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Discuss the US Presidential Election
We made it. It's election day. Tomorrow we'll know. So for today's election discussion story, I'm throwing it wide open: let's discuss the election itself. Who are your picks and why. And also what about your actual experience voting today? Did Diebold eat your vote or did everything go off without flaw?
The fact that you voted is not secret. Only who you picked is.
No, he called him one for wanting to increase income taxes on people who do pay income taxes and then write checks to people who don't.
Fixed that for you. If you claim that he's giving money to people who don't pay taxes at all, you are spreading a common misconception. Sorry.
You bitch slapped him with an invisible hand!
At the end of the 6th paragraph
This is otherwise referred to as a progressive tax. It's not actually that bad of an idea. Compare to regressive tax.
It is such a good idea that, in fact, John McCain himself advocated for a progressive tax system, back in 2000.
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Wrong! McCain/Palin had to bring up Ayers, and Wright, and Rezco, because the press wouldn't.
Yeah, it's not like the press spent about three months talking almost exclusively about them during the primary or anything. It's not like an entire primary debate was almost an exclusive Ayers/Wright/Rezco "Gotcha-fest" toward Obama or anything. That must have been in some parallel universe, right?
Could you imagine the outcry if McCain had received favorable (extremely favorable) business deals from a convicted slum lord?
You mean like this?
They didn't get any traction because the press ignored the argument that was presented and slammed McCain for "negative campaigning", although nothing that was said was false.
As for accuracy...
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Congress has been a disaster, so you vote to strengthen the majority party in Congress?
I don't think you thought your cunning plan all the way through.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Having lived in both a country with mandatory health insurance (Germany) and the US - there is a difference. If you're in the US, and have good insurance, you generally seem to end up in nicer facilities. Not necessary better care, but hospitals, at least in my area, seem to be in better shape.
Having said that, I would trade back to the German insurance in a heart beat. Every time something is not covered by my US insurance, the out-of-pocket expenses balloon, and there is no way for me to get my insurance to expand their coverage. Add the lifetime benefit cap that prevents me from getting the help when I really need it, and it becomes a lot of eye wash.
The German model is assessed as a tax, with a cap based on what you'd pay when you reach the "opt-out level" (You don't have to use public insurance in Germany if you can afford to buy your own, the cap used to be around 100k yearly income). The rumors of "don't get a bed for 5 years" are just bullocks, it's not any more difficult to get your doctor to see you in Germany than it's in the US. And at least insurance acceptance is universal, so if your employer switches insurance carriers you don't have to switch doctors.
I'd love to see a universal HMO be established here, one that can't drop you like a hot potato if your get sick, or flat out refuse to let you in for "pre-existing conditions" if you change jobs.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
For some reason the U.S. has the most expensive and the least efficient health care system of all developed nations.
Citation required.
Here's one, a quick Google will show you a few hundred others all from the same dozen or so primary sources (US budgets, WHO figures, and so on from a few years). Last year, you spent $1, 975 per-capita on medicare and medicaid. A number of countries provide universal healthcare for less than this.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
For some reason the U.S. has the most expensive and the least efficient health care system of all developed nations.
Citation required.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States
Current estimates put U.S. health care spending at approximately 15.2% of GDP, second only to the tiny Marshall Islands among all United Nations member nations. The health share of GDP is expected to continue its historical upward trend, reaching 19.5 percent of GDP by 2017. In 2007 the U.S. spent $2.26 trillion on health care, or $7,439 per person.
There are numerous cites in the Wikipedia article that you can read.
I would argue that spending over $7000 per person per year in health care, yet having vast numbers of your citizenry uninsured is a powerful example of a health care system that is both expensive and inefficient.