General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 98

LOL, don't apologize. I wish I could communicate what you just did to most Trump supporters I encounter all the time in a way that they actually understand the logic and responsibility in everything you said. TBH I usually tend to not care much about politics, but when I get drawn into debates (sometimes discussions) with most Trump supporters I notice they tend to base their reasoning on the troll theory or spout "raw data" and lots of random-sounding political jargon at me that's supposed to give them a feeling of superiority I guess? I don't know. Just my personal experience.

Regarding the troll theory, while I agree with most everything you said, there is of course a legitimate danger of the reactionary "that's PC bullshit bro" voices drowning out more reasonable ones for being "too sensitive", etc. That's why I was wondering what concrete "anyone would have to realize they are a complete idjiot to debate this" sources of facts about trump are out there that prove how problematic his rhetoric is and beyond that how likely unfit someone with his personality type and career experience is for being president, etc. But with the way he seems to be so reactionary, manipulative and opportunistic it's difficult to differentiate between the reality and the reality show.

To be fair, I've actually met some more reasonable Trump supporters who are voting on him based on legitimate concerns with Hilary and they think his financial knowledge will lead to him improving the economy in a way that will improve their lives and a few other reasons that seem to make sense. I wish I was more informed and spent more time looking up obscure political literature or knowing where to find it to get a grip on being able to debate the crazier supporters better though, haha. Gonna spend a weekend researching in the near future I reckon.

 

How's Kansas doing with those right-side economics by the way?

 

Actually, my job is a determinant when it comes to my healthcare options. My entire argument, or gripe, is that if I was out of work, I'd be able to more easily afford the same quality of healthcare I cannot afford at the current moment.

Minimum wage where you have no insurance? Look up MediCAL and IEHP, both local to southern California and both require NO income what so ever. I'm paying for that with my taxes already, yet I can't use it!

My evidence is first hand, I SEE IT all of the time, or hear it occasionally.

 

Shit I have no idea, I'm just happy to have gotten out of there before i was completely corrupted. I've never felt so discriminated against in my life, also my wife who is Mexican had even worse experiences that I did.

I lived in Overland Park, KS where the population was mainly white, upper-middle class people. I come from the middle class, I am white, but even I didn't fit in over there. It was a really weird situation.

 

You didn't look up the worder "anecdotal" did you?

 

Why are you so insistent in arguing with me? I see what I see living in a not so great part of southern california, alright? I probably have a better understanding on some of these things than you do since I'm actually here.

 

Kansas is crumbling because they cut public spending and services in the name of "taxes bad, freedom good." Their economy, much like Wisconsin and Louisiana who employed similar strategies, is dog shit. Their kids are uneducated and their people are poor. But, hey, at least there aren't hands in their pockets. There just isn't any money in them either.

 

Because that's anecdotal evidence and is useless

 

Right...the problem there isn't that there's a medical insurance program that covers the poor, but the fact that there isn't a medical insurance program that covers everyone else. You seem to be angry at the government for helping on the most vulnerable instead of being angry at your employer for cutting corners by listening you as a contractor, or at the private insurance industry for fucking hard working people out of the ability to afford insurance.

This is exactly how health care is rationed in the US, BTW. People talk about "rationing" in single payer systems like Canada that leads to 'wait times', but it's rationed here too...we just do it through prices that prevent a fifth of the population from accessing the care at all.

 

They do have good schools in eastern KS, for sure, my kids went to a top rated school in the entire country...but you pay for it, which is odd since it's a public school.

Every person that I encountered who was born/raised in KS/MO lived by the mentality of "keep government out of everything", so that included taxes and the like.

 

Why would we want a single entity determining prices for medical care? When has that ever panned out?

How are people prevented from using healthcare services unnecessarily?

 

I'm just angry that I can't afford it, regardless of my salary. I mean, I CAN afford it, but I wouldn't be able to maintain the same lifestyle for my wife and kids.

Poor me, yea I get it.

 

Yeah fucking poor you who gives a shit about your lifestyle people are dying for fucks sake and you aren't interested in finding an answer for them. And youre trying to draw sympathy lol

 

The argument against single-payer that I'm seeing only exists if you believe that all people are isolated individuals, having nothing to do with one another and entering into a world complete free of context. It is, in other words, a fiction. The other fiction is this idea that one is paying for other people. If anything, the tax codes in America and the punitive charges one incurs living day to day life are regressive, so, as a portion of their total income, they're likely paying more taxes; then, there is the matter of how tax cuts to upper tax brackets, like someone making over a hundred grand a year, is actually a displacement of cost on to the working poor. The strange thing about this is watching ideology do its work so thoroughly and misdirecting anger towards those who are barely surviving in the system, as opposed to those who perpetuate it. They've made these subjects that genuinely feel that, if someone gets something, they lose something.

 

Well, I'm trying to stay civil with you on the topic since ti's apparent (and you admitted it yourself) that it's not anything you ever looked deeply into. So I won't get into the "poor me" stuff lol...at least not yet.

I get that your angry you can't afford it, but that's kind of the reason why many here advocate for a public option of some sort. The ACA helped out a lot of people, but at the end of the day it was still trying to rely on market forces to make health care more affordable. The problem with market forces is without strict regulation, profit (and in these days, short term profit) will be the end all-be all. Without that regulation, someone is always going to be in the group that "loses". The ACA, much like every other policy, was going to have "winners" and "losers", and the argument from many supporters was always that the winners would out number the losers. That is probably true. You happen to fall into the demographic that was almost always going to be the one most likely to be "losers"--Middle class/upper middle class people with jobs that didn't pay for their employee's health insurance. That's not to say you can't benefit from the ACA, as I def think having an ACA plan would ahve been a big help to you guys when your son had those medical issues, but rather it's harder for you to get the benefits because you don't get the tax credits and all that.

A public option takes care of most of those problems because it eliminates the need for health insurance, negotiates prices with hospitals and doctors with much more leverage, frees up billions of dollars of capital for businesses who no longer feel obligated to provide health insurance to employees, etc. They would also almost assuredly need to raise salaries to stay competitive in attracting skilled labor, which means more money in peoples pockets, even after the resulting tax increase needed to pay for a single payer system. And you could always still have private insurance that covers things on top of public health care too. Or if they did it like Australia, you could have "public hospitals" and "private hospitals" and such where people could use public hospitals for the basics but maybe go to a private place for a surgery or etc. Lots of ways to do it, really.

 

I'm not against the idea of everyone having the same access to equal healthcare...you'd have to be a pretty fucked up person to be against the IDEA of that.

I just want something planned out to the "T" and we'll see how it goes from there. Many people jump on the bandwagon of "free healthcare for everyone!", but seem to forget that the money needed to fund such an endeavor needs to come from somewhere. Then once the planned taxation of certain brackets comes forward, the people praising the idea for free healthcare complain of taxes...so it's a lose-lose in the current state of things.

Slightly off topic, but I had this exact same conversation with someone at my previous job in KS and his views were "why should I pay the same amount of money as the terminally ill person?"

Basically saying it's not fair if we all put in $10/week or whatever. Because some people wouldn't use the services and it would be unfair to pay for something we don't use.

Also, what would happen with medical doctor salaries in this case? Who pays their salary, the hospital or the insurance companies?

I like the idea of having the option for a private policy on top of the federal program, as long as that federal program doesn't make the private policies skyrocket (like they are now).

The private hospital idea is also good, but there are too many "gimme gimme" people that will think it's unfair that they aren't allowed to be treated there.

 

Insurance is paying for something you don't use. That's literally the definition of insurance

 

wanting to get medical treatment so you don't die isn't being "gimme gimme" it's wanting to live despite being poor, which I guess your opinion on has been made quite clear

 

I know that.

 

Again, might be a state thing, but here in California, you can get what you need if you have no income. I've personally been there and have taken advantage of such programs.

 

how often do you think to yourself "y'know, i'm bored. imma go to the hospital and get an MRI or invasive procedure!"

 

There's been plenty of plans in the past that were pretty detailed. The Americare Act seems like a good place to start, IMO.

That's basically a philosophical question that comes down to what you think it means to be part of a society, and how much you really feel connected to your "fellow Americans". That's the type of logic that leads down the "well why should I pay for other children's education" or "why should I fund roads that I'll never personally use". The answer is a pretty simple one, IMO, and it's that America is made better when people are better educated, and when infrastructure allows for business and tourism to be conducted smoothly..and, IMO, it's made better when the people around me are both healthy and financially protected from bankruptcy as a result of medical bills--which are unavoidable compared to most everything else in life. The Housing market is better when people aren't foreclosing on their homes because they have medical debt, the economy is stronger when people have money to spend instead of paying for medical bills, etc.

There's no real one set way doctors are paid. I can't find my health policy textbook right now, but if I remember correctly, most doctors in single payer systems get paid by capitation payments--they get a set amount for each patient, per period of time they're assigned that patient, and they get paid regardless of whether or not that patient uses service. Our system here in America is different. Doctors and hospitals get paid on what is basically a "fee-for-service" model--each time someone uses a service, the doctor or hospital gets paid. The easiest and most visible example of this would be a surgeon, who often gets paid a set amount for every surgery he performs. The biggest problem with this system is it can incentivize perverse practices--if a hospital or doctor gets paid each time you use their service, then they want you to continue to use their services so they can get paid. And it gets even more confusing when you get into different insurance companies--the same doctor in the same hospital could, in theory, get paid two different rates by two different insurance companies for the exact same surgery. But that's getting a little into the weeds, tryign to keep it more basic here.

Richter is a med student who probably has much more insight on how doctors get paid and all that. I have long said that any move to a single payer system here in America would have to include an overhaul of medical school. Or, more accurately, how we force med students to pay for school. Doctors would almost definitely get at least a little bit of a pay cut in a single payer system, and you can't expect people to want to become doctors if they're getting paid less but still paying 200K for medical school.

 

Dr. Strong, I think the point is, healthcare is a human right. Bottom line. I don't care who has to pay, so that people can be able to live. But yes, to your point, single payer would cost a lot of money, but that is offset by the alleviation of the inflated and punitive costs in this country. This can be done in many ways. Personally, I think all private insurance companies should be nationalized, eliminate market forces entirely and the CEO's summarily fired with no compensation and charged with price gouging.

 

I don't think anyone does. But plenty of people go to the ER for non-life threatening ailments rather than heading to an urgent care facility or waiting to contact their doctor. I don't blame them when they can pay little to nothing to do so, but it drives up costs considerably and denies people who need real emergency care.

Similarly, people who go see a doctor for every little thing add to the problem, but when your co-pay is 20 bucks why not go? Hell, I did it. Raise that to 75 or 100 dollars (which also happened to me) and all of a sudden that ache or pain that seemed troublesome is suddenly not so urgent. The desire to take care of yourself so doctor's visits become infrequent also occurs.

Removing the price interaction from the patient initiates a behavioral change. That is pretty undeniable.

 

I mean, you don't see that phenomena in the countries where single payer actually exists.