Those $24 billion need to be weighted against the trillions that Obama's costly and unnecessary new debt, regulations, restrictions, crony capitalism, bailouts, and opportunity costs are costing the economy.
Under Obamacare, I'm forced to pay for coverage I neither want, nor need, nor consider reasonable. And every time a lobby of doctors or disease activists gets together and pushes for coverage for yet another overpriced and useless procedure or tratement, I'm forced to pay for it.
Prior to Obamacare, I had the choice of self-insuring or picking a plan with lifetime or coverage limits. Prior to Obamacare, insurers also had much more leeway for punishing and refusing coverage for people, whereas now I'm forced to pay for the consequences of other people's bad choices.
If you don't think that affects your life in a significant way, I have to question your claims below.
How it affects my life is none of your f*cking business. People like me don't want your pity, your support, or your help. Just stop making assumptions about us or anybody else based on your arbitrary categorizations of people. I don't care if you call me a "faggot", but you piss me off if you tell me about all the wonderful things you need to do to support people like me. And I can tell you: many women and other minorities feel the same way about people like you.
You were fun to insult at first and then try to educate but your entertainment value has been exhausted.
Ah, yes, the well-meaning. self-righteous progressive prick: to you, the plight and problems of minorities are just entertainment value. Thanks for being honest at last.
I didn't think the costs of private insurance in NZ is high.
New Zealanders also make substantially less money than Americans.
People pass on it because it isn't needed.
I wouldn't call more than a quarter of people "passing on it".
The only people who "need" it are the ones who demand to have their convenience medical care be taken care of like it was a heart attack.
And I don't like others passing judgment on what my medical needs are, nor do I like paying for other people's excessive consumption of medical services.
Yeah, with patronizing shit like this: "But at least we weren't black or women or gay"
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and not assuming you weren't just homophobic as well.
You really are incredibly stupid. As a gay man and a minority, let me tell you that I consider pricks like you worse than the Christian fundamentalists; at least they are honest about their bigotry, and unlike you, they at least occasionally manage to be polite.
More than a quarter of New Zealanders have supplementary private insurance. The number is small not because of lack of desire but because of lack of affordability.
I will fight tooth and nail against a UK-like system. I think it is a disaster and I do not want my insurance to be affected by it. I'm glad Republicans are also trying to get rid of Obamacare. Health care in the US needs to be reformed, but it needs to be done right.
I'm looking at the [UK], Australia and NZ systems. All better and cheaper than the US system.
Based on my contacts with them, I wouldn't want to trade my current insurance for them. Have you actually been insured in any of those systems? Many people in those nations get secondary private insurance to make up for the deficiencies of the public system.
Furthermore, even if those systems were a nice as you think they are, just because something works in another nation doesn't mean it works in the US. We have different demographics, a different culture, and different politics. NZ is a country of 4M people, smaller than some US cities.
Because, in practice, a single death panel for the national plan works out much better than the current US system.
Looking at the UK, Australia, and NZ is insufficient evidence.
What choice? I have a very limited number of health care providers to choose from, and they are in overt collusion (they have representatives on the state board that oversees themselves)
Yes, you have correctly identified a major problem with our current system. So, if you recognize this as the current problem, why do you want to make it worse by reducing choice even further and giving even more control to corruptible state and federal boards and regulators? If the power that these organizations have is already being abused, how is giving more power to them going to improve things?
A better choice would be to deregulate the insurance industry and create more choice. The only area where we need more regulation is to prohibit insurers from the current practice of dropping the seriously ill or raising their rates.
A decent human being doesn't go around categorizing people by sex, gender, race, and sexual orientation, making assumptions about their lives, and offering his benevolent support for their fragile little selves.
You once again state that I want the super rich to be able to abuse the gov't,
No, I do not state that. You clearly do not "want" the super rich to do that. I am saying that the policies you advocate enable such abuse, contrary to what you actually want.
I'd love to live in a magic world of fairy dust and pixy farts where something as powerful as a central gov't doesn't get abused. Instead, I'd rather work around the inevitable abuse.
We agree that government will get abused (it's called "rent seeking"). But the proposals you make for "working around the inevitable abuse" actually make the problem worse rather than better. Imposing 90% income taxes on "the rich" will not hurt the rich or diminish their power, but it will add large amounts of money to the coffers of government that rent seekers of all stripes then can enrich themselves further with.
To your other point, you listed a whole bunch of enormously expensive procedures and then said "but who decides!?" Well apparently it was decided by your own personal finances, since your limited coverage definitely won't pay for any of those things
No, you still don't understand. I'm not worried about whether I can afford those expensive procedures, I simply do not want them. I think many of them are useless; they are overpriced solutions pushed by the medical profession for problems that are much easier and cheaper to prevent in the first place. Yet, under a single payer system, I am forced to pay for them and to support a system that ultimately makes people sicker than they need to be.
No I think it will bring in revenue which can be used to offset costs to the healthcare system incurred from obesity.
So the vision for your country is that of a huge population of obese people kept alive through an expensive medical system. Well, I do not want that. What I want is a country in which people stay healthy. Staying healthy takes a lot of effort, and unless you make the cost of not staying healthy very high, people simply won't bother. The only way I know of doing that is to give people three options: (1) stay healthy, (2) pay a lot of money, or (3) die early. A single payer health care system, by design, removes most of the incentives for people to stay healthy.
if it pays for anything at all, since the insurance company's first action when you make a claim is going to be to try and deny and drop you.
That's something that really needs to be addressed by law, but it doesn't require a single payer health system.
So you object to Death Panels if those are run by government employees (who have no incentive to kill you), but like them when the Death Panels are run by for-profit companies who gauge your future payments against the cost of the treatment (thus may end up with a fiscal motive to kill you)?
Yes, that is correct. When it's a government death panel, I don't have a choice. When it is a for-profit death panel, I and everybody else gets to choose their death panel, which is infinitely preferable.
Dismissing someone as a "radical feminist" is not a defense to a valid critique. It's usually a sign of someone who doesn't like their privilege being questioned
Both of those are correct: calling you a "radical feminist" is not a critique, it's an observation. And I strongly object to the sexist and racist ideologies of feminism and critical race theory.
But I guess the threat of missing out on whatever you do at your frat parties makes you feel powerful or whatever while you play beer pong and call each other pussy cats.
Actually, my parties are fabulous. My frat boy friends sip Chablis while hugging their boyfriends, and when we call each other "pussy", it's a term of affection. Many of us had a hard time growing up and really don't need to be lectured by pricks like you about our supposed "white and/or male privilege". Besides, people like you have no style or humor.
So which is it? Are you an innocent idiot or a guilty coward?
I have nothing to feel guilty about. The expression "You're a pussy." means nothing more than "You're a coward.", and it's often used for ribbing friends of either sex, as in "Don't be such a pussy, go ahead and do it." There is absolutely nothing vulgar or sexist about it.
By the definition of some radical feminists of either gender, that may be true, but I really don't care what they think or whether I offend them. They simply don't get invited to my parties again.
It's certainly not illegal in a criminal sense - you won't get sent to prison for it.
Even that isn't clear given US privacy and data protection laws.
But I think anyone with an iota of common sense would agree it is extraordinarily unprofessional to start calling anybody names of any sort just because they don't want to work for you without compensation.
It is unprofessional, but who knows what the background is; people have bad days. Communities can't function if people get publicly humiliated every time they make a mistake.
And Lee now has to expect that men are less likely to interact freely with her in professional contexts, and that her own E-mails are fair game for publishing. Ultimately, her response hurt her more than simply ignoring it or sending back a witty remark would have done.
I'm not "using sexist language", we were discussing whether certain phrases are sexist or not.
when confronted on it play ridiculous semantic games to "defend" yourself rather than engaging in self evaluation like an adult. Grow up.
You know, I don't know what is wrong with you. Are you really so dumb that you are incapable of talking about sexism without confusing that with "using sexist language"?
That's in addition to your ignorant belief that calling a man a "pussy" has anything to do with sexism or women. Are you not a native speaker? Or are you simply linguistically challenged?
Actually you do, because housing and utility cost are considered and if you don't think that is poor you are out of your mind.
I live on less than $1000/month and I'm not even trying to save money; if I did, I could shave off a couple of hundred dollars off that. No, that's not "poor".
I suppose you could try to pack your wife and kid into a room for rent/roommate situation somewhere
If you make $1461/month, you shouldn't get married to a stay-at-home wife, and you certainly shouldn't have kids until your income increases. If you do anyway, it's your own fault.
And if you're a single guy, you can easily get a roommate and cut rent and utility bills nearly in half and save even more.
According to a calculator I just ran it's about $75/week or $300 a month.
You said "30% withholding". "Withholding" is what the IRS does for federal taxes. Federal taxes are around $723 on that income for a single person; divide by 12 to get the monthly withholding, it's not rocket science. I don't know why PayrollCity gets $34.33 per week, but it's wrong. Social Security and Medicare do add another $100/month, of course.
This is one thing: "Anybody near the center of the income distribution or above" This is quite another: " i.e., the great majority of Americans"
I chose my words carefully, and yes, the two statements are equivalent.
So lets see how far that goes trying to maintain a minimal US standard of living. That's $1416/month gross if we ballpark 30% for mandatory withholding it is $944/mo.
At $1416/month, withholding (and tax) is about $61/month. On the other hand, you don't qualify for food stamps because at that income level, you aren't poor.
What your attempt at a budget actually tells me is that you're rich (if you have 30% withholding, you have to be) and don't know how to budget yourself because your budget is way off.
It starts with your silly assumption that the only way to get housing is to go out and rent a $600 apartment by yourself. Your Internet and utilities estimates are also way off.
Given that more and more Android devices have wireless charging and data is usually synced wirelessly as well, these discussions seem like discussions about the best buggy whip in the era of automobiles.
..regarding obesity and smoking: you tax fat, sugars and the smokes.
It is a patently ridiculous suggestion that you can get people to eat a decent diet by taxing things they shouldn't eat.
who decides who gets cancer treatment on private medical insurance?
I decide myself by the coverage I choose and the sacrifices I make in order to buy that coverage.
provided everyone are on equal payments.
But people shouldn't be "on equal payments"; you may have an irrational trust in the power of medicine and want millions in useless coverage, but I shouldn't have to pay for that nonsense. I want $100k lifetime coverage and when that's used up, I want to die. Period.
(Of course, ironically, that's the kind of limit people in the UK get. It's just that in the US, with its greater ability to pay, costs spiral out of control more.)
if you as a citizens need to pay(privately) for your own police and fire department then you(usa) will officially be a 3rd world country - again.
Oh, I hope so: a wealthy, free third world country.
It's telling that you think calling someone a "pussy" is a "gender appropriate insult" for a man.
It is linguistically gender-appropriate.
That's a pretty sexist viewpoint in and of itself.
Only if your mind is in the gutter. When you insult a man with the term "pussy", you are calling him a "pussy cat", i.e. a small and timid creature. It has nothing to do with women or the other meaning of that slang word.
I'm not sure you're in a position to be judging sexism.
But I'm pretty sure you aren't, since you don't even seem to understand the words involved.
The people building search engines and inventing cancer drugs top out around $100,000 a year.
Obviously, you're unfamiliar with Silicon Valley bonuses and salaries even among technical staff, let alone among founders.
I didn't say I support the super rich using the tool of gov't, rather I recognize that it's inevitable.
No, you don't say it, and you even fool yourself into believing that you don't want it, but in reality, you and people like you are primarily responsible for "the super rich" and a bunch of others being able to enrich themselves at the cost of everybody else, and you want to make it even worse than it already is.
The only question is can I wrest those institutions from them.
You cannot. Government is always controlled by people who want to use it to enrich themselves. The more taxes you give it and the more power you give it to regulate, the more that power will be abused by the well-connected to enrich themselves. That's why raising taxes on the rich is like throwing gasoline on a fire. Why do you think that giving another trillion to the US government will result in anything other than that trillion being sent to more defense contractors and bailouts?
The way to keep people from misusing government to enrich themselves is to limit government to the absolutely minimally necessary functions, and to keep it as local as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Those $24 billion need to be weighted against the trillions that Obama's costly and unnecessary new debt, regulations, restrictions, crony capitalism, bailouts, and opportunity costs are costing the economy.
Under Obamacare, I'm forced to pay for coverage I neither want, nor need, nor consider reasonable. And every time a lobby of doctors or disease activists gets together and pushes for coverage for yet another overpriced and useless procedure or tratement, I'm forced to pay for it.
Prior to Obamacare, I had the choice of self-insuring or picking a plan with lifetime or coverage limits. Prior to Obamacare, insurers also had much more leeway for punishing and refusing coverage for people, whereas now I'm forced to pay for the consequences of other people's bad choices.
How it affects my life is none of your f*cking business. People like me don't want your pity, your support, or your help. Just stop making assumptions about us or anybody else based on your arbitrary categorizations of people. I don't care if you call me a "faggot", but you piss me off if you tell me about all the wonderful things you need to do to support people like me. And I can tell you: many women and other minorities feel the same way about people like you.
Ah, yes, the well-meaning. self-righteous progressive prick: to you, the plight and problems of minorities are just entertainment value. Thanks for being honest at last.
New Zealanders also make substantially less money than Americans.
I wouldn't call more than a quarter of people "passing on it".
And I don't like others passing judgment on what my medical needs are, nor do I like paying for other people's excessive consumption of medical services.
Yeah, with patronizing shit like this: "But at least we weren't black or women or gay"
You really are incredibly stupid. As a gay man and a minority, let me tell you that I consider pricks like you worse than the Christian fundamentalists; at least they are honest about their bigotry, and unlike you, they at least occasionally manage to be polite.
More than a quarter of New Zealanders have supplementary private insurance. The number is small not because of lack of desire but because of lack of affordability.
I will fight tooth and nail against a UK-like system. I think it is a disaster and I do not want my insurance to be affected by it. I'm glad Republicans are also trying to get rid of Obamacare. Health care in the US needs to be reformed, but it needs to be done right.
Based on my contacts with them, I wouldn't want to trade my current insurance for them. Have you actually been insured in any of those systems? Many people in those nations get secondary private insurance to make up for the deficiencies of the public system.
Furthermore, even if those systems were a nice as you think they are, just because something works in another nation doesn't mean it works in the US. We have different demographics, a different culture, and different politics. NZ is a country of 4M people, smaller than some US cities.
Looking at the UK, Australia, and NZ is insufficient evidence.
Yes, you have correctly identified a major problem with our current system. So, if you recognize this as the current problem, why do you want to make it worse by reducing choice even further and giving even more control to corruptible state and federal boards and regulators? If the power that these organizations have is already being abused, how is giving more power to them going to improve things?
A better choice would be to deregulate the insurance industry and create more choice. The only area where we need more regulation is to prohibit insurers from the current practice of dropping the seriously ill or raising their rates.
A decent human being doesn't go around categorizing people by sex, gender, race, and sexual orientation, making assumptions about their lives, and offering his benevolent support for their fragile little selves.
Wow, are you really that dense?
No, I do not state that. You clearly do not "want" the super rich to do that. I am saying that the policies you advocate enable such abuse, contrary to what you actually want.
We agree that government will get abused (it's called "rent seeking"). But the proposals you make for "working around the inevitable abuse" actually make the problem worse rather than better. Imposing 90% income taxes on "the rich" will not hurt the rich or diminish their power, but it will add large amounts of money to the coffers of government that rent seekers of all stripes then can enrich themselves further with.
No, you still don't understand. I'm not worried about whether I can afford those expensive procedures, I simply do not want them. I think many of them are useless; they are overpriced solutions pushed by the medical profession for problems that are much easier and cheaper to prevent in the first place. Yet, under a single payer system, I am forced to pay for them and to support a system that ultimately makes people sicker than they need to be.
So the vision for your country is that of a huge population of obese people kept alive through an expensive medical system. Well, I do not want that. What I want is a country in which people stay healthy. Staying healthy takes a lot of effort, and unless you make the cost of not staying healthy very high, people simply won't bother. The only way I know of doing that is to give people three options: (1) stay healthy, (2) pay a lot of money, or (3) die early. A single payer health care system, by design, removes most of the incentives for people to stay healthy.
That's something that really needs to be addressed by law, but it doesn't require a single payer health system.
Yes, that is correct. When it's a government death panel, I don't have a choice. When it is a for-profit death panel, I and everybody else gets to choose their death panel, which is infinitely preferable.
Both of those are correct: calling you a "radical feminist" is not a critique, it's an observation. And I strongly object to the sexist and racist ideologies of feminism and critical race theory.
Actually, my parties are fabulous. My frat boy friends sip Chablis while hugging their boyfriends, and when we call each other "pussy", it's a term of affection. Many of us had a hard time growing up and really don't need to be lectured by pricks like you about our supposed "white and/or male privilege". Besides, people like you have no style or humor.
I have nothing to feel guilty about. The expression "You're a pussy." means nothing more than "You're a coward.", and it's often used for ribbing friends of either sex, as in "Don't be such a pussy, go ahead and do it." There is absolutely nothing vulgar or sexist about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy
By the definition of some radical feminists of either gender, that may be true, but I really don't care what they think or whether I offend them. They simply don't get invited to my parties again.
Even that isn't clear given US privacy and data protection laws.
It is unprofessional, but who knows what the background is; people have bad days. Communities can't function if people get publicly humiliated every time they make a mistake.
And Lee now has to expect that men are less likely to interact freely with her in professional contexts, and that her own E-mails are fair game for publishing. Ultimately, her response hurt her more than simply ignoring it or sending back a witty remark would have done.
I'm not "using sexist language", we were discussing whether certain phrases are sexist or not.
You know, I don't know what is wrong with you. Are you really so dumb that you are incapable of talking about sexism without confusing that with "using sexist language"?
That's in addition to your ignorant belief that calling a man a "pussy" has anything to do with sexism or women. Are you not a native speaker? Or are you simply linguistically challenged?
I didn't "use an insult", I gave an example of an insult.
But here is an insult for you, in a completely gender neutral way: you are a moron.
Are you f*cking serious? Do you actually think that the obesity epidemic in Australia is going to be addressed by "taxing high sugar products"?
I do. In particular, I decide to get limited coverage at a low price.
But you want to force me to buy coverage I neither want nor need in order to subsidize your personal desire for excessive medical spending.
I live on less than $1000/month and I'm not even trying to save money; if I did, I could shave off a couple of hundred dollars off that. No, that's not "poor".
If you make $1461/month, you shouldn't get married to a stay-at-home wife, and you certainly shouldn't have kids until your income increases. If you do anyway, it's your own fault.
And if you're a single guy, you can easily get a roommate and cut rent and utility bills nearly in half and save even more.
You said "30% withholding". "Withholding" is what the IRS does for federal taxes. Federal taxes are around $723 on that income for a single person; divide by 12 to get the monthly withholding, it's not rocket science. I don't know why PayrollCity gets $34.33 per week, but it's wrong. Social Security and Medicare do add another $100/month, of course.
I chose my words carefully, and yes, the two statements are equivalent.
At $1416/month, withholding (and tax) is about $61/month. On the other hand, you don't qualify for food stamps because at that income level, you aren't poor.
What your attempt at a budget actually tells me is that you're rich (if you have 30% withholding, you have to be) and don't know how to budget yourself because your budget is way off.
It starts with your silly assumption that the only way to get housing is to go out and rent a $600 apartment by yourself. Your Internet and utilities estimates are also way off.
Yes, because it's not actually sexual in nature, because it's private, and because the person posting it was more clearly acting unprofessionally.
I.e., you don't know. As I was saying: it may be illegal, even in the US.
Given that more and more Android devices have wireless charging and data is usually synced wirelessly as well, these discussions seem like discussions about the best buggy whip in the era of automobiles.
It is a patently ridiculous suggestion that you can get people to eat a decent diet by taxing things they shouldn't eat.
I decide myself by the coverage I choose and the sacrifices I make in order to buy that coverage.
But people shouldn't be "on equal payments"; you may have an irrational trust in the power of medicine and want millions in useless coverage, but I shouldn't have to pay for that nonsense. I want $100k lifetime coverage and when that's used up, I want to die. Period.
(Of course, ironically, that's the kind of limit people in the UK get. It's just that in the US, with its greater ability to pay, costs spiral out of control more.)
Oh, I hope so: a wealthy, free third world country.
It is linguistically gender-appropriate.
Only if your mind is in the gutter. When you insult a man with the term "pussy", you are calling him a "pussy cat", i.e. a small and timid creature. It has nothing to do with women or the other meaning of that slang word.
But I'm pretty sure you aren't, since you don't even seem to understand the words involved.
Obviously, you're unfamiliar with Silicon Valley bonuses and salaries even among technical staff, let alone among founders.
No, you don't say it, and you even fool yourself into believing that you don't want it, but in reality, you and people like you are primarily responsible for "the super rich" and a bunch of others being able to enrich themselves at the cost of everybody else, and you want to make it even worse than it already is.
You cannot. Government is always controlled by people who want to use it to enrich themselves. The more taxes you give it and the more power you give it to regulate, the more that power will be abused by the well-connected to enrich themselves. That's why raising taxes on the rich is like throwing gasoline on a fire. Why do you think that giving another trillion to the US government will result in anything other than that trillion being sent to more defense contractors and bailouts?
The way to keep people from misusing government to enrich themselves is to limit government to the absolutely minimally necessary functions, and to keep it as local as possible.
WTF? Pay attention who you are responding to.