per year into the program; their 'premium'. If a family earns $50,000 per year, they pay $5,000 per year.
But the point as to why this would be very reasonable is that as income increases, there is a point where private health insurance premiums would eventually drop below 10% of income, and so a private insurance plan would be cheaper. If 10% of your income meant $120 per week, but you could get private insurance for $80 per week, why would you stay on the public system? You would save $40 per week from going private.
It's self-regulating in that people who can afford to pay for private health insurance will do so and not burden the public system. While poorer people, and people with on-going care requirements will be better off on the public system. The latter point in particular would mean that private insurance premiums could drop, as such people will transfer to the public system where they may face lower deductibles. Premiums (and deductibles) could also drop as private providers will compete with the public provider for customers when premiums are roughly equal to 10% of the customer's income.
There is of course the problem with funding the scheme, as the 10% income levy from enrollees only probably wouldn't be enough, but that's an idea of a reasonable compromise which could be made.
To make a proper healthcare for all system work you need EVERYONE paying into it via an increase in tax. An opt-in system wouldn't work as it wouldn't have the power to force any kind of cost reductions. If you want to go private then you should still have to pay those increased taxes still.
[QUOTE=Morgen;49563970]To make a proper healthcare for all system work you need EVERYONE paying into it via an increase in tax. An opt-in system wouldn't work as it wouldn't have the power to force any kind of cost reductions. If you want to go private then you should still have to pay those increased taxes still.[/QUOTE]
Yeah except what I was saying wasn't a 'healthcare for all' system. It's about retaining the private industry - for those who can afford it - while effectively re-inventing what Medicaid is already doing in the U.S.
Italy is ranked #2 in the world for best healthcare and I really can't imagine a system much worse than ours (everyone keeps complaining all the time).
[QUOTE=Morgen;49563970]To make a proper healthcare for all system work you need EVERYONE paying into it via an increase in tax. An opt-in system wouldn't work as it wouldn't have the power to force any kind of cost reductions. If you want to go private then you should still have to pay those increased taxes still.[/QUOTE]
That's going to be a VERY hard sell to the middle class who is already effectively taxed at ~30%. Hell, I'm paying $21,405.28 PER YEAR overall in taxes. Now explain to me why the government needs even more of my money to operate effectively.....
[QUOTE=Morgen;49563970]To make a proper healthcare for all system work you need EVERYONE paying into it via an increase in tax. An opt-in system wouldn't work as it wouldn't have the power to force any kind of cost reductions. If you want to go private then you should still have to pay those increased taxes still.[/QUOTE]
But in such a system, there would be practically no reason to go private because, you wouldn't be paying a dime out of pocket for health care costs. The point is to get rid of the private system.
[editline]19th January 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=Silence I Kill You;49564159]That's going to be a VERY hard sell to the middle class who is already effectively taxed at ~30%. Hell, I'm paying $21,405.28 PER YEAR overall in taxes. Now explain to me why the government needs even more of my money to operate effectively.....[/QUOTE]
Regardless of taxes you would need to levy, the middle class would be saving money with such a system in that you would no longer be paying insurance premiums.
[QUOTE=maxolina;49564142]Italy is ranked #2 in the world for best healthcare and I really can't imagine a system much worse than ours (everyone keeps complaining all the time).[/QUOTE]
I see the irony in this. Italians complaining about the very good healthcare available, and Americans not white with fury because of their malfunctioning, expensively overpriced healthcare.
Healthcare is a joke currently in the U.S.
You can pretty much guarantee to go in debt even with insurance if you have an extensive medical problem. I know people that do everything they can to avoid going to the hospital, we all prefer medical clinics around here before hospitals. Shit, you can even get sicker from just being in a hospital; my mom got pneumonia the last time she had to stay in the hospital more than a few days [B]from the damn hospital[/B]. Now she never stays at the hospital if she has to go and elects for home aide with Nurses. I'd say honestly the only reason my mom isn't in crippling debt from breast cancer treatment is because she happens to be a Nurse and gets really good health insurance through her hospital.
Go Bernie, please don't let 2016 be Trump VS Hillary
[QUOTE=HoodedSniper;49554239]I agree with lowering costs first.
People dont realize much that hospitals can just buy a trashcan for $5 a pop at walmart. They have to buy SPECIAL trashcans that are more like 50-100$ a pop yet are exactly the same.
Apply this to like absolutely anything in a hospital.
[/QUOTE]
Yes and no, I'd argue the nature of the U.S. is to have a wide variety of these garbage cans. And because they're not mass produced across a Federal system, it costs more. So if hospitals were owned by the government, a decent standard could be introduced and mass-produced health care for the masses would be cheaper.
Yes people need specialists and what that means is that there would be specialists spread out across the country. And people may have to travel far to get those services which is always unfortunate.
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;49557451]I dunno, I really hate seeing these charts from both sides because it just screams "We could do this but understand I can do about a fifth of what I promise"
Like bernie or don't, he's gonna be fucked with a Republican control of both houses[/QUOTE]
late reply to this but,
yeah. Its unfortunate. But its also unfortunate that candidates like Clinton use this same thing to say (effectively) "Well, look, you can't get that anyways so why don't you go with me? I'm the candidate thats [I]realistic[/I] and therefore I'll get things done"
I've read through the various sources of this, as a list of sources was given with the original infographic. The papers and such backing it are all fairly solid, and do suggest that most of this is feasible, but there are also many papers telling us without a doubt that climate change is anthropogenic and look how that's been going for us politically.
[QUOTE=sgman91;49561662]Sure, but that money still wasn't made in the US. It was made overseas, and is then held overseas to avoid paying the very high US corporate tax rates.[/QUOTE]
I'm sorry, but exactly where do you get this "money wasn't made in the US" bit.
Walmart owns zero stores, they have zero market presence in Luxembourg, and yet they, a retail company, made 64 billion dollars there?
That's not how it works. They make the profit in the US, transfer the funds to subsidiaries in tax havens, bury any mention of these subsidiaries where-ever they can. IIRC some loophole that lets them do so under the guise of brand development or something, so less tax.
They say that this money is for re-investing, yet it's apparently stagnant. As far as I know there's no public records of what they do with that money, and until they repatriate it it will literally stay there as a "fuck you, this is the money you could have" to America.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49561552]Working a 9-5 job is not sustainable for most people, and corporations don't aim to make it stable, they are legally obligated to aim for short term profits above all else.[/QUOTE]
Can you elaborate on the legal obligation bit? I'm curious.
[QUOTE=srobins;49566737]Can you elaborate on the legal obligation bit? I'm curious.[/QUOTE]
Any publicly traded company has a legal obligation to it's shareholders to maximize short term profits.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49566820]Any publicly traded company has a legal obligation to it's shareholders to maximize short term profits.[/QUOTE]
Legally? I don't think that's the case. It's simply what is assumed in classical economics.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;49566833]Legally? I don't think that's the case. It's simply what is assumed in classical economics.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/special-comment/ebay-v-newmark-al-franken-was-right-corporations-are-legally-required-to-maximize-profits/[/url]
The outcome of this case is summarized at the bottom of the page, I recommend you read through it all as there are many opinions bandied about in this article, but at the [B]end of the day[/B] Senator Frankens words on the issue are the law of the issue. They were legally prohibited from doing what they wanted to do because it would "Impinge on their financiary duties"
[editline]19th January 2016[/editline]
The issue with this particular thing is that it largely relies on the court that's hearing the case. In the Craigslist vs Ebay, Craigslist lost and had to take action to best suit the needs of Ebay, their stockholder.
In other events, like the recent Hobby Lobby case, this was not the case, and it was argued that "In the best interests of stockholders" can mean quite a large variety of things, and that companies shouldn't be second guessed on their actions by the courts. It's true, it can mean a lot of different things, but any publicly traded company is going to be attracting, by and large, short term profit investors, because by and large, the world we live in today, thanks to the american ethos of high corporate america and what not over the last 20 years, that's what we've trained people to care about, and to invest into.
[QUOTE=Silence I Kill You;49564159]Hell, I'm paying $21,405.28 PER YEAR overall in taxes..[/QUOTE]
that's nuts
you need to utilize tax advantaged accounts fella
[QUOTE=EcksDee;49566312]I'm sorry, but exactly where do you get this "money wasn't made in the US" bit.
Walmart owns zero stores, they have zero market presence in Luxembourg, and yet they, a retail company, made 64 billion dollars there?
That's not how it works. They make the profit in the US, transfer the funds to subsidiaries in tax havens, bury any mention of these subsidiaries where-ever they can. IIRC some loophole that lets them do so under the guise of brand development or something, so less tax.
They say that this money is for re-investing, yet it's apparently stagnant. As far as I know there's no public records of what they do with that money, and until they repatriate it it will literally stay there as a "fuck you, this is the money you could have" to America.[/QUOTE]
The assets located in other countries doesn't mean shit, they still pay tax over the profit earned in the country, and the way they move money is by giving out loans to themselves,
That are regulated to make sure they don't have a significantly higher interest then international banks. And the tax differences are largely compensated for through increased dividends and CGT tax.
Luxembourg doesn't have bank secrecy anymore, they literally report directly to the IRS.
Sure they probably cut their corner just like every other major corporation, but it isn't as simple as "lol just move it to luxemburg, 3% corporate tax lol"
[QUOTE=Killuah;49563548]No he shouldn't have to.
He really shouldn't have to.[/QUOTE]
I might have phrased it wrong. What I meant was could, not should. It wasn't a reproach.
And you have absolutely no right to answer the question in his place. Maybe he didn't know about this at the time.
What do you expect? Nobody should be punished by the irresponsible actions of one's country. The fact that he now is happy with his life doesn't change the fact that maybe, if confronted with the decision back then, he most likely would have chosen in favor of getting the vital surgery in another country.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.