It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning.
-Kujako-
I remember in another topic someone posting about how bad Obamacare was and his rates had gone up he is one of those that lives in a state that voted against against the Medicaid expansion which is why his rates went up when that was pointed out to him he still blamed Obamacare rather than the ones that actually voted against his interests.
Increased military spending to boost defense against threats imagined and such.
Insistence on border security somehow not being tied to military spending, despite absolutely being in scope for it
Decreased care for the needy. At least they'll be safe from above, non existent marauding forces.
It's like he looks at NK, and says, "you know, that Sum Kong guy has the right idea"
Not caring about the law being broken, or the government not enforcing it, or having more and more people in your country which haven't proven they respect the country and its laws... is kind of a strange mentality. I'm just curious what region of the country you live in.
I've wondered if the size of the United States has anything to do with our inability to provide Healthcare such as other countries. I realize that there are a lot of other contributing factors, including privatizing and what you've pointed out as employer based provisions.
That's... a complicated question. There is certainly something to it.
I like to use the example of my state, Massachuetts. In terms of population GDP, numbers of major cities and land area, Massachusetts is broadly very comparable to Denmark. In terms of metrics used to evaluate countries and standards of living, if Massachusetts were it's own country, in many respects, it would be hanging up there with Denmark and the other Nordic countries. On it's own, it's education system is rated one of the best in the world.
Now you need to understand something about Massachusetts.
Population wise, the vast majority of the state lives between Boston and Worcester (the eastern half of the state, and north or south of Boston, either direction, about 1 - 1:15 drive. Boston is known for it's hospitals... Mass General being considered one of the world's best. What does this translate to? If you need Medical care, very high quality AND quantity medical care is very close by for the majority of the state. Worcester, out in the middle of the state, also has some very good hospitals for people who live in that region. But as soon as you get as far as Pittsfield, which is extremely rural, access to healthcare dramatically falls off, as does population.
Now let's talk about income. People in Massachusetts are very wealthy and very educated... more so than the country as a whole. Median income in Massachusetts is $68,000 (versus $52,000 for the whole of the US).
Massachusetts also had, briefly, it's own universal healthcare Romneycare. And by all accounts it was far superior to Obamacare. And looking at the above, it should be clear why: rich state, geographically localized. Universal healthcare in Massachusetts was not a complicated or difficult thing - the state had all the pieces, it just needed to assemble them in the right way and it did.
Now let's compare that to Texas, which is enormous, with a population over 4 times that of Massachusetts, with more than just one major city (Worcester is kind of a small city). It's also much more geographically distributed and median income is lower. This means that servicing healthcare to every citizen of Texas is much more expensive, and the state has a less-wealthy revenue pool to draw from.
So physical size of the US is certainly problem. In some regard it is not like broadband in the US. Population dense areas of the US have had good broadband for well over a decade now, but rural areas badly lag, and bringing it to them is coming slowly, at enormous expense.
One thing I left out of my Japan summary for the sake of brevity is that the local government prefectures in Japan manage their healthcare systems... a way of thinking about this would be that for us, the Federal government would empower states to manage it. There's something to that, as the people living there would be the ones the best understand the healthcare needs and effiencies desirable for their States, rather than the Federal government.
In terms of what the US should do to "implement the strat", we should do the following.
-The Federal government is responsible for healthcare regulation (the fee setting committee, standards) and money transfers between the states to a common pool. Policy standards for cost of services and coverage requirements would be done at a Federal level.
-Revenue generation for Healthcare (taxation) would be moved entirely to the States - in other words, a elimination of all Federal taxes related to healthcare, and moving the entire of that revenue generation to State taxes.
- States would be responsible for how the money is spent and the quality of care within the states, to meet the federal requirements.
- There would be a Federal revenue-sharing pool for Healthcare seekers that cross State lines.
A big goal of this is that if a State's healthcare sucks, the people in the State house / State legislature, are the ones who should pay the electoral price for it. Consistent with that States can raise revenue as they see fit - for example if Massachusetts wants to vastly exceed Federal requirements, they can tax more, and if Alabama doesn't want such a lavish system, they can tax less. And if people live less healthy lives in Alabama, then Alabama can vote appropriately to either support or redress that.
Honestly, I think he went with such ridiculous things because they wont get rid of everything. So some things are going to have to slide. I think a lot of this is fluff that he knows wont get passed. But doing so, he might be able to get other things through.
2014 Gamergate: "If you want games without hyper sexualized female characters and representation, then learn to code!"
2023: "What's with all these massively successful games with ugly (realistic) women? How could this have happened?!"
The "illegal thing" can be read in one way and one way only.
"Keep American White (again)".
They say the word illegals openly, and less openly, they push to cut or all but eliminate legal immigration as well.
Everything about illegal immigration in the US is code word for anti-latino racism.
The problem is Trump has no clue what the concept of political capital is and he's burnt all of his on dumbshit toxic legislation like this in the first few months. No one is willing to work with the guy anymore on anything since him trying to govern is like a racist Billy from Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy being put in a suit and told to be the president.
It's not just a case of knowing some shit won't get passed but using it to compromise for other things. It's him constantly trying to push legislation and ideas that are political suicide for anyone on either party to back while coming out looking like a bigger asshole and further killing the credibility and reputation of his own party.
This is not even an opening bid. He might as well asked for a gazillion dollars to build a helicarrier.
And it's actually, objectively, way worse than that. Most people are not policy buffs. They scarcely know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid (see polls showing "Obamacare" vs "ACA"). Going after Medicaid in this manner gives Democrats a loaded gun. They can now plausibly tell Doris in Milwaukee "He's going after Medicaid now, after promising not to. What do you wanna bet he's going to go after your Medicare?"
Put Donald Trump aside for a moment... this is politically imbecilic. This country can and has done bipartisan entitlement reform before. That's the only way about this. Taking a gigantic meat cleaver unilaterally? Put aside Trump-Russia... this is one term President stuff.
They never will, because most of them don't even see it like that. They're knowledge of history is too poor. As someone pointed out the other day, it's hugely ironic really: most of these people's ancestors were looked down upon by "Real Americans" looking to protect their ethnic and cultural traditions from "Swarthy" Europeans, "People loyal to the Vatican" (Catholics, US was hugely Protestant for many, many decades) and so forth.
There's absolutely nothing new or original about these cretins.
The reports of all the fearmongering about JFK's election and the mythical "direct line to the Pope" is a particularly fantastic moment of historical comedy for me. The notion seems so patently absurd nowadays, but there are plenty of modern parallels that one could pretty easily draw.