%% Exactly; Cuba gives you a choice-cut cane or go to jail. NOT that excercise is best demanded by a commie country LOL. John Adams -speedo is good speed
Move to Brazil. Here you'll have a chance to experience real results of your beloved policies. Use only our "SUS" - Sistema Único de Saúde(Sole Healthcare System). The same goes to countries like the Netherlands. My sister-in-law is dutch, she has relatives that come to Brazil(to São Paulo, Curitiba and other cities where there's some capitalism, real competition in Brazil) to get dental and general health treatment when they can. But they use the private parallel system, of course, where they can get quality and speed. In addition, where do you think brazilian politicians, presidents and government officials, the very people that promote this "beautiful" public system, get their treatment? You guessed it: in the few private hospitals that don't accept patients from the public system, hospitals like "Hospital Sírio-Libanês" and "Hospital Albert Einstein" in São Paulo. You evaded my questions. But answering yours, it is not my problem how the other guy dies, and it is not his problem how I die, that is my problem, my responsability, nobody else's. But you can be sure that if he can make me pay for how he dies, he will spend my money to the last penny without taking in consideration any issues that will cause me. Nobody spends other peoples's money as they spend their own money.
A fair system will ask that all citizens share in the costs of public services regardless of their level of selfishness, political/economic beliefs, or ability to understand those costs. That includes the cost of present and future risk to need medical care. You choose the nation you want to live in ( the "like minded" people of your choice ), and that's nothing to do with me. But if you are going to whine about costs you must pay and show no ability to understand why those costs exist, be prepared to hear from others why you must pay those costs. I didn't address your intentions, but I addressed "Java"'s intentions because he's a frequent poster who made his beliefs clear in his posts. US national debt and future health care costs are REAL. You can't close your eyes and say hey not my problem. If you choose the US to live in, it is your problem and your responsibility. Pulling a Trump and saying "who knew health care was so complicated" doesn't solve the problem or eliminate the responsibility to pay for it. I made my choice, Canada has decent health care at a much lower cost then the US. People can pretend that isn't the case on here ( and many do ), but somehow I've managed to get by fine in our system and it works for me and the majority of Canadians. This is not the case for millions of Americans, and "Java" complains about health care insurance a lot on this site. My comments on Canadian health care are pretty positive. I am not "forcing" you to move to Canada and I am not "forcing" you to be an advocate for any health care system.
That's an absurd theory that only ends up transferring the risks you personally wish to ignore or under service to the government or the rest of society should those risks come to bear. It's also totally impractical. At different stations of life, even successful and driven people can be broke ( e.g. going to college or children with poor homes; people suffering catastrophic illnesses ).
I've stated this before, but I do feel for Americans who are stuck paying the price due to the bad decisions many Americans are making for their country in recent years. Some of the posters like "Java" are posting absurd themes that solve nothing. My conclusion is sure, it's the business of US citizens to choose how their country will run, and the choices made must be paid for. Which means things like higher personal taxes for maybe a decade is coming in some form. And if health care remains this muddled mess of political infighting and the inefficient invisible hand of capitalism and special interests, just pay the premiums they are your chosen path. I'm fine with it all, I do think studying Canada's social systems would be helpful but word on the street is most Americans aren't interested. So be it. Even more interesting is the upcoming trade wars between the US and Canada. Seems inevitable under Trump. He's already fired shots and ready to tariff the hell out of everything Canadian. Shots will be fired back soon, and many US trade reps are already extremely nervous that Trump and his people are going to deeply damage their industries. Both our economies will hurt as a result, but the one good thing is that will help educate many American voters why Trump has to go. Might take a couple of years for most voters to connect the dots and understand why their jobs are diminished or gone, why their consumer prices are going up. I see everything as a messy short term issue for Canada but a very good long term trend for Canada ( more talent moving here, certain industries relocating here, less reliance on the US for trade, strong housing market as immigration remains strong ). I suppose clearer heads could prevail and the pain could be averted. But Trump's stated ideas and how messed up US health care is suggests otherwise.
How do you know what a "fair system" is? How does anyone know that? What is fair for one, may not be fair to others. US public debt is indeed a real problem, a problem created by waste and stupid ineficient socialist policies such as the one being discussed in this thread implemented over the years in the US. In order to create your so called "fair system", someone will have to define "fair", that will demand centralized power and as you said, it will demand "forcing people" to pay what a very small group of people demands they pay. That is communism, something that has been proven to not only not accomplish its theoretical goals, but also to take people's liberties, resulting in catastrophies such as nazism and movements of the kind. I recommend a book called "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek. It explains this very clearly. As for the costs, prices in the US could be lower for sure, but not through socialization of medicine, which always result in inefficiency and higher costs. As for any other economic subject, free markets and the resulting competition from them are the way to go. But for that to happen, a lot of other stupid policies must be reversed. The US is less down the road as other countries, but it has gone really far in this destructive path.
That's comparing apples and oranges. Keep in mind the topic of this thread is not just that Buffet supports a single payer system, but that America is so rich it can afford...a single payer system. A fair point. But on health care, it's demonstrable that government spends less of other people's money than other people themselves will spend. Of course there's a class war argument that can be made against this. But as one of the economic losers in a single payer system, I find rich folk saying keeping poor people healthy is too expensive to be inconsiderate at best.
You raise some good points -- buying a no-deductible insurance plan that covers everything for a healthy 25 year old who has never had any health issues and paying the same rate as an unhealthy 60 year old does not make financial sense. However, it doesn't have to be that way. A catastrophic-only health insurance plan for a 25-year old with no health issues and $10k deductible should be dirt cheap. But that plan would only cover catastrophic issues, not dental visits or annual checkups. Sure, the cost of the health insurance would go up over time, but so would the risk that the insurer would have to pay out a claim. That's fair. Over time, the person would have had the opportunity to save up for his or her own medical costs. That would be considered personal responsibility. The Elizabeth Warren types that try to discredit all successful people as simply being lucky really annoy me. Maybe you were born with a large inheritance and maybe you did not have to do anything in your life to earn your wealth, but not everyone was as lucky as you. For most people, success comes as a byproduct or sacrifice, delayed-gratification, and substantial risk. Supply and demand would not die. At some wage, people would be willing to perform the shitty jobs, but more likely they would try to figure out a way to automate as much of the shit jobs as possible. Higher wages encourage automation because potential cost savings from automation increase with wage. If that was true, there would be no 3rd world countries. Standards of living would not vary greatly from one area to another. I suspect that culture and historically access to natural resources has the greatest influence over that. Who is forcing them to buy those cell phones? If I was poor, I would not have a cell phone. I'd buy an old cell phone, not pay for service, and rely on wifi-calling. That's true. But it comes back to supply and demand. What do you propose doing? Maybe Walmart should pay all employees $20. Fine. What would happen? Walmart might as well hire college graduates since there is enough college-educated labor at that rate and then focus on automation. All cash registers could be automated checkout like Amazon's Fresh store in Seattle. That's where things are going. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-...ikes-has-cost-works-14mm-hours-year-6700-jobs We can talk about the way things should be all day, but it has no effect on what will happen. The laws of economics will ultimately prevail.
Yes, we are not socialists. We don't like socialists. That's why we don't like their single payer systems. We are the single payer. Otherwise known as the taxpayer. We pay for EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!! You talk about single payer like there is just a payer sitting around out there looking for something to pay for. As soon you as you communists start talking about how much WE spend on healthcare I know you are just another socialist robber talking about MY money like it is OUR money and keep YOUR greedy hands out of MY pocket.
Your rants suggest you don't like to pay for the services you require now and in the future, and you need to grow up and pay them. I suppose if the world was a nasty place and we could design a waiver for you that says you will decline any medical treatment for the rest of your life unless you can pay in cash within 24 hours, we could satisfy your extreme views and prevent the country from paying for the risks you refuse to acknowledge. At this point, the US doesn't accept this scenario that arrogant young men should be able to put their health or life on the line to save money. Society has said not everyone can be sensible about these things and you are a good working example of this.