• dragontamer@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The fuck do I hear Bernie saying “Medicare for All” ?

    That’s literally free Healthcare as his top-of-the-line discussion point for the last decade.

    All of this could easily be paid by taxing the wealthy and reducing military spending. Would that be a problem for you?

    Where does Ukraine and Taiwan fit in that reduced military spending?

    Ah right, Bernie is also isolationist. He probably doesn’t give a shit. And even if we don’t support Israel (I know how the left feels about that), we the USA need to continue to patrol the Red Sea vs not just the Houthis, but also Somali Pirates and other threats.

    Military spending is going up, by any realistic discussion. Ukraine is only heating up, and Taiwan is likely getting hotter and hotter as China literally cuts off Filipino fingers and uses them to bully others in the Far East. If yall think peace will happen by reducing US Military spending at this juncture, you’re losing my vote.

    Bonus points: I’m also Filipino. So consider myself, and my family, very interested in hearing what the Democrats actually have to say about far-east stability / Taiwan / China’s increasingly aggressive actions.

    Military spending is going up, and not because anyone wants war. But because its necessary to keep the peace. USA has no control over China or Russia, we only have control over our own spending. And we must keep our spending up with them as they get more aggressive.

    • subignition@fedia.io
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      5 months ago

      You’re either trolling or too stubborn to evaluate new information that might change your position.

      Medicare For All is not free healthcare, as in on the government’s dime, it is entirely paid for by taxes. (Unless you actually object to free healthcare as in being able to go to the hospital when you need it for free, which is too ludicrous to be sincere.) The only reason it seems “free” is that the total operating cost of the system without the middleman of private insurance is significantly lower than our existing healthcare spending.

      Most households would significantly increase their spending power throughout the year by eliminating healthcare premiums, deductibles, copays, and prescription costs in excess of $200 a year, and would only see a smaller increase at tax time. Those who would be paying more in total are very wealthy households who would be paying primarily at tax time, and frankly many of those households have not been paying their fair share of taxes already, so I find it hard to see that as a bad thing.

      • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Medicare For All is not free healthcare, as in on the government’s dime, it is entirely paid for by taxes.

        Yeah, no shit sherlock. Socialist / Communist countries like Cuba also pay for Health Care.

        That doesn’t change the fact that several important examples (Soviet Union, Cuba, and now most recently, Venezuela) have collapsed… or are currently collapsing under that load and those costs.

        We know plenty of examples of countries who have done that. My question is why the fuck do you want to bring it to the USA?

        • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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          5 months ago

          Why do you keep pointing out these Marxist countries and ignoring the perfectly functioning western liberal democracies with policies like these? There’s literally one on our northern border.

        • TheDuffmaster@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          We’re the only 'first world" country without centralized healthcare. So the other countries that have done that would be… All the other first world countries, and all of them spend way less on healthcare then we do in the US.

      • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yeah, and Medicare / Social Security are already going bankrupt by 2040.

        A gross expansion of those programs will make them go bankrupt even faster. You need to explain how to raise money for a “Medicare for All” program… and not just “Well fuck Taiwan / Phillipines / Far East / Ukraine / everyone else in the world”.

        We’re going to have our hands full just keeping the programs available over the next few decades, and you want to expand them?

        • NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth
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          5 months ago

          By having free healthcare for all you actually save money if basically no other change is made.

          People will go to the dr whenever they first start feeling ill instead of putting off until it gets so bad that it now costs 10x what it would have to catch early as well as the reduced economic potential in workers being unable to due to recovery or worse.

          It will also save money by reducing er costs from above by the jobless, homeless and addicts only going at the same points but they have even higher rates of hospitalization and severity so we save a ton more there.

          You cut out the middlemen on all negotiated services and products, will save manpower and labor by everything being standardized universally with one system.

          Eliminating all of the inefficiencies that insurance causes will reduce the cost of healthcare.

          Also, no one is trying to make private insurance illegal, look at all the different Medicare programs they already allow.

          • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            By having free healthcare for all you actually save money if basically no other change is made.

            https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2022-02/57637-Single-Payer-Systems.pdf

            In this analysis, we found that economic output would be between 0.3 percent lower and 1.8 percent higher than the benchmark economy 10 years after the single-payer system was implemented, without incorporating the effects of financing the system. Under a single-payer system, workers would choose to work fewer hours, on average, despite higher wages because the reduction in health insurance premiums and OOP expenses would generate a positive wealth effect that allowed households to spend their time on activities other than paid work and maintain the same standard of living. If the system was financed with an income or payroll tax, gross domestic product (GDP) would be between approximately 1.0 percent and 10 percent lower by 2030, depending on the specification of the single-payer system and the details of the financing policy.

            Sounds like we pay by having a loss of GDP measured between 1% to 10%. That’s rather substantial.

            CBO is the non-partisan accountants of the US Senate/House. They are our best estimate on the true costs of various programs.

              • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                That’s cool and all, but GDP is related to… You guessed it. Inflation.

                I recognize that Republicans overemphasized GDP but it’s a chief metric for a reason. If our top line GDP drops it will absolutely be a problem.

                If you want to bring up easy inflation gremlins into your argument, be my guest. But inflation is already a weak point for Democrats and I expect y’all to get hammered on it even harder moving forward.