You are aware that nobody actually paid that 91% marginal tax rate, right? I mean that literally. Not. One. Person. Nobody paid that marginal tax rate - there were plenty of loopholes and far less manpower to find those exploiting them.
Yes, because people WILL NOT PAY such a rate...
People complain that Warren Buffet pays half the effective tax rate as his minions... that is BECAUSE he is taxed at such a high marginal rate...
So if my yearly income was $10 million but I decided to stop working after the first million I'd be foregoing $810,000 in income after taxes. I guess if you're that rich already it's not that big a deal. But as I said I don't support a 91% tax rate but if the rate was 50% you'd be foregoing $4,500,000 in income in my example. Do you really think that's such a disincentive that people would quite working?
Quit working?
No. Quit working in such a way as to pay that tax rate? Yes.
Many people in the 50s simply worked overseas to avoid it.
No one making $10 million is going pay $4.5 million if they have any brains, and most do.
A 50% tax rate won't get paid any more than the current 35% corporate tax rate gets paid.
Well if after $1,000,000 you'd be handing most of it over to Uncle Sam that probably encouraged business owners to instead reinvest into the company more than taking profits for themselves while looking for more ways to cut costs and shaft the employees.
Yea, because it is only "greedy" business owners that could make that kind of money.
Lord, our education system has failed, I read the replies and it just... is sad...
He neglected to mention that 91% tax rate didn't kick in until the 2016 equivalent of $20 million dollars and only applied to income _over_ that amount.
You are mistaken, he didn't "neglect" to mention it, it is obvious and anyone who knows anything knows that.
What YOU ARE MISSING is that once you hit that rate, you might as well stay home and watch TV, you're done.
No one is going to pay such a rate if they can avoid it, it is stupid.
And besides, let 'em take a 9 month vacation.
Yea, good thing you don't make policy. Perhaps you can move to France where they tried it recently. It just doesn't work the way you think it does.
If you can afford to live well enough to not give a fuck after you only get 9% of your income I have a hard fucking time feeling sorry for you or your tax rate.
You don't have to care, but you're deluding yourself if you think people will work, earn money, and pay taxes at that rate.
The whole point of passing higher taxes is to raise money, is it not? Well it doesn't raise money if no one is paying the rate, now is it?
France recently tried this, raising the top rate to 75%. Oh sure, that'll bring in a lot of taxes, right?
When it's a Republican complaining about a 38% marginal tax rate.
Don't feel bad, I won't pay 38% either... You get beyond 1/3 and I'd do whatever it takes to avoid paying it. Frankly below that is worth a lot of effort to avoid.
If you make $100,000, having $38K of it taken away is highway robbery.
A flat 20% tax rate and the removal of all deductions would go a long way towards balancing the system.
What you fail to take into account with the 91% tax rate is that it was a marginal rate. It only applied to income over a certain amount. I'll use $1,000,000 for the sake of argument. So if the 91% rate applies to income over $1 M all of your income up to that point is taxed at the lower rate that people not making that much pay.
I don't fail to take anything into account... What YOU fail to understand is that once you hit that $1,000,000 number, you might as well sit home and watch Oprah...
Sure, the tax rate "isn't so bad" on the first $1,000,000, but on the second $1,000,000 you only get to keep $91,000.
That is stupid, you're done for the year, there is no point to working to make another million when you keep less than 10% of it.
Now I'm not advocating for a 91% tax rate but I don't think something like a 50% tax rate on income over $10 million is crazy to contemplate.
You can do that all you like, but it would be ineffective. 50% is high enough that people will find ways to avoid it, or just not work. I'm not going to pay it, most other people aren't either.
About 1/3 is as high as you can go, before I personally will do whatever it takes to avoid it. Your statements about "but you have enough, you can afford it" largely will fall on deaf ears.
Regarding the 91% tax rate it applied from around the end of WW II until Kennedy changed it to around 75% in the early 1960s. Yet that period was one of the most productive in terms of economic growth and infrastructure building to support that growth in the history of the USA.
Correlation is not causation. The two had nothing to do with each other.
It doesn't have to hit 100% for the effect to be largely the same.
Ronald Reagan once said in support of lower top tax rates that the old 91% rates from the 50s were pointless and counterproductive, because people would work for 3 months, then when they hit that rate, just stop working for the rest of the year (or work overseas or for cash) because no one was going to labor only to keep just 9% of their income.
Totally! If we just elect Bernie then problems like these will be a thing of the past.
Instead of worrying about filing taxes 100% of income goes right to the Feds and every year you can apply to the Federal Government for a welfare package that will be given out based on politically correct preferences regarding race (no whities), gender (no Benjamins for Benjamin unless Benjamin was born Bethany), language & lack of citizenship (Habla Ingles? No Dinero!), and of course, whether or not you used a substantial portion of last year's welfare check to pay off Union "community organizers" Vido & Guido who run Bernie's local chapter of the Revolutionary Guard.
All you need to do is fill out a trivially simple 200 page form in triplicate, get it notarized by an official government agent, send it via certified mail and wait 18 - 24 months. Take that corporations!
^ You got modded down to troll, but what is sad is that such things can happen.
They exist, right now, on Earth. Not in the US of course, but the USA is full of human beings. Those other nations are full of human beings.
There is nothing overly special about the humans here vs the humans there.
Too many people assume "different" means "better". No, different means "different". It COULD be better... but it doesn't have to be...
"The beatings will continue until moral improves!"
As a society, we have made the choice not to let people die in the streets because they haven't made adequate provisions for health insurance. It would be immoral dehumanizing, and unhygienic.
And in fairness, I tend to agree with that decision.
AC has made the choice to live in that particular society.
Have they? We no longer really live in a world that gives people that choice. The world is full, there is nowhere *new* to go that doesn't have governments and "society".
I didn't pick to be born here, or live here. I don't have unlimited freedom to move to any nation on Earth, they don't have to accept me. And even if they did, they have their own rules that I might or might not agree with.
Unless you're suggesting that the AC has the right to kill themselves if they don't like "our rules"? If not, then what are you suggesting? Because honestly, I can't see that they got much of a say in any of it.
Also, there are times when we don't have free will, due to incapacitation of some sort or another, and those are the cases where we are most likely to need expensive medical treatment. They aren't predictable, either. If AC gets into a bad accident, we'll say not AC's fault, and is unconscious and seriously injured in other ways, AC is going to be hauled to the emergency room and receive some very expensive medical attention before AC can choose to refuse it.
Yes, I get that. Would you suggest some type of registration system that allows him to op-out in advance? Or perhaps we treat him anyway and just eat the cost, since that was our choice to not refuse treatment on the basis of money?
May I further suggest that if you wish to take the moral stand that we should not refuse treatment on the basis of money, that we also should not allow for-profit health insurance or for-profit doctors/hospitals? That it should be more like the fire department or police, we all pay for it, but we all get it free of charge to the person?
After all, the police and fire departments do not send a bill for their services. Neither is driven by profit. They exist to serve all of us.
Since AC is quite likely to need expensive health care at some point
"Need" or "want?
Those are two different things... Or are you suggesting that the AC has lost all free will and can't turn healthcare down?
AC is likely to incur considerable health care expenses where AC wants to or not.
That is society's problem, not the AC's. If society doesn't want to incur those costs, then we can switch to not treating all comers, regardless of ability to pay. That is a different choice, one we aren't likely to make.
But we could.
Regardless, you aren't going to convince the AC of anything with your moral argument of what he/she should or should not do, they don't really care.
AMD has less than $1 billion in cash left, bleeding a bit more each year, with $600 million in cash needed Jan 1, 2018 or they default on the 2020 bank debt.
AMD has a market cap of $1.6 billion. Intel is nearly $150 billion. Intel has over $25 billion in cash on hand.
Intel could buy AMD with cash more than 10 times over.
This is not a battle of equals, sad to say. AMD has done a bunch of tricks in the past few years to survive, but they are running out of them.
Example: AMD recently sold its headquarters building and then leased it back, to raise cash.
You can only do that stuff so many times before you run out of things to sell.
We recently refinanced our home, purchased 2006 at 6.25%, for 15 years at 3.5%.
I could have done 30 years at 3.25%, but honestly the 15 years does save a ton of interest over 30 years and we consider it forced savings for retirement.
I now own more than 50% of my home, and could probably pay it off too, but what a waste of money? I make far more than that on investments.
AMD doesn't have 5 years left, there is a reason their stock is where it is. The investors know the company is on borrowed time.
It essentially has no value, beyond its patents and deal with Intel, the rest of the enterprise is worthless, according to Wall Street. (who isn't always right, but can be right from time to time)
AMD is burning cash, racking up debt, and has a lot due in the next three years. They won't have any income to pay it off and likely can't finance it anymore.
This is sad, since we need them to do well, but our needing that doesn't make them profitable.:(
I don't disagree with you. I think Obamacare is the worst possible result, the casting in stone of a flawed system that now has no need to reform itself because it has just been enshrined as a permanent monopoly.
For all of its flaws, the pre-Obamacare system was at least vulnerable to its own worst impulses. Without ACA I think it would have been forced to adapt its cost structure, but now it doesn't have to. We just make people buy insurance they increasingly can't afford and which doesn't really provide them with an guarantees of protection from catastrophic health costs.
You put into words exactly how I feel about it.
I think, though, that we need to dig even deeper than that and address some of the labor side costs as well. Part of the reasons doctors expect or want to earn high incomes is that it cost them so much to become doctors. I would think we could make medical school free but tack on a requirement that the first five years after your internship you have to work as a salaried provider. Remove the argument that you have $150k in loans and costs therefore you need to make bank in order to pay them off.
Amen... My wife in her 40s still owes more than $50K in student loan debt. If it weren't financed at such a cheap interested rate, I'd have long since paid it off, since we have the money, but at the 2 something percent it is financed at, why bother?
What's the fundamental difference between those two? (Not that I'm against a single-payer health system)
The difference is the demand that I sign up with a private company and contract for their services, even if I don't like them.
Keep in mind that the United States spends more money per person on health care, while providing a whole lot less care, than most other 1st world nations.
There is a stupid amount of overhead in the insurance companies and for-profit hospitals.
The very idea of a for-profit hospital is about as stupid as a for-profit police department. I don't mind some socialist services (and I say that as a right-winger). It makes for a nicer civilization.
I like good police, good fire protection, good roads, good schools, and a nice zoned city to live in. All of that requires government in some form. It makes sense if that everyone (or ALMOST everyone) needs health care, then perhaps we should all collectively provide it to ourselves. But it shouldn't be via for-profit private insurance companies marking up the services of private for-profit hospitals.
It would be much cheaper to simply hire doctors directly and pay them a salary, than to use the system we have now.
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Side note: Just because I'm against the ACA doesn't mean I think our old system was good, it sucked too. Health insurance should not be connected to your work, many people end up taking jobs for the health insurance. That's nuts. Whoever designed that system needs a kick in the teeth (and yea, I know it started back in WWII as a way to compete for employees when wages were frozen).
We shall see... even if AMD gets chips out this year on the 14nm GF scale, that doesn't mean they'll solve their issues. Intel has been on 14nm for how long now? 10nm is coming in a year or so?
I honestly wish AMD the best of luck, we need them to keep Intel honest, I have no desire to pay monopoly prices... but the future isn't pretty for AMD.
When Sally comes in with her special snowflake who fell down and scratched her hand, demanding that you apply an antibacterial ointment and a bandaid, 20 times each month, your wife will see her time being wasted. People with serious problems will be kept waiting while the lonely and hypochondriacs get attention. Some of those people with serious problems won't get the prompt service they need, and their conditions will worsen and some will die.
Doctors clearly need the ability to make judgement calls, such as telling Sally that she is overdoing it.
Most doctors became doctors, not for the money, but because they actually want to help people. Oh sure, there are those in it for the money, but frankly I can tell you that many doctors would be happy with a flat salary and a commitment to helping all comers, with the condition that they can place them in order of medical need.
There are already numerous examples of people who call for an ambulance because they don't want to pay for a taxi ride.
And such people should be denied that ride, if in the judgement of the medical personal, it is not needed.
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If you call the fire department over every little thing, they'll either start billing you, or stop coming. Same with the police department.
The medical community needs the ability to do the same thing. If you abuse the system, you can get cut off.
You are correct... When I said "private health insurance", I was intending to refer to the huge mega insurance companies.
But you're right, what the Amish are doing is also private health insurance, but I have no issue with what they are doing.
I WOULD have an issue if the government wanted to try and mandate that I join the Amish, or any other private group, which is what they are doing with the ACA.
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As a side note, I don't really have a problem with the idea of government health care. There are issues and concerns with it, to be sure, but it is different than the government telling me I must join a private company/group/association.
We have government roads, government schools, etc. and while they aren't perfect, they are better than nothing. In some ways, the ACA *IS* worse than nothing.
Actually, he was arguing that since the AC would need healthcare sooner or later, they had an obligation to pay for it now.
Or to put it another way, sjbe was arguing that since the AC might cost society *something, someday* the AC had an obligation to pay towards everyone's health care today.
You are correct, I left an important word off my post...
"not everyone uses healthcare INSURANCE".:)
It changes the meaning a lot, and that was my error.
Where I have a problem is in the attempt to get me to buy a private medical policy from a private company with all that comes along with it.
During the time I had insurance, I attempted to use it a few times, only to find out that it is a PITA to use. It isn't accepted very many places, it doesn't actually cover all that much, and it still costs a ton of money.
My biggest problem with your "freedom" argument is that it could be extended to pretty much anything. I could decide I will never fly, so why I should have to pay for the FAA or airports? Extend that to anything people decide they want to opt out of.
The difference is that the FAA is a public agency funded by tax dollars.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield is not.
Make it single payer national health care not run by private companies and you'd have a point.
If you really want to make health care actually cost less, you have to remove two things from it. Insurance companies and paperwork.
I've commented on this before, my wife is a doctor. She earns a comfortable six figure income, but she also spends more than $50K a year in admin overhead. That would largely go away under a better system.
She has told me that it would actually make sense to take a 50% pay cut, if the government would simply hire her on a salary and tell her to treat all comers, free of charge. She would take home about the same amount of money, at a far lower cost to society.
The grand flaw in your argument is that you are taking a moral stand that you expect others to just accept.
The person you replied to is not asking for society to spend money on him, so he isn't much interested in the bill for any of it.
You're suggesting that since you value such things, he should have to pay for it, wanted or not.
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Last year I have health insurance, my out of pocket cost was under $100. The cost to society was far higher, but I can't control that, only what I spend myself.
This year, my cost rose to over $350 a month. I no longer see value at that price. So I dropped insurance.
I completely understand your point, and the purpose of the ACA requiring me to buy insurance, it is to pay for those people who do get sick. But just like the cost to society, that is beyond my control.
$350 a month for a product I don't use is a bad deal for me. It begins and ends there.
Now I know what you'll say, "sooner or later I'll need it". Yes, that might be true, but I'll take my chances at age 40 that it won't be this year.
That $4k+ per year will go a. Ice way towards funding my retirement, 10 years of that, plus interest, will be a nice chunk of money when I'm 65.
I replied and said "not everyone believes in private health insurance", and indeed the Amish ar exempt from that part of the ACA, much as they are exempt from social security.
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You are aware that nobody actually paid that 91% marginal tax rate, right? I mean that literally. Not. One. Person. Nobody paid that marginal tax rate - there were plenty of loopholes and far less manpower to find those exploiting them.
Yes, because people WILL NOT PAY such a rate...
People complain that Warren Buffet pays half the effective tax rate as his minions... that is BECAUSE he is taxed at such a high marginal rate...
Lower it to 20% and remove all the deductions.
So if my yearly income was $10 million but I decided to stop working after the first million I'd be foregoing $810,000 in income after taxes. I guess if you're that rich already it's not that big a deal. But as I said I don't support a 91% tax rate but if the rate was 50% you'd be foregoing $4,500,000 in income in my example. Do you really think that's such a disincentive that people would quite working?
Quit working?
No. Quit working in such a way as to pay that tax rate? Yes.
Many people in the 50s simply worked overseas to avoid it.
No one making $10 million is going pay $4.5 million if they have any brains, and most do.
A 50% tax rate won't get paid any more than the current 35% corporate tax rate gets paid.
Well if after $1,000,000 you'd be handing most of it over to Uncle Sam that probably encouraged business owners to instead reinvest into the company more than taking profits for themselves while looking for more ways to cut costs and shaft the employees.
Yea, because it is only "greedy" business owners that could make that kind of money.
Lord, our education system has failed, I read the replies and it just... is sad...
He neglected to mention that 91% tax rate didn't kick in until the 2016 equivalent of $20 million dollars and only applied to income _over_ that amount.
You are mistaken, he didn't "neglect" to mention it, it is obvious and anyone who knows anything knows that.
What YOU ARE MISSING is that once you hit that rate, you might as well stay home and watch TV, you're done.
No one is going to pay such a rate if they can avoid it, it is stupid.
And besides, let 'em take a 9 month vacation.
Yea, good thing you don't make policy. Perhaps you can move to France where they tried it recently. It just doesn't work the way you think it does.
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/...
If you can afford to live well enough to not give a fuck after you only get 9% of your income I have a hard fucking time feeling sorry for you or your tax rate.
You don't have to care, but you're deluding yourself if you think people will work, earn money, and pay taxes at that rate.
The whole point of passing higher taxes is to raise money, is it not? Well it doesn't raise money if no one is paying the rate, now is it?
France recently tried this, raising the top rate to 75%. Oh sure, that'll bring in a lot of taxes, right?
No, it really doesn't.
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/...
People will avoid such tax rates at all costs.
When it's a Republican complaining about a 38% marginal tax rate.
Don't feel bad, I won't pay 38% either... You get beyond 1/3 and I'd do whatever it takes to avoid paying it. Frankly below that is worth a lot of effort to avoid.
If you make $100,000, having $38K of it taken away is highway robbery.
A flat 20% tax rate and the removal of all deductions would go a long way towards balancing the system.
What you fail to take into account with the 91% tax rate is that it was a marginal rate. It only applied to income over a certain amount. I'll use $1,000,000 for the sake of argument. So if the 91% rate applies to income over $1 M all of your income up to that point is taxed at the lower rate that people not making that much pay.
I don't fail to take anything into account... What YOU fail to understand is that once you hit that $1,000,000 number, you might as well sit home and watch Oprah...
Sure, the tax rate "isn't so bad" on the first $1,000,000, but on the second $1,000,000 you only get to keep $91,000.
That is stupid, you're done for the year, there is no point to working to make another million when you keep less than 10% of it.
Now I'm not advocating for a 91% tax rate but I don't think something like a 50% tax rate on income over $10 million is crazy to contemplate.
You can do that all you like, but it would be ineffective. 50% is high enough that people will find ways to avoid it, or just not work. I'm not going to pay it, most other people aren't either.
About 1/3 is as high as you can go, before I personally will do whatever it takes to avoid it. Your statements about "but you have enough, you can afford it" largely will fall on deaf ears.
Regarding the 91% tax rate it applied from around the end of WW II until Kennedy changed it to around 75% in the early 1960s. Yet that period was one of the most productive in terms of economic growth and infrastructure building to support that growth in the history of the USA.
Correlation is not causation. The two had nothing to do with each other.
It doesn't have to hit 100% for the effect to be largely the same.
Ronald Reagan once said in support of lower top tax rates that the old 91% rates from the 50s were pointless and counterproductive, because people would work for 3 months, then when they hit that rate, just stop working for the rest of the year (or work overseas or for cash) because no one was going to labor only to keep just 9% of their income.
Totally! If we just elect Bernie then problems like these will be a thing of the past.
Instead of worrying about filing taxes 100% of income goes right to the Feds and every year you can apply to the Federal Government for a welfare package that will be given out based on politically correct preferences regarding race (no whities), gender (no Benjamins for Benjamin unless Benjamin was born Bethany), language & lack of citizenship (Habla Ingles? No Dinero!), and of course, whether or not you used a substantial portion of last year's welfare check to pay off Union "community organizers" Vido & Guido who run Bernie's local chapter of the Revolutionary Guard.
All you need to do is fill out a trivially simple 200 page form in triplicate, get it notarized by an official government agent, send it via certified mail and wait 18 - 24 months. Take that corporations!
^ You got modded down to troll, but what is sad is that such things can happen.
They exist, right now, on Earth. Not in the US of course, but the USA is full of human beings. Those other nations are full of human beings.
There is nothing overly special about the humans here vs the humans there.
Too many people assume "different" means "better". No, different means "different". It COULD be better... but it doesn't have to be...
"The beatings will continue until moral improves!"
As a society, we have made the choice not to let people die in the streets because they haven't made adequate provisions for health insurance. It would be immoral dehumanizing, and unhygienic.
And in fairness, I tend to agree with that decision.
AC has made the choice to live in that particular society.
Have they? We no longer really live in a world that gives people that choice. The world is full, there is nowhere *new* to go that doesn't have governments and "society".
I didn't pick to be born here, or live here. I don't have unlimited freedom to move to any nation on Earth, they don't have to accept me. And even if they did, they have their own rules that I might or might not agree with.
Unless you're suggesting that the AC has the right to kill themselves if they don't like "our rules"? If not, then what are you suggesting? Because honestly, I can't see that they got much of a say in any of it.
Also, there are times when we don't have free will, due to incapacitation of some sort or another, and those are the cases where we are most likely to need expensive medical treatment. They aren't predictable, either. If AC gets into a bad accident, we'll say not AC's fault, and is unconscious and seriously injured in other ways, AC is going to be hauled to the emergency room and receive some very expensive medical attention before AC can choose to refuse it.
Yes, I get that. Would you suggest some type of registration system that allows him to op-out in advance? Or perhaps we treat him anyway and just eat the cost, since that was our choice to not refuse treatment on the basis of money?
May I further suggest that if you wish to take the moral stand that we should not refuse treatment on the basis of money, that we also should not allow for-profit health insurance or for-profit doctors/hospitals? That it should be more like the fire department or police, we all pay for it, but we all get it free of charge to the person?
After all, the police and fire departments do not send a bill for their services. Neither is driven by profit. They exist to serve all of us.
Since AC is quite likely to need expensive health care at some point
"Need" or "want?
Those are two different things... Or are you suggesting that the AC has lost all free will and can't turn healthcare down?
AC is likely to incur considerable health care expenses where AC wants to or not.
That is society's problem, not the AC's. If society doesn't want to incur those costs, then we can switch to not treating all comers, regardless of ability to pay. That is a different choice, one we aren't likely to make.
But we could.
Regardless, you aren't going to convince the AC of anything with your moral argument of what he/she should or should not do, they don't really care.
In other words, someone sold you a crap insurance policy
No, I bought my policy off the Federal Marketplace, it was a silver policy with Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Texas.
A policy that falls under the ACA categories will be accepted at enough places to be really useful
You keep thinking that, I found it to be less than useful.
Side note:
AMD has less than $1 billion in cash left, bleeding a bit more each year, with $600 million in cash needed Jan 1, 2018 or they default on the 2020 bank debt.
AMD has a market cap of $1.6 billion. Intel is nearly $150 billion. Intel has over $25 billion in cash on hand.
Intel could buy AMD with cash more than 10 times over.
This is not a battle of equals, sad to say. AMD has done a bunch of tricks in the past few years to survive, but they are running out of them.
Example: AMD recently sold its headquarters building and then leased it back, to raise cash.
You can only do that stuff so many times before you run out of things to sell.
:) I understand...
We recently refinanced our home, purchased 2006 at 6.25%, for 15 years at 3.5%.
I could have done 30 years at 3.25%, but honestly the 15 years does save a ton of interest over 30 years and we consider it forced savings for retirement.
I now own more than 50% of my home, and could probably pay it off too, but what a waste of money? I make far more than that on investments.
AMD doesn't have 5 years left, there is a reason their stock is where it is. The investors know the company is on borrowed time.
It essentially has no value, beyond its patents and deal with Intel, the rest of the enterprise is worthless, according to Wall Street. (who isn't always right, but can be right from time to time)
AMD is burning cash, racking up debt, and has a lot due in the next three years. They won't have any income to pay it off and likely can't finance it anymore.
This is sad, since we need them to do well, but our needing that doesn't make them profitable. :(
I don't disagree with you. I think Obamacare is the worst possible result, the casting in stone of a flawed system that now has no need to reform itself because it has just been enshrined as a permanent monopoly.
For all of its flaws, the pre-Obamacare system was at least vulnerable to its own worst impulses. Without ACA I think it would have been forced to adapt its cost structure, but now it doesn't have to. We just make people buy insurance they increasingly can't afford and which doesn't really provide them with an guarantees of protection from catastrophic health costs.
You put into words exactly how I feel about it.
I think, though, that we need to dig even deeper than that and address some of the labor side costs as well. Part of the reasons doctors expect or want to earn high incomes is that it cost them so much to become doctors. I would think we could make medical school free but tack on a requirement that the first five years after your internship you have to work as a salaried provider. Remove the argument that you have $150k in loans and costs therefore you need to make bank in order to pay them off.
Amen... My wife in her 40s still owes more than $50K in student loan debt. If it weren't financed at such a cheap interested rate, I'd have long since paid it off, since we have the money, but at the 2 something percent it is financed at, why bother?
What's the fundamental difference between those two? (Not that I'm against a single-payer health system)
The difference is the demand that I sign up with a private company and contract for their services, even if I don't like them.
Keep in mind that the United States spends more money per person on health care, while providing a whole lot less care, than most other 1st world nations.
There is a stupid amount of overhead in the insurance companies and for-profit hospitals.
The very idea of a for-profit hospital is about as stupid as a for-profit police department. I don't mind some socialist services (and I say that as a right-winger). It makes for a nicer civilization.
I like good police, good fire protection, good roads, good schools, and a nice zoned city to live in. All of that requires government in some form. It makes sense if that everyone (or ALMOST everyone) needs health care, then perhaps we should all collectively provide it to ourselves. But it shouldn't be via for-profit private insurance companies marking up the services of private for-profit hospitals.
It would be much cheaper to simply hire doctors directly and pay them a salary, than to use the system we have now.
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Side note: Just because I'm against the ACA doesn't mean I think our old system was good, it sucked too. Health insurance should not be connected to your work, many people end up taking jobs for the health insurance. That's nuts. Whoever designed that system needs a kick in the teeth (and yea, I know it started back in WWII as a way to compete for employees when wages were frozen).
We shall see... even if AMD gets chips out this year on the 14nm GF scale, that doesn't mean they'll solve their issues. Intel has been on 14nm for how long now? 10nm is coming in a year or so?
I honestly wish AMD the best of luck, we need them to keep Intel honest, I have no desire to pay monopoly prices... but the future isn't pretty for AMD.
When Sally comes in with her special snowflake who fell down and scratched her hand, demanding that you apply an antibacterial ointment and a bandaid, 20 times each month, your wife will see her time being wasted. People with serious problems will be kept waiting while the lonely and hypochondriacs get attention. Some of those people with serious problems won't get the prompt service they need, and their conditions will worsen and some will die.
Doctors clearly need the ability to make judgement calls, such as telling Sally that she is overdoing it.
Most doctors became doctors, not for the money, but because they actually want to help people. Oh sure, there are those in it for the money, but frankly I can tell you that many doctors would be happy with a flat salary and a commitment to helping all comers, with the condition that they can place them in order of medical need.
There are already numerous examples of people who call for an ambulance because they don't want to pay for a taxi ride.
And such people should be denied that ride, if in the judgement of the medical personal, it is not needed.
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If you call the fire department over every little thing, they'll either start billing you, or stop coming. Same with the police department.
The medical community needs the ability to do the same thing. If you abuse the system, you can get cut off.
You are correct... When I said "private health insurance", I was intending to refer to the huge mega insurance companies.
But you're right, what the Amish are doing is also private health insurance, but I have no issue with what they are doing.
I WOULD have an issue if the government wanted to try and mandate that I join the Amish, or any other private group, which is what they are doing with the ACA.
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As a side note, I don't really have a problem with the idea of government health care. There are issues and concerns with it, to be sure, but it is different than the government telling me I must join a private company/group/association.
We have government roads, government schools, etc. and while they aren't perfect, they are better than nothing. In some ways, the ACA *IS* worse than nothing.
Actually, he was arguing that since the AC would need healthcare sooner or later, they had an obligation to pay for it now.
Or to put it another way, sjbe was arguing that since the AC might cost society *something, someday* the AC had an obligation to pay towards everyone's health care today.
To say they don't use health care is incorrect.
You are correct, I left an important word off my post...
"not everyone uses healthcare INSURANCE". :)
It changes the meaning a lot, and that was my error.
Where I have a problem is in the attempt to get me to buy a private medical policy from a private company with all that comes along with it.
During the time I had insurance, I attempted to use it a few times, only to find out that it is a PITA to use. It isn't accepted very many places, it doesn't actually cover all that much, and it still costs a ton of money.
My biggest problem with your "freedom" argument is that it could be extended to pretty much anything. I could decide I will never fly, so why I should have to pay for the FAA or airports? Extend that to anything people decide they want to opt out of.
The difference is that the FAA is a public agency funded by tax dollars.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield is not.
Make it single payer national health care not run by private companies and you'd have a point.
If you really want to make health care actually cost less, you have to remove two things from it. Insurance companies and paperwork.
I've commented on this before, my wife is a doctor. She earns a comfortable six figure income, but she also spends more than $50K a year in admin overhead. That would largely go away under a better system.
She has told me that it would actually make sense to take a 50% pay cut, if the government would simply hire her on a salary and tell her to treat all comers, free of charge. She would take home about the same amount of money, at a far lower cost to society.
The grand flaw in your argument is that you are taking a moral stand that you expect others to just accept.
The person you replied to is not asking for society to spend money on him, so he isn't much interested in the bill for any of it.
You're suggesting that since you value such things, he should have to pay for it, wanted or not.
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Last year I have health insurance, my out of pocket cost was under $100. The cost to society was far higher, but I can't control that, only what I spend myself.
This year, my cost rose to over $350 a month. I no longer see value at that price. So I dropped insurance.
I completely understand your point, and the purpose of the ACA requiring me to buy insurance, it is to pay for those people who do get sick. But just like the cost to society, that is beyond my control.
$350 a month for a product I don't use is a bad deal for me. It begins and ends there.
Now I know what you'll say, "sooner or later I'll need it". Yes, that might be true, but I'll take my chances at age 40 that it won't be this year.
That $4k+ per year will go a. Ice way towards funding my retirement, 10 years of that, plus interest, will be a nice chunk of money when I'm 65.
I replied and said "not everyone believes in private health insurance", and indeed the Amish ar exempt from that part of the ACA, much as they are exempt from social security.