If Universal Healthcare is a Bad Idea...

[Markle]

It wouldn't be 50,000.

What would the minimum income be, in your fantasy world?

 

[Markle]

The same with drug testing for welfare recipients. Despite the numbers which show that it costs States far more to test for drugs than they save by cutting off drug users, more states are signing on for this. Conservatives LOVE drug testing.

For good reason. The numbers of people applying for welfare benefits drops substantially when drug testing is instituted. Why do you suppose that happens?

 

[Dragonlady]

In Canada, we have supplemental health insurance, usually paid for by employers, or purchased through work.

Yes, in Canada you have supplemental health insurance since the initial single payer from your government failed. Initially private medical services were not permitted and everyone was forced to use government doctors. Since then your Supreme Court overturned that provision allowing private doctors. Which is now available on a cash basis to whom? The poor or the wealthy?

In addition, you must be aware of the extraordinary, extensive waiting lists for specialists. In addition, you know that our hospitals, US hospitals along our entire Northern border are crammed with Canadians seeking immediate care. You must also be aware that women with difficult pregnancies are sent to the US for care since you don't have the facilities available. Many times the families cannot join the women because they do not have visas.

Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2015 Report

How do Canada's hospital wait times fare with other countries?

Your post is completely false. We have NEVER had government doctors. I had the same family doctor - in private practice, from the time I was a child until I got married and left the town I grew up in. Throughout my life I have only had doctors in private practice. I've also

Supplemental insurance has also been around since I was a kid. OHIP was never intended to provide more than than doctors visits and hospital care. For Cadillac care, we have supplemental policies. In total we paid for our family $3,000 per year for our coverage.

It is a total lie that border hospitals are jammed with people looking for care. We have more Americans coming to Canada for care than Canadians going to the US. Americans are also buying prescription drugs in Canada. EPI pens cost $400 in the US and $70 in Canada.

Wait times are for elective surgery. If you need an operation, or any treatment today, you'll get it. There are waiting lists for knee replacements and hip replacements, cataracts, and hernias but you always have the option of going to a different city to get treatment quicker.

My father-in-law was offered immediate surgery for his hernia two hours from his home. He opted to wait 6 weeks and have it done locally.

Four days after my heart attack, I was sent for an angiogram to determine if I had a blockage. If I had needed a stent, it would have been done immediately.

I need a knee replacement. I've been putting it off, but because my area has the lowest wait times in Ontario, I can get an appointment with a surgeon in 2 weeks.

Americans are constantly lied to about problems in Canadian Healthcare, but most of what you are told is lies because if Americans knew the truth, they'd demand the same treatment.

 

[Markle]

Nah you don't know much about the rest of the world apparently. And yes healthcare personnel are overpaid and so is the treatment. Everyone wants to be in the medical field mostly because there is money in it.

Your opinion. In mine, NO ONE in the medical field is overpaid. In fact, many, such as nurses etc., are underpaid.

Of course, people go into the medical field because it pays well, there is also a great demand for people in the medical field. Folks like me need a lot of care now.

The vast majority of workers are paid exactly what they are worth. This includes laborers, engineers, doctors, nurses, specialists, and sports figures.

 

[Markle]

In Canada, we have supplemental health insurance, usually paid for by employers, or purchased through work.

Yes, in Canada you have supplemental health insurance since the initial single payer from your government failed. Initially private medical services were not permitted and everyone was forced to use government doctors. Since then your Supreme Court overturned that provision allowing private doctors. Which is now available on a cash basis to whom? The poor or the wealthy?

In addition, you must be aware of the extraordinary, extensive waiting lists for specialists. In addition, you know that our hospitals, US hospitals along our entire Northern border are crammed with Canadians seeking immediate care. You must also be aware that women with difficult pregnancies are sent to the US for care since you don't have the facilities available. Many times the families cannot join the women because they do not have visas.

Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2015 Report

How do Canada's hospital wait times fare with other countries?

Your post is completely false. We have NEVER had government doctors. I had the same family doctor - in private practice, from the time I was a child until I got married and left the town I grew up in. Throughout my life I have only had doctors in private practice. I've also

Supplemental insurance has also been around since I was a kid. OHIP was never intended to provide more than than doctors visits and hospital care. For Cadillac care, we have supplemental policies. In total we paid for our family $3,000 per year for our coverage.

It is a total lie that border hospitals are jammed with people looking for care. We have more Americans coming to Canada for care than Canadians going to the US. Americans are also buying prescription drugs in Canada. EPI pens cost $400 in the US and $70 in Canada.

Wait times are for elective surgery. If you need an operation, or any treatment today, you'll get it. There are waiting lists for knee replacements and hip replacements, cataracts, and hernias but you always have the option of going to a different city to get treatment quicker.

My father-in-law was offered immediate surgery for his hernia two hours from his home. He opted to wait 6 weeks and have it done locally.

Four days after my heart attack, I was sent for an angiogram to determine if I had a blockage. If I had needed a stent, it would have been done immediately.

I need a knee replacement. I've been putting it off, but because my area has the lowest wait times in Ontario, I can get an appointment with a surgeon in 2 weeks.

Americans are constantly lied to about problems in Canadian Healthcare, but most of what you are told is lies because if Americans knew the truth, they'd demand the same treatment.

How cool, you always have the option of going to another district (state).

Economic Freedom of the World

 

[Markle]

Ah the myth of high corporate tax rates. The effective tax rates your largest corporations pay are some of the lowest in the world. Only smaller corporations are paying 35%.

Wrong again.

Most smaller corporations are Chapter S corporations where the owner shows the profit as income and pay taxes on their personal tax return.

Why would a corporation bring profits into the United States when they can keep them in a foreign country, where the profit was earned, and pay far less? Would you?

 

[Markle]

It is a total lie that border hospitals are jammed with people looking for care. We have more Americans coming to Canada for care than Canadians going to the US. Americans are also buying prescription drugs in Canada. EPI pens cost $400 in the US and $70 in Canada.

Crossing the Border for Care
Frustrated by long waits, some Canadians are heading to the U.S. for medical treatment.

By Randi Druzin | Contributor

Aug. 3, 2016, at 5:46 a.m.

TORONTO — When Sharon Shamblaw was diagnosed last summer with a form of blood cancer that could only be treated with a particular stem cell transplant, the search for a donor began. A Toronto hospital, 100 miles east of her home in St. Mary's, Ontario, and one of three facilities in the province that could provide the life-saving treatment, had an eight-month waiting list for transplants.

Four months after her diagnosis, Shamblaw headed to Buffalo, New York, for treatment. But it was too late. She died at the age of 46, leaving behind a husband and three children, as detailed by the Toronto Star.

Frustrated with their much-maligned health-care system, many Americans look at the Canadian system with admiration. While promoting his 2007 movie "Sicko," for example, filmmaker Michael Moore called on his compatriots to "push politicians to pass legislation so that [Americans could have] the system they have in, say, Canada."

But such intense admiration may be misguided.

[...]

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-co...dians-increasingly-come-to-us-for-health-care

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

If you track the size of government, under both Clinton and Obama, the number of government employees shrunk. Under Bush I and Bush II, as well as Reagan, the size of government grew.

So much of this growth isn't due to government programs, as much as it is the administration of government programs. Means testing, distribution and rules governing the programs are expensive.

Take the rules about what food stamp recipients can buy. There is this paternalistic notion that the poor make bad decisions about where to spend money, so the have to have their expenditures monitored and governed. At what cost?

The same with drug testing for welfare recipients. Despite the numbers which show that it costs States far more to test for drugs than they save by cutting off drug users, more states are signing on for this. Conservatives LOVE drug testing.

It's not that conservatives love drug testing, it's conservatives feel it's unfair that we working have to endure drug testing in order to keep our jobs while welfare people take the money we work for and buy drugs with it.

 

[Markle]

Americans are constantly lied to about problems in Canadian Healthcare, but most of what you are told is lies because if Americans knew the truth, they'd demand the same treatment.

Not possible.

Another example.

Canada has 9.48 MRI units per million population. The USA has 38.96 MRI units per million. Nearly FOUR times that of Canada.

MRI units density by country 2015 | Statistic

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Ditto food stamps. Give the poor higher wages. Stop using EIC's for fast food and retail workers and pay a bit more for your hamburger. Better a quarter out of your pocket now than $1 added to your tax bill later.

Not really. Your hamburgers would actually be cheaper with a high minimum wage because restaurant owners would invest in automation to make those hamburgers instead of humans. After all, that's what's happening in the US as we speak. Then we will have to put more people on food stamps because they would no longer have a job.

 

[Markle]

Ah, yes, after telling you I want nothing to do with this nonsense partisan politics, you come up with MORE partisan politics. Oh, please.

This is just ridiculous Ray. I can't be bothered.

Get your head out of the sand.

 

[dblack]

Means testing for social programs adds an enourmous cost to these programs. For one Canadian child care program, conservatives demanded a means test. It was found that it would be cheaper to give the money to ALL who applied, than it would be to pay for the additional administration costs of the application review means test, as well as staff needed to police income levels and revoke coverage if the recipients income increased.

But American conservatives keep ladling on expensive administration costs, the most expensive and ludicrous of which is drug testing for welfare recipients. Florida spent over $1 million flagging welfare recipients for drug testing and performing the tests. Savings to the taxpayers - less than $200,000. Spending $1 million dollars to save $200,000 is penny wise and pound foolish.

Taxpayers are out of pocket an additional $800,000 over the amount they would have spent leaving well enough alone.

This is why I oppose earned income credits. It would be cheaper to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour than to collect payroll taxes from workers, review each tax return to determine who qualifies for EIC's and send that money back to them.

Ditto food stamps. Give the poor higher wages. Stop using EIC's for fast food and retail workers and pay a bit more for your hamburger. Better a quarter out of your pocket now than $1 added to your tax bill later.

Conservatives scream about social programs, but manage to make them as inefficient and expensive as possible.

Yep. And that's exactly what's happening with health care.

The for-profit private health care insurance program you have skims 20% of your ...

I guess I wasn't clear. I was talking about ACA, or even single payer. If we "succeed" in turning health care into an entitlement program, the same Republicans trying to drug-test welfare recipients will play the same kinds of games with health care (and I honestly suspect many Democrats will join them). They'll start with scapegoating various demographics with unhealthy habits. Before long they'll be using health care as a means of "promoting healthy behavior" - effectively making activities or lifestyles they don't approve of illegal with surcharges and limitations on health care benefits for people who don't do as they're told.

 

[dblack]

So again, your view is that healthcare should only be available to those who can pay the going rate for it.

And the rest should go without.

Where did anyone say they anyone should go without?

Anyone who believes their tax money shouldn't go to pay for someone else's healthcare, for starters.

Well, that's just a fucking lie, carby. There are all kinds of reasons to oppose socialized health care, reasons that aren't driven by a desire to see people die needlessly. What you're doing is the equivalent of someone saying that socialists won't be happy until we're all enslaved by the state. I assume you'd, quite rightly, reject such a claim, wouldn't you? Why should conservatives and libertarians sit still for your bullshit?

 

[Markle]

The US has major problems and just doesn't wanna learn from others about it.
Health care, guns, education.

In the vast majority of cases, Democrats run our education systems which explain their failure.

We have superior health care although our health insurance system has problems.

Yes, we have far more guns but we have far less violent crime than Western Europe and even Australia.

It seems to me that other countries have much to learn from us but many of their citizens are now accustomed to virtually unlimited benefits allowing them womb to tomb care without assuming much personal responsibility.

 

[danielpalos]

Means testing for social programs adds an enourmous cost to these programs. For one Canadian child care program, conservatives demanded a means test. It was found that it would be cheaper to give the money to ALL who applied, than it would be to pay for the additional administration costs of the application review means test, as well as staff needed to police income levels and revoke coverage if the recipients income increased.

But American conservatives keep ladling on expensive administration costs, the most expensive and ludicrous of which is drug testing for welfare recipients. Florida spent over $1 million flagging welfare recipients for drug testing and performing the tests. Savings to the taxpayers - less than $200,000. Spending $1 million dollars to save $200,000 is penny wise and pound foolish.

Taxpayers are out of pocket an additional $800,000 over the amount they would have spent leaving well enough alone.

This is why I oppose earned income credits. It would be cheaper to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour than to collect payroll taxes from workers, review each tax return to determine who qualifies for EIC's and send that money back to them.

Ditto food stamps. Give the poor higher wages. Stop using EIC's for fast food and retail workers and pay a bit more for your hamburger. Better a quarter out of your pocket now than $1 added to your tax bill later.

Conservatives scream about social programs, but manage to make them as inefficient and expensive as possible.

Social services cost around fourteen dollars an hour. It is the reason for a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage.

 

[danielpalos]

This is why I oppose earned income credits. It would be cheaper to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour than to collect payroll taxes from workers, review each tax return to determine who qualifies for EIC's and send that money back to them.

Ditto food stamps. Give the poor higher wages. Stop using EIC's for fast food and retail workers and pay a bit more for your hamburger. Better a quarter out of your pocket now than $1 added to your tax bill later.

But the jury is in on raising the minimum wage. In places where it has been done, it is shown to cost the average low-income worker $121 a month. That's because businesses cut hours and/or benefits and eliminate jobs. Now, I'm not going to argue for EIC, I don't agree with that either.

They recently voted in St. Louis to LOWER the minimum wage from $10 to $7.50, it will be interesting to see what effect this has on the economy there. I predict it will be a positive.

Do you know when the last time black unemployment was lower than white unemployment? (Oh yes, there was a time such as this!) Go do your research like a good little progressive.... you'll find out, it was the year before passage of the first "minimum wage" law. the Davis-Bacon Act.

The "jury is in" for now. Economics waits for no one. Increasing expenditures from higher paid labor working fewer hours, will eventually create demand.

 

[NYcarbineer]

The US has major problems and just doesn't wanna learn from others about it.
Health care, guns, education.

In the vast majority of cases, Democrats run our education systems which explain their failure.

We have superior health care although our health insurance system has problems.

Yes, we have far more guns but we have far less violent crime than Western Europe and even Australia.

It seems to me that other countries have much to learn from us but many of their citizens are now accustomed to virtually unlimited benefits allowing them womb to tomb care without assuming much personal responsibility.

Who runs the educational systems in the old South? aka the former Confederacy, aka the heart and soul of modern conservatism?

 

[NYcarbineer]

So again, your view is that healthcare should only be available to those who can pay the going rate for it.

And the rest should go without.

Where did anyone say they anyone should go without?

Anyone who believes their tax money shouldn't go to pay for someone else's healthcare, for starters.

Well, that's just a fucking lie, carby.

so the people who have said that REPEATEDLY ON THIS FORUM have been lying?

 

[NYcarbineer]

A basic for all would replace almost all of the poverty programs.

Specifically how?

It is economically impossible. Something far beyond your comprehension.

Do you have any idea how much a poor person qualifies for in government assistance?

I'll help you. No, you don't.

 

[Markle]

In terms of high school and public schools, both are woefully underfunded and the teachers are poorly paid compared to other countries.

The failure of our school systems has nothing to do with funding. In fact, many of our lowest performing school systems are the ones with the highest, per student funding. Washington DC and Chicago are just two.

Would it hurt for you to do just a tiny bit of research before posting? Consistently you just look foolish. Why do you insist on posting such misinformation?

At the extremes are:

School Budgets: The Worst Education Money Can Buy