Tweet is from around February 2022; I’m not visiting that cesspool to find the exact date.
If it is Feb '22 then that’s an extremely prescient tweet, as the Palestinian Genocide didn’t start until Oct '23.
Remember: nothing happened before 7/10/2023
7/10/2023? The date you gave was three days ago.
Also, obviously there is a bloody long history there. However this is still the only all out war since 2014. It just seemed like weird timing to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I do actually know a fair bit about the history of the conflict in Palestine.
This video by Middle East Eye is a decent summary of the reasons IMO.
Specifically the fact that Saudi Arabia was in the process of normalizing relations with the occupiers, but no longer is.
Wrong person? Also I’m not watching a 10min vertical video. xD
No, it’s for you, since you talked about the timing. I could have made that more clear though.
I’m not sure what the layout of the video has to do with anything, but yes, you don’t have to watch it.
Yes, whoops.
Americans pay more for healthcare than any other country, for worse results than any country with universal single-payer healthcare. Moving to the same model as Canada or the UK would mean paying less for healthcare, and getting better healthcare.
Which is obvious once you understand how private health insurance works.
Hold on, not all my money goes to healthcare in my for-profit healthcare system??
My friend, you’ve been sold a story about Canadian healthcare that is a complete lie. It’s a province-based system that is in complete shambles. Just look at what Doug Ford, the premier (equiv. to governor) of Ontario has done: https://www.ona.org/news-posts/20221124-healthcare-union-sos/
What would likely work the best in the US is a system akin to Australia’s. It’s federal-based, and is a combination of public and private. Private health insurance still exists to cover “gap” fees and similar, but, similar to medicaid, low/no-income earners don’t pay. America is already doing most of this, but nationalising most hospitals would be required, as well as forcing private health insurers to divest ownership of other medical clinics. This would be to eliminate the inane “in-network” crap, which we don’t have in Australia (for the most part).
Doctors here aren’t employed by the government like with the NHS in the UK either. They’re able to run private clinics, and can charge above the government “bulk-billing” rebate. That government rebate is set nation-wide for all services in a master price-list, and is always paid out for those services whether the patient has private health or not. Then the provider and insurance negotiate for what is paid above and beyond that only. This gap fee can be paid directly by the patient, or by private health insurance. Clinics generally waive these fees for both disability and aged pensioners.
It’s far from perfect, but I think the US would need to follow a system like this. Otherwise doctors, used to a certain wage and lifestyle, would likely revolt in some fashion.
Its not the doctors who are reaping the benefits its the insurance companies and hospital administration that make most of the money
This take really completely misses the point of my comment. US doctors still make much more money than UK ones who work under the NHS. Obviously insurance companies and hospital administration make the vast majority of it. They can safely be ignored if you were transitioning the system, as they provide literally no value. If you try and pay all the doctors less though, and they revolt, you won’t have anyone to do the actual work.
Funny how Reagan ran on fiscal responsibility, gutted social programs and then spent all that money on military crap and subsidies for industrialist pals. It’s never been different. Even the tea-party was miserly about social programs but happy to give the military everything it wanted (but not to improve the DVA and things to improve the lives of soldiers were right out.)
And yet somehow who’s going to pay for it is regarded as a valid argument even though these social programs would be a tiny fraction of what we spend on our toys for killing people.
Reagan didn’t just spend the money from social programs: he changed the US from the biggest creditor nation to the biggest debtor nation to fund the military.
if I’m paying for the creation of skeletons, I expect to receive some in the mail.
A Doot will visit you shortly. Please be at home between 6am and 1pm
good, I will hang them an leave them on my front porch until thank giving
Your wish is my command
Tap for spoiler
Not really don’t arrest me please.
You can also take a fairly selfish view and come to the same conclusion. Like, I don’t want to see homeless encampments, or really sick and untreated people, or panhandlers, or (…) while I’m walking around in my city. I can solve this problem by 1) moving to a nice suburb, or 2) having my tax dollars go to fix a problem that affects me. 1) is off the table because I want to live in the city, and 2) — while it helps the greater good — also helps me directly. (2 can also be addressed in a draconian fashion, which is not what I’m advocating at all.)
I think one problem is looking at things as zero sum. It’s not. If you are healthy and housed and fed then you’re not — to be very crass — an eyesore, you’re adding to the fabric of the city. I want street musicians who are playing for fun, not because they’re trying to make enough to afford dinner.
This is something I just don’t get how so many folks don’t seem to get it. Social safety nets make just a better overall environment to live in. Most people work jobs interacting with other people and have all sorts of things outside of work interacting with people. Ideally they are clean, healthy, educated, and are happy in the sense they are not worried about their prospects for basic necessities like food and shelter.
There is some percentage of people that simple can not think in any other way than zero sum games. Every transaction, interaction, etc needs to have winners and losers. They can’t see that some spending is good because it helps people which in turn helps them. It is a completely alien world view that I also don’t understand. They are the foot soldiers for fascism.
I was gonna joke that they must not have friends then, but that’s actually a pretty common problem.
Libertarians be like “But with free healthcare, I would pay for liver treatment for alcoholics, and lung treatment for cig smokers! No one will incentivized to live healthy lives!”
They already do, though, that’s what insurance is. They’re just paying for the premium luxury version of liver treatment.
American Libertarians would be okay with many of the contracts we consider illegal, like ejecting people with pre-existing conditions.
Yeah, well the rest of us will have to pay for their bear mauling injuries
I think I found a way to convince them. we can say that with free healthcare kids under 18 will be able to go to a hospital and ask for treatment b without their parents because they won’t need money anyway and doctors would want to keep their medical history confidential.
if kids can make healthcare decisions without their parents getting involved, that would be a first step towards lowering the age of consent!
I made it up but if we make it sound convincing they’ll be advocating for free healthcare in no time.
Unfortunately i think “Medical privacy” is going to scream “abortion” to your target audience.
Not to mention that anything mentioning minors making their own medical decisions without parental consent will be interpreted as confused kids allowed to get trans surgeries en masse. It makes no sense but that fear is already there.
Like yes taxes go up, but also you’re already paying for health insurance
Here’s Life Expectancy vs. Healthcare Expenditure, and there you can see Americans on average living about as long as people in Turkey or Poland while spending dramatically more than people in Germany or Switzerland.
This is the thing that drives me crazy. Especially with those “I don’t want my money going to pay for the wrong kind of person’s healthcare” idiots. It already does. You already pay for that. Private healthcare is socialized healthcare except with some rich dumbass acting as a middleman so he can scrape a ton of money out while denying grandma that new hip she needs in the name of profits.
Just because you call it an “insurance fee” and pay more than if it was called a “tax” doesn’t somehow make it better.
Your taxes would go down, actually. The federal government pays more now than they would with a Single Payer healthcare system, because it turns out allocation and claim management for hundreds of millions of people, and allowing insurers and pharma to be price-makers, is more expensive than just giving the hospitals what they need on a regular basis.
many proposals have zero cost (or net zero, via offsetting tax credit of at least as much as the health care ‘tax’) for lower income earners. if this guy’s only got 25% being withheld from each paycheck, he’d probably fall under that threshold.
We’re already paying more money for worse care. So dumb.
Removed by mod
Basically sums up what i said although instead of deleting just the R bomb that I dropped the mods deleted the whole thing 😞
So stop using hurtful slurs?
Blondes, not R-bombs
this band is very based from what I have seen
Ok, so I completely support universal healthcare. However, it still is true that you are paying for “someone else’s healthcare”. How?
Let’s assume that there’s a flat tax percentage - 30% for all. (Actually most developed countries have progressive tax systems, but let’s ignore that for now). The more your income, the more tax you pay. Therefore, some people pay more tax than others. This means, that some people contribute more to fund the healthcare system compared to others.
Some people have pre-existing conditions. Some people may just be unhealthy due to bad lifestyle choices. I might be incredibly fit. The probability of me falling sick would be very less. If there were a multi payer healthcare system, then perhaps I might not need to spend much money on healthcare. A universal single payer system might be forcing me to pay more for others’ healthcare. Therefore, saying that I’m paying for someone else’s healthcare isn’t inaccurate.
That being said, healthcare is a human right. Every human, regardless of financial status deserves timely access to good healthcare. That’s why I support it.
Right now we pay for other peoples healthcare and we also pay some shitty middlemen who tell us what treatments they think are necessary. If we cut out the middlemen its literally cheaper than our current system.
We pay the middlemen, yes. I don’t see how we pay for other people’s healthcare. The private insurance that I’ve experienced takes many factors into account (age, quality of health, pre-existing conditions and so on). Thankfully because I’m both young, and don’t have pre-existing conditions, I pay less insurance premiums than a kid born with diabetes.
Remember, we’re talking about technicality here. We aren’t talking about ethics. Strictly from a money standpoint, we’re not paying for other people’s insurance.
If you pay for insurance you are paying for other people’s Healthcare. The whole reason to do insurance is that you have the ability to use more money from it than you ever put in, but will hopefully never need to. Otherwise it would make more sense to just have a health savings account.
What about the premiums though? Say the insurance premiums for x amount of coverage are 100 dollars. Doesn’t matter if I’m a billionaire or if I’m homeless. The premium stays the same.
In a single payer universal healthcare system however, the premium would be a percentage of my income (collected via taxes). Suddenly, the 100 dollars becomes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Therefore, from my perspective, I am “paying for someone else’s healthcare”. This is the technicality that I’m talking about.
Now of course, fuck my perspective because fuck billionaires. This however, is out of scope of the discussion.
You also have to consider that the healthcare is worth a lot more money to the billionaire than the homeless guy. Just like the roads and the protection of the armed forces worth more money to him. I’m sure the billionaire is a fan of price discrimination too, conveniently enough!
Sure! The homeless guy is very likely uninsured. They might die in the streets because of this. The billionaire on the other hand would get higher quality healthcare. What would not be happening though, is the billionaire paying for the homeless guy’s healthcare.
Now of course, a consequence of that is the homeless man dying. Ethically, this is an incredibly shitty system. THAT’S why we need single payer universal healthcare. However, a consequence of that would be the rich paying for the poor people’s healthcare.
Yeah I didn’t comment on the “person A paying for person B” technicality because that’s always part of the deal. It happens with private insurance too. If the lowest paid worker at a company is healthy, and the billionaire CEO has a multitude of health problems, then if they’re using the same company insurance the poor person is paying for the rich person. It doesn’t matter that they’re paying the same premiums — the healthy poor person is getting less out than they paid in, and the sick rich person is getting more out than they paid in.
Yes you are. The insurance company takes money from healthy people, scoops some off the top for themselves, and then distributes the rest to pay for grandmas hip replacement.
Unless you use the same or more than what you paid into insurance, you are subsidizing someone elses healthcare.
To reply to your devil’s advocate
Agreed. The ethical argument for universal healthcare triumphs everything else, assuming that we value human life equally.
Except the US clearly has a stratified society, even when it tries to lighten that with myths of fair pay, opportunity and get-rich-quick schemes (all the old American dreams before the post WWII townhouse family.)
Part of the rise of fascist rhetoric (targeting minorities like trans folk and immigrants) is to distract from the failure of these myths. Millennials and Zoomers know they’re probably never going to own a home, or get to retire well, which not only discourages the Protestant work ethic (see quiet-quitting) but also elevates civil unrest (see the Great Depression).
So the Republican response is to kill elections and install one-party autocracy backed by a police state. That way they don’t even have to listen to fellow Republicans, after they realize getting benes from being party loyalists are not actually soon to arrive. This is literally a return to monarchy, as Representative and constitutional historian Jamie Rasken has observed.
Well it also helps that it would be overall cheaper, with the only difference being that a few assholes wouldn’t be getting rich off it at everyone else’s expense.
For some reason everyone thinks they are the healthy ones that don’t and never will need healthcare, not like those unhealthy everyone else
True. I’m playing Devil’s advocate here. These r arguments that I’ve heard that make sense technically, but not ethically. I’m not saying that real life me would want to give up my universal healthcare lol. It’s a safety net that I absolutely want in my life (for selfish reasons as well)
No. These arguments don’t even make sense technically. Hospitals generally don’t deny emergency care, often leaving people with huge bills after their stay. If someone doesn’t pay, insurance needs to recoup the cost by charging higher rates for everyone. On top of that, preventative care is often cheaper than emergency care, with poorly insured people usually receiving less of it.
Without socialized healthcare, you pay for the care of everyone that can’t pay through your insurance AND people receive worse care overall. The healthcare system functions worse, even when money isn’t as much of a concern. Unless you’re a billionaire with private doctors on payroll 24/7, anyone can get fucked over when emergency care is shit.
There is no logical argument for our system unless you believe wealth can always protect you. They think the foundation can rot away without ever hurting them, but that’s the fantasy of people who believe in perpetual free lunches.
Logical argument: profit
Edit for clarity: /s
Insurance premiums are flat. They don’t give a shit about your income. The insurance premium for a minimum wage worker and a billionaire would be the same for a given coverage.
When you make it universal and single payer, the billionaire has to pay more money for the same quality of healthcare compared to the minimum wage worker. Therefore, the billionaire is essentially subsidizing the minimum wage worker’s healthcare.
Now of course, you can argue about the ethics of private property, how the billionaire became a billionaire by wage theft and so on. The point is, within the capitalist system that we have, universal healthcare is still the rich person paying for the poor person’s healthcare. This is the technicality that I’m talking about.
Remember, I support universal single payer healthcare. I am merely talking about technicality here.
To address the emergency room situation, what happens when the person being admitted lacks any sort of insurance? If they can’t cough up money, then they go into debt. Their credit scores get screwed. Life becomes hell.
The minimum wage worker simply doesn’t have the same quality insurance. They could never afford the best plans, as those are more than they can pay, so they get more limited plans with less coverage, fewer options, and longer wait times. You often need to pay out of pocket to get acceptable care for certain issues, even if you have decent insurance.
With the emergency room issue, most of that debt the uninsured people take on never gets paid by them. This isn’t just their problem, but a problem for hospitals and doctors and banks who don’t get paid for their work. The banks don’t just shrug their shoulders and accept the systemic loss, but recoup the costs from the entire medical industry. It costs more than 2x for a bandage here because those banks make the cost of providing care higher at every possible step.
As more become uninsured or unable to pay, even the hospitals can’t stay out of the red, shuttering care for millions. Many areas have zero options for hundreds of miles as a result, meaning many people die preventable deaths because it takes hours to get it. The US has a geographic scale you cannot comprehend as someone elsewhere. It’s on the scale of the EU. State politics serve country size populations, but the relative homogeneity of culture betrays this fact.
You have absolutely no idea how a world without single payer works because you assume we have basic shit you take for granted. You once again demonstrate that arguments against single payer MUST IGNORE facts to work, cutting out the bigger picture to keep you from recognizing the scale of the problem. It’s why capitalism is so impossible to tackle in general.
The minimum wage worker simply doesn’t have the same quality insurance.
THERE! So the billionaire pays more to get higher quality insurance. In a single payer universal healthcare system, the billionaire and the minimum wage worker both get the same quality of healthcare despite paying different amounts. This is what I mean.
You have absolutely no idea how a world without single payer works because you assume we have basic shit you take for granted.
I have experience with the Indian multi payer, non universal healthcare system. It sucks a lot more than the US. U guys at least have the affordable healthcare act, which prohibits discrimination against ppl with pre-existing conditions by insurance companies. Indians don’t even have that. The universal single payer healthcare system that I have experience with is the Canadian one.
Now, of course the arguments against universal healthcare fall flat on ethical grounds, as you explained above. I am not saying that universal healthcare is bad or whatever. However, that does not change the fact that universal healthcare follows the “from each according to their ability to each according to their need” thing. Rich or poor, everyone gets the same quality of healthcare despite paying different prices. The rich here are subsidizing the poor.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. The concepts of private property themselves cause trouble, where we lose all sight of humanity, blah blah blah. That’s a discussion for another day.
The point is, if you are rich and want a better life for yourself, you probably should be against universal healthcare. If u r anything but that, and want a better life for everyone- u, ur family, ur friends, or just society in general, universal healthcare is a common sense choice.
it still is true that you are paying for “someone else’s healthcare”.
Yeah but that’s ALREADY how it works. With private insurance some people pay their premium month after month after month and make no claims. Some people get paid out more than they’ll ever pay in. That’s how insurance works. Plus with private insurance toss in shareholder profits and millions of dollars in quirky commercials off the top of that.
Insurance premiums aren’t decided by my income. They are decided by my probability of needing the coverage offered. Therefore, if I am rich, I end up paying a smaller percentage of my income on insurance premiums for the same coverage compared to a poor person.
Single payer universal healthcare makes healthcare more expensive for rich people and cheaper for poor people. I’m not saying that’s bad ofc.
This is true for any real insurance, but not health insurance. Health Insurance premiums are decided by your employer, someone who has no reason to even be involved. It’s entirely based on how much “benefit” they think they need to give you compared to their peers.
You’re already doing that with insurance premiums. Universal healthcare is that but cheaper because the government doesn’t have a profit incentive to price gouge.
Universal healthcare is that but cheaper because the government doesn’t have a profit incentive to price gouge.
Cheaper for everyone except higher income folk. They would benefit from a multi payer, private insurance system as they would end up paying less.
You’re already doing that with insurance premiums.
Insurance premiums aren’t decided based on my income. They’re decided based on the probability of me needing healthcare. Therefore, we kinda are not doing that right now. Universal, single payer healthcare would mean that healthcare expenditure would increase with my income. If I’m rich, I would be very sad.
But I’m not. Also, eat the rich. Healthcare is a human right. I am very happy with the universal healthcare that I have lol. I wouldn’t want it to go away at all. But again, I was talking about the technicality here.
Guess who tends to need Healthcare most often, the poor and the elderly, two groups that don’t tend to have much income to spend on health premiums.
But don’t worry it’s not like ‘you’ will ever be poor or elderly so you shouldn’t care about health coverage for those groups.
But don’t worry it’s not like ‘you’ will ever be poor or elderly so you shouldn’t care about health coverage for those groups.
Spot on. This person isn’t playing devils advocate, they’re playing self defence of their own cognitive dissonance.
Huh??? I never even presented my own ethical position. We were talking about TECHNICALITIES here. Suddenly u’r accusing me of holding a shitty ethical position? Fuck right off.
I rlly try to be as polite as possible online. But jeez r u guys fkin stupid. We’re having a logical argument about technicalities for fuck’s sake. I said a thousand times that I support single payer universal healthcare. I love it, and I don’t want to lose it. I’m just pointing at the economic exchange here and how it is different from a non-universal multi payer healthcare system. That’s it. But NOOOOOOO how could I do that??? Ugh
Oh boo hoo the poor 0.01 percent erst and their extra thousand dollars going to Healthcare sure is going to ruin them.
Also, eat the rich. Healthcare is a human right.
Oh fuck right off. My political positions r my political positions because I’ve formed synthesis by evaluating both, thesis and antithesis. I consider myself a leftist. This however does not mean that I shouldn’t talk about antithesis for leftist theses. We’re not in a cult, uk.
