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Social Justice Universal Health Care Discussion Thread

@Burnt so someone making 100k a year what percent should they pay in taxes? I know if I ever have to pay more then 50% I will never work overtime again and be looking into leaving this country. Apparently half the country paying 97% of the taxes isn’t enough lol
 
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bmf666 said:
@Burnt so someone making 100k a year what percent should they pay in taxes? I know if I ever have to pay more then 50% I will never work overtime again and be looking into leaving this country. Apparently half the country paying 97% of the taxes isn’t enough lol
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in the UK (read my post above for what the system is like) less than 60% of the adult population even pay income taxes. if you're on £100k you will pay £33k in income tax.

from what i have seen regarding the US healthcare system, $100k doesn't go far if you get a chronic illness, or an acute one that requires significant treatment. if that illness puts you out of work a long time you're fucked unless you have exceptional insurance or huge savings.

i just checked and the tax burden for you guys is lower for that income bracket but honestly i'd prefer to have higher taxes and not have the threat of bankruptcy ever present than lower taxes and be at the mercy of circumstance and a health insurance provider.

i would be really interested to see if anyone has done the calculation of what not having universal healthcare costs the US (missed work, welfare etc) vs the projected cost of implementing it.
 
Even though our tax system could use some overhaul I'm of the opinion that we already pay enough taxes to implement
a health care system designed to take that kind of burden off of the people.
My health insurance in no way leaves me feeling protected.
 
@chinup did u factor in federal, state, Medicaid, and social security? I know I paid 73k off my 230k which makes my stomach hurt. I agree 100k ain’t much especially since I think it’s like 35k I’d be paying in taxes and where I live is expensive so that’s not shit. I did a 5 year apprenticeship and made a lot of sacrifices to hopefully live good and if people like burnt get there way I’ll be making as much as the guy at McDonald’s. Cut taxes and stop incentivizing laziness. And electron I agree our country needs to improve with what we got, people are already overburdened and are country brings in enough money. Maybe cut back on the crazy pensions for people in politics and all the other scams they waste money on. I agree things should be better but people are already paying way to much.
 
An important question is whether health care should be a ‘for profit’ business and whether ‘profit maximisation’ ought to be one of the principal drivers of the way it is structured. The for profit character of the business results in the following facts I lifted from https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200319.920962/full/

“Many of the symptoms of our dysfunctional health care system are not in dispute:

  • We pay more than twice as much per person on total health care spending and on prescription drugs in comparison to other developed countries. This spending totals nearly 18 percent of our economy.
  • Between 2008 and 2018, premiums for employer-sponsored insurance plans increased 55 percent, twice as fast as workers’ earnings (26 percent). Over the same time period, the average health insurance deductible for covered workers increased by 212 percent.
  • An average employer-sponsored family health insurance policy now exceeds $28,000 per year, with employers paying about $16,000 and employees paying about $12,000.
  • Almost half (45 percent) of US adults ages 19 to 64, or more than 88 million people, were inadequately insured over the past year (either they were uninsured, had a gap in coverage, or were underinsured; that is, they had insurance all year but their out-of-pocket costs were so high that they frequently did not receive the care they needed).
  • Compared to other developed countries, the US ranks near the bottom on a variety of health indicators including infant mortality, life expectancy, and preventable mortality.”
Even if you are the kind of person who says “people must pay their fair share”, it is abundantly evident that “fairness” is a not a part of the way the industry is structured. And for those who think the government cannot run things as efficiently as the private sector, profit-ratios are the principal way corporations measure their performance and that is basically the sole measure of whether the system is “good”.

At the very least when comparing the job done by corporations versus the job potentially done by the government under a single payer model, it is is only reasonable to have a more balanced basket of success measures (including things like access and probably average infant mortality, and life expectancy!)
 
Some of the posts in this thread are really off topic.
Here’s a thread for tradespeople and a shortage of skilled labor:

In Other News... - JOB TRAINING | Matching Job Seekers with Potential Employers

Jobless claims were high again this past week with more than 860,000 people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time. Millions of people are still looking for work, but some employers say they can't find enough skilled workers for certain jobs. That is due in part, they say, because...
www.bluelight.org www.bluelight.org

If your post doesn’t tie into healthcare and various models of it, please post in the appropriate thread or start your own.
 
Thank you @chinup and @Atelier3 for being so well spoken. You seem to feel the same about health care as I do and are able to better argue it.

When I think about the level of profiteering in our health care and justice (prisons) system I don't feel like any part of it is at all good.
Sometimes I would say it is down right evil.
 
@chinup also most jobs do have benifits included, hell even starbucks and Lowe’s had health benefits. So to have zero coverage I really believe someone put zero effort into getting it and in that case I have a hard time having sympathy for them. Might sound harsh but if our government would start telling the truth and telling people like it is instead of patronizing everyone I think a lot of people would be better off.
 
@Atelier3 These are some great reasons why for-profit healthcare is a terrible idea. In fact privatizing any public service (schools, prisons, health care, etc) is a terrible idea, and since we started doing that, all of these systems have fallen to shit, except for the people who control them, it's been amazing for them and their billions of dollars. We pay many times more for health care and prescription drugs than anywhere else on Earth, because it's a for-profit system.

electronDegenerate said:
My problem with that besides the total lack of caring about the wellbeing of anyone except themselves
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Fixed it for you

bmf666 said:
and don’t have kids out of wedlock
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What the fuck? Marriage has nothing to do with it. People shouldn't have kids when they can't afford to, though. We have too many people getting pregnant at very young ages and that definitely makes it a lot harder to get ahead. People can get married right out of high school and have kids and face the same negative consequences.

bmf666 said:
Social security is mismanaged to hell and same with Medicare yet when the government takes more of our money they’re going to magically get it right and everything will be awesome
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Here is where we agree, we need more regulation. We got lazy over the last 50-60 years and apathetic and allowed a bunch of sociopaths to infest the government and now whoever has the most money gets to make the rules, we don't even live in a democracy anymore, really, it's a plutocracy, with the illusion of democracy, at least at the federal level. We need a system overhaul and put safeguards in place to prevent people from corrupting the system again. It's definitely true that our tax money is being misappropriated.

bmf666 said:
if people like burnt get there way I’ll be making as much as the guy at McDonald’s
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No one is saying that, at all. You paying 3% more tax, or 5% more tax, or 50% more tax, still puts you WAY ahead of the guy working at McDonald's. Note, I'm not saying anyone should pay 50% more tax, or even close. Hell I bet we could provide health care without even raising taxes if all the money wasn't being wasted and put towards corporations and wars and other bullshit.
 
bmf666 said:
@chinup also most jobs do have benifits included, hell even starbucks and Lowe’s had health benefits. So to have zero coverage I really believe someone put zero effort into getting it and in that case I have a hard time having sympathy for them. Might sound harsh but if our government would start telling the truth and telling people like it is instead of patronizing everyone I think a lot of people would be better off.
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This isn't true at all, man. Many jobs don't have benefits included. Almost anyone working for a small business like a gas station, grocery store, etc isn't going to have any benefits whatsoever, which is a shit ton of people.
 
By the way @bmf666 , for the record, I do have a problem with people abusing the system and choosing to not work for free benefits and I would support making changes to better ensure people are not able to do this, but there are legitimately a lot of people who can't find work or who can't work due to illness, injury, etc. Availability of work varies greatly by where you live. Some areas don't have many jobs and a lot of people are unable to find work. Sounds like you live somewhere with a lot of people and a lot of jobs, which is good. But not everyone does.
 
bmf666 said:
Zero skill jobs aren’t meant to be careers and the argument that everyone can’t work trades or other professions that give a living wage that’s not even close to being a problem now so who cares.
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It matters because let's say we somehow eliminate the problem of people abusing the system... then we still have the problem I described. Not everyone can work the higher-tier jobs like the trades and white collar jobs, because there isn't enough need to give everyone jobs. And the lower level jobs still need to be filled.

Try telling someone from rural Kentucky (for example) that their minimum wage job isn't meant to be a career, when there aren't even enough jobs available in total for every adult who lives there. They may not be meant to be careers, but there are only so many skilled jobs available, some people will lose out and be stuck in minimum wage shitty jobs. It's just a numbers game.

It's good advice to an individual to tell them they can improve their position by learning a trade, 100%. But it doesn't solve the overall problem. There will still be people stuck in shitty minimum wage jobs. So my point remains, we either need to overhaul the system such that people working those jobs can earn an actual living. One way that will help that happen is to fix our health care system. Whether that is making it public and paid for with taxes, or making it so it's affordable (or both), we need to do something. The system only works for some people as it is right now, and although some people could improve their situation through harder work, or smarter work, not everyone can do that.
 
bmf666 said:
If your goal is to rely on a minimum wage then yeah it can suck in America. You literally have to apply zero effort and not give a crap to make minimum wage. I’m an electrician and make $51 an hour and I’ve made tons of mistakes in my life. The damn sweeping ladies on our job site don’t even speak English and they make $15 an hour. I really hope America doesn’t go to free healthcare. I don’t see why everyone wants to cater to the people that don’t even care about themselves. It’s not hard to get a job with benefits, if someone doesn’t care about there health why should everyone else foot the bill. Having great health coverage is a nice perk to my job I made sure I had. Everywhere I hear that has free healthcare is extremely backed up and as big as American is and the fact we let everyone in it would be a nightmare. If we actually enforced our borders it might no be that bad but the way things are there’s no way I want to pay for other people that don’t give a shit.
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Cater to who? Universal Healthcare benefits every single American. Sooo..why is that a problem?
 
Anyone with a basic understanding of economics and government knows that universal healthcare and an increase in the minimum wage is the best path forward.
 
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