"100% of people who do not save money do not have any!"--Dave Ramsey

[Xist]

Originally Posted by Shaneajanderson

I'm not computer savvy, and have never figured out how to post pictures here, but there is a chart out there showing inflation of various products, and the trend you'll find is the items that are most unregulated (electronics, etc.) have greatly fallen in price, while simultaneously rising in quality and extravagance. there are products that have some regulations in place, but not too crazy that have stayed pretty much static in price while quality has improved (new cars), and then there is healthcare, probably the most heavily regulated industry in America, and low-and-behold the prices have gone through the roof, and some would argue certain aspects of the quality (think nurse: patient; doctor: patient ratios) have fallen.

Can you link the chart or give me enough information to find it?

Some people were swooning over that old guy with crazy hair that just had a heart procedure. "he's the `President we need but don't deserve.' Clear-cut plans with hard-to-hear side effects aren't as nice as vague generalizations."
I asked "What is his clearcut plan for paying for his program?"

Of course, I was downvoted!

He doesn't have a plan. He has seven pages of ideas: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/downl...ll?inline=file

I was falling asleep, but I did not hear Biden--no, it was something called a "Klobuchar." One of my battle buddies went to the aid station with Klobuchar. They told him to drink water and take ibuprofen.

Anyway:

At least Bernie's being honest here and saying how he's going to pay for this and that taxes are going to go up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...te-transcript/

So sleepy...

Anyway! Sanders and Warren want healthcare that will cost more than the U.S. brings in in taxes. What could possibly go wrong? Occasionally Coherent has come up with all kinds of crazy plans that would cost tens of trillions of dollars. When people ask how she would pay for it she links articles claiming that the national debt does not matter.

"The federal government’s total debt stands at $22.023 trillion."
The gross domestic product was an estimated $21.06 trillion in the first quarter of 2019. If Welfare for All cost 3.26 trillion a year, it would consume 15.5% of the GDP.
"Net interest payments on the debt are estimated to total $393.5 billion this fiscal year, or 8.7% of all federal outlays."
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...national-debt/

if Bernie or Elizabeth raised taxes to cover half of Medicare for all and added the rest to the national debt, which we doubled in eight years, interest payments would roughly double.

When I searched for "how much does the us spend in healthcare" Google said "The United States spends more on health care than any other country in the world, and a large share of that spending comes from the federal government. In 2017, the United States spent about $3.5 trillion, or 18 percent of GDP, on health expenditures – more than twice the average among developed countries."

https://www.crfb.org/papers/american...federal-budget

Would Medicare for all replace that? That is supposed to cost 32.6 trillion over ten years. 3.26 > 3.5, but medicare pays 80% as much as private insurance. "In general, hospitals lose money on Medicare and Medicaid patients, but make up for that by charging private-sector insurers more." "Medicare currently only pays hospitals 87 percent of the costs of caring for patients."

So, hospitals lose 13% of all expenses covered by Medicare, profit 8.75% on patients covered by private insurance, and need for at least 60% of their patients to have private insurance to afford to treat the Medicare patients.

Anyway, the only way to make healthcare costs go down is to stop subsidizing it?

[redpoint5]

I'm indifferent to most presidential candidates because they will all behave roughly the same. The Bern is the only one I'd be very concerned about considering his agenda is to marginalize the US, not strengthen it. What's his campaign slogan; "Make America Great Again, like North Korea"?

There's tons of ways our healthcare does not work well and things to be done to reduce costs.

Administrative overhead in both insurance and medicine represent waste. You as a patient get no benefit from people working to bill as much as they can to insurance, and insurance trying to reduce their payout. It's like stock market activity where a lot of noise is generated, but in the end nothing of value is produced.

Since people don't have advanced directives, all the relatives end up speaking on behalf of the patient, and since no consensus can be reached amongst a group of people, the path of least resistance is to have "everything that can be done" to keep the person alive a few more days or weeks. Government provided health would reduce those costs because they would have the say in what is reasonable end of life care.

Lots and lots of other ways to reduce costs too. I'd start by making it illegal to have employer provided health plans because insurance shouldn't depend on a particular place of employment, and you aren't a group of people, but an individual, so insurance should be tailored to your values. It should look more like car insurance. There should be plans that are lower cost that might specify less end of life benefits, for instance.

[Fat Charlie]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

...nobody has the right to dictate the terms under which I'm willing to work, because they don't have ownership of my body or labor.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I'd start by making it illegal to have employer provided health plans...

Tom Wolfe said that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged and that a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.

But a liberal is really just someone who wants to interfere in everyone else's life because he knows better than they do what's best for them, while a conservative is someone who wants to interfere... You get the picture.

Because when I do it, it's for a higher cause. When someone else does it, he's just being a damn [insert childish political label here].

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

Tom Wolfe said that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged and that a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.

But a liberal is really just someone who wants to interfere in everyone else's life because he knows better than they do what's best for them, while a conservative is someone who wants to interfere... You get the picture.

Because when I do it, it's for a higher cause. When someone else does it, he's just being a damn [insert childish political label here].

I fit both of those definitions (robbed, not mugged though. Nobody muggs me.) Perhaps that's why I'm centrist and dont' have allegiance with any party. I've always been independent. I was the kid that would sit at any table in the lunchroom from the football group, to the programming nerds.

As an aside, one of my first memories in life was having saved up a quarter and being happy to have and play with that quarter. Someone tapped on the window of our car in a parking lot and asked if we had a quarter to spare for the phone. I asked my mom if I should give my quarter and she said it was up to me, so I gave it happily. Then I watched the person go to the next car and ask if they had a quarter for the phone... that informed my knowledge of what was actually going on with people on the street asking for money. 99.9% of the time it's to feed an addiction, and I'll have no part financing their own destruction. Of course at the time I didn't know what was going on; only that they had lied about their reason for asking for money.

In a similar vein, throwing money at problems like homelessness is a self-perpetuating problem. It's a dragon eating its own tail.

[Shaneajanderson]

Originally Posted by Xist

Can you link the chart or give me enough information to find it?

hopefully this works:

https://s.marketwatch.com/public/res...0212131601.png

[Xist]

If you just bookend the URL with [IMG](insert URL here)[/IMG] you get

Or you can hit the image button and paste it.

If you attach an image you can do the same thing.

[Shaneajanderson]

Originally Posted by Xist

If you just bookend the URL with [IMG](insert URL here)[/IMG] you get

Or you can hit the image button and paste it.

That's the one! Thanks, even I can figure that out.

[Xist]

If you attach an image you can do the same thing.

[redpoint5]

Probably my favorite photo of you, Doug :P

[Fat Charlie]

Not to drift farther, but I was looking for a gif of the old Wayne's World sketches when they do the "why would I take the stairs, when I can just take the escalator?" behind the couch. Sadly, NBC has all that crap locked down.

Then I found this and had to add it in lieu of.