Time to get health care right once and for all

[Boss]

The problem with you is that you're one- dimensional in your thinking. For you, everything is either black or white. Collective bargaining was one of myriad tools used by the Democrats to assist FDR in expanding the American middle class. The GI Bill was another. Veterans returning from World War II were given unprecedented opportunities to enter into middle class status due to Democrat initiatives. Social Security and other benefits came out of that era. And we haven't forgotten that the Republicans have been trying to destroy Social Security and the middle class itself ever since.

I never posited that the middle class was a group made up of the same people all the time. Indeed, the boundaries of the middle class are ambiguous and ever-changing. As you said, people move in and out of it all the time; but, that does not mean it doesn't exist as a body of people classified by certain income levels.

Now I will reciprocate and return your compliment. You too make some pretty good points. However, to say the dwindling middle class is a result of upward mobility is quite a stretch. The ranks of the middle class is down to 49.9 percent from 61 percent of the population in 1971, with the ranks of the poor and ultrarich growing to a majority in the US.

You keep talking about a "middle class" and I've rejected that concept because we don't have classes in America. Our system provides freedom to be in any class. You realize this, you admit it's true, then go right back to arguing about this mythical class of people that do not exist.

As I stated, middle income families have been upwardly mobile since 1967. They are becoming upper income families. Lower income families are slightly less than in 1967. Many of them have become middle income families. You say this is "a stretch" but it's not. Census Bureau data proves it's not:

All the glorious socialist things you're mentioning on behalf of FDR and Democrats have pushed us into a $20 trillion national debt with over $200 trillion in unfunded liability. In a few more years, our interest payments on the debt will be greater than the entire cost of our military. This is unsustainable.

Socialist policies are a FAILURE! They've always been a failure! They don't elevate anyone into the so-called "middle class"... they relegate everyone they touch into a dependent class and stick us with a bill we can't pay and our grandchildren will be having to deal with. FDR's first term policies were so bad he almost lost re-election. He continued the Keynesian policies Hoover started and they didn't work. That turned what would have been a normal recession like we had about every 30 years into a Great Depression.

Even Social Security, the hallmark program of FDR, is about to go tits up. Bankrupt! It cannot be sustained. If you had allowed a person back in 1950, who started paying into SS, to invest a portion of their salary into the stock market, they would be multi-millionaires now. Instead, they are left with literally nothing to show for a lifetime of contribution in a ponzi scheme that didn't work.

 

[Boss]

0

The examples I offered were in response to your erroneous assertion wealth attainment is limited in Socialist countries.

The examples you gave were oligarchs and ruling class elites. Certainly, oligarchs and ruling class elites benefit financially in any socialist system. They do so on the backs of the peasantry and they use capitalism to do it. If you're not an oligarch or part of the ruling class, you are not free to pursue any degree of wealth as you have no individual liberty. You are born into the "worker class" and that's where you stay. This is the primary reason socialist systems fail.... it eventually crushes the human spirit.

My refutation of your premise is embodied in the person of former German chancellor Willy Brandt; the product of an unwed mother who never met his father. Rising to Chancellor from those humble beginnings would have been Impossible using your specious logic.

You're citing an individual who made his entire fortune as a Socialist oligarch of the ruling class. He did not accomplish his fortune as a free market capitalist.

 

[dblack]

Healthcare right would be single payer....

Corporate healthcare has always been a cluster fuck.

What is single payer, if not corporate?

 

[Boss]

What is single payer, if not corporate?

"Single payer" is Democrat-speak for "government-paid."

 

[dblack]

What is single payer, if not corporate?

"Single payer" is Democrat-speak for "government-paid."

I get that much. But, regardless of who runs it, I don't get how forcing us into one pen makes it any better.

 

[Flopper]

In so called "free market" capitalism, both labor and goods cross all borders with no restraints....

if businesses here can get cheaper labor from Mexico, or China, or Guatemala etc., then so be it, they should be allowed to get it and bring this labor in, if goods are cheaper in China, then so be it, the business should be able to buy from there, with no restraints....

is this what you actually mean by "free market" capitalism??

I don't believe there should be absolutely NO restraints. Again, I think it's government's role to protect free market principles in general and ensure free markets for American business entrepreneurs.

Trade policy is a tricky thing with a global marketplace because everyone isn't operating a free market capitalist system. We cannot compete with cheap labor from China. That is an unfair competition and that's not a free market. Therefore, we must implement some form of tariff or restriction in order to protect American interests. But this is where that gets tricky... not everything we import from China is a competitive consumer good. Some things are material goods used in American production. So we need a dynamic policy that distinguishes between products which directly compete in the market and materials which are used in production.

Some people form their opinions on the basis of "trade deficit" and I think that is an incorrect evaluation because it doesn't illustrate the entire picture. We run a trade deficit because we import much more than we export. But much of what we import is used in production of tangible products we sell and even export. Jobs depend on that. Much of our GDP depends on that. Looking at nothing but the trade deficit and forming policy to try and balance that alone is cutting our nose off to spite our face.

Getting back to my point, trade policies, and really any government policies ought to protect and encourage free market capitalism. If they are a hindrance to that, we should eliminate those policies.

I agree, government does have the responsibility to protect the free market. In regard to insurance without government regulation, the industry would hardly exist. Who would be so foolish as to buy insurance, that may or may not payoff when needed.

Unlike other products you can not determine the quality of the product you are buying because you have no way of knowing when or if it will ever be needed.

 

[Boss]

Who would be so foolish as to buy insurance, that may or may not payoff when needed.

Unlike other products you can not determine the quality of the product you are buying because you have no way of knowing when or if it will ever be needed.

It's really quite simple to understand. If any private sector company is selling a worthless product, the consumer is going to complain. They'll be on TV and reporters will write columns and articles. Lawsuits will be pursued... congressmen will be written.... state attorney generals will be contacted. You're going to know that XYZ Company is screwing it's customers.

So I don't get this "you have no way of knowing" business. I understand you're trying to make an argument, you're just not making a very believable one. A free market is when people and businesses are transacting commerce voluntarily with price determined by supply and demand. Whenever someone is getting screwed over or cheated, that's NOT a free market. Whenever exploitation is taking place, that's NOT a free market. And when a business is protected from it's competition or prices are set by the government, that's NOT free market.

 

[Care4all]

Who would be so foolish as to buy insurance, that may or may not payoff when needed.

Unlike other products you can not determine the quality of the product you are buying because you have no way of knowing when or if it will ever be needed.

It's really quite simple to understand. If any private sector company is selling a worthless product, the consumer is going to complain. They'll be on TV and reporters will write columns and articles. Lawsuits will be pursued... congressmen will be written.... state attorney generals will be contacted. You're going to know that XYZ Company is screwing it's customers.

So I don't get this "you have no way of knowing" business. I understand you're trying to make an argument, you're just not making a very believable one. A free market is when people and businesses are transacting commerce voluntarily with price determined by supply and demand. Whenever someone is getting screwed over or cheated, that's NOT a free market. Whenever exploitation is taking place, that's NOT a free market. And when a business is protected from it's competition or prices are set by the government, that's NOT free market.

AND ALL THOSE BAD THINGS HAPPENED and people did complain and Congressmen were written and called by their constituents,

and this is why we have the regulations we have today!

 

[Boss]

AND ALL THOSE BAD THINGS HAPPENED and people did complain and Congressmen were written and called by their constituents,

and this is why we have the regulations we have today!

It's why we have SOME regulations to protect free market capitalism. Other regulations are the result of insurance lobbyists buying political influence to get regulations passed on their competitors while they get favoritism. Even more regulations are the result of government attempting to manipulate the markets.

Remember, my argument is for the SYSTEM of free markets. Not just free market capitalism alone. Part of the system is the Constitution and part of that allows government regulations to ensure public safety, to protect against exploitation, to guard against fraud, etc. What is not supposed to be allowed is government collusion with business and government regulation which works to undermine the free market.

 

[dblack]

... What is not supposed to be allowed is government collusion with business and government regulation which works to undermine the free market.

It undermines free society.

 

[JQPublic1]

The problem with you is that you're one- dimensional in your thinking. For you, everything is either black or white. Collective bargaining was one of myriad tools used by the Democrats to assist FDR in expanding the American middle class. The GI Bill was another. Veterans returning from World War II were given unprecedented opportunities to enter into middle class status due to Democrat initiatives. Social Security and other benefits came out of that era. And we haven't forgotten that the Republicans have been trying to destroy Social Security and the middle class itself ever since.

I never posited that the middle class was a group made up of the same people all the time. Indeed, the boundaries of the middle class are ambiguous and ever-changing. As you said, people move in and out of it all the time; but, that does not mean it doesn't exist as a body of people classified by certain income levels.

Now I will reciprocate and return your compliment. You too make some pretty good points. However, to say the dwindling middle class is a result of upward mobility is quite a stretch. The ranks of the middle class is down to 49.9 percent from 61 percent of the population in 1971, with the ranks of the poor and ultrarich growing to a majority in the US.

You keep talking about a "middle class" and I've rejected that concept because we don't have classes in America. Our system provides freedom to be in any class. You realize this, you admit it's true, then go right back to arguing about this mythical class of people that do not exist.

As I stated, middle income families have been upwardly mobile since 1967. They are becoming upper income families. Lower income families are slightly less than in 1967. Many of them have become middle income families. You say this is "a stretch" but it's not. Census Bureau data proves it's not:
View attachment 117427
All the glorious socialist things you're mentioning on behalf of FDR and Democrats have pushed us into a $20 trillion national debt with over $200 trillion in unfunded liability. In a few more years, our interest payments on the debt will be greater than the entire cost of our military. This is unsustainable.

Socialist policies are a FAILURE! They've always been a failure! They don't elevate anyone into the so-called "middle class"... they relegate everyone they touch into a dependent class and stick us with a bill we can't pay and our grandchildren will be having to deal with. FDR's first term policies were so bad he almost lost re-election. He continued the Keynesian policies Hoover started and they didn't work. That turned what would have been a normal recession like we had about every 30 years into a Great Depression.

Even Social Security, the hallmark program of FDR, is about to go tits up. Bankrupt! It cannot be sustained. If you had allowed a person back in 1950, who started paying into SS, to invest a portion of their salary into the stock market, they would be multi-millionaires now. Instead, they are left with literally nothing to show for a lifetime of contribution in a ponzi scheme that didn't work.

I am not sure why you are so adamantly sensitive about use of the word “class” to identify various socio-economic strata in our system. Respected authors use it and so do many others considered members of the erudite intelligentsia. Pardon my redundancy but i just couldn’t resist. Heh heh heh! Saying that, I wonder if you are so quick to “reject” the social construct “race” as a tool to compartmentalize cosmetic differences among humankind? Do you get upset when you hear Navajos, Comanches or Apaches called “Indians?” I doubt it.



Speaking of things that do not exist, aren’t you professing to be a fan of a Free Market healthcare system? That doesn’t exist either, at least not in the USA; and neither does socialized medicine .

Disability SSI is the closest thing we have to socialism since receiving a check entails no requirement to have paid into the system. I suppose medicaid could also be classified as socialized insurance but not socialized healthcare.


Civilian healthcare systems in the USA have never been owned by the government nor has the delivery systems crucial to their operations been owned by the government. So what socialism are you referring too?


FDR:

I harbor no special fondness for FDR but I don’t over look the fact that he was president for three consecutive terms. That fact on it’s own merit warrants special attention. Speaking of his enduring legacy:


Social Security isn’t about to go “tits up.” It is alive and well. Even when the fund is only able to pay 75% of its obligations due to depletion of reserves, that break even point will last for 56 years. By that time, the baby boomer glut will be long gone. BUt allow me to remind you that we’ve been here before and Congress acted to keep the fund 100% viable. They will do it again.

 

[Flopper]

Who would be so foolish as to buy insurance, that may or may not payoff when needed.

Unlike other products you can not determine the quality of the product you are buying because you have no way of knowing when or if it will ever be needed.

It's really quite simple to understand. If any private sector company is selling a worthless product, the consumer is going to complain. They'll be on TV and reporters will write columns and articles. Lawsuits will be pursued... congressmen will be written.... state attorney generals will be contacted. You're going to know that XYZ Company is screwing it's customers.

So I don't get this "you have no way of knowing" business. I understand you're trying to make an argument, you're just not making a very believable one. A free market is when people and businesses are transacting commerce voluntarily with price determined by supply and demand. Whenever someone is getting screwed over or cheated, that's NOT a free market. Whenever exploitation is taking place, that's NOT a free market. And when a business is protected from it's competition or prices are set by the government, that's NOT free market.

The rationale behind insurance regulation is to promote beneficial competition and prevent destructive or harmful competition in various areas that would destroy public confidence.

The idea that a company will be so concerned about their reputation, that they would not use all legal means to deny claims and increase profits is a bit silly. If one company finds a way to legally slip out of it's obligations, others will follow. Even companies that tried to maintain fair policies would be pushed into shady business practices by the competition.

If you have any doubt on the need for insurance regulation, you should read about the fraud and scandal in 18th century before insurance regulations.

 

[Boss]

I am not sure why you are so adamantly sensitive about use of the word “class” to identify various socio-economic strata in our system.

Because the "groups" are constantly changing. The only thing that stays the same is the arbitrary boundaries you've established to form some mythical group that doesn't actually exist.

It's like making the argument that the people on the Manhattan bridge are disadvantaged because there's no place to stop and eat on the Manhattan bridge. These poor people! They're starving and no one seems to care about them being fed! We must act immediately to remedy this problem! ...Doesn't that sound stupid? The people who are on the bridge are constantly changing, it's not the same people always on the bridge. Now if the people were stuck on the bridge and couldn't ever get off, that would be a problem.

Every day, new people move into and out of the so-called "middle class." The only measures we need to ensure regarding this arbitrary "class" that isn't really a group of people is to ensure that people who happen to be in it can move freely out of it into a higher class. This starts by eliminating their tax burden which liberals seem to idiotically continue to want to heap on them. As soon as they start to get near the top, ready to move into upper income, libs come along and proclaim they are wealthy and need to be taxed more.

 

[Boss]

The rationale behind insurance regulation is to promote beneficial competition and prevent destructive or harmful competition in various areas that would destroy public confidence.

The idea that a company will be so concerned about their reputation, that they would not use all legal means to deny claims and increase profits is a bit silly. If one company finds a way to legally slip out of it's obligations, others will follow. Even companies that tried to maintain fair policies would be pushed into shady business practices by the competition.

If you have any doubt on the need for insurance regulation, you should read about the fraud and scandal in 18th century before insurance regulations.

Again, I have no problem with laws against fraud, exploitation or to protect public safety and consumers at large. The mountain of government regulations which currently exist go WAY beyond that. Most of them are written to satisfy political donors, crony corporatists, special interest groups. They have nothing to do with protecting the free market or ensuring it's functionality.

And you're just flat WRONG about what companies will do in a fair free market governed by free market principles. Free market competition prevents it from happening because someone will capitalize on the shortcomings of other capitalists. That's what makes the system work. It's when you introduce government that things go wonky.

 

[Billo_Really]

Obongo-aid only works for a few and the rest of us has to pay for them and all leftist that control it - they are ticks...
'Repeal and Replace' Obamacare -- With the Free Market
Time to get health care right once and for all.
January 5, 2017
Larry Elder

One of President-elect Donald Trump's major campaign promises is to "repeal and replace" Obamacare.

Vice President Joe Biden recently dared him to do so. Biden knows that 20 million Americans have health insurance that didn't before Obamacare, and they represent 20 million stories on CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times — in the entire "health care is a right" crowd — when and if Trump follows through.

Sure, despite President Barack Obama's promises to the contrary, some people lost their health care coverage and some people lost their doctors. And no, the average family did not save $2,500 per year as Obama insisted would be the case. And yes, health insurance premiums, copays and deductibles are going up even though Obama promised that his plan would "bend the cost curve" down.

All that matters to the anti-Trump media is that there is now an entire class of people to exert pressure against the repeal of Obamacare. Many Republicans say they want to keep "the good parts of Obamacare," specifically the prohibition against denying insurance based on a pre-existing condition and forcing insurance carriers to keep a "child" on his or her parents' policy until the child is 26. Republicans promised to not only repeal but to "replace" Obamacare. How can they do this — and replace it with what?

Republicans, despite their unanimous opposition against Obamacare, bought into at least two premises that its proponents argued. The first is that health care is a right — or, if not a right, at least something whose costs the federal government should reduce. The second is that, having made the decision to intervene in health care, the federal government possesses the knowledge, wisdom and judgment to reduce its costs to make it "affordable." The feds, promised Obamacare advocates, can even make health care affordable without reducing quality.

For Obamacare to "work," it is particularly important for young people to "buy in," because while they are forced to spend on health care insurance they are unlikely to consume health care services. Obamacare transfers money from the pockets of young people (with a net worth smaller than that of seniors, by the way) into the pockets of older, health care consuming Americans.

If the goal were truly to make health care more affordable, Obamacare would be as laughably wrongheaded as other Obama boondoggles like "cash for caulkers" or "cash for clunkers." No, the real goal is taxpayer-paid health care. Both ex-DNC chair Howard Dean and ex-Senate leader Harry Reid said so.

To reduce costs in health care, or, for that matter, in any commodity, is to unleash the free market. Health care is particularly shackled by restrictions and regulations too numerous to mention. Here is just one example.

In the biographical movie "Hacksaw Ridge," a World War II medic, Private Desmond Doss, a pacifist, refused to carry a rifle. In the midst of the carnage, during the Battle of Okinawa, Doss carried wounded soldiers and rappelled them down a cliff face to safety then treated them alongside the medics. He was awarded a Medal of Honor for saving scores of lives.

...

If Congressional Republicans were serious about making health care affordable, they should sell the voters on the free market. Where's the slogan for that?

'Repeal and Replace' Obamacare -- With the Free Market

Get it right by giving tax cuts to the rich and leaving 25 million people without health insurance.

 

[JQPublic1]

I am not sure why you are so adamantly sensitive about use of the word “class” to identify various socio-economic strata in our system.

Because the "groups" are constantly changing. The only thing that stays the same is the arbitrary boundaries you've established to form some mythical group that doesn't actually exist.

It's like making the argument that the people on the Manhattan bridge are disadvantaged because there's no place to stop and eat on the Manhattan bridge. These poor people! They're starving and no one seems to care about them being fed! We must act immediately to remedy this problem! ...Doesn't that sound stupid? The people who are on the bridge are constantly changing, it's not the same people always on the bridge. Now if the people were stuck on the bridge and couldn't ever get off, that would be a problem.

Every day, new people move into and out of the so-called "middle class." The only measures we need to ensure regarding this arbitrary "class" that isn't really a group of people is to ensure that people who happen to be in it can move freely out of it into a higher class. This starts by eliminating their tax burden which liberals seem to idiotically continue to want to heap on them. As soon as they start to get near the top, ready to move into upper income, libs come along and proclaim they are wealthy and need to be taxed more.

I guess you didn't read this part of my narrative in a previous post:
"I never posited that the middle class was a group made up of the same people all the time. Indeed, the boundaries of the middle class are ambiguous and ever-changing. As you said, people move in and out of it all the time; but, that does not mean it doesn't exist as a body of people classified by income levels. Even PEW researcherss use the term "middle-class" inadvertantly. You can even find the term in your dictionary. Look it up.
mid·dle class
ˈˌmidl ˈklas/
noun

1. 1.
   the social group between the upper and working classes, including professional and business workers and their families.
   "the urbanization and expansion of the middle class"

adjective

1. 1.
   relating to the middle class.
   "a middle-class suburb"

 

[JQPublic1]

As soon as they start to get near the top, ready to move into upper income, libs come along and proclaim they are wealthy and need to be taxed more.

Well, if your chart is correct, higher tax brackets don't even slow them down. So what is your beef?

 

[Boss]

I guess you didn't read this part of my narrative in a previous post:
"I never posited that the middle class was a group made up of the same people all the time. Indeed, the boundaries of the middle class are ambiguous and ever-changing. As you said, people move in and out of it all the time; but, that does not mean it doesn't exist as a body of people classified by income levels.

That's exactly what it means. It is nothing more than an artificial construct so that Socialists can make a class warfare argument. To understand this better, you have to go back to the early days of Socialism and how it was promoted. What made the ideas of Marx so wildly popular across Europe and Asia was the idea of "hope and change" for a particular class of people.

Unlike free Americans, many of these people lived in countries ruled by kings and oligarchs. You were very much a part of a specific class and you had no choice in that matter, it was what you were born into and what you remained in until you died. Your children and grandchildren would belong to their class while the rulers and kings, along with their progeny remained in the ruling class or royal class. There was no such thing as "individual liberty" as we enjoy in America.

Socialism was designed to be sold to the peasantry class or "worker" class. This is why you will often hear today, Socialists yammering about "the workers" or the "working class". All of this "class" talk is the product of Socialists. Yes.... Today it's common parlance and it's used widely by virtually everyone but it's important to understand how it originated and the purpose it serves for promoting Socialist ideas.

The very foundation and fundamental principles of America is a repudiation of a class system. We are not a nation of classes, we are a nation of free individuals who have the liberty to be in ANY class they desire. Indeed, 66% of the infamous "1%" came from humble and modest beginnings. Oprah Winfrey, the richest woman in America, was raised in a tar paper shack in rural Mississippi. She was a sexually abused female minority... virtually everything socially was against her, yet she persevered and was successful as a free individual able to pursue her ambitions. She is one example of millions.

 

[Boss]

Well, if your chart is correct, higher tax brackets don't even slow them down. So what is your beef?

Well my beef is, higher tax brackets produce less revenue. Any time you tax something you get less of it... the more you tax it the less you get. If we started taxing bottled water, fewer people would drink bottled water. That's just a fact.

Subsequently, the less you tax something or the more you lower the tax rate, the MORE of something you'll get. So when we lower top marginal tax rates, we get more tax revenues because more people will earn top marginal incomes.

I actually believe we'd be better off by a long shot in America if we didn't tax incomes at all. If we switched to a consumption tax instead, it would promote upward mobility of income. But Socialists are defiantly opposed to this because it would end their class warfare rhetoric.

 

[Toro]

Well, if your chart is correct, higher tax brackets don't even slow them down. So what is your beef?

Well my beef is, higher tax brackets produce less revenue. Any time you tax something you get less of it... the more you tax it the less you get. If we started taxing bottled water, fewer people would drink bottled water. That's just a fact.

Subsequently, the less you tax something or the more you lower the tax rate, the MORE of something you'll get. So when we lower top marginal tax rates, we get more tax revenues because more people will earn top marginal incomes.

I actually believe we'd be better off by a long shot in America if we didn't tax incomes at all. If we switched to a consumption tax instead, it would promote upward mobility of income. But Socialists are defiantly opposed to this because it would end their class warfare rhetoric.

There is no empirical evidence that higher income taxes produce lower revenues unless those tax rates are at extremely high levels, at least here in America. We are not as those levels. In fact, all the empirical evidence concludes that cutting income taxes underneath those levels reduces tax revenues. Greg Mankiw, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Bush, concluded that for every $1 reduction in income taxes, income tax revenue declines by 83 cents. Changes in income tax rates alters the marginal amount of tax revenue on a given unit of income, but it doesn't change the directionality.

However, there is a fair amount of empirical evidence that cutting corporate taxes increases total tax revenue. Same with cutting royalties on natural resources.