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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Quit Your Job, Taxpayers Will Cover Your Health Ca
Quit Your Job, Taxpayers Will Cover Your Health Ca
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eharp
665 posts
May 20, 2010
4:01 PM
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i aint voting for the lions much this football season!!
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eharp
666 posts
May 20, 2010
4:10 PM
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so, stickman. i understand you wanna keep what you earn. who doesnt?
what is your take, then, on athletes getting paid 10's of millions of dollars per year? and the team owners wanting to earn as much as they can, but with the salaries they gotta pay, so they charge bunches for a seat which puts a family of 4 into over a hundred for a game. (counting the high price of parking and hot dogs/popcorn/pops.)
i guess the same could be said of actors driving movie prices up.
i just want to know if others think enough is enough at some point.
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Stickman
330 posts
May 20, 2010
4:31 PM
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To answer your question eharp, I am of two minds. As a teacher I think it sucks that society talks a good game about how they support education but will toss $ hand over fist at athletes, while I drove all over town today looking for a basketball goal that we could borrow so that our students could play a student vs teacher game tomorrow. (we only found one, so the game my be canceled) On the other hand, if people will pay that much for their services, then why not. I don't think that sports teams are under any obligation to keep ticket prices low. If people stop supporting pro sports because the prices are too high, then the ticket price will come down. Does it suck? yes! Is it fair? well under capitalism...Yes. Just be glad you are not going to a PHISH concert.
And if you want to know. I don't watch any sports ever. I'd rather play them.
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The Art Teacher Formally Known As scstrickland
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The Gloth
382 posts
May 20, 2010
4:54 PM
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@bluesnut "@ phogi, I am with you on most points but if the goverment runs health care you will not get to choose a burocrat will. I want the freedom of choice."
The problem is, the goal of every private insurance company is to make profit. If they have to screw you to make it, they'll do. Or if they don't and get bankrupt, you're screwed too.
You don't have this with a public founded healthcare organised by the governement, because it doesn't have to make profits and cannot go broke, unless the country is.
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Gwood420
190 posts
May 20, 2010
5:31 PM
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eharp, i agree that athletes are overpaid, but remember one thing.. the governmend eats up lets say 25%(on the low end)if their income, managers/agents 10-15%, and the union has to get a good share. not to mention bodyguards, accountants, lawers, and god knows who else has there hands in their pockets.. i dont feel for them in the least, but if you read a player getting 120 mill over 6 years, i bet he wont see half of it..
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Marty we're no GOD (Greenwood)
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Last Edited by on May 20, 2010 5:31 PM
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Nastyolddog
762 posts
May 20, 2010
6:40 PM
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Private health cover will not automaticly get you in a small private Hospital in Australia,
i spent a few weeks in a goverment funded Hospital,
after 3 days i got sick of this old Mongrel in the next bed,he constantly bagged the nurses giveing them a hard time,
well i fucken cracked, mate i said whats so great about you ya ingnorant old Poofter giveing the nurses a hard time you think we like listening to you mate,
if you don't like it i will drag your bed outside and ya can roll down the hill back Home shut fucking up mate,
well i new it would stir him up, sunny he said i pay $20000+ a year for private Health cover, and i get stuck in hear cause they haven't got a bed vacant in my Hospital,
well fuck of home mate and let us get better and get out of here you ain't makeing this a picnick mate,
he said he had a Heart attack and was just being monitored untill they had a spare bed, mate i said so you give every one thats trying to help you here a hard time.
im sure the love you and will throw a party when you leave do me a favor have ya Heart attack and get the fuck out of here,
he did finaly calm down and show some respect for the nurses but 6 days later he respected my wishes,
20000+thou a year to not even get in your chosen Hospital man thats value...
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nacoran
1895 posts
May 20, 2010
7:35 PM
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Nasty, are you saying he respected your wishes and got moved to the other hospital or he had another heart attack?
I guess that will teach him.
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Nate
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Nastyolddog
764 posts
May 20, 2010
8:26 PM
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Yo Nacoran i woke up that morning he wasn't there i asked the nurse if he got moved to another ward,
she just said he has moved on in life he was 85,
no i don't feel guilty:)
Last Edited by on May 20, 2010 8:27 PM
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dfwdlg
109 posts
May 21, 2010
11:41 AM
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Gloth:
"The problem is, the goal of every private insurance company is to make profit. If they have to screw you to make it, they'll do. Or if they don't and get bankrupt, you're screwed too.
You don't have this with a public founded healthcare organised by the governement, because it doesn't have to make profits and cannot go broke, unless the country is."
The flip side of your argument is that the Government doesn't have to worry about quality and service because it has no competition. Government workers would only care about their union jobs and benefits and don't care about patients, so they will just let you lie in your own excrement while they are on their required breaks. (Here, I am just making a generalization about them, similar to all insurance companies are profit focused. I don't really believe they are all bad people).
Outside of the military, Government performance leaves much to be desired, so why would I want to trust them even more with life and death stuff. There is no incentive for them to control costs either. For starters, let's see the Dems suggestions for the $500M in Medicare savings they are counting on. Fat chance!
So, I leave y'all with 2 last questions:
1) When Government provides all health care, who do you sue when denied coverage or injured through malpractice. The Government is indemnified.
2) Why are Government workers allowed to unionize? Seems like an immense conflict of interest. Why would they need protection from their Government?
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dfwdlg
110 posts
May 21, 2010
11:43 AM
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Sorry, $500B in savings.
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nacoran
1899 posts
May 21, 2010
1:07 PM
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dfwdlg, government health care is usually provided by the same people who provide regular health care. I've got government health care. It's insurance. I can get a hearing if something is denied and if the doctor screws up I can sue the doctor. There is no real incentive for a nurse in a private care facility to change your bedpan except she might get fired if she doesn't. The real power of government health care is it sets the rates. Doctors can refuse to accept it, but they lose patients to other doctors. If enough people aren't getting medical care they call their representatives to complain and the rates get reimbursement rates get raised.
I have government health insurance. Sometimes I have a hard time finding a specialist, but without it I couldn't afford a specialist anyway. I have to see the doctor monthly to get blood tests and it's covered. My medication is covered. There is a very strong downward pressure on paying medical claims and little upward pressure. Medicaid reimbursement rates are low enough that a lot of doctors won't take Medicaid patients. In general, government reimbursement rates are lower than private insurance companies because the government programs have such scale they can negotiate more effectively. National health insurance will only increase that. The private companies providing services will try to reduce costs, but they already do, and since they still have competition, if we don't like their service we can go somewhere else.
At one point, before my medication went generic, I was paying $300 a month for one medication. I had no income so I put it on my credit cards, which, with no income, I couldn't pay. I was poor long enough that the debt went out of statute. You paid for it with higher credit card interest rates and more expensive goods. I paid for it with a ruined credit rating. That doesn't show up as a tax or whatever, but essentially, that's what it is. I didn't chose to get sick. I didn't want to have no insurance. (I was a student at the time.) The tax got paid in the end. That's where the savings eventually come from. They are structural.
As for why government workers are allowed to unionize, well, because we have the right to free association and the right to negotiate a fair wage. Anything else is serfdom. Legislators want to lower taxes to get elected. They try to do this by keeping costs down. There is a downward incentive on costs. You need a union to balance it. In health care you have that balance with review boards and agencies that help health care consumers. They aren't unions, but they serve the same purpose. Checks and balances.
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Nate
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dfwdlg
112 posts
May 21, 2010
3:08 PM
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And I guess I addressed a few of nacoran's points too.
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dfwdlg
113 posts
May 21, 2010
3:10 PM
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And sorry for the bad spelling, in a hurry to pick up kids.
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nacoran
1902 posts
May 21, 2010
4:17 PM
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Dfwdlg, one of the best arguments for national health care, if it's done right, is it can be pro-business. Because of international laws to level the playing field for companies a lot of forms of subsidies have become illegal. If two companies, one in the U.S., and one in the U.K. both produce widgets and sell them in the U.S. and the U.K. the U.S. company is at a disadvantage without national health care. The U.K. will tax all the widgets sold in the U.K., whether they are U.K. or U.S. widgets. They'll use that money to pay for health care. In the U.S., without national health care, the company will pay for health care. Our products will help pay for our health care AND their health care. By moving it to a tax supported system their products, when sold here, will help pay for our health care.
Companies can control costs lots of ways. They can negotiate with Unions, they can replace workers with better machinery (which may not be great for the employee in the short term but in the long term does increase productivity, and it creates jobs for making that machinery), they can write off wages as expenses, they can tinker with whatever they are making to bring down the costs, they can export jobs to where it's cheaper to do business...
If you collect the tax to fund health insurance as an income tax on wealthier Americans it's less likely to drive business out of the country than raising the price of labor by tying health insurance to employment. People need insurance. Poor people need insurance even more. It's about figuring out how to get people insured with quality insurance at the best price.
As for life expectancy, infant mortality, etc., yes, there are cultural differences that effect that, but how would you compare how well a health care system is doing? You can break it out by social class. I'm sure the top fifth of the U.S. population by wealth is doing pretty well, and a lot of poor people aren't doing as well, but that's the point.
Really poor people, people who qualify for Welfare, already get health insurance. The people who don't are the working poor, people who are doing the most work to create wealth in the country compared to the compensation they are getting. Before national health care sometimes if you were sick the best way to get treatment was to quit your job and wait a few months until you qualify for Medicaid. That's not a good system. (For the record, the financial aid system for tuition is broken in pretty much the same way, but that's an argument for another day.
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Nate
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Stickman
331 posts
May 21, 2010
4:44 PM
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"The people who don't are the working poor, people who are doing the most work to create wealth in the country "
Thanks Nacoran for pointing out that in many cases it is people within our circle of influence that will benefit from national healthcare. I suppose may americans believe that Healthcare reform is a way to give more free stuff to lazy people. Allow me to add to the list: College students who are not covered by parents. Small/family business owners. and most importantly, The children of all of the above. Imagine having a child in pain from an abscessed tooth and not having the $200 cash needed for the dentist until next payday. That would suck
Oh and I almost forgot and as the original post suggested. Musicians who want to quit their day job and pursue a full time career playing music.
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The Art Teacher Formally Known As scstrickland
Last Edited by on May 21, 2010 4:55 PM
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dfwdlg
114 posts
May 22, 2010
7:21 PM
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nacoran - Trade problems should be addressed as trade problems. Perhaps tarrifs would be appropriate. Or, we could have all these progressive countries pay for their own defense instead of using that money for entitlements.
Likewise, I'm not surprised people live longer in countries that guarantee two months vacation and where you can retire way early. In Sweden and Switzerland, 7 of 10 people work past 50. In France, only half do. The legal retirement age in France is 60, while Germany finally raised it to 67 for those born after 1963. They have to scrap their systems because they can't sustain them.
Our new health care law is full of waste and magical promises. Again, I'm OK with a safety net, but the new entitlements will bring down the system. this will force it into a single payer model that will allow Government to regulate everything people do. Just look at tabacco laws as an example. They won't outlaw something they say is a sure killer because of the $$$.
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nacoran
1915 posts
May 22, 2010
8:37 PM
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Dfwdlg, tariffs result in retaliatory tariffs. As for defense budgets, even without the U.S. in the picture Europe and Japan and most of the other first world countries could protect themselves just fine from any threat outside the first world. The U.S. has a doctrine that relies on being able to fight multiple major conflicts at the same time. The problem is there aren't multiple major conflicts out there.
You are combining issues. Even in countries with 'single payer' models you can still get private insurance. A single payer of last resort won't kill your ability to buy insurance if you want to buy extra insurance, and tobacco laws are a complicated issue. Tobacco taxes were supposed to cover health expenses related to tobacco illnesses. We didn't keep that money separate like we should have, but a failure to execute something properly doesn't mean the underlying idea is flawed, just that you have to fix the execution. As for smoking in public places, as an asthmatic with severe allergies to cigarettes smoke it's nice to be able to enjoy public places without getting sick. Cigarette smokers can too, they just can't do it with a lit cigarette. My feeling though is anything you can do that doesn't hurt anyone should be legal. If you want to puff on one of those eCigarettes or wear a patch or chew the gum, or even chew tobacco, even although I think carrying around a spit cup is pretty gross. If there is a cost to society the tax should recoup that cost, whether it's gasoline taxes for roads or cigarette taxes for health care.
The thing is though that we already pay for health care. It's a false argument that we don't. The economy is tough all over the world but it was pure capitalist market derivatives and sub-prime mortgages that did that, not subsidized health care. Not only don't we produce good health results, but we spend more than anyone else on health care. As for the retirement age, a lot of retirement ages where set when people didn't live as long. Old people are a powerful lobby. The retirement age should be tied to average life expectancy. If old age hits someone early, that's what disability is for.
Health care insurance is already regulated, just by private industry.
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Nate
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Stickman
336 posts
May 23, 2010
12:02 AM
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" The current financial melt-down problem wouldn't have happened if people could pay their mortgage obligations."
The idea that banks should be able to lend $ to anybody just for the asking without any obligation in protecting their investment is ridiculous. Especially since the money they are lending is borrowed money.
Yes borrowers have an obligation to make good on their debt, but this wouldn't have happened if the FED had not propped up our economy by encouraging a borrow and spend plan. By Keeping interest rates ridiculously low during prosperous times banks could not make the big profits their investors (us with our 401K's) have come to expect. Therefore to make their profit margins they had to sell more "product". Any time the market tried to correct the Fed would drop the rate another .25%. No corrections over 10 years caused a grossly inflated market that manifested in a real-estate bubble, very similar to the tech bubble and the gas bubble. These bubbles come about by plugging all of the release valves. Greenspan was not the genius everybody thought he was.
It is not as simple as to blame the borrowers for this mess. It was a complicated house of cards that we all have a hand in.
Oh and as for things working better with less government oversight ask Enron, Goldman Sachs and BP how that is working out for them. I agree that too much regulation stymies growth but less regulation is just as bad. Like everything else, it is a balance thing. Getting the correct balance can be tricky especially when both sides argue the extremes rather than work together to find compromise.
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The Art Teacher Formally Known As scstrickland
Last Edited by on May 23, 2010 12:33 AM
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dfwdlg
116 posts
May 23, 2010
9:34 AM
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Let's not forget, the Government encouraged and/or bullied banks into lending to unqualified borrowers. That's why they call it subprime.
Adequate regulation exists in most areas, the Government jaust fails to execute. Just like immigration, the laws are there, they are not enforced.
The Government is also getting into the habit of changing the rules and rewriting contracts (a la GM shareholders). This undermines confidence and contributes to the relentless self-reinforcing death spiral of our current economy.
I think there is alot of agreement amongst us here, i.e., some regulation makes sense and there is plenty of blame for all. The hard part is listening to the Pols try and snow the public on so many issues. It would help if they would publish a list of the laws that count and those that don't.
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nacoran
1920 posts
May 23, 2010
1:51 PM
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The government didn't arm twist to get banks to make sub-prime loans. The government should have been raising the insurance rates banks paid when they were making those sorts of loans instead of keeping them flat, but that's a lack of regulation, not an excess. Banks were falling over themselves to make these loans, just like they did in the Savings and Loans days in the 80's. As badly as the feds may have done in this bailout the results where still way better than when there wasn't a Federal insurance plan in place. A private system wouldn't have worked. It didn't work. The companies insuring Wall Street melted down.
As for GM, well, the shareholders would have lost even more under bankruptcy, which is probably how it should have been handled. I think public confidence was just so shaky that the government moving like it did was more about restoring confidence. It seem it may have saved GM and gotten paid back.
I agree that Medicare and Medicaid are sort of redundant. If you have Medicaid you get your services almost for free, but you have access to fewer doctors and options. It pays doctors less money to see patients than Medicare does. (And Medicare actually pays doctors less than private insurance, but it's almost universally accepted.) Medicaid covers people who are really poor. Medicare covers people with more money. It costs more per person to provide even with the copays being higher. It is a little silly to have two whole bureaucracies to administer it. You need the part of Medicaid that determines if you qualify for disability or low income assistance. You need low copays for people who can't afford them. After that, a lot of it's just redundant and could and probably should be combined. If I was designing a health care system Medicare/Medicaid would be one option, and a tax credit or voucher for private insurance would be the other. You'd get to chose which option you wanted.
As for immigration laws, they aren't enforced because there is a huge amount of ambivalence and even outright hostility towards them. Politicians haven't had the willpower to fight that out yet. Personally, I think anyone who wants to come to America and who doesn't have a criminal record should be able to. Then they should have to pay taxes, just like the rest of us. They should qualify for retirement only if they worked enough quarters, just like Americans. The same should go for disability. One of the reasons they hurt American workers is because they can't organize like regular labor, so they get stuck getting paid below minimum wage and taking jobs away from Americans. If you make it all above board then wages get competitive again. That's how our ancestors did it. It made America a diverse, populous super power.
And don't even get me started on the War on Drugs. :)
I like that this discussion has stayed pretty civil. I have one more thought that occurred to me last night, about the whole original posts. It talked about how a musician could quit his job and still have health insurance while he tried to make it a career. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think some of the other people in the thread may have been exposed to the same indoctrination as kids. If Pelosi had just said she felt that someone who left their job to start a small business would still have insurance, would we be so upset? Or is it our own insecurity, all those sit-coms where the dad shunned the kid who wanted to be a musician, where the musician slept in late and partied all night, weighing on our conscience? What is a solo performer but a self-contractor. If you hire a band to back you, are you not a small business owner? Prick us, do we not bleed (although maybe some of us shouldn't let them run the blood alcohol test!)
As for lists of laws that count and that don't, I'd love some legislative reform that let bills go straight to the floor for a vote without a chance to get loaded up with pork. Pork gets a bad name. Some of it really is useful stuff, but the way we dole it out now is about rewarding Congress members, not voting up or down on particular issues based on merit.
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Nate
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