U.S. Debt discussion

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Back on topic, can anyone explain to me why in the US it's okay for parties to add legislation conditions that have nothing to do with the legislation currently being proposed? Are bills supposed to not focus on a single topic and be very narrow in focus or am I just viewing things too much through my Canadian glasses? Not quite clear on the rules behind

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Democracy simply doesn't work.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Again, while that is true, you will have to convince the electorate that they should stop paying premiums to private providers and start paying taxes to the government to provide that care. It ain't happening

So apparently if the US adopted universal health care and implemented it correctly it would save so much money that it'd be able to be able to eliminate personal income taxes altogether. So in effect you might actually end up having to pay less taxes altogether. If lobbying dollars weren't involved and political will/cooperation (which would never happen mind you) you might be able to sell this to the electorate as a tax break and an elimination of private health insurance. Though that would mean hospitals, doctors and administrators would have to take a pay cut in the US.

In the year 2010, if we had had the French health care system, which is one of the most expensive in the world, it would have provided universal coverage and it also would have saved us so much money that we could have eliminated the individual income tax that year and all else would have been equal. Our excess health care costs above those of the French were a little over 6 percent of the economy and the income tax in 2010 brought in about 6 percent of the economy.

http://billmoyers.com/2013/10/03/the...el-ripped-off/

[FlameOn]

Tea party members are planning not to vote for a debt ceiling increase when the issue comes up October 17th. When commenting on the current government shutdown, tea party congressmen Yoho is quoted as saying:

“You’re seeing the tremor before the tsunami here,” Yoho said. “I’m not going to raise the debt ceiling.”
“I think we need to have that moment where we realize [we’re] going broke,” Yoho said. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, that will sure as heck be a moment. “I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets,”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...35e_story.html

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

So apparently if the US adopted universal health care and implemented it correctly it would save so much money that it'd be able to be able to eliminate personal income taxes altogether. So in effect you might actually end up having to pay less taxes altogether. If lobbying dollars weren't involved and political will/cooperation (which would never happen mind you) you might be able to sell this to the electorate as a tax break and an elimination of private health insurance. Though that would mean hospitals, doctors and administrators would have to take a pay cut in the US.



http://billmoyers.com/2013/10/03/the...el-ripped-off/

This article makes a few erroneous assumptions.
1. Disease burdens are equal in France and the US. Rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc are much higher in the states. These are expensive diseases to treat.
2. Healthcare wages can easily be lowered. (eg. Average gp income in 2009 US-$162k vs France-$92k. Orthopedic surgeons in the US make almost 3x as much ($442000/yr)
3. Healthcare use in the 2 countries is the same
4. No initial investment required


Maybe in the long term they could get these savings and get their expenditure per capita to be similar to France, but that could well take decades. Some of these may be the same, but you really can't take France's per capita spending and assume the US can there either immediately or in the next few years.
And again, in the US these are more than 50% private expenditures which would become public expenditures. Overall dollars spent per person would go down over the long term, possibly short term, but immediately the deficit gets bigger or taxes go up. Individuals have more of their after tax income to keep as they're not spending it on healthcare themselves because now the government is doing it for them with tax money. And that is the single reason it isn't the right time. Not enough people trust the government to be willing to give more in taxes. Tax is such a feared word in the US it makes the task of getting agreement on universal health care almost impossible.

It's extremely simplistic to pick a country with low health expenditures and say if you go public, you'll save the difference.