This Will Not Work

Medicare is not nearly as costly as the private sector.

The issue for Medicare is the age of its recipients.

Bring in everybody, and the cost will drop dramatically.

cow451 said:

What’s wrong with taking that last rich boy tax cut and dropping some of it the working class

Click to expand...

I benefited from the " rich" man tax cut...and we are far from rich

mark46 said:

Kamela Harris had made her priorities clear. She wants

1) Medicare for all
2) free college education for all
3) a middle class tax cut
4) the rich to pay for the above
5) some amount of gun legislation

===========
IMHO, Democrats must not propose a corporate tax increase. A modest increase in top individual tax rates is fine (note that some want it to be 70%). I believe that any plan must add up, be revenue neutral.

And in addition to the above, there must be a focus on opioid addiction, job training, dealing with climate change, and criminal justice reform.

Click to expand...

It seems to work best when the rich pay more taxes. Imagine the money ,that could have went into the wall. If the rich was still paying more taxes.

ml5363 said:

The VA gere in states have a bad rap of negativity, not sure this could be done with government and not have the same results

Click to expand...

My dad uses the VA and loves it. They treat him very well. The problems that exist with the VA are due to lack of funding. Republicans have voted many times against VA funding.

Hieronymus said:

Working well???
There are serious problems developing for decades now in those very countries.

Click to expand...

What issues do those countries have as a result of or in regards to higher learning? In what measurable areas are they inferior places to live?

Sparagmos said:

My dad uses the VA and loves it. They treat him very well. The problems that exist with the VA are due to lack of funding. Republicans have voted many times against VA funding.

Click to expand...

That's the main danger to a single-payer system. What happens when Republicans do the same thing to all of us, hoping they can convince people that the system has failed?

ml5363 said:

I benefited from the " rich" man tax cut...and we are far from rich

Click to expand...

Nope, we got the regular people tax cut. They got a different one.

hedrick said:

That's the main danger to a single-payer system. What happens when Republicans do the same thing to all of us, hoping they can convince people that the system has failed?

Click to expand...

I agree, they will try. But look at what has happened with Obamacare, a Rebupkican controlled government couldn’t take it away because the people were ready to vote out anyone who did. It won’t be easy, but we have to move in the direction of universal healthcare, even if we just do it one step at a time.

Sparagmos said:

I agree, they will try. But look at what has happened with Obamacare, a Rebupkican controlled government couldn’t take it away because the people were ready to vote out anyone who did. It won’t be easy, but we have to move in the direction of universal healthcare, even if we just do it one step at a time.

Click to expand...

They haven't quite taken it away, but they have crippled it to some extent.

hedrick said:

They haven't quite taken it away, but they have crippled it to some extent.

Click to expand...

Yes, and now the courts really have. But I believe that the people are now ready to take the next step after having a taste of something better.

hedrick said:

That's the main danger to a single-payer system. What happens when Republicans do the same thing to all of us, hoping they can convince people that the system has failed?

Click to expand...

They tried to eliminate the ACA but too many of they constitutes like it, so they had to back off. I think, if everyone was in it and it worked well for them, the Congress, R or D, wouldn't dare to play those games.
If the feds won't do it there are states who are talking about doing it on their own. If those states got together they just might have enough population and funding to pull it off.

The other day on TV ....
Seven women in their 20s and early 30s, with diabetes, went to Mexico to buy their prescriptions. Some of them had insurance but because the year was starting over and their deductibles are so high it was useless.
One woman paid $104 for a year's supply. In the US it would have cost her $1,400. All seven together paid $800 - 900, I don't remember the exact figure, for what would have cost over $8,000 in the US.

hedrick said:

The services will work. Every other civilized country does them. It's the coupling with a tax cut that I find hard to believe.

Click to expand...

Hi hedrick,

I would agree. However, I personally think that we should at least raise the corporate tax rate that President Trump slashed just to win favor. I don't understand crying about taxes that corporations pay. Corporations aren't people. The people that actually pay corporate taxes are the customers. So long as any taxes are fair and level across the board, then every business that is in the same business has to pay the same taxes and so there isn't any unfair advantage that one company can gain over another so far as taxes go.

All the evidence that I've seen so far regarding the latest round of corporate tax cuts is that the lion's share was used in ways that didn't dramatically improve the economy for the dramatic amount of tax revenue that we gave away. All evidence that I've seen also seems to show that the lion's share of personal tax reductions were for the, what I would certainly label, wealthy or at least the very comfortable.

I'm all for keeping taxes as low as possible, but it takes x number of dollars to run any government and the government must collect that revenue somewhere. They have tariffs available to them, but tariffs are also just a tax on the consumer. The consumer is the one who pays for the cost of any business to produce a product and deliver it to market. The price the consumer pays includes all those costs and so as long as all those costs are equal across the board, then I don't see how lowering corporate tax rates really does anything more than just cutting out a lot of needed revenue that needs to be made up somewhere else.

Now, we can cut some services and I'd start with the $50 billion more given to support the military. People work all their lives for the promise of Social Security and it just isn't fair to tell someone who's about to retire within the next 3-5 years that you're now going to change the contract with them as far as how much money they will get. Yes, we could cut some of the 'extras' that Social Security pays that may not really be something that Social Security should be involved in. Yes, we could cut some of the public welfare services, but is that really the wise choice? To cut corporate taxes so that you then have to take food and housing away from those who just haven't been able to attain the 'American dream'? Somehow I'd much rather a corporation pay an extra million or two in taxes than to cut someone who depends on public welfare by $500.

Businesses will make it. Businesses have been making it in this nation for decades and for every American manufacturer that has opened a plant in some other country, there is a foreign manufacturer who has facilities right here. Toyota, Honda, Yamaha, Mitsubishi, Canon, Citizen, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC and Nikon are all companies with headquarters in Japan that have a presence on a corporate scale in America. There are German companies with corporate scale operations in America. Bayer, Daimler, BASF, BMW, Siemens, Volkswagen, T-mobile and DHL holdings. This has been working pretty well for decades and now all of the sudden we're losing companies to foreign nations that are somehow costing us serious revenue while yet having the lowest unemployment in 50 years. How can those two truths possibly both be true? Sure, companies move and grow all the time. Some who are worldwide companies take advantage of better locations not just for taxes but also for delivery and market reasons.

I honestly don't think that President Trump has even a clue how corporate business works in the world today. The United States is not some island set off by itself in some far corner of the galaxy. We are a working and productive part of the many, many nations that make up the global economy.

That's my two cents worth.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

mark46 said:

ranked higher by who?

Seniors are fine with Medicare.

Click to expand...

I have heard folks on Medicare complain about copays, costs, and being complicated...trying to figure out which plan to get...also know a pastor refuses to get Medicare because he would rather his church foot the bill for regular insurance

ml5363 said:

I think population. Has a lot to do with it

Click to expand...

Hi ml5363,

I'm sure that population will make the overall costs greater as a whole, but I generally look at per capita expenditures when researching these things. That generally takes out population size except that there might be some economies of scale that a larger population might have over a smaller one. On a per capita basis, them means the dollars spent to take care of one individual person in one country and the dollars spent for the same thing on another individual in another country, the U.S. pays waaaaaay more than any other nation for healthcare. I don't think it's population so much as unconscionable greed by some medical companies.

Have you seen the latest news reports on what some of the big pharmas are doing regarding their retail drug prices? In 2015 Turing Pharmaceuticals raised their price on a particular pill from $13.50 to $750. That's right from just over $10/pill to $750/pill. What possible manufacturing or distribution process change could have warranted such an increase?

According to Scott Knoer at the Cleveland clinic in that same year he said that drug costs alone had gone up $11.2 million. The Cleveland Clinic isn't a particularly large hospital facility, but just imagine what that must mean nationwide for all hospitals and pharmacies and pharmacy providers.

Here's a quote from Mr. Knoer: And these increases are largely hidden from everyday consumers, because many of the drugs involved are medications hospitals give to inpatients, for example the heart drugs Nitropress and Isuprel. In February, the very same day Valeant Pharmaceuticals International bought the rights to both medications, the company hiked the list price of Isuprel by 500%, and Nitropress by 200%. “It's the exact same drug off the exact same production line with the exact same people making it,” Knoer said.

Rodelis Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to cycloserine and immediately bumped the price from $500 to $10,800 for a 30 day supply. Surely you've seen the latest report on epipen cost. A report in 2018 claimed that medicare prescription drug costs had risen at over 10 times the general rate of inflation. Then you read that big pharma companies are enjoying record booming profits which is all good for stock investors and corporate CEO's but doesn't help the guy out on the street that needs to buy some medicine for themselves or a loved one.

America is the land of the greedy and we're all about who can be the richest. Who gets to have their face emblazoned on the Forbes 500 list. Greed, pure and simple. I'll never forget a documentary I saw, I can't remember whether it was some 60 minutes show or some Netflix doc., but they visited several different countries showing how they seemed to do things better than we do here in America. One was an Italian motorcycle manufacturer and when the reporter made the claim to the CEO that he could probably get three times what he was selling his product for, the CEO said, "Why, I make a comfortable living. All my employees are paid an equitable salary that also provides them a comfortable living." We're different here. Some of those differences can be good and some of them not so good.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

mark46 said:

ranked higher by who?

Seniors are fine with Medicare.

Click to expand...

Hi mark,

I'd encourage you to make sure everyone knows that you aren't speaking for everyone when you make such claims. My wife is a couple of years older than me and on medicare. I'm still on private insurance. Her medicare costs us more each month than my private insurance which includes a dental plan that her medicare does not. I likely won't be too happy to switch to medicare in a couple of years. So, you can count me as one senior who isn't 'fine' with medicare. So, from now on when you make that claim, you'll have to qualify it that all seniors are fine with medicare except for one that you know of.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

hedrick said:

That's the main danger to a single-payer system. What happens when Republicans do the same thing to all of us, hoping they can convince people that the system has failed?

Click to expand...

They won't. If they attack SS and Medicare, we vote them out. If they attack single payer, we vote them out.

miamited said:

Hi mark,

I'd encourage you to make sure everyone knows that you aren't speaking for everyone when you make such claims. My wife is a couple of years older than me and on medicare. I'm still on private insurance. Her medicare costs us more each month than my private insurance which includes a dental plan that her medicare does not. I likely won't be too happy to switch to medicare in a couple of years. So, you can count me as one senior who isn't 'fine' with medicare. So, from now on when you make that claim, you'll have to qualify it that all seniors are fine with medicare except for one that you know of.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

Click to expand...

One man does not a host make, unless he is Samson.

I do love my VA, and I have used it since 1991, and have completely relied on it since I retired. I have no complaints.