BF2S Forums The 2% Illusion... Take everything they earn, and it still won't be

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

FEOS wrote:

No, it won't. No, they won't.

Yes, it will. Yes, they will.

Nope. And nope.

The employers still pay the insurance premiums. That's the part you keep missing. They just pay the govt instead of private companies.

And until there is tort reform, the cost of medical care will not drop...no matter what socialist scheme The Obama comes up with.

The part you keep missing is that they'll pay the government a lot less money, unless of course you genuinely believe that the US is the most incompitent of all the developed countries by an absolute mile.

Oh and based on the UK, socialising medical insurance actually is a very clever scheme that Obama could use that would reduce the costs associated with court cases, not that tort reform is even the major reason that the US system coast so much, it's due to the inherent inefficiencies of administering vast numbers of different healthcare policies as opposed to just one policy.

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

FEOS wrote:

And don't forget 1/10th the size/population (or smaller).

1/3.75 in the case of Germany, hardly a spectacular difference when it also works for counties 1/20th the size of Germany.

The idea that it won't work in the US because it's so big lacks any actual reasoning behind it, especially as nobody's ever actually tried it. The police, fire service, military, waste disposal etc. still work in America despite it being a big country, so why can't healthcare? It may even be more efficient as a lot of admin requirements don't increase in cost linearly with the size of program.
(technically the US has tried it with healthcare in a way with the relatively successful Medicare and Medicaid programs).

Those services are paid for with local taxes, not nationally (except for military, of course).

Medicare and Medicaid are far from "successful" programs. Medicaid is a state-run program that has different standards of care and payment from state to state. Medicare is basically for the elderly. Trust me on this. My son is on Medicaid and my family uses socialized, federal govt-run medical insurance. It's not the utopia you portray it to be. It has huge administrative overhead, is not consistent from region to region, and has the same bullshit constraints that private insurers do.

Oh...and because it works for countries 1/3 and 1/60 the size of the US, it should work for the US as well? Great logic there.

Can you actually think of any actual reason why it wouldn't work? Unless you can think of a compelling reason why it would completely fail if you increase the populace size by x3.75 then you have to assume it'll work as it has been shown to works across such a large change in scales.

The admin costs per person of Medicare and Medicaid are several times smaller than that of the private sector.

If the scales scare you that much, why not have 50 universal state healthcare systems that have to give care up to a Federally determined level? Competition between states to keep the population within the state would result in a market driven system keeping standards up and costs minimised, without the crazy admin costs generated by the private system.

Narupug wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Narupug wrote:

Ugh ok really Britain is socialist? Canada is Socialist? France is socialist? Those are major European nations that do just fine with universal health care.

Ugh ok. Did I call any of those countries socialist? No.

Is universal health care (and a lot of other Obama initiatives) a socialist concept? Yes.

Those two conflict, all of those countries have Universal Health care to some degree, yet you say you never called them socialist even though you just specifically stated that it was a socialist concept.

There are socialist programs running in the US right now, yet the US isn't a socialist country. They do not conflict at all.

Implementation of a socialist concept does not equate to being a socialist country. It is, however, a slippery slope. And The Obama is greasing the slope up and pushing the wagon over the edge.

PureFodder wrote:

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

1/3.75 in the case of Germany, hardly a spectacular difference when it also works for counties 1/20th the size of Germany.

The idea that it won't work in the US because it's so big lacks any actual reasoning behind it, especially as nobody's ever actually tried it. The police, fire service, military, waste disposal etc. still work in America despite it being a big country, so why can't healthcare? It may even be more efficient as a lot of admin requirements don't increase in cost linearly with the size of program.
(technically the US has tried it with healthcare in a way with the relatively successful Medicare and Medicaid programs).

Those services are paid for with local taxes, not nationally (except for military, of course).

Medicare and Medicaid are far from "successful" programs. Medicaid is a state-run program that has different standards of care and payment from state to state. Medicare is basically for the elderly. Trust me on this. My son is on Medicaid and my family uses socialized, federal govt-run medical insurance. It's not the utopia you portray it to be. It has huge administrative overhead, is not consistent from region to region, and has the same bullshit constraints that private insurers do.

Oh...and because it works for countries 1/3 and 1/60 the size of the US, it should work for the US as well? Great logic there.

Can you actually think of any actual reason why it wouldn't work? Unless you can think of a compelling reason why it would completely fail if you increase the populace size by x3.75 then you have to assume it'll work as it has been shown to works across such a large change in scales.

The admin costs per person of Medicare and Medicaid are several times smaller than that of the private sector.

If the scales scare you that much, why not have 50 universal state healthcare systems that have to give care up to a Federally determined level? Competition between states to keep the population within the state would result in a market driven system keeping standards up and costs minimised, without the crazy admin costs generated by the private system.

I have said repeatedly that running a program like that at the state level would be preferred to a national-level program. The Federal government cannot do anything that is simultaneously effective and efficient due to scale and the variations that must be taken into account for a single program to cover the entire demographic.

States, however, can. Medicaid is far more efficient than Medicare...but the biggest problem with them is that they pay far lower for everything than other plans. My son had some tests run recently. When we got the explanation of benefits (EOB), it showed charges of around $430 for the tests. Guess how much our federal insurance agreed to pay? $43. One-tenth of what was charged. Very likely far less than it cost that lab to collect the sample, run the tests, and document them. How do you reconcile that?

Hospitals hate that because they lose money. Doctors hate it because they lose money. And why is that? Because they have to pay outrageous malpractice insurance premiums...hence the need for tort reform to make a country-wide implementation workable.

Here is another way to look at the tax issue

You can look at the $200k+ tax like this.
The tax on the $200k+ crowd isn't going to pay for national healthcare. Instead the $200k+ taxation is going to pay for the wallstreet bailout. After all its the wallstreet crowd that makes $200k+ and other people who earn $200k+ are the ones that invest and use wallstreet most. So really its like a user pay tax. and the wallstreet crowd are employees and they are being taxed and that tax money is going to their employers to save their jobs. If you look at it like that then the tax looks very fair to me.

As far as national healthcare, the ordinary citizens already pays enough in tax AND insurance premiums to fund a national healthcare system, so there really won't be a loss of net income, just a reshuffling of where the money is going.

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

FEOS wrote:

No, it won't. No, they won't.

Yes, it will. Yes, they will.

Nope. And nope.

The employers still pay the insurance premiums. That's the part you keep missing. They just pay the govt instead of private companies.

And until there is tort reform, the cost of medical care will not drop...no matter what socialist scheme The Obama comes up with.

Nope.
which would you prefer to pay.
Cost of medicine + a profit margin or Cost of medicine?
Spoiler (highlight to read):
BTW 'profits' are not usually negative


And why has no one responded to my previous post?
Is it upsetting to learn that the majority of democrats (I mean liberal, entitlement, lazy, irresponsible, big government (whatever the fuck that means), welfare leeching scum (I'm sure I left some out)) actually earn, yes EARN a lot more money then the Republicans do?

I wonder how they earn all this extra money? If we believe Lowing its by sitting around on a couch all day taking money from them good old hard working responisble Republicans who earn on average far less then them.

Last edited by DrunkFace (2009-02-26 20:20:46)

DrunkFace wrote:

No business is going to expand and hire new staff if there is no demand for their product. You have to start at the consumer and get them spending money.

What I don't understand is why all the rich people vote for these 'liberal bastards' so they can take all their hard earned money and the poor vote against them.
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/726/incomes.jpg
source

The best thing about a socialised health system is it is not run for profit. The cost should more or less be the same but because there is no 'profit' needed to be a viable business the consumer no longer needs to pay the extra premiums.

If this is what you mean by your previous post, I suggest you get more data than this to support your hypothesis that whether a state went red or blue in the 2004 election correlated to some unprovenanced data about average wages in said states somehow means what you say it means.

That's the problem with statistics in that form...you can make them support whatever you want.

Your theory about socialized medicine is flawed. Medical companies still have to make money. Suppliers still have to make money. Even if you remove the profit margin from hospitals, that is a pittance compared to the enduring profit margin requirements of the aforementioned industries. Unless you expect the federal government to become the sole provider (to include R&D and production) of all medication, medical supplies, services, etc.

And if that's what you're thinking, you are living in lala land.

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Those services are paid for with local taxes, not nationally (except for military, of course).

Medicare and Medicaid are far from "successful" programs. Medicaid is a state-run program that has different standards of care and payment from state to state. Medicare is basically for the elderly. Trust me on this. My son is on Medicaid and my family uses socialized, federal govt-run medical insurance. It's not the utopia you portray it to be. It has huge administrative overhead, is not consistent from region to region, and has the same bullshit constraints that private insurers do.

Oh...and because it works for countries 1/3 and 1/60 the size of the US, it should work for the US as well? Great logic there.

Can you actually think of any actual reason why it wouldn't work? Unless you can think of a compelling reason why it would completely fail if you increase the populace size by x3.75 then you have to assume it'll work as it has been shown to works across such a large change in scales.

The admin costs per person of Medicare and Medicaid are several times smaller than that of the private sector.

If the scales scare you that much, why not have 50 universal state healthcare systems that have to give care up to a Federally determined level? Competition between states to keep the population within the state would result in a market driven system keeping standards up and costs minimised, without the crazy admin costs generated by the private system.

I have said repeatedly that running a program like that at the state level would be preferred to a national-level program. The Federal government cannot do anything that is simultaneously effective and efficient due to scale and the variations that must be taken into account for a single program to cover the entire demographic.

States, however, can. Medicaid is far more efficient than Medicare...but the biggest problem with them is that they pay far lower for everything than other plans. My son had some tests run recently. When we got the explanation of benefits (EOB), it showed charges of around $430 for the tests. Guess how much our federal insurance agreed to pay? $43. One-tenth of what was charged. Very likely far less than it cost that lab to collect the sample, run the tests, and document them. How do you reconcile that?

Hospitals hate that because they lose money. Doctors hate it because they lose money. And why is that? Because they have to pay outrageous malpractice insurance premiums...hence the need for tort reform to make a country-wide implementation workable.

As I said, socialise medical malpractice insurance and the doctors no longer have to worry about it.

As far as costs go, I've said nothing about the costs of providing medicine, only the admin costs that the private and universal systems generate. Vast admin costs are simply a product of the private system.

As far as the overall cost of the system goes, the relative costs of the US tort system have remained effectively the same since the mid 80's yet the cost of the US medical system has exploded and is expected to explode further.
http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/getwebca … _FINAL.pdf
The US tort system is relatively in check already and simply doesn't put out the numbers to be the cause of the problems in the US medical system. Other countries with much cheaper healthcare systems also have fairly similar tort costs to the US and (the UK has 30% less tort cases than the US and the average payout per case is actually slightly higher). Tort reform isn't the reson for these costs.

Varegg wrote:

lowing wrote:

Varegg wrote:

This is old news tbh but still some egoists refuse to believe it, why analyze and improve a situation when you can just blame the people behind it rather than those cut throat brokers and financial institutions that bleeded the system for all it was worth with fat bonus salaries ...

@lowing: Greed is what made this crisis and still fuels it, short time profits and "I don't give a shit" mentality is the factors you can blame ... where is the neighbourly love now when millions have lost their work and even more will ... you say cut the taxes for those 5% of the population that actually have made money off this crisis and ain't giving none of it back ... I applaud your wisdom on economic issues ...

What is greed? define it for me. Tell me who is to judge how much is too much for a person to acquire. Tell me who is to judge when a person has earned enough. What is enough? WHat is the yard stick you are going to measure each of us with to determain if we should have what we worked for or we should give it away to someone else who didn't. WHo is the judge and what qualifies him to be so?

Nope, I say give the income taxes back to the people who paid them for the past 2 years, and then watch what happens when people start paying their bills and buy shit like cash for a new car, or a vacatation or home improvments.

That's your problem right there, you don't have a clue what greed is do you?

Greed is infectious and highly containable ... lets say you are a lawyer, financial consultant or brokers ...

Lawyer: Example referred to in another thread ... a lawyer contacts the Hudson river survivers and convince them to make a joint lawsuit to get money off the airline because of post traumatic stress. If you saw the 60 minutes program about the reunion between the crew and passangers you got the impression the passangers was just happy being alive. The lawyers instantly sees this as an oppurtunity to make some money and greed is what drives them and they feed off the greed they can plant in each of the survivors.

Financial consultant: He sells you a mortgage he knows you can't afford but it makes him more money that the mortgage you could have managed.

Broker: Sells stocks and saving products, gives out bad "advice" to maximize profits, he doesn't care if your pension is lost as long as he gets a higher provision than his collegues.

These are the kind of people you can blame for the economic crisis lowing or you can continue blaming whatever sheeple BS reason fits your agenda better ...

You failed to answer my question with all of your frustrated bullshit.

I am asking you how you plan on measuring greed. Who is going to be high executioner over-seeing it, and most importantly, how much are you gunna pay him to do so?

Ya see, your big solution is going to put even more govt. control over our personal lives. YOu may want it, hell, in Europe, you may need it, since you are not used to having to provide for yourselves. Most im America, however, do not need govt. in such a way nor do we want it. The only ones that do, are those that refuse to accept responsibility for themselves.

Now please answer my question on how you plan on measuring greed and by who.

lowing wrote:

Varegg wrote:

lowing wrote:

What is greed? define it for me. Tell me who is to judge how much is too much for a person to acquire. Tell me who is to judge when a person has earned enough. What is enough? WHat is the yard stick you are going to measure each of us with to determain if we should have what we worked for or we should give it away to someone else who didn't. WHo is the judge and what qualifies him to be so?

Nope, I say give the income taxes back to the people who paid them for the past 2 years, and then watch what happens when people start paying their bills and buy shit like cash for a new car, or a vacatation or home improvments.

That's your problem right there, you don't have a clue what greed is do you?

Greed is infectious and highly containable ... lets say you are a lawyer, financial consultant or brokers ...

Lawyer: Example referred to in another thread ... a lawyer contacts the Hudson river survivers and convince them to make a joint lawsuit to get money off the airline because of post traumatic stress. If you saw the 60 minutes program about the reunion between the crew and passangers you got the impression the passangers was just happy being alive. The lawyers instantly sees this as an oppurtunity to make some money and greed is what drives them and they feed off the greed they can plant in each of the survivors.

Financial consultant: He sells you a mortgage he knows you can't afford but it makes him more money that the mortgage you could have managed.

Broker: Sells stocks and saving products, gives out bad "advice" to maximize profits, he doesn't care if your pension is lost as long as he gets a higher provision than his collegues.

These are the kind of people you can blame for the economic crisis lowing or you can continue blaming whatever sheeple BS reason fits your agenda better ...

You failed to answer my question with all of your frustrated bullshit.

I am asking you how you plan on measuring greed. Who is going to be high executioner over-seeing it, and most importantly, how much are you gunna pay him to do so?

Ya see, your big solution is going to put even more govt. control over our personal lives. YOu may want it, hell, in Europe, you may need it, since you are not used to having to provide for yourselves. Most im America, however, do not need govt. in such a way nor do we want it. The only ones that do, are those that refuse to accept responsibility for themselves.

Now please answer my question on how you plan on measuring greed and by who.

Oops ... switch containable with contractible (I think) or maybe contageous is a better word in my previous post ...

How you measure greed?



You are just incredible, your questions and perception of this issue is just unbelievable ...

Lowing, I think the definition of greed has more to do with how the wealth is obtained rather than a dollar figure.

lowing wrote:

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

Lowing, I think the definition of greed has more to do with how the wealth is obtained rather than a dollar figure.

No, I have heard on this forum people spouting off as to what people should and should not have. IE, no one NEEDS 5 houses, no one needs a private jet etc....These statements fly into the face of ownership and not how it was obtained.

Also, if the wealth is obtained legally, what is your problem with it? Should a company owner NOT become wealthy through his risk taking, and efforts and decisions? THen once wealthy, should they not be allowed to do with it as they see fit and not as YOU see fit?



So again if you are going to legislate greed, what will the rule of measure be and who will be the one to decide if a person is greedy or not?

Legal or not, there is small little thing called ETHICS.  Just because something isn't illegal doesn't mean it isn't unethical.  Sure, independent business owners take risks, but all too often so do those in charge of corporations, of which stockholders are the owners of the company.  When they start taking risks to improve their bottom line at the expense of stockholders, that is another story altogether.

You're always griping about things like SSI, but what about people that were planning their retirements?  Many people have had to put off retirement because their IRA's, 401K's, and other investments are in the toilet; years worth of investments wiped out at this point.  All because of greed and some one that "took a chance".  How many people have seen not only their retirement money, but the money they use, or will use, for their child(ren)s college education (you know that education that will make them employable and productive members of society) go up in smoke, all because of greed and the chance that some one took?

lowing wrote:

Varegg wrote:

Will be so much fun to talk about universal healthcare with you lowing after some years when you can't possibly understand how genious it is and that it wasn't implemented before ...

Yeah right, this coming from countries that are 20 times as old as the US and a 1/64th as important on the world stage. Please try and remember, our economy affects yours, not the other way around.

Note, that is because european countries heavily invested in you hundreds of years ago,

though it's true that many Europeans have got their faces stuck up their own asses. That's especially true when you see the average european over here compare us to America. The baseline and normal way of thinking here is that you're all crazy rednecks loaded with guns, crime and inferior economic systems.

Though that's not the point, point is that healthcare is a fairly good idea. However there are numerous problems with it, like now in most countries healthcare quality is declining, while that of America is very high. Nevertheless, you can't blame someone if everything goes tits up. If his bussiness fails enormously due to the things someone else did wrong you've got a hard time trying to advocate the "it's your fault, your problem" mindset.

This is where a social care net comes into work, to give those people a second chance. Which by all means isn't such a bad initiative. Maybe when given that second chance people can contribute more to society, on the other hand they can leech most of their lives (tbh they should just force every slacker into working for the government, even if it's just cleaning trash bins just so that he isn't a heap of wasted money.)

Now if a person loses his limbs during surgery due to some weird disease that suddenly started spreading, I suppose that in America your family is responsible for taking care of you (or if you were born that way.) Now what if you either got no direct family anymore, or your family is incapable of caring for you? apparantly that's a lose-lose situation over there in America. Over here they tend to take care of their citizens more if everything goes wrong. I support this kind of government-help. It's good.

Not every idea about socialism is totally backwards, the backwards comes in when some nutter tries to implement it now in a time of economic crisis. This shit sucks, you can't expect a system that's based on working for a country that has positive economic growth to work when everything is failing hard, for example the DOW losing 50% of it's market value in the past few years. That's an indication of that it's all bad and that you SHOULDN'T invest in social systems at that time. First recover, then social systems.

Indeed, what makes a country going again is the opportunity for jobs. I suppose either a war or some genious Obama plan (which he doesn't seem to have) which would suddenly create thousands of jobs is the only way to get things going a little again.

p.s. I agree that taxing small business owners to solve an economic crisis is the most retarded plan ever.

Last edited by dayarath (2009-02-27 14:47:00)