171–180 of 285 posts
The 'Housing First' model was really pushed hard by Stephen Harper as Prime Minister of Canada. It was weird because he is such a staunch right-wing kind of guy, yet here he was putting money towards what seems like a very left-wing socialist idea. But he, like Lloyd Pendleton in this article, apparently figured out that it saves a lot of money, ideology be damned. Maybe that's a good example of how to get right-wing…
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If you're a wealthy person anywhere in the world and you have a really terrible disease you're probably going to come to the US to get care. Why? Because we have the highest quality healthcare in the world. There's a reason why there was some mild drama over Danny Williams (Premier of Canadian province) hopped the border to have heart surgery in the US. We're the best. What we lack is healthcare access for the poor.…
The US does not have a monopoly on high quality health care, and what use are the best experts if they're too expensive? It's not like you can have your pick of the US top experts as long as you're insured in the US. I live in the Netherlands and our healthcare system is pretty damned good. I pay €92 (~100 USD) a month for my healthcare plan, which covers most anything (I only sometimes have to pay ~€50 for dental ch…
Go do a google search for something like "best children's hospitals in the world." I challenge you to find a list that isn't at last 75% US hospitals. Most are over 90% US. If you have something that warrants it in the US, you're going to get into one of those hospitals and you're not going to pay anything.
>Our population is healthier, which probably helps keep costs down.
This not only keeps costs down, but also keeps health stats up. Your life expectancy is probably a lot better than ours, but you also have much lower obesity rates. People often cite our health outcomes with any context at all. Context matters. The fact that over a third of our population is obese matters. And not having to pay a copay isn't going to change that.
The 'Housing First' model was really pushed hard by Stephen Harper as Prime Minister of Canada. It was weird because he is such a staunch right-wing kind of guy, yet here he was putting money towards what seems like a very left-wing socialist idea. But he, like Lloyd Pendleton in this article, apparently figured out that it saves a lot of money, ideology be damned. Maybe that's a good example of how to get right-wing…
Utah's success should be replicated where it makes sense. But just because Utah can reduce chronic homelessness 90% by adding 1,000 beds in a low land value, low labor cost state doesn't mean you can simply transfer the program to San Francisco or San Diego and achieve the same success. One of the achievements of Utah is actually putting together decent living conditions in their homeless housing. I fear California's…
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> For example, IIRC, we're quite middling/mediocre in life expectancy, infant mortality, heart attack mortality, % of diabetics with managed care, efficiency of spend, etc. Life expectancy, infant mortality, and heart attack mortality are directly related to our culture more than access to health care. Go look at our obesity rates. Do you think not having to pay a copay to go to a doctor would fix that?
OK, I'm done debating this with you. You seem to have an unfalisfiable belief that our mediocre health outcomes are due to problems in our general culture. In other words, all of the good outcomes are due to us having the highest quality healthcare, and all of the bad outcomes are due to culture. I disagree. I believe that a) our healthcare system is part of our general culture and b) deficiencies in our healthcare s…
US life expectancy: 79 years Sweden life expectancy: 81 years
It is falsifiable. When I talk about culture I'm talking about things like smoking rates, obesity rates, etc. These things are totally unrelated to whether or not you pay a copay to go to a doctor. If you think our relative life expectancy has nothing to do with our obesity rates, then I'm sorry but you just don't need to be making statements about healthcare at all.
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>If we ignore the fact that the US is in the 10 OECD nations with lowest life expectancy. We have among the lowest life expectancy because we have among the highest obesity. That has almost nothing to do with healthcare access. >There's a bunch of over-testing, over-diagnosis, and over-treatment in the US. These make customers feel like they're getting good service, even though they're being harmed by it. If you real…
Do you think obesity is not significantly increased by overmedication?
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> Maybe that's a good example of how to get right-wing politicians to agree to some left-wing ideals: prove that it will save money and let them lower taxes. I think this is a fine approach for the left to take, as long as the moral foundation is never sacrificed. In other words, it should always be "we should do this because it's the right/moral/dignified thing to do (and if it saves money too, great)" rather than "…
> I think this is a fine approach for the left to take, as long as the moral foundation is never sacrificed This is why we have Republicans in the first place who won't even consider implementing social programs. They believe so strongly in their moral foundation of lower taxes that they refuse to consider the evidence. Being willing to look at the evidence objectively is something everyone needs to get better at, co…
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That's the best argument for UBI I've heard yet. It gives people an option to "exit" shitty societies. Unfortunately you'll find a good portion being spent on 20th century drugs, which suck immensely. But if the people in power are willing to take that risk, then it might be a positive thing. One glaring flaw is that humans are a social species and calculate rank and favors and grudges almost autonomously. Receiving…
> Unfortunately you'll find a good portion being spent on 20th century drugs, which suck immensely Leaving aside any evaluation of the quality of modern drugs... You raise my one concern about UBI. I'm fairly liberal, and particularly with the rise in automation, I see something like UBI becoming necessary. Unlike some conservatives, I have no real concern about people "mooching" or getting money they don't "deserve"…
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> Lower taxes tend to bring in more revenue and create more employment. Two responses: 1) A bit of an irrelevant point, since we're not talking about RAISING taxes, we're talking about collecting taxes that are due under current rules. (You can argue that's an effective tax increase, but I doubt people/companies that aren't following the rules are a good basis for policy - with lower taxes they'll still cheat) 2) But…
Our top marginal rate is 39.4%, not 38. And that's only Federal income tax. Add in 3.8% Medicare and top marginal rates at the state / city level approaching 15% for some locations and top marginal income tax rate on earned income approaches 60% for some (wealthy) individuals. Not to mention sales tax, property tax, capital gains, etc. Whether that's too high or too low is a separate discussion. But saying we're at 3…
> Whether that's too high or too low is a separate discussion
Sounds fine: while exploring the numbers here (because frankly, I'm curious - tax rates are NOT a strength of mine) I'll not engage in that debate
> Add in 3.8% Medicare
Just to clarify that's the TOP rate, and that includes the employer share (which is arguably fair to include)
> top marginal rates at the state / city level approaching 15% for some locations
I'm less inclined to talk about the local taxes of extreme locations when discussing US taxes - Those would just induce people to move if too high (particularly since we're talking about people making over $400,000/year) and their new location could still be US.
So that would bring top marginal rates to 44.2%, and effective rates somewhere around 28-29% (assuming I didn't screw it up)
There is likely some minimum level of local taxes to apply there, (as well as a "reasonable minimum" to apply so we exclude rare extremely low results just like I rejected the extremely high ones) but I have no idea how to find that (1%? 3%?)