No cost to the person receiving the good or service is the exact definition of free. That someone else pays is implied, but in no way diminishes the fact it is free.
That's illegal in some places. You can use the auto-fill, but must attend the vehicle at all times, in case of problem.
And I've never seen a place that will let you pay with the hose in the car. To help fight drive-off with hose in tank, the pumps I've seen *all* require the hose to be replaced before the register inside will allow the cashier to ring up the sale. So your regular example sounds fictitious.
Where are you where you can pay with the hose still in the tank? And, though you'll not give a location, I'd look up the regulations on filling if you did.
because in the time it takes for you to plug in and unplug the car a gas will still go farther ?
It takes 2 seconds to plug in, and 2 seconds to unplug, those 4 seconds, spaced long enough apart will get you much more distance than 4 seconds of fueling a gasoline car.
how far do you get if you stop charging after 15 minutes ?
Fast charger will get a good charge in 15 minutes.
forgot something for dinner, but the commute almost burns the charge. well those 15 mins of charge time is gonna be useless.
For one, your commute leaves you with more than enough to get ingredients from your local supermarket, and the 15 minute charge would be more than enough, if you were on empty when you got home.
Your argument sounds like "I don't like electric, and I don't want anyone having an opinion that differs with mine." If you don't like them, fine, but no reason to go out of your way to bash them. If they are as horrible and useless as you claim, just wait until 100 people buy them, and the piles of complaints will silence the zealots. Oh wait, there are hundreds of thousands of them on the road, and there aren't complaints by the owners about that. Either there's a massive conspiracy to silence complaints, or the problems you complain about simply aren't a problem.
Most (more than 90%) have power where they park. If you disagree with the facts, take them up with those that did the study, rather than raging all over those who are just pointing out the facts in the article. Shooting the messenger is more fun, because they are easier to find, and more likely to not bother to argue the point, as it's obviously not worth it.
Most places have periodic inspections. Conduct those with an odo check, and tack on a mileage fee. Problem solved. Or tax electricity for transportation. That'd have the additional effect of driving greater efficiencies. The problem isn't hard to solve.
It charges long enough for 90% of people to use it as their only car. Everything else is a deflection by you. That he didn't play your game doesn't make it a "deflection". Fot 90% of people, they'll be parked in a location they can charge to get then through the next day. Whether you claim to be in the 10%, and thus the 90% are stupid for not demanding more, is irrelevant to the facts.
I didn't pay to read the whole thing, but the summary implies charging was considered in that 90%. Most people park in a location where charging isn't an issue. Apparently 90+%.
Do you think a generic manager could step in and manager a newspaper without intimate knowledge of the newspaper business? How well do you think that company would do if it actually happened?
Depends on the manager. A good manager can manage outside their expertise.
When I was in college, I tutored people. In one case, someone came to me for tutoring in a subject I didn't know anything about. I was able to successfully tutor them, with no knowledge in the field. Of course, in the process of tutoring, I learned lots, but walking someone through the work, asking them to think about the problem, and explain the process to get the answer is the same across most academic subjects. Actually teaching them might have been impossible, but directing their self-study to increase comprehension and retention (thus grades) was doable without any knowledge of the subject.
My experience with management is the same. Someone could manage outside their expertise, but it'll be harder. Find experts, and trust them. Let them do the work, direct them, without controlling them. Passion, dedication, and expert knowledge will be missing, but the ability to manage doesn't require specific knowledge of the industry.
The studies I've seen are that it's easy to "kill" trolls. If you mask them such that they can see their post, and nobody responds, they rage-quit. They exist to annoy. They don't serve any other purpose. When they don't get responses, they get frustrated, and leave. If a normal person posts, and doesn't get responses, they assume everyone heard and agreed. When a troll doesn't get responses, they assume they didn't piss off anyone enough to cause a response. Silently filtering out trolls doesn't harm anyone. If the person filtered out for a month quits, then they were most likely a troll, not a normal. If the person continues posting after a month, then they aren't a troll. So an automated troll filter would mask responses randomly for a period of time. Though, nobody has studied whether this filters trolls if the trolls know the process exists.
If the item is confiscated by the police and re-distributed, that's not "giving back" anything. When you use an invalid analogy, it doesn't work. Hans Reiser didn't have to cooperate with his prosecution by producing his murdered wife. Though, after being convicted of murder, he produced the body, in exchange for a reduced charge/sentence.
You can pull an arrow out of your dead target and use it again.
Yes, you could, how many times will it work? Twice? Ten times? Once, for fun, I shot at a tree. 0% of the arrows were re-usable after that.
Sorry I deflated your internet tough guy routine with facts.
Yeah, your magic indestructible arrows, and 10,000 people per day lining up to break in, but they wait orderly in a line so you can shoot them all, one at a time, and take your magic arrow out and re-use it for the next.
My simple point is that: 1) you underestimate the amount of ammunition hoarded by the preppers. 2) Your magic arrow solution is much more stupid than anything you are accusing me of. 3) I never claimed that a.22 is a one-shot kill. Are you going to continue being a lying sack of shit, or are you going to act more than your 12 years? I did say that a shot to the chest would stop someone. a.22 to the leg won't take you down, but a hit to the chest will take out a lung or heart. A gut shot won't kill either. Well, it will eventually, from an infection, but the.22 doesn't carry enough energy to kill with hydrostatic shock, where a.44 could hit in the gut, and miss everything vital, and still kill. a.22 would have to hit something vital to kill. And no, you won't shrug off a.22 in the lung. That's fatal, and if not immediately so, it'll prevent you from breathing freely, and will eliminate the ability and will to fight.
You refuse to answer clear questions designed to promote honest debate, and lie about what I say, and just ad hominem all over the place. Yes, for the first time, I insulted you, but you've been doing it from the start, because you know the facts aren't on your side, and all you have is badgering and insulting anyone you argue with, until they give up, so you can declare victory. Congratulations on winning every Internet fight, despite never being correct.
You really suck at planning. How many shots per day do you think you'll average? Would that be vastly different if you were using a bow or a firearm?
Let's say you are 12, because you act like it. Then, let's (wrongly) assume life expectancy doesn't change after an apocalypse. So that's 67 years, or about 25,000 days. So if you average 1 shot per day, that's 25k bullets/arrows. If you average 10 shots per day, that's 250k. Your arrows are less lethal than the.22 you make fun of, and good for about as many shots each. Especially at the start of the apocalypse, firearms will be vastly superior. The rate of fire and reload will protect the owner at the start, when roving gangs of looters try to rush them.
And 10-20 years later, they can make a bow, if they need. Starting with an inferior weapon with some delusions of longevity in the apocalypse seems a bit insane, even worse than the preppers you make fun of.
And because you are assuming the opposite, I'll let you know that I'm not a prepper, own no guns (and no bow, because here they are firearms), but am proficient with both bows and guns.
Hunting for food in an apocolypse would be dificult. Imagine today, but where every other hunter wants you dead. You wouldn't leave the safety of your compound. Your meat would be locally grown, or you'd become a vegetarian. What would you hunt for? Deer? Where are you where you can walk to an area with numerous deer? Because you can't drive there, because fuel wouldn't last you "years", again, unless you are cooking your own. And yes, a single.22 in the chest would stop any unarmored intruder. If they are armored, aim for the eye, or having a backup firearm with greater penetration.
If you have 1000 bullets, and shoot 10 people outside your house a day, the pile of rotting corpses would serve as a deterrent. and if you have more than 10 raiders a day trying to break into your compound, you should have spend more time/effort disguising your compound, rather than preparations to defend it.
The US manufactures about 10 bullets for every person on the planet. There's no shortage of ammo, just a distribution problem. And you don't need that much. After the first 10 corpses pile up at the "keep out" sign, even the aggressive raiders, will get the hint. And a tin of 1,000.22LR will not cost more than the gun pile the nuts have.
Only if they know where to look. If you walked to Brazil and lived in the Amazon, nobody would ever find you there. If you were going to be tracked with $10B worth of surveilance looking for you and only you, you'd hide in Brazil in the favelas. They couldn't pick you out of the millions. There are similar places in the US to do the same thing, but in a foreign country, the search is harder, and less likely to work.
As I understand it, kaomoji are always faces (right-side up ones, at that!) where as emoticons and emoji can be anything.
The first emoticons were faces. The first emoji were faces. They expanded after that. That kaomoji didn't expand and gain popularity outside Japan doesn't diminish the start and original purpose of the others. Emoticon preceded kaomoji by a couple years, enough for someone to have seen it, adjust it, and had it gain a little popularity with the "enhancements". But the timeline is such that it looks clear that Emoticon was first, and the others are all derivative of it. Though the confusion of people who grew up with emoji who never heard emoticon using emoji to include all emoticon and kaomoji, such that someone who lived through it would be confused at the usage.:P
Also "emoji" is not a abreviation of "emotional ji" ("ji"="character"), as some might think. It's a combination of "e" and "moji", not "emo" and "ji".
Han-ji (kanji) is the Han character set. Roma-ji is the Roma(n) character set. So emo-ji would be the emo character set. It's possible it's both. The reason it caught on is that both e-moji and emo-ji made sense, perhaps one to one group of people more than the other, but they are both valid and consistent.
I don't know when the first emojis were used, but I remember them in the early '90s. Emotion-icons, emoticons, were tags to express emotions over the emotionless text.;):P:O and others. They became single graphic icons about the time they changed names to emoji. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Gopher was closer to the first Yahoo, and some of the first national ISPs (that were gateways, and not ISPs as we know it today). Indexes, and less free-form. WWW was designed to allow more freedom.
I don't see how the 1% is calculated. it's almost all "personal income tax" and isn't split up, and there isn't a clear definition of the rate the tax is calculated from. The 1% have an AGI much less than the gross income, and the rate seems to be on "adjusted" income, something much more adjusted for the 1% than the rest. The poor can't afford to adjust their income.
Pharma research may stop, but medical research would jump ahead. Having lived outside the US for a while, I've noticed the large number of medical studies that were done outside the US that the US uses. Medical research happens all over the world. Pharma research happens almost exclusively in the US. Because of the pro-monopoly laws in the US, not because of any inherent difference. The skills are available anywhere, and would be done elsewhere, if the big pharma weren't working almost exclusively in the US for the best profits. If anything, it'd be cheaper, and get better results, when the US stops doing research.
Competition, in fact, is the only thing that has ever caused healthcare costs to decrease.
So technology has never had any effect on the cost of medical care? And you do know that there's no competition in the US system. It's the worst of all worlds. Yes, I know that your link addressed elective surgeries, but those aren't the same. They aren't necessary, and not covered by insurance.
When someone is having a heart attack, would you expect to shop hospitals for the one with the cheapest MRI, then shop for the hospital with the cheapest operating theater, then shop for a surgeon? No, competition is impossible. You go to the nearest place, because time to respond is more important than quality or cost.
I've asked the question many times, and no one has ever been able to explain how a single-payer system, with no competitors, would not eventually incur much higher costs because it has turned into a bloated bureaucracy that delivers rotten healthcare -- like that which our veterans get from the VA -- and operates as inefficiently as a DMV.
Everyone I've seen present that lie, has had the answer explained to them many times, and simply rejected all the answers.
On the off chance you are the only person in the world asking that question who isn't a liar, here's an explanation:
The hospitals are run exactly the same, but under a form of price-fixing. The "prices" are set by a central decision board. They are compared internationally, and based on actual costs. As with all costs in the government, the medical board's budget is set by Congress (or the equivalent). The "bloat" in government is not from "runaway bureaucracy". The IRS is about 10x more efficient than the private sector. At least based on the costs from private companies like ADP to provide similar services. And SS is, for costs that resemble a low-cost (no risk) mutual fund, also much much cheaper than the private sector.
The "inefficiencies" in these organizations are from the extra functions they perform, as required by law, not by the bureaucratic operations within them.
The budget is imposed by law. If they are too expensive, it's because the law is bad. The VA is actually not bad, from a cost perspective. At least, not when you correct for the types of things they do. They are more expensive per-person than a private clinic, but the private clinic is $200 per person or less, handing out antibiotics for a cold and seeing the next person as quickly as possible, while the VA is replacing limbs, and treating PTSD.
The price pressure is from the central authority. Keeping costs down in one central place is easier than every hospital and private practice. Surprisingly, places with price fixing (capping doctor's pay) don't have any problems with shortages of doctors. Look at the systems in the UK, Australia, and the like. No cost blow-outs, and much much more efficient than the US private system.
There, your question was answered. Will you accept an answer, or lie that it's not what you wanted, to nobody has ever answered?
There is no "promised" SS income. Yes, I've paid in long enough for "projected" statements, but they explicitly say that they are projections, not promises, and that they can and will change before you receive any benefits.
That you don't understand doesn't make everyone else wrong.
And you understand that "single-payer health care" isn't going to be magically cheaper (to fund) than Medicare, right?
The UK spends less per person to cover 100% of people than the US, who collects more money per taxpayer to cover only a fraction of the population. Universal health care is cheaper than Medicare. I know it won't be magic, but I do know how to use an "example." Would you like me to define that word for you? You obviously don't know what it means.
Slashdot Mirror
No cost to the person receiving the good or service is the exact definition of free. That someone else pays is implied, but in no way diminishes the fact it is free.
The article looked at that, and found 90%+ of people live in a place where they can charge.
That's illegal in some places. You can use the auto-fill, but must attend the vehicle at all times, in case of problem.
And I've never seen a place that will let you pay with the hose in the car. To help fight drive-off with hose in tank, the pumps I've seen *all* require the hose to be replaced before the register inside will allow the cashier to ring up the sale. So your regular example sounds fictitious.
Where are you where you can pay with the hose still in the tank? And, though you'll not give a location, I'd look up the regulations on filling if you did.
because in the time it takes for you to plug in and unplug the car a gas will still go farther ?
It takes 2 seconds to plug in, and 2 seconds to unplug, those 4 seconds, spaced long enough apart will get you much more distance than 4 seconds of fueling a gasoline car.
how far do you get if you stop charging after 15 minutes ?
Fast charger will get a good charge in 15 minutes.
forgot something for dinner, but the commute almost burns the charge. well those 15 mins of charge time is gonna be useless.
For one, your commute leaves you with more than enough to get ingredients from your local supermarket, and the 15 minute charge would be more than enough, if you were on empty when you got home.
Your argument sounds like "I don't like electric, and I don't want anyone having an opinion that differs with mine." If you don't like them, fine, but no reason to go out of your way to bash them. If they are as horrible and useless as you claim, just wait until 100 people buy them, and the piles of complaints will silence the zealots. Oh wait, there are hundreds of thousands of them on the road, and there aren't complaints by the owners about that. Either there's a massive conspiracy to silence complaints, or the problems you complain about simply aren't a problem.
Most (more than 90%) have power where they park. If you disagree with the facts, take them up with those that did the study, rather than raging all over those who are just pointing out the facts in the article. Shooting the messenger is more fun, because they are easier to find, and more likely to not bother to argue the point, as it's obviously not worth it.
Most places have periodic inspections. Conduct those with an odo check, and tack on a mileage fee. Problem solved. Or tax electricity for transportation. That'd have the additional effect of driving greater efficiencies. The problem isn't hard to solve.
It charges long enough for 90% of people to use it as their only car. Everything else is a deflection by you. That he didn't play your game doesn't make it a "deflection". Fot 90% of people, they'll be parked in a location they can charge to get then through the next day. Whether you claim to be in the 10%, and thus the 90% are stupid for not demanding more, is irrelevant to the facts.
I didn't pay to read the whole thing, but the summary implies charging was considered in that 90%. Most people park in a location where charging isn't an issue. Apparently 90+%.
Do you think a generic manager could step in and manager a newspaper without intimate knowledge of the newspaper business? How well do you think that company would do if it actually happened?
Depends on the manager. A good manager can manage outside their expertise.
When I was in college, I tutored people. In one case, someone came to me for tutoring in a subject I didn't know anything about. I was able to successfully tutor them, with no knowledge in the field. Of course, in the process of tutoring, I learned lots, but walking someone through the work, asking them to think about the problem, and explain the process to get the answer is the same across most academic subjects. Actually teaching them might have been impossible, but directing their self-study to increase comprehension and retention (thus grades) was doable without any knowledge of the subject.
My experience with management is the same. Someone could manage outside their expertise, but it'll be harder. Find experts, and trust them. Let them do the work, direct them, without controlling them. Passion, dedication, and expert knowledge will be missing, but the ability to manage doesn't require specific knowledge of the industry.
The studies I've seen are that it's easy to "kill" trolls. If you mask them such that they can see their post, and nobody responds, they rage-quit. They exist to annoy. They don't serve any other purpose. When they don't get responses, they get frustrated, and leave. If a normal person posts, and doesn't get responses, they assume everyone heard and agreed. When a troll doesn't get responses, they assume they didn't piss off anyone enough to cause a response. Silently filtering out trolls doesn't harm anyone. If the person filtered out for a month quits, then they were most likely a troll, not a normal. If the person continues posting after a month, then they aren't a troll. So an automated troll filter would mask responses randomly for a period of time. Though, nobody has studied whether this filters trolls if the trolls know the process exists.
If the item is confiscated by the police and re-distributed, that's not "giving back" anything. When you use an invalid analogy, it doesn't work. Hans Reiser didn't have to cooperate with his prosecution by producing his murdered wife. Though, after being convicted of murder, he produced the body, in exchange for a reduced charge/sentence.
You can pull an arrow out of your dead target and use it again.
Yes, you could, how many times will it work? Twice? Ten times? Once, for fun, I shot at a tree. 0% of the arrows were re-usable after that.
Sorry I deflated your internet tough guy routine with facts.
Yeah, your magic indestructible arrows, and 10,000 people per day lining up to break in, but they wait orderly in a line so you can shoot them all, one at a time, and take your magic arrow out and re-use it for the next.
.22 is a one-shot kill. Are you going to continue being a lying sack of shit, or are you going to act more than your 12 years? I did say that a shot to the chest would stop someone. a .22 to the leg won't take you down, but a hit to the chest will take out a lung or heart. A gut shot won't kill either. Well, it will eventually, from an infection, but the .22 doesn't carry enough energy to kill with hydrostatic shock, where a .44 could hit in the gut, and miss everything vital, and still kill. a .22 would have to hit something vital to kill. And no, you won't shrug off a .22 in the lung. That's fatal, and if not immediately so, it'll prevent you from breathing freely, and will eliminate the ability and will to fight.
My simple point is that:
1) you underestimate the amount of ammunition hoarded by the preppers.
2) Your magic arrow solution is much more stupid than anything you are accusing me of.
3) I never claimed that a
You refuse to answer clear questions designed to promote honest debate, and lie about what I say, and just ad hominem all over the place. Yes, for the first time, I insulted you, but you've been doing it from the start, because you know the facts aren't on your side, and all you have is badgering and insulting anyone you argue with, until they give up, so you can declare victory. Congratulations on winning every Internet fight, despite never being correct.
You really suck at planning. How many shots per day do you think you'll average? Would that be vastly different if you were using a bow or a firearm?
.22 you make fun of, and good for about as many shots each. Especially at the start of the apocalypse, firearms will be vastly superior. The rate of fire and reload will protect the owner at the start, when roving gangs of looters try to rush them.
Let's say you are 12, because you act like it. Then, let's (wrongly) assume life expectancy doesn't change after an apocalypse. So that's 67 years, or about 25,000 days. So if you average 1 shot per day, that's 25k bullets/arrows. If you average 10 shots per day, that's 250k. Your arrows are less lethal than the
And 10-20 years later, they can make a bow, if they need. Starting with an inferior weapon with some delusions of longevity in the apocalypse seems a bit insane, even worse than the preppers you make fun of.
And because you are assuming the opposite, I'll let you know that I'm not a prepper, own no guns (and no bow, because here they are firearms), but am proficient with both bows and guns.
Hunting for food in an apocolypse would be dificult. Imagine today, but where every other hunter wants you dead. You wouldn't leave the safety of your compound. Your meat would be locally grown, or you'd become a vegetarian. What would you hunt for? Deer? Where are you where you can walk to an area with numerous deer? Because you can't drive there, because fuel wouldn't last you "years", again, unless you are cooking your own. And yes, a single .22 in the chest would stop any unarmored intruder. If they are armored, aim for the eye, or having a backup firearm with greater penetration.
How long do you think 1000 rounds would last you?
If you have 1000 bullets, and shoot 10 people outside your house a day, the pile of rotting corpses would serve as a deterrent. and if you have more than 10 raiders a day trying to break into your compound, you should have spend more time/effort disguising your compound, rather than preparations to defend it.
The US manufactures about 10 bullets for every person on the planet. There's no shortage of ammo, just a distribution problem. And you don't need that much. After the first 10 corpses pile up at the "keep out" sign, even the aggressive raiders, will get the hint. And a tin of 1,000 .22LR will not cost more than the gun pile the nuts have.
Only if they know where to look. If you walked to Brazil and lived in the Amazon, nobody would ever find you there. If you were going to be tracked with $10B worth of surveilance looking for you and only you, you'd hide in Brazil in the favelas. They couldn't pick you out of the millions. There are similar places in the US to do the same thing, but in a foreign country, the search is harder, and less likely to work.
As I understand it, kaomoji are always faces (right-side up ones, at that!) where as emoticons and emoji can be anything.
The first emoticons were faces. The first emoji were faces. They expanded after that. That kaomoji didn't expand and gain popularity outside Japan doesn't diminish the start and original purpose of the others. Emoticon preceded kaomoji by a couple years, enough for someone to have seen it, adjust it, and had it gain a little popularity with the "enhancements". But the timeline is such that it looks clear that Emoticon was first, and the others are all derivative of it. Though the confusion of people who grew up with emoji who never heard emoticon using emoji to include all emoticon and kaomoji, such that someone who lived through it would be confused at the usage. :P
Also "emoji" is not a abreviation of "emotional ji" ("ji"="character"), as some might think. It's a combination of "e" and "moji", not "emo" and "ji".
Han-ji (kanji) is the Han character set. Roma-ji is the Roma(n) character set. So emo-ji would be the emo character set. It's possible it's both. The reason it caught on is that both e-moji and emo-ji made sense, perhaps one to one group of people more than the other, but they are both valid and consistent.
emojiis (whatever they are)
I don't know when the first emojis were used, but I remember them in the early '90s. Emotion-icons, emoticons, were tags to express emotions over the emotionless text. ;) :P :O and others. They became single graphic icons about the time they changed names to emoji. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Gopher was closer to the first Yahoo, and some of the first national ISPs (that were gateways, and not ISPs as we know it today). Indexes, and less free-form. WWW was designed to allow more freedom.
I lived through both, and both made sense to me.
I don't see how the 1% is calculated. it's almost all "personal income tax" and isn't split up, and there isn't a clear definition of the rate the tax is calculated from. The 1% have an AGI much less than the gross income, and the rate seems to be on "adjusted" income, something much more adjusted for the 1% than the rest. The poor can't afford to adjust their income.
Pharma research may stop, but medical research would jump ahead. Having lived outside the US for a while, I've noticed the large number of medical studies that were done outside the US that the US uses. Medical research happens all over the world. Pharma research happens almost exclusively in the US. Because of the pro-monopoly laws in the US, not because of any inherent difference. The skills are available anywhere, and would be done elsewhere, if the big pharma weren't working almost exclusively in the US for the best profits. If anything, it'd be cheaper, and get better results, when the US stops doing research.
That you are an exception doesn't make that false.
Competition, in fact, is the only thing that has ever caused healthcare costs to decrease.
So technology has never had any effect on the cost of medical care? And you do know that there's no competition in the US system. It's the worst of all worlds. Yes, I know that your link addressed elective surgeries, but those aren't the same. They aren't necessary, and not covered by insurance.
When someone is having a heart attack, would you expect to shop hospitals for the one with the cheapest MRI, then shop for the hospital with the cheapest operating theater, then shop for a surgeon? No, competition is impossible. You go to the nearest place, because time to respond is more important than quality or cost.
I've asked the question many times, and no one has ever been able to explain how a single-payer system, with no competitors, would not eventually incur much higher costs because it has turned into a bloated bureaucracy that delivers rotten healthcare -- like that which our veterans get from the VA -- and operates as inefficiently as a DMV.
Everyone I've seen present that lie, has had the answer explained to them many times, and simply rejected all the answers.
On the off chance you are the only person in the world asking that question who isn't a liar, here's an explanation:
The hospitals are run exactly the same, but under a form of price-fixing. The "prices" are set by a central decision board. They are compared internationally, and based on actual costs. As with all costs in the government, the medical board's budget is set by Congress (or the equivalent). The "bloat" in government is not from "runaway bureaucracy". The IRS is about 10x more efficient than the private sector. At least based on the costs from private companies like ADP to provide similar services. And SS is, for costs that resemble a low-cost (no risk) mutual fund, also much much cheaper than the private sector.
The "inefficiencies" in these organizations are from the extra functions they perform, as required by law, not by the bureaucratic operations within them.
The budget is imposed by law. If they are too expensive, it's because the law is bad. The VA is actually not bad, from a cost perspective. At least, not when you correct for the types of things they do. They are more expensive per-person than a private clinic, but the private clinic is $200 per person or less, handing out antibiotics for a cold and seeing the next person as quickly as possible, while the VA is replacing limbs, and treating PTSD.
The price pressure is from the central authority. Keeping costs down in one central place is easier than every hospital and private practice. Surprisingly, places with price fixing (capping doctor's pay) don't have any problems with shortages of doctors. Look at the systems in the UK, Australia, and the like. No cost blow-outs, and much much more efficient than the US private system.
There, your question was answered. Will you accept an answer, or lie that it's not what you wanted, to nobody has ever answered?
My promised SS income
There is no "promised" SS income. Yes, I've paid in long enough for "projected" statements, but they explicitly say that they are projections, not promises, and that they can and will change before you receive any benefits.
That you don't understand doesn't make everyone else wrong.
And you understand that "single-payer health care" isn't going to be magically cheaper (to fund) than Medicare, right?
The UK spends less per person to cover 100% of people than the US, who collects more money per taxpayer to cover only a fraction of the population. Universal health care is cheaper than Medicare. I know it won't be magic, but I do know how to use an "example." Would you like me to define that word for you? You obviously don't know what it means.