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51% are for and only 21% are against the government manufacturing and selling generic drugs

Don't forget that allowing Americans to buy drugs from Canada and other countries is also hugely popular - over 70% according to this

Uninsured numbers weren't cut in half, and premiums increased at the same rate as prior to Obamacare.

You also conveniently ignore that President Obama had complete control for a good chunk of the first two years of his Presidency (Chuck Schumer was Senate Leader, and Nancy Pelosi was Speaker).

Despite being given $350 billion by President Bush (as then-President Elect Obama requested) to stimulate the economy, the economy was starting to slink back to recession when President Trump was elected, with GDP plunging back down. Thankfully that's been arrested, and interest rates (which were at 0% for most of the Obama Administration) have started to come back up (which will strengthen the economy long-term). All while racking up more debt than pretty much all previous Presidents combined. He even got Congress to amend President Bush's 2009 budget by adding another $900 billion to it - and his supporters love to pin that $900 billion back on President Bush (which is completely disingenuous).

Now, you forgot things like his own self-described "worst mistake" of Libya, failures in Syria, drove world opinion of the USA down (thankfully it's rebounding back up), assassinated US citizens without due process, knowingly illegally selling guns to Mexican drug gangs (one of which was used to kill a US border patrol officer), and many, many more things which could be considered abject, Administration-destroying failures.

Except that poverty affects people of color disproportionately compared to whites. Here's a reference - https://www.kff.org/other/stat... From that reference, in the State of New York, poverty rates are: White - 7%, Black - 19%, Hispanic - 18%, Asian/Pac Islander - 13%, Native American - 24%, More than one race - 14%,

I'm asking for evidence on your claim "he indoctrinated them according to a particular ideological playbook."

Here and here.

Poverty is a tricky issue. Ask the government of literally any red state except for Texas. Their economies are all garbage and their state's packed full of poverty.

Using correlations between state level political choices and poverty to try to make arguments about causation is utterly silly. Try again.

Oh geez, this is embarrassing for you https://www.factcheck.org/2017... [factcheck.org] . We gained a lot of jobs under him. Maybe you are the type to just make things up.

No, you're simply the type not to understand statistics. Let's take the first number: "The economy gained a net 11.6 million jobs." Sounds good, doesn't it? Except that the US population grew by about 20 million people during Obama's presidency, so this is below what was needed simply to keep the labor participation rate the same.

Yup, it's really looking like you're the type to make shit up. Medicare costs us less than $11,000 per user ( https://www.kff.org/medicare/s... [kff.org] , https://www.healthaffairs.org/... [healthaffairs.org] ) and currently covers about 15% of the population ( https://assets.aarp.org/rgcent... [aarp.org] ). Per American that comes out to 1,600 per person so no it does not cost more per American than any socialized system. In fact, it's not even close.

The Medicare budget is $1055 billion and the Medicaid budget is $579 billion. There are 326 million Americans. When you do the math, you get $5000/American.

Well I don't think being "fully privatized" would get us healthcare coverage for our poorest as we're already pretty privatized and can't do that but we can certainly agree Obama Care isn't great.

You're right: I was imprecise. We have a fully privatized system, albeit a corrupt one. What I meant was that our two realistic alternatives are a fully nationalized system (like the UK and France) or a minimally regulated free market system. And a minimally regulated free market system would lower costs so much that even the poorest Americans could afford it.

"I'm not sure what exactly you are asking.

I'm asking for evidence on your claim "he indoctrinated them according to a particular ideological playbook.". Clearly you're an intelligent person who wouldn't just make shit up because your ideology says you should not like something, right?

"Are you asking for evidence of "he's one in a long line of people who use the poor and the desperate to lift themselves into political office with no ability or intention to actually help them"?"

Poverty is a tricky issue. Ask the government of literally any red state except for Texas. Their economies are all garbage and their state's packed full of poverty. Meanwhile encouraging people to participate in our Democratic process is about as American as you can get and doing so with the people least likely to participate even more so.

"We're not debating whose fault it was, we're simply debating whether the statement that Obama created a lot of jobs is a reasonable assessment of his presidency, and it is not."

Oh geez, this is embarrassing for you https://www.factcheck.org/2017... . We gained a lot of jobs under him. Maybe you are the type to just make things up.

"We already have a massive system of socialized medicine, called Medicare/Medicaid. It already spends more per American (again not per patient but per American) than many European systems of socialized medicine. So the problem is not that we lack sufficient funding for socialized medicine, the problem is that the system of socialized medicine we have is horrendously inefficient and overpriced. And Obama did nothing, zero, zip to fix that."

Yup, it's really looking like you're the type to make shit up. Medicare costs us less than $11,000 per user ( https://www.kff.org/medicare/s... , https://www.healthaffairs.org/... ) and currently covers about 15% of the population ( https://assets.aarp.org/rgcent... ). Per American that comes out to 1,600 per person so no it does not cost more per American than any socialized system. In fact, it's not even close.

Even if we ignore your ridiculous claim of per American and look at per user it's actually pretty impressive how low that $11,000 is given that by design medicare exclusively serves our highest cost demographics.

"There clearly is. And there are three ways in which Obama could have addressed that problem: he could have fully privatized our system, he could have imposed a mixed system with strict cost controls, or he could have implemented a nationalized public system like the UK and France. All three of these can be made to work cost-effectively, given the right regulations. Obama did none of those."

Well I don't think being "fully privatized" would get us healthcare coverage for our poorest as we're already pretty privatized and can't do that but we can certainly agree Obama Care isn't great.

According to this it looks like the distribution of medical school graduates by gender appears to be pretty close to 50/50 at 47% female and 53% male for a whopping difference of 6%. Compare this with the distribution of nursing facility residents by gender where you have a 32% difference favoring females.

According to this it looks like the distribution of medical school graduates by gender appears to be pretty close to 50/50 at 47% female and 53% male for a whopping difference of 6%. Compare this with the distribution of nursing facility residents by gender where you have a 32% difference favoring females.

All of those socialist countries which are "doing better than the USA" have smaller, relatively homogeneous populations.

That's evidence that it would work even better in the US. With a higher population, you get economies of scale.

As for homogeneous population, well there's China from TFS. They have an even larger population than the US, have a homogeneous population, but even they are improving while being downright communist.

Additionally, before Obamacare (I have not seen the numbers recently), the five year prognosis for someone diagnosed with a life threatening illness was significantly better than in any of them.

That's evidence Obamacare has little to no relation to life expectancy, seeing as health insurance costs were rising even before Obamacare. If Obamacare making things more expense (not really, the rising costs actually slowed a little under Obamacare https://www.kff.org/report-sec...) led to lower life expectancy, then the rising costs before Obamacare ought to have done the same before.

Can you imagine a world where Obamacare didn't exist at all? Would you be here cry about how Bush Jr's Medicare expansion killing people?

Obamacare dramatically increased costs for consumers.

Not really. Premiums were rising even before Obamacare. The rise during the Obamacare years were actually a little less than the years before it.

https://www.kff.org/report-sec...

This, btw, further reinforces that heath insurance is not the same as health care, and thus Obamacare has little relation to life expectancy. If health insurance cost really had a relation to life expectancy, we should have been hearing about lower life expectancy way before Obamacare entered the picture.

The nurse and doctor thing would be correct according to the number of people working in the field. Very quick search but...gender ration of nurses, and gender rations of physicians.

It isn't biased.

Social Security is busted already. Anyone under the age of 50 who's counting on it needs to wake up - because at best you'll get 75% of what a retiree gets now. The average today is about $1400, meaning you'll get around $1000 per month. If you think living on $4K a month is hard - try 1/4 of that, with higher drug and medical costs to boot (half are covered by their employers today).

But, that still means 81% of people should go to college ( if they have hopes of being a primary provider ).

But Only like 34% of American's are getting bachelors degrees right now (44% for associates+).

Sources: https://www.kff.org/other/stat...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States

https://www.nationalreview.com...

North Carolina features one of the closest Senate races in the country this year, between Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and Republican Thom Tillis. So what guerrilla filmmaker James O'Keefe, the man who has uncovered voter irregularities in states ranging from Colorado to New Hampshire, has learned in North Carolina is disturbing. This month, North Carolina officials found at least 145 illegal aliens, still in the country thanks to the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, registered to vote. Hundreds of other non-citizens may be on the rolls.

A voter-registration card is routinely issued without any identification check, and undocumented workers can use it for many purposes, including obtaining a driver's license and qualifying for a job. And if a non-citizen has a voter-registration card, there are plenty of campaign operatives who will encourage him or her to vote illegally.

O'Keefe had a Brazilian-born immigrant investigator pose as someone who wanted to vote but was not a citizen. Greg Amick, the campaign manager for the Democrat running for sheriff in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), was only too happy to help.

Greg Amick: Here's a couple of things you can do. You do not have to have your driver's license, but do you have any sort of identification?
Project Veritas investigator: But I do have my driver's license.
Amick: Oh, you do. Show 'em that and you're good.
PV: But the only problem, you know, I don't want to vote if I'm not legal. I think that's going to be a problem. I'm not sure.
Amick: It won't be, it shouldn't be an issue at all.
PV: No?
Amick: As long as you are registered to vote, you'll be fine.

But North Carolina officials shouldn't be "fine" with Amick, who appears to be afoul of a state law making it a felony "for any person, knowing that a person is not a citizen of the United States, to instruct or coerce that person to register to vote or to vote."

Amick stepped down

http://www.charlotteobserver.c...

Tillis won by 45608 votes or 1.5% of the total.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I.e. it was a classic case of an election the Democrats could have won by getting non citizens to vote. North Carolina has about 527,000 non citizens, so about 17K voters assuming 3.3%

https://www.kff.org/other/stat...

In a close race, they could swing it. Amick doesn't seem to have been prosecuted.

Medical insurance companies tell the hospitals what they can charge for any given procedure based on the individual plan the customer has purchased. Depending on your plan the the cost of the procedure and the copay will differ. There are only two major health care insurance providers in the US. On the west coast this is Bluecross/Blueshield for instance. Every other provider is a reseller of their products who make money by slightly changing the packages and adding things like vision and dental (also provided by other carriers). To deal with the ever complex series of plans and payment schedules hospitals and insurance companies have had to increase their administrative costs by over 60% in the last 20 years. Most major hospitals now have at least one entirely separate building complex dedicated to nothing but billing. Where as in Japan (where the insurance/medical costs are regulated by government) an MRI will cost 500 USD in the US an MRI will cost anywhere between $600-$3000 and that often doesn't even cover the staff required to operate or analyse the results.

Now while you may not trust government bureaucracy (and hell I'm right with you) it's really hard to imagine how it could get any more bloated and screwed up than it is.

But lets just look at some basic known quantities. Medicaid. Now mind you copays on Medicaid are very low to almost nonexistent so keep that in mind when searching for a health care plan. Use this chart to find your state and then see if you can find a comparable private health care plan at a comparible cost. There is nothing more simple than looking for yourself.

The US government spends more per capita on healthcare than almost any other nation. Yes, the US government, excluding the private sector.

Per capita what? Per population? Per taxpayer? But what about in terms of healthcare received, or in terms of assessing the costs of healthcare?

Think about the difference. Then cite your sources. I'm sure you realize that hand-waved declarations of vague assertions are not especially persuasive when we know how easy it is to lie with statistics.

The problem with the US healthcare system isn't excessive stinginess by the government, it is excessive costs and excessive prices.

Indeed, among other things, it's lack of coverage. And bankruptcies.

Which isn't caused by the government being stingy, it's because the government isn't being thrifty enough by operating its own healthcare facilities. Oh wait, that's because the government is being made to be stingy under the false pretense of not providing its own healthcare facilities!

And the ACA did nothing to address excessive costs and prices (because drug companies, lawyers, and doctors tend to be big donors), instead it simply tried to force Americans to pay those excessive prices in perpetuity, which ensures that this will never get fixed.

Yes, it didn't have a public health insurance provision, let alone a healthcare provision, but we knew this at the time.

Do you not have any actual recall of the situation?

However, you forget the specific subsidies that did reduce the costs for the poor.

That some of us would have preferred hiring more doctors and providing better medical care directly, well, we didn't get a vote on that, now did we?

So if the money allocated to the border wall is unused, it does not go to healthcare

And by "healthcare", you mean the yachts and estates of wealthy doctors, insurance company executives, and pharmaceutical companies.

Now now, we're told "trickledown> " is essential by the GOP. It's their tax-plan now.

Sorry man, you've got less than you think.

But hey, at least you can get your pills.

Look, you know what's happening is due to the GOP, they're the party that's responsible now. And they're going to do their best job...of filling their own pockets. And baking

"The other kind of response people have are to direct their attention to a specific product within their existing desires. E.g. You're thirsty, the advert will likely make you drink Coke instead of say Pepsi."

I'm sure you already know all this, since you're actually in marketing...

Most people have more abstract pre-existing desires than 'I'm thirsty... I need a drink'. Stuff like "I want to be successful. I want to fit in. I want to be happy. I want to be healthy. I want to be secure. I want to be loved. I want to be respected. I want to have fun. I want to find meaning in life. I want to be attractive. I want to be comfortable."

Coke hasn't really advertised that its product will resolve your immediate thirst problem in decades. It's been advertising to a batch of those more abstract wants. Likewise, car ads aren't made for people who need to get somewhere.

In either case only the really weak of mind end up spending more. Most people just end up spending the same but with different vendors.

Here's a few stats that refute that argument, showing advertising directly increases sales accross all vendors. (so its not just shifting dollars from vendor a to vendor b).

https://www.kff.org/health-cos...

Here's a study that shows people who are already fans of a product will buy more of the product due to ads. (ie if Adidas was ALREADY their preferred vendor when it comes time to buy shorts they'll buy adidias so showing them ads isn't going to help right? Nope... they'll buy more than they would have otherwise with ads.)

https://sproutsocial.com/insig...

racism resulting higher poverty rates in makes people prone to crime and violence. Blacks are 2-3x more likely to be poor in most states. Anyway I'll just leave this here.

The ACA included reductions in Medicare payments to plans and providers, increased revenues, and introduced delivery system reforms that aimed to improve efficiency and quality of patient care and reduce costs, including accountable care organizations (ACOs), medical homes, bundled payments, and value-based purchasing initiatives.

At least some improvement is being attempted.

Sometimes I really wonder if you guys really do just leave your heads in the sand intentionally.

That's some nice back-handed name calling there. It really contributes to the discussion. /s.

Thanks lumping me in with whoever you define "you guys" as, and for contributing to the us vs. them paradigm that does nothing but divide people. I'm fine with looking at a statement critically and adjusting it to new or previously unseen facts, but I also have learned that most commenters on the internet are neither willing to do that or expecting of others to.

91% of Americans have health coverage

Plus lots of poor people are eligible for Medicaid even though they haven't signed up. Which means as soon as they have a significant medical expense, they'll be signed up for Medicaid and Medicaid will pay for it. So they are also "covered" by Medicaid.

Sorry you believed liars who told you otherwise. You should stop believing shit that haters and agenda-pushers say.

African Americans have the lowest life expectancy, and vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

Something with as many subgroupings as life expectancy is going to be rife with Simpson's Paradox, so probably best not to read too much causality into these correlations.

Because the vast majority of people get healthcare through their employer or provided by the government and don't have to explicitly purchase it?

http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D

I hear people say that about health care and it's hilariously stupid because the US pays the most per capita for health care and covers way less people than other countries do.

That was the most common argument i saw for Obamacare. Unfortunately, it's wrong. Before Obamacare was passed, the U.S. already spent just about as much government money ("public expenditure") as percent of GDP and per capita as Canada did on its single payer system. Since Obamacare, it's actually gotten worse, with the U.S. government now spending 25% more per capita on health care than Canada.

The reason for the high health care costs in the U.S. isn't because of lack of government provided health care as the socialists want to think it is. In fact, given that medicare ("public expenditure") recipients are only 17% of the population but account for roughly half of the U.S. health care costs, there's a strong argument to be made that government-provided health care is the problem.

Given the slime and huge profits already visible in the insurance industry, I'd really love to see a public option, just to keep them honest. Just let anyone buy into Medicaid at the average cost of delivering services. They're currently exclusively servicing the economically disadvantaged, generally the least healthy portion of the population, so it should be a good deal for the program.

And if government inefficiency is even remotely as bad as many claim, then private insurers will have no problem offering better, cheaper alternatives at a tidy profit.

But they'll also have a really hard sell for "premium" plans with overinflated profit margins.

Just for reference, here's the current average Medicaid expenditures per month, as calculated from this page: http://kff.org/medicaid/state-...

Average: $482
Adult:$271
Children:$205
Aged: $1,104
Disabled:$1,387
And that gets you completely free necessary medical care (and I think dental) and off-brand prescription drugs whenever you need it. No copays. No hassles.

Every state in the country has Medicaid, whether it was expanded or not. If you are unemployed with no income, you qualify for medicaid.

No offense, but you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. States that didn't expand their Medicaid program (about 20 states) absolutely do not cover you if you're unemployed and don't have dependent children.

http://kff.org/health-reform/s...

Well, profiting off the ill and going bankrupt for getting cancer isn't right either.

How many peoples' lives is that worth? In this world, we have routinely have trade offs between choices. A key health care problem universal throughout the developed world has been rising health care costs (see "Exhibit 7a" which is from the OECD, showing decade by decade increases as a fraction of GDP of selected countries).

In the linked article, fifteen developed world countries (including of course, the US's crazy rise in health care costs since 1970) show considerable growth in their health care costs as measured as a fraction of their GDP (and maintained over the course of the recession, see this 2013 snapshot also from the OECD).

And there's no obvious level of activity that will stop at. While the average growth (averaged over countries) from 1970 to 1980 is larger than any other decade, the average growth in the GDP fraction of health care costs is 2.6% from 1970 to 1990, while it is 2.3% from 1990 to 2010. That's not much of a slow down in the rate of growth of the share of GDP devoted to the health care industry.

Perhaps the for profit nature of the US industry is driving the higher relative costs of US health care (ignoring other factors like subsidizing of health care as a tax free employee benefit), but everyone's health care costs are increasing considerably faster than the ability of their economies to pay for those health care costs.

I think why is encapsulated in the reasoning further down this thread. A lot of people need or will need expensive medical care and they'll vote for any policy that gets them the medical care. Costs will continue to rise IMHO because we're just smearing more and more expensive lipstick on a pig. Under the current model of medical care, we will die in a rather short period of time, triggering progressively more and more expensive treatments as we get closer to dying.

Sure, technology can radically change that. But it hasn't yet.

Well, profiting off the ill and going bankrupt for getting cancer isn't right either.

How many peoples' lives is that worth? In this world, we have routinely have trade offs between choices. A key health care problem universal throughout the developed world has been rising health care costs (see "Exhibit 7a" which is from the OECD, showing decade by decade increases as a fraction of GDP of selected countries).

2013 snapshot also from the OECD).

And there's no obvious level of activity that will stop at. While the average growth (averaged over countries) from 1970 to 1980 is larger than any other decade, the average growth in the GDP fraction of health care costs is 2.6% from 1970 to 1990, while it is 2.3% from 1990 to 2010. That's not much of a slow down in the rate of growth of the share of GDP devoted to the health care industry.

Perhaps the for profit nature of the US industry is driving the higher relative costs of US health care (ignoring other factors like subsidizing of health care as a tax free employee benefit), but everyone's health care costs are increasing considerably faster than the ability of their economies to pay for those health care costs.

I think why is encapsulated in the reasoning further down this thread. A lot of people need or will need expensive medical care and they'll vote for any policy that gets them the medical care. Costs will continue to rise IMHO because we're just smearing more and more expensive lipstick on a pig. Under the current model of medical care, we will die in a rather short period of time, triggering progressively more and more expensive treatments as we get closer to dying.

Sure, technology can radically change that. But it hasn't yet.

I am a fan of capping medical care at some reasonable level once you reach a certain age. We should as a society be willing to pay a million or two to save a child, who has their whole life ahead of them, but once you hit the median life expectancy, you should accept the fact that you are going to die soon. Everyone dies, be thankful that you have now lived longer than half (the day after you pass the median life expectancy). In the US we have socialized medicine for those over 65 (medicare) so the US tax payer ends up paying 20% of all health care spending on 55 million retirees (.37% spent per million people), along with another 16% for medicaid to care for the 65 million poor (0.25% spent per million people). Meanwhile, just 33% is spent on/by private insurance that covers 58% (~186 million; 0.17% spent per million people). So to recap, the working insured are footing 100% of the bill and only receiving 33% of the benefits. Theoretically they will eventually use Medicare as well, if they live long enough.

The problem is that the retired block all votes, so it is the political third rail to talk about capping medical benefits past a certain age. The working insured are the cheapest block to provide health care for. It is also widely known that Medicaid is heavily used by emigrants from other countries either legally or often illegally. Anyone venture a guess as to how often Canada or Mexico puts up with that from a US citizen?

http://kff.org/other/state-ind...

https://www.cms.gov/research-s...

Lucky you. My plan (through United Healthcare), covering the family, is very close to $5k/year, along with co-pays and deductibles that have jumped every year. I think the Cadillac plans are being eliminated due to the changes going into affect over the next couple years. Here's an article on that.

http://kff.org/health-costs/is...

Single payer is the sane answer for the average person.

What is an "average person"? In 2014, 49% of Americans were covered by employer-provided health insurance. I understand that mileage varies, but I have had employer-provided insurance from four different employers over a period of almost 40 years, and the cost has been reasonable and the coverage excellent. I would really rather not have to give that up.

If you look at the components of the increase, it does not look much like an obesity epidemic. There are increases in suicide, Alzheimer's, gun deaths (probably because of suicides), and opioid overdoses. Most of the increase was among whites, especially white women, but whites have a slightly lower obesity rate than most other racial categories in the US.

It is easy, but probably wrong, to blame this on people's bad eating habits.

You're very wrong. Look at the graph here, and you'll see current debt as % GDP is below the average for the past 50 years. https://www.cbo.gov/publicatio... The increase in 2009 was due to the banking and auto industry bailouts both critical to the economic recovery since (and quickly brought down). http://www.nytimes.com/interac... The forecast increase after 2016 is more due to demographics than policy. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01... Regarding hospitals, here is a case from Ascension. http://kff.org/health-reform/i... Specifically "Compared to hospitals in states that did not expand Medicaid, Ascension Health hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid experienced larger increases in Medicaid discharge volumes and decreases in uninsured/self-pay volume from 2013 to 2014". " And "Despite somewhat smaller increases in patient revenue, hospitals in expansion states had larger relative increases in operating margins from 2013 to 2014 compared to hospitals in non-expansion states. Operating margins among hospitals in Medicaid expansion states increased from 2.1 percent in 2013 to 3.4 percent in 2014. Operating margins also increased among hospitals in non-expansion states, but the relative increase was smaller compared to hospitals in expansion states. The increase in operating margins in expansion states was due largely to almost zero growth in the costs of providing health care." To break that down for you: uninsured and self pay have much higher default risk so their reduction improves profitability (revenue forecasts), operating margin is how business make money, and it is increasing faster in states with full ACA rules than others, and quality (successful discharge) is key to avoiding unplanned costs from re-admissions. Notice that the CBO claims non-partisanship, while the other stories are from NY Times Business and Financial news, not the editorial pages. Kaiser Family Foundation covers health industry news, and is considered unbiased by Forbes. For some perspective on why you think they way you do, despite the evidence, see http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/...

No they aren't.

Australia spends less on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than the US and yet has higher life expectancy. Look at the life expectancy from age 25 in the US. It is positively associated with income and education because access to quality healthcare in the US is largely limited to those who can afford it.

The US healthcare system is dysfunctional and inefficient. Australia achieves better outcomes at half the price. For a supposedly capitalist nation, the US is sadly unsophisticated with its healthcare dollars. Where is the business sense in ignoring the problem and continuing with an inefficient model? The US needs to make the hard business decision to change to a model more like the ones developed by Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK.

Democrats can't be the night on the white horse if they don't convince you that there is some dire problem for them to solve for you.

It's silly to politicize something like healthcare because it has has easily measurable practical outcomes. The US is falling short and its healthcare model is broken. The smart move is to switch to a more workable model.

In theory, every child should be getting meals at home thanks to government SNAP benefits to their parents or guardians. In practice, schools give many kids a free breakfast and lunch every school day, and even give them food bags to take home for the weekend, because Mom or Dad can't be bothered to buy food for the kids with the SNAP money. Where does the money go? No one knows or even attempts to find out. They just give the kids free food and cross their fingers.

Just a reminder, the average food stamp benefit in 2014 was $125.35 per person per month [source]. Back in grad school, a decade ago, I found a way to feed myself on $35 a week. That involved cutting out most fresh fruits and vegetables. I also limited meat to the cheapest available and only used it in 3-4 dinners a week. Now assuming that inflation on food prices has tracked the average. This plan would cost a little over $42 these days. It's a little unreasonable to expect people to eat like this, especially given how unhealthy that diet was.

Of all the people that I've met that used food stamps, none of them wanted to be there and most were ashamed of it. They want to have a job that can pay them enough to feed their family. It's just that circumstances have made that difficult to impossible (mental disability, lack of jobs in the area, recovering from an injury). Thankfully for most of them, circumstances changed and they were able to get a better paying job (mostly through hard work but occasionally luck).

Now I'm not saying there aren't some lazy bums who just want a free handout to go blow on whatever makes them feel good. But they're not the majority.

Furthermore, affordably subsidized individual health care plans are available to all Americans via a high-tech government-run web site.

Yes, those plans are so affordable their costs are skyrocketing by double digits in many cases.

So while I have to be leeched off by the smokers, drug users, alcoholics and obese, who never have to change their ways because someone else gets to pick up the tab, the costs keep rising and the insurance companies keep getting richer.

Which is not unexpected. When you have a captive audience you can charge almost what you want because people are forced to hand over their money to a private company. Quite an odd situation to be in considering all the anti-government/big government/thieving business rantings on this site. One wouldn't expect people to be so happy to give corporate CEOs that much more money.

that their treatments are effective, thus reducing health costs."

Never has something which is shown to be effective reduced costs. It's like being a safe driver yet your car insurance goes up every year.

The only ones who will see the savings are the companies themselves. It will not "trickle down" to us peons.

Remember how forcing people to hand over their money to private companies via Obamneycare was supposed to make health insurance less expensive? How's that working out?

Printing in offices is still common.

You might be surprised to find just how few working people actually work in offices:

http://kff.org/other/state-ind...

If you pick a black person and then pick a random victim, it's more likely the victim will be white than black, because there are more white people than black people.

Then why are there more murders committed by black people (against all sorts of victims) then would be accounted for by their percentage of the population? What is your point, exactly? Yes, there are more "white" people than "black" people in the general population. That's not what's being discussed. What's being discussed is the rate of crime coming out of specific demographics.

Income inequality if the largest driver of murders. Homicide has a r=0.8 correlation with income inequality.. 10% of whites are in poverty in the USA, but 27% of blacks are in poverty. Poverty (income inequality), crime, and race are all related in the USA. That's not good, but it does open options because there are a lot more levers available to pull. Reduce minority poverty, and minority crime will probably drop too. There are lots of ways to do that, but it takes a huge effort to do so.

poverty and corruption track with homicides worldwide. not skin color you racist moron

it's kind of ironic, but it requires intellectual inferiority to believe in a theory of superiority via skin color

That must be why the 24% of the 54 million Hispanics who live below the poverty line in the US commit over half the violent crime.

No, wait.

That would be the 27% of the 40 million or so blacks who live below the poverty line in the US who commit over half the violent crimes.

So, let's see...

There are more Hispanics living below the poverty line in the US (12 million) than there are blacks (10 million). Hell, there are almost twice as many WHITES living in poverty in the US (19 million) than there are blacks (10 million).

Yet blacks commit over half of all violent crime. But only make up 20% or so of those living in poverty...

Think that might be because when a 300-lb HISPANIC thug beats up a convenience store clerk while committing a robbery and then gets his ass shot assaulting a police officer, the Hispanics don't go and burn down their own damn neighborhood?

Yeah, it must be Whitey that made Michael Brown into a thug.

Dumbasses like you who cry "RAAAACIST!!!" at everything are going to have a problem when the media stops portraying BLACK 300-lb thugs who rob stores, beating up people in the process, and then get shot assaulting police as "innocent teens".

The problem is that the program has increased by a third in membership the span of six years (almost 48 million in 2009 to 65 million last year) while the economic base that pays for Medicaid still grows slower than the rate of growth in the program (and of health care cost as a whole).

That 1/3 increase in enrollment is not a problem so much as it's how the law was designed. More support for lower income people by expanding Medicaid and Medicaid receipts to support them. That initial growth is accounted for in the law's budgeting. As for the rate of growth, I'm wondering what data you have on that. In aggregate, the growth rate in per-capita healcare spending has declined over the past few years, averaging about 1.3% in real terms per year. Not great, but also not something that looks to be outstripping our ability to pay for it. That includes Medicare spending, so it's possible that the Medicaid data is drastically different and being averaged out, but I don't have a clean dataset in easy reach. Based on private market trends, I'd be surprised if Medicaid turned out to be growing at a uniquely high per-capita rate.

Only if you count Medicaid as part of that.

This one gets me every time. Of course you count Medicaid as part of that! A huge part of the law was getting more lower income people healthcare by providing it through Medicaid.

If they had implemented a 100% coverage single payer system, I bet there would be people who say that it didn't expand access to healthcare "unless you count that government plan." It's one thing if we accidentally made everybody too poor to afford anything but public assistance, but the Medicaid expansion was completely intentional. It was the answer to the question, "How you going to get health insurance to lower income people?"

While I don't have a lot of experience with the program, it does appear to be going downhill to me, especially with below market rates for most medical care.

I don't really know how to respond to feelings of vague unease with the quality of the program. Are you really asserting, as you imply below, that Medicaid is no better than just showing up at an emergency room? I don't think there's a lot of data to support that. The mainstream consensus is quite the opposite.

What amazes me is that the program is working more or less as designed, costs are running lower than expected, the economy has failed to collapse as predicted, and people are still saying everything was perfectly fine when stumbling into an emergency room to be stabilized and sent home was "healthcare." The idea that there have been no objectively measurable improvements to the situation baffles me.

Well, i cant speak for statistics in Europe, but I can say without a doubt that violent crime in america is much more heavily influenced by race than by poverty. As you can see here: http://kff.org/other/state-ind... for example, 27% of people living below the poverty line are black, compared to 10% being white. This means that blacks are 270% more likely to live in poverty than whites. Following so far?

Now, according to DOJ statistics: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cj... blacks are responsible for more about 52% of all murders in the united states, with whites (including hispanics) accounting for 45%.

Now as i am sure you are aware, blacks are a minority in America, accounting for only 12% of the population, and yet they are responsible for over half of the murders. What this means, is that a black person is nearly 8 times more likely to commit murder than any other person of any other race in America.

Now, if you take the rate of murderers that are black and subtract from it the rate of blacks living in poverty, (800%-270%=530%) even if you supposed (wrongly) that every single black living in poverty is a murderer, then you are still left with the remaining blacks who dont live in poverty committing over 500% more murders than every other race in America combined.

Poverty is not the leading factor in violent crime, race is. The poverty myth is nothing short of delusional or perhaps deceitful propaganda.

Your question is essentially "How would we finance medical research if drug patents stopped being effective?"

The Medicare/Medicaid drug reimbursement is more than the yearly total loaded research costs for all drugs, when using the highest available academic estimate as of mid last year (estimates vary wildly, from $100M to $1.8B in for this estimate, by researchers from Lily, a pharmaceutical company). There is one non-peer-reviewed estimate that is even higher ($2.6B), but that is only for NMEs (new molecular entities),(completely new drugs), and multiplying that by all drugs approved each year isn't reasonable, as most approved drugs aren't NMEs. There's about 22 NMEs approved per year. At $2.6 billion each, that's $57.2 billion.

The 2015 federal cost of medicare drug reimbursement is $54.12B - for outpatient subsidies only. Medicaid had a cost of $63.34B (see page 184); this is presumably also excluding inpatients, as hospital costs are listed separately. These two programs sum to $117.46B, or a bit over *twice* the cost of the NMEs. Non-NME costs are much, much lower (tens of millions), and there aren't lots of them, so they don't really add up to much either.

If you're in the US, you can no longer can be denied medical insurance based on pre-existing conditions nor can your premiums be different because of those conditions - unless, of course, the Republicans succeed in abolishing the ACA.

That is simply not true. It is a State matter, and it does differ among the 13 States that created ACA exchanges. I know of at least one state that adopted the ACA except the pre-existing condition inclusion.

You are flatly incorrect. The ACA is a Federal Law and the only thing the states can opt-opt of is the Medicaid expansion - as per the Supreme Court ruling.

Perhaps you're thinking of the Pre Existing Condition Insurance Plan which was a *temporary* measure (that states could choose to participate in) that expired in 2014:

The temporary program covers a broad range of health benefits and is designed as a bridge for people with pre-existing conditions who cannot obtain health insurance coverage in today’s private insurance market.

In 2014, all Americans – regardless of their health status – will have access to affordable coverage either through their employer or through Health Insurance Marketplaces, and insurers will be prohibited from charging more or denying coverage to anyone based on the state of their health.

I have HIV, more funding goes into 1 years worth of funding for my university sports team than has gone into HIV cure R&D funding over the past 5 years COMBINED.

Big pharma don't want to make you better, they want your money.

Why cure something when you can keep it under "control" and earn 100x more?
Why help more people more often and improve quality of life, when you can help less people and earn more?

You are wrong.
Research averages 2.7 billion dollars a year of the $25 - $30 billion yearly total funding for AIDS in the USA.
Over the last five years? R&D = $13.5 billion; total spending over $130 billion.
Here's the actual numbers:
http://kff.org/global-health-p...

Or are you comparing the sports funding at your University to the HIV research funding at your University?
That would be a pointless comparison. We already know that University of Phoenix doesn't have much of a research program in anything.

No - the Nazis were in favor of better pensions than that given to Illinois' public employees. Illinois is actually demonizing pensions as a way to excuse increased spending.

Illinois has the largest unfunded pension in the US, so demonizing their ridiculously high pensions is exactly what should be happening. They come in #32 out of 50 in state spending per capita, so out of control spending is not the reason the pensions are out of whack. Illinois comes it as #14/50 in total state and local tax revenue per capita as well, so the problem isn't that they aren't taxing enough either.

The pensions are being demonized because they are the problem.

Here ya go, AC.

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pu...
http://kff.org/other/state-ind...
http://scholarship.law.cornell...
http://www.americanbar.org/con...
https://docs.google.com/spread...
http://www.indiana.edu/~emsoc/...

I can only assume that you'll return the favor. :D

The excuse that Government "is not a corporation and cannot be run like one" is nonsense. It's a great ivory tower view....

Perhaps you'd care to back up that opinion with a fact or two explaining why two radically different types of organizations should be run in exactly the same manner? Note that I did not state that government cannot be efficient, but that efficiency is not the top mission of a government agency.

I'll look up the Medicare claim for you when I have a chance, the fraud level in Medicare is enormous - as it is with most programs run the the Feds.

I hear that bank robbers go after banks because that's where all the money is...

The ACA was a giant payoff to the insurance companies

Yes it was. It was also all that was politically achievable in one piece of legislation. Don't believe me? Ask Hillary Clinton what happened to her husband's attempt to take on both the insurance industry AND the healthcare industry all at the same time. Realpolitik is a bitch. I would much prefer we went with some form of single-payer as every other first-world nation on the planet has done (incidentally, at nearly 18% of GDP, the US spends twice as much on healthcare as other nations and gets half the results).

with quid pro quo to the DNC that has blown up in their faces.

So this "pro quo" you speak of is going to be delivered exactly when? I didn't notice Aetna or Cigna littering the DNC with contributions this last election cycle...

Any other view is naive my friend...

How about the view that the ACA saved my best friend's life? That it made it possible for her to purchase insurance which detected her cancer and is providing for treatment she never would've gotten otherwise?

How about the view that the number of uninsured Americans has dropped significantly for the first time since Nixon was President?

How about the view that insurance premium increases have been checked for the first time in my adult life, where they previously had been growing annually at more than double -- sometimes triple -- inflation? You might recall the litany of stories in 2013 of how we would see crazy increases in premium costs? None of those crazy increases actually happened.

How about the view that budget impact was better than the CBO forecast?

Which of these views is "naïve"? All in all, that's not too shabby for what was admittedly a giant insurance company blowjob. I can't wait to see how much better it gets when we get around to reforming the other half. Maybe we'll exorcise the Profit Demon from our healthcare system once and for all and remove the perverse incentives it creates that keep people sick rather than cure them.

For example, a lot of well paying jobs are found through networking.

Not sure where you live but here on planet earth most women are way better at networking than men are.
You completely lost any and all credibility when you tried to imply that men are better at networking.
On a somewhat related note, I've noticed more and more women moving into sales as it pays
better than average and they get to use many of the skills they are good at like networking.
Women are also becoming doctors more and more frequently, as again, this is a good paying job that
utilizes alot of their natural skills. Women exceed men in college degrees now and have almost
caught up as medical doctors: http://kff.org/other/state-ind...
Programming is not one of those professions so tech companies are fighting an uphill battle.
It would be far better to spend that time/effort encouraging women to go into the medical field
and other high paying jobs where their natural skills like nurturing (and networking) can be advantageous.

According to your own chart there were 6.6million whites arrested and 2.7million blacks arrested.
In this country there are 197 million whites, 65 million blacks.
Therefor white crime rate is 3.33% and the black crime rate is 4.15% (this is of course not counting repeat offenses, your chart doesn't give me a way to calculate that)
That's using regular math from the FBI's stats. So African American's have a 0.8% increased risk of crime. So maybe it makes sense that they are at least slightly more prone to violence...

until you factor in poverty rates:
http://kff.org/other/state-ind...
Blacks have triple the poverty rate of whites.

And concentrated crime in a community has a direct and measurable impact on violent crime:
http://blogs.jccc.edu/campusle...

Stereotype - a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

Now stop surfing white supremacist websites that mascaraed as news articles.

In the cases of Violent Crimes, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia rank 30th, 18th, and 19th, respectively according to census.gov.
http://www.census.gov/statab/r...
These aren't exactly low figures.

Let's look at some other poorer states.

South Carolina is 1st.
Tennessee is 2nd.
Nevada is 3rd.
Florida is 4th.

Looking at the following report on income disparity between states, I am seeing some similar names at the top of that list:
http://www.epi.org/publication...
Florida
Nevada

Interestingly enough, Mississippi actually proves my point in that it's one of the states with the least amount of income inequality and actually further down on that list.

Thank you for that Mr. Anonymous Coward.

Oh, and to further ad to the flames of failure.
Mississippi has the highest percentage of African Americans by state, and ranks 30th in the amount of violent crime there. Even further reinforcing that race is actually not an issue:
http://kff.org/other/state-ind...

I restate my previous suggestion that quenda is a racist idiot.

There are only 3,572 known comets, but there are many millions of asteroids.

Thus you are orders of magnitude more likely to be killed by an asteroid than a comet.

Does this mean you should go about cowering and worrying and fulminating about the possibility of your own "death by asteroid"?

Guns... same thing. If you're at high risk for a firearms injury, you probably not only know that, but you probably know why, and you probably know what you could do to reduce that risk. While "probably" is the modifier at hand, I'll tell you what's probably going to actually kill you:

Deaths per 100,000 by disease/accident (total is about 600 a year right now)

Note no comets, no asteroids, and no ebola.

Deaths per 100,000 by firearms (total averages out to well under 20. Location where the odds are worst? Alaska. Yes, Alaska. :)

So... 600 out of 100,000 die by disease or accident (and more than 50% of them from heart disease or cancer), and I bet it wouldn't take me more than a few seconds to find some smoker and/or over-eater in a crowd who spends a goodly amount of their time online pearl-clutching about firearms, when that's ~3.2% likely as compared to the other 96.8%, and where that 98.6% is LARGELY UP TO YOU, as is a GOOD BIT of your odds of dying by firearm.

Ah, but you just can't fix stupidity. Such is life. :)