and the govt shutdown still exists..

[Noxx79]

"We need to keep out illegal immigrants with any means necessary, a big wall if we have to, these people costing the American taxpayer over 15 billion a year in terms of healthcare, education, and public assistance. We need to put our people first and secure our border."

--- Chuck Schumer, Nov 21, 2018, in an interview with Arizona state senator John McCain.

McCain died in August. Are you insane?

[Emode]

What I love about political arguments is that, you argue that the opposition are shit, while pretending that you dont know that your side are equally as shit, just in different ways.

[Zoldor]

Of course. Let's all suck Israel's dick at the detriment of our citizen's freedoms instead of doing something actually important.

Not all, just the usual suspects. From the article:

"the 2019 GOP-controlled Senate, the first bill to be considered — S.1 — is not designed to protect American workers, bolster U.S. companies, or address the various debates over border security and immigration. It’s not a bill to open the government. Instead, according to multiple sources involved in the legislative process, S.1 will be a compendium containing a handful of foreign policy-related measures, the main one of which is a provision — with Florida’s GOP Sen. Marco Rubio as a lead sponsor — to defend the Israeli government. The bill is a top legislative priority for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee."

In the House where the Democrats control it is a campaign finance reform bill.

[Captain N]

"We need to keep out illegal immigrants with any means necessary, a big wall if we have to, these people costing the American taxpayer over 15 billion a year in terms of healthcare, education, and public assistance. We need to put our people first and secure our border."

--- Chuck Schumer, Nov 21, 2018, in an interview with Arizona state senator John McCain.

That's one hell of a whopper to be telling us...considering McCain died on August 25th.

[IIamaKing]

"every year now"

You mean, not at all during Bush Jr, once in 2013 which was blatantly the GOP's doing, and again now, once more, very blatantly the GOP's doing?

"BOTH SIDES"

Huh, for some reason I thought this was happening year after year now. /shrug. Still a pile of bullshit that these fucks get to keep their jobs while failing to do their jobs.

[Toppy]

if you think its JUST trump you're completely misinformed.

Republicans vs Democrats. its that simple.

The Right puts something in the budget the Left doesn't like, SHITSTORM happens, Left submits a new budget without that thing but with something else in it that the Right doesn't like, SHITSTORM happens. Repeat until they both manage to agree on a watered down version of the budget that gets NOTHING done outside of paying their salaries.

If the Democrats say the sky is Blue, Republicans will scream bloody murder that the Democrats are wrong. and vice versa. Republicans say that Water is Wet, Democrats scream that Water is Dry.

Except that each government shut down has been blatantly the fault of the Republican party. Very blatantly. What you're arguing is that the Democrats should just roll over whenever the republicans demand anything.

Try to actually read into the history of this stuff rather than just assuming your first thought is correct.

[jackofwind]

Yup, once you stop drinking the red and blue koolaid you can laugh at everyone who does.

But everyone else laughs at you

[Gamer8585]

I know someone that got kicked off their plan during treatment for cancer and had to stop treatment for a year, but I'll let that one slide as it's not a personal story.

My family got kicked off our plan that wasn't allowed to exist under the ACA that was pretty much full coverage for $300/month with $250 deductibles, only thing comparable in coverage after ACA implementation was $4000/month with $1000 deductibles. Had to get the one-size-fits-all plan that many practitioners don't even take because it was the only thing affordable, and fortunately(?) I had the VA to fall back on... although if you want the model of inefficiency and long wait times, the VA is for you if you need anything other than a regular check-up. I got constantly get told by VA practitioners, "I'd like to give you X treatment which would likely work well for you, but I'm not allowed to, so you'll get Y treatment and hope for the best." The result was that I had to stop getting treatment from the private facilities (which didn't take the new plan) and is likely the direct cause of my ability to walk declining to potentially not being able to walk anymore since I can't get the treatment I need.

However, both are not really the point I'd like to make about this. The goal of the ACA was to insure more people, but it didn't, it shifted who got covered more than anything else (shifted them into Medicaid if I recall, where they took funds to make the ACA seem more cost-effective, but that's another discussion). So while we may have stories of people who got life-saving treatment due to the ACA, there are just as many stories of people who lost life-saving treatment due to the ACA. In reality, the ACA didn't fix anything or even its initial goal while giving the government more control over healthcare/insurance matters and adding more taxes.



The ACA was designed more as a regulation of health insurance, not healthcare, which gets confused quite often. Everyone in the US has access healthcare, you can walk into the ER or a MinuteClinic/Redi-med/etc. and get healthcare, it's just a matter of what you want to pay. The ACA did have some parts taken from single-payer systems as it was likely the end-goal in later legislation, but the problem is that single-payer systems likely won't work with large population countries at all, and I'd argue that it's not the responsibility of the US government to even run such programs to begin with. Even the 'clean' version of the ACA was a mess, as most lawmarkers who passed the law admittedly didn't read it, can't blame them because it was massive. Doesn't help that even officials in the administration admitted to lying to people about the content and effects of the ACA (if you have to lie to get something passed, it probably shouldn't be passed). If people wonder how such a bill came together so quickly despite being so large while no one reading the entire thing, it's usually because K Street lobbyists have pet legislation always written up for when they can get a politician to push their agenda, so the bill was probably mostly written prior well before the ACA topic even came up. Massachusetts tried something similar with MassHealth, and it's just a much a mess and always operating in the red every year and the deficit keeps going up according to their own state government reports annually. Medicaid is another example (which is likely what people get when they get the "free" healthcare due to the ACA), where in my state most places don't even accept it.

In reality, most people don't need healthcare insurance as sold by daily narratives, especially if you're young. If you're low risk and want to protect yourself from major accidents or sudden serious illnesses, that's what catastrophic plans are for (and why they're cheap as most people don't even need those). As one gets older, you might consider more robust healthcare plans as the chances of health issues come up. What I find rather interesting is that people have this notion that you need insurance for regular wellness visits or yearly check-ups, but that's not true at all. This is actually a much more recent phenomenon, and likely the reason people don't see price increases because it all happens in the background. Most people would likely save money in the long by just paying out of pocket for the simple medical care and have catastrophic insurance versus having insurance paying for such mundane visits as those monthly premiums still exist despite most people forgetting about them at the check-out counter.

I get that there are many problems with the insurance system and prices of care, but the solution is not to have government say that they can do it better (look at the VA, it's terrible compared to private care while servicing barely anyone compared to the national population size). The government or a panel of 'experts' cannot and will not have the efficiency and intimate detailed knowledge required for individuals to get the best care they need, which is why such matters are best left as close to the individual as possible. If anything, I'd venture that many insurance problems and price of care issues are the result of government intervention/regulation and cronyism with politicians over the years. It's pretty common that there are staunch defenders who blindly follow one political faction in these forums, but consider this: do you really want to leave such important matters in the hands of the supposedly evil/inept/corrupt/<insert negative descriptor> of your opponents? The reality is that you should never consider the federal government your friend and trust them as a whole, even if you like those in power, as the federal government was considered a necessary evil when the US Constitution was made due to all of human history showing what happens with large centralized governments in general. People should ask themselves if they want the federal government to tell them what they want and need, or if they themselves would know what they want and need better than the federal government.

As a slight aside, since ancient times it has been known that the easiest way for a government to exert control over a populace is through government-controlled healthcare (was discussed by Plato even). People praise the governments for caring and having a heart while those in control are slipping them into shackles. At that point, you have to pray those in power of the government won't abuse control over you. Trying to think of the exceptions, the most popularly known authoritarian dictatorships actually have universal healthcare for their countries. This was something even the Nazis wanted for their own people, since people love talking about Nazis nowadays. The ruse is always the same: blame the private insurance companies and/or hospitals for having too high of prices, convince the people that their magnanimous government will take over and solve all their problems because it's their right, sound familiar? That isn't to say everyone has an evil agenda and that prices can't be high (and typically, the prices were high because of government involvement anyways), but once the government has control over every facet of your life, it only takes one evil person to abuse that power.

This was an unusually coherent rebuttal to the ACA as-implemented. I think the conclusions you reached are wrong and myopic, but I wish more conservatives put half as time and effort into their positions as you did rather than regurgitating Limbaugh invectives, and pretending they have their own opinions. While I won't pick apart everything that's wrong here, and I'm not going to challenge you on your own experience I believe that your comment warrants a reply.

1) The idea that Government managing health care would give them complete control of a person's life is a bit of a strawman. While yes it would increase their power, it wouldn't do so in a meaningful way WRT the powers they already have. For example if someone gave you a million dollars right now it would probably make a huge difference in your life. However if you already had a billion dollars, and someone gave you another million that would just be more cloth to throw on the pile. Right now if the government really wants to make your life hell, they can. A DA can find something to run you in on pretty openly, and that's not to mention what the CIA could do clandestinely (and in an "yeah its totally illegal, but who's going to stop them" way). So really the increase is generally meaningless, since they don't need that and they already have more efficient ways of screwing you over.

2) Government isn't a monolith. Its many different departments and interests held together by norms of behavior and deference to executives. Using something like health care exclusively to mess with people would require a rather large conspiracy potentially across several agencies and that would require a lot of mid and low level bureaucrats to risk jail time for something they don't have a stake in just some someone above them can be petty. Yeah its much easier to have the IRS tax audit someone, or for an AG to run someone in.

Which brings us to:

3) Laws and Transparency! The safeguard against despotism. Many, many, many things the government could do that would essentially place us all into an Orwellian Dystopia they don't do. Why? Well its because A) That shit is illegal, and 2) anyone that tries is likely going to be caught, because 3) the vast majority of government workers are not going to stand for it. And the success of a conspiracy is inversely proportional to the number of conspirators since it takes only one defection to spoil the plot. Ex. Edward Snowden's disclosure of illegal NSA activity. If the NSA can't keep their stuff completely locked down then other government agencies have essentially no chance. If you're worried about government malfeasance of any program then those concerns should be raised and the appropriate documentation and institutional checks should be put in place to discourage such behavior. Since it works for everything including the most potentially despotic and freedom trampling government institution: The Military. If you're worried about the government being able to trample your rights then you need to be calling for the complete disbandment of all Armed Forces. And no you're lil' AR-15 or backwoods militia buddies won't be protecting you if the US Military gets serious. You would only have three options in the face of an Army battalion: Run, Surrender, or Die. Victory is essentially impossible.

I've heard more than one story about the VA being completely worthless for healthcare, but that raises the question: why? As far as I've learned its been extremely underfunded, but with the cost of medical services in general I'm not sure if a large cash infusion would be more than a quick half-measure. If you have more information about the structural problems the VA faces I would be interested.

A big problem with the ACA I've heard most people face is that they fall into a gap like you did. The only reason I've heard for this gap existing is that some states did not roll out the medicaid expansion required to fill that gap. Often it was because their governor was so staunchly Obama they wanted to blame him for people suffering so they didn't take the steps necessary to ameliorate that suffering just so they could have a political effigy to attack come election time. This is the only reason I have found for the gaps, but if there are others that apply in your specific case let me know.


Now onto Single Payer Health Care.
1) The biggest benefit to single payer is one aspect of health care that most people probably don't think about. Bureaucracy! You may think that the government taking over would mean an even larger pile of red tape, but in this case it actually may be more efficient. One of the largest expenses a hospital or doctor's office will have is the time it takes to fill out paperwork and one of the reasons is that there are so many different forms and codes for each insurance provider. Medical Billing is one of the most complicated and Kafkaesq things in society today, because its evolved as the fight between insurance companies and care provides to see who can screw the other the hardest. Having a single payer system would allow for standardized forms, codes, and procedures across the country.

2) Another large benefit is the negotiating power the government would have with drug companies and medical equipment companies. Right now corporations can play off different insurer's and squeeze the most money possible. That eventually causes everyone's rates to rise. With a Single Payer system all of the bargaining power would be in the hands of the insured. Anyone that wants to play hardball will go out of business very quickly, since a competitor is likely to crop up and ask for a lower price and capture the market entire.

3) Because it would be paid for by taxes this allows for it to be included in regular tax planning, and it would cost you less in taxes than the premiums you're currently paying now since the costs would be more disbursed. Nominally you're taxes may go up by $100, but you wouldn't have to pay $4-5k in premiums, and if you may be able to offset those with other deductions and credits.

4) The expense of such a program is a scare tactic by people that have never done a full economic analysis and are looking to score political points. Will it be expensive, boy-howdy yes, but...not really. So, the first question is often how to pay for it, but that really belies a misunderstanding of how government financing works. You see the government isn't like a household or a business for one tiny, but super important reason: its backed by fiat. Essentially that note is a US Government Credit. That is huge. It means the government can essentially contract for services and make good, just by saying they've made good on it. The gov isn't editing a business financial account the banks are doing that themselves when the government says that they've paid that amount (the formal instrument for doing this is a check, but these days its even more abstracted as an ACH transfer).

Now there are some practical limits which is why the government can't just print a bunch of cash and give it to everyone and solve poverty, but such limits don't really exist in the narrow sphere of government spending. Keeping a balanced federal budget is a good principle, but it shouldn't stand in the way of necessary reforms. There's also the saving people will get from not paying exorbitant premiums, and the economic stimulus provided by a nation with more money, better health, and less stress about health care. I'd prognosticate on that, but due to the complexity you can ask 10 different people and get 15 different models. I've only read positive things from professionals, and the difference is not whether the trajectory is good, its precisely how good and on what time scales.


Sure the ACA is a bit of a mess, but that's because it was hobbled by Republicans at every turn. If you want to get out of the health care quagmire we're in we need to take healthcare decisions away from insurance companies, and place them in the hands of doctors and patients. And the only way to do that is to switch fully to well managed public funding. Note: I said well managed, we will need proper laws and extreme transparency in the process and its executors to ensure a good outcome. Such a thing is a non-negotiable requirement in making it work properly.

[Toppy]

Huh, for some reason I thought this was happening year after year now. /shrug. Still a pile of bullshit that these fucks get to keep their jobs while failing to do their jobs.

So, you got proven wrong and are doubling down anyway? And what fucks? Because the 2013 shutdown was largely blamed on the GOP. You can't really go "But both sides" when the same side always takes the blame for it.

[Zinstorm]

I think FailtakuPolytrash avatar fits him... tbh. He says fake things and the avatar is based off of a fake person within that show.

[r3gul8r]

It's funny how I work for CBP, experience it first hand on the southwest border, and see all the corruption within immigration. We need to wall. But don't take my word for it, I guess. Keep thinking like you know what's going on down here when you don't.

[Captain N]

I think FailtakuPolytrash avatar fits him... tbh. He says fake things and the avatar is based off of a fake person within that show.

Could be a sockpuppet for that flat Earther conspiracy theorist who uses Question as an avatar whose name escapes me at the moment...

Posting style is identical.

[Kathandira]

It's funny how I work for CBP, experience it first hand on the southwest border, and see all the corruption within immigration. We need to wall. But don't take my word for it, I guess. Keep thinking like you know what's going on down here when you don't.

To wall in the corrupt folks?

[Toppy]

It's funny how I work for CBP, experience it first hand on the southwest border, and see all the corruption within immigration. We need to wall. But don't take my word for it, I guess. Keep thinking like you know what's going on down here when you don't.

Tell me then, how will a wall help with corruption?

[IIamaKing]

So, you got proven wrong and are doubling down anyway? And what fucks? Because the 2013 shutdown was largely blamed on the GOP. You can't really go "But both sides" when the same side always takes the blame for it.

You can't read well can you. I never said "both sides", you have, a bunch now. NOW WHERE in what I wrote does it imply that I exonerate the right of responsibility. But hey, keep on keeping on.

[Toppy]

You don't work for customs.

Well no a few agents do think a wall is needed. Though they tend to be lower level and think that being in the job gives them expertise in said job.

I mean look at him, he's already deflecting criticism with "And those who dont think like I do are corrupt"

[FailtakuPolytrash]

"Today, I am proud to be standing here with one of the great liberal lions in Washington, Mr. Ted Kennedy. Ted has fought for over 50 years to secure American border from illegal aliens and wishing to build a wall to keep us safe ever since the 80's. He is one of the greatest champion of the working class American people and welcomes all legal immigration, because our country was founded on law and order. Let's build that wall and secure our border."

--- Nancy Pelosi, in a joint speech with Mass. Senator Ted Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention in Detroit, Sept 26, 2017.

[Ragedaug]

These Gov't shutdowns always crack me up.

If two cars are driving directly towards each other and neither car turns, who's fault is it? If you said it was the fault of both drivers, you would be correct.

Who's responsible for the current shutdown? Everyone not willing to concede to the other's side's demands...that means both parties.

The question always boils down to, will you lose more of your base if you concede, or will you lose more of the undecided vote if you stand fast and refuse to concede.

Pretending it's anything other than that makes you look silly.


As far as the wall funding, Trump stands to lose the majority of his support if he concedes to no funding. All the GOP talking heads turned on him pretty hard in December when he made mention that he would concede, and he quickly turned around. The fact that Trump's entire base wants him to build a wall, and it was the fundamental principle he campaigned on, will make it very difficult for Trump to drop it.

[Toppy]

You can't read well can you. I never said "both sides", you have, a bunch now. NOW WHERE in what I wrote does it imply that I exonerate the right of responsibility. But hey, keep on keeping on.

Huh, for some reason I thought this was happening year after year now. /shrug. Still a pile of bullshit that these fucks get to keep their jobs while failing to do their jobs.

Shit happens like every year now, less to do with the man and more to do with a system that allows this dysfunction to continue. I have responsibilities at work, If I fail to do them, I get fired. Yet every year we let the snakes on the hill play politics with our lives and keep their jobs. Its a rigged game.

You're blaming both sides for the actions of one side.

[FailtakuPolytrash]

So, you got proven wrong and are doubling down anyway? And what fucks? Because the 2013 shutdown was largely blamed on the GOP. You can't really go "But both sides" when the same side always takes the blame for it.

I 100% agrees with you that both sides are to blame for this mess.