Current Events > Americans should refuse to pay taxes until free healthcare ia established.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sorry, but if my country isn't going to use my money to take care of me then why should I agree to give it?

Rich people already don't pay taxes

I'm going to guess this is Octillery?

Supersex420 posted...

Rich people already don't pay taxes

True but they basically don't pay directly healthcare too

DrizztLink posted...

I'm going to guess this is Octillery?

Yup

SandersonFanboy posted...

Sorry, but if my country isn't going to use my money to take care of me then why should I agree to give it?

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/aug/17/facebook-posts/pie-chart-federal-spending-circulating-internet-mi/
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/9/0/AABJX0AAEQF6.jpg

s0nicfan posted...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/aug/17/facebook-posts/pie-chart-federal-spending-circulating-internet-mi/
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/9/0/AABJX0AAEQF6.jpg

You mean a country that doesn't establish proper Healthcare ends up spending just as much when the healthcare industry runs rampant with abuse? Shocker.

https://youtu.be/b2sDx0Y_I-k

How much would free health care increase taxes for even the poor?

Not trying to make a point or anything I am just curious.

Mistere_Man posted...

How much would free health care increase taxes for even the poor?

Not trying to make a point or anything I am just curious.

Less than the excess costs from unregulated Healthcare. Like, right now I can't even afford therapy with insurance, even if I could find it, and without that I can't get medication I badly need which I ALSO couldn't afford.

SandersonFanboy posted...

Less than the excess costs from unregulated Healthcare. Like, right now I can't even afford therapy with insurance, even if I could find it, and without that I can't get medication I badly need which I ALSO couldn't afford.

I cant even afford insurance so I am not judging.

Mistere_Man posted...

I cant even afford insurance so I am not judging.

My heart goes out to you man. If I can't find a job soon I may be in the same boat

Nice idea, but Americans are just too fractured and fragmented to plan something like this or a giant nationwide strike which could also work.

Hell, you'd have certain folks wanting to pay double their tax money just to spite people they don't like from getting healthcare.

Mistere_Man posted...

How much would free health care increase taxes for even the poor?

Not trying to make a point or anything I am just curious.

Poor people get money back from taxes yes it's money they paid but technically truly poor wage earners don't pay tax.

Unless you mean sales tax which I guess could go up, idk why I always assume it has to be paid with income tax.

Ontario has savage sales tax.

Why should I pay the healthcare bills of someone who smokes, drinks, does IV drugs, is overweight by 200 lbs and eats little ceasars twice a day?

Dan_Haren- posted...

Why should I pay the healthcare bills of someone who smokes, drinks, does IV drugs, is overweight by 200 lbs and eats little ceasars twice a day?

But it's Hot n Ready

Southernfatman posted...

Nice idea, but Americans are just too fractured and fragmented to plan something like this or a giant nationwide strike which could also work.

Hell, you'd have certain folks wanting to pay double their tax money just to spite people they don't like from getting healthcare.

You're absolutely right. I've come to the conclusion that I need to just do what needs to be done and protect me and mine rather than looking to fix things. Just gotta hope enough people join me to matter, even though I know it won't.

It's hard not to be incredibly depressed these days.

Dan_Haren- posted...

Why should I pay the healthcare bills of someone who smokes, drinks, does IV drugs, is overweight by 200 lbs and eats little ceasars twice a day?

Because it's nice

Dan_Haren- posted...

Why should I pay the healthcare bills of someone who smokes, drinks, does IV drugs, is overweight by 200 lbs and eats little ceasars twice a day?

Frankly if you think this is a legitimate question then I'd be in favor of having everything you have taken and given to people who need it.

If you aren't going to treat other people with humanity why should anyone do it for you?

Dan_Haren- posted...

Why should I pay the healthcare bills of someone who smokes, drinks, does IV drugs, is overweight by 200 lbs and eats little ceasars twice a day?

Because you already do, you also pay for some health insurance executive's third house and second boat.

Dan_Haren- posted...

Why should I pay the healthcare bills of someone who smokes, drinks, does IV drugs, is overweight by 200 lbs and eats little ceasars twice a day?

how many people do you think there are who do this?

averagejoel posted...

how many people do you think there are who do this?

Theres alot of people who do at least one of those thinks, smoke, drink heavy, do hard drugs, are overweight.
42% of the population is obese
22% of the population uses nicotine products - cigs, vaping, etc
13% of the population uses hard drugs
17% of the population binge drinks

Dan_Haren- posted...

Theres alot of people who do at least one of those thinks, smoke, drink heavy, do hard drugs, are overweight.
42% of the population is obese
22% of the population uses nicotine products - cigs, vaping, etc
13% of the population uses hard drugs
17% of the population binge drinks

Imagine going this hard on being a shit person

averagejoel posted...

how many people do you think there are who do this?

Go for the low hanging fruit? Here or in general?

SandersonFanboy posted...

Imagine going this hard on being a shit person

I'm being devils advocate and just brought up a very valid counterpoint and you immediately resort to ad hominem.

Dan_Haren- posted...

Why should I pay the healthcare bills of someone who smokes, drinks, does IV drugs, is overweight by 200 lbs and eats little ceasars twice a day?

It's called being a good person and having a genuinely humane society. Two things that are sorely missing today in America.

In the past 150+ years the American country has taken massive leaps and bounds in

* Healthcare / Medical Science
* Medical Recovery / Treatment sciences
* Basic Technology
* Advanced Technology
* Military / Defense Technology
* Mental Health Science
* Quality of Life Advancements / Technology
* Automotive, Aeronautical and Nauticall transportation Technology

* as well as several other areas that I am forgetting right at this moment.

All of these areas of life we have pushed forward and made amazing advances and achieved great things.

The one area that we have seemingly gotten worst at while improving all these other aspects of society is how we treat one another on a personal level.

* Disrespect is such a common place thing now.
* Common Sense has long been dead and next to no one is trying to bring it back.
* As a society we immediately seem to bend the knee to capitalism and anything that works in the name of making money.
* We are slowly just blindly succumbing to quietly following the letter of the law regardless of the context of the situation.
* Money officially rules and governs our politicians and the people we put into positions of power to represent us.
* In the name of making money it is increasingly becoming widely accepted that denying individuals and citizens of this country (America) affordable access to life saving / life dependent medicine and life saving / life dependent medical treatments and procedures is okay so long as share holders, owners of the companies are doing it in a technically legal manner.
* Being educated is only valued if it can help someone or a company make money.
* If education is used to showcase corruption, or demand accountability from corporations, or show that money must be spent to treat the common individual better on a basic level, then that education is immediately questioned, ridiculed and pushed to the side.

How we treat our fellow human beings has been degrading for the past 100+ years. Doing the right thing is only accepted if it also helps make money. Otherwise it's thrown on the trash heap.

This is one of the biggest problems with modern society. This is the hardest problem to fix as well. Because this solution takes time and patience to grow and manifest. It takes a few generations to be raised properly before we start seeing a meaningful effect. Thus......nobody pushes back on when doing the right thing is what needs to be done. It's easier to just give the problem money and make it go away.

Dan_Haren- posted...

I'm being devils advocate and just brought up a very valid counterpoint and you immediately resort to ad hominem.

There was nothing valid about you suggesting people who make some unhealthy choices don't deserve healthcare.

Dan_Haren- posted...

Theres alot of people who do at least one of those thinks, smoke, drink heavy, do hard drugs, are overweight.
42% of the population is obese
22% of the population uses nicotine products - cigs, vaping, etc
13% of the population uses hard drugs
17% of the population binge drinks

Exactly.
With free healthcare, as things are now, the deathrates would skyrocket due to the waiting times (Even more than they are now) that would naturally come with it.

Which would probably just equalize itself because if enough people pass away due to inability to receive treatments from those excruciating wait times, less and less unhealthy people will be around, making said wait times more manageable.

I mean... it's why other countries with free healthcare work so well: their citizens don't have more health issues on average. USA's got a ton, so they have to pay to get treatment in a reasonable amount of time.

Dan_Haren- posted...

I'm being devils advocate and just brought up a very valid counterpoint and you immediately resort to ad hominem.

you didn't bring up a "very valid counterpoint" -- you made up a guy and got mad at him

Mistere_Man posted...

How much would free health care increase taxes for even the poor?

Not trying to make a point or anything I am just curious.

Closest estimate was probably Bernie's M4A plan back in the 2016 primaries:
https://www.bbc.com/news/51662741

So M4A would cost about 17.5 trillion over a decade, so about 1.75 trillion a year. I'm using Bernie's updated estimate and not the $40 trillion he first said it would cost for fairness, but I'll add that multiple groups have done the math and say his 17 trillion figure is way under. Nevertheless... For comparison, the entire federal budget for 2023 is 1.7 trillion. So M4A would require literally doubling the budget. If it's closer to the $30T number, it would require roughly tripling the national budget.

In terms of what that means for individual taxes, it's sort of an unknown. The BBC link above has one potential breakdown on how the money will be raised, but there's no estimate on individual impact and every analysis of Bernie's tax proposal showed that it only raises roughly half of what he would need for his plans overall, so something significant would have to give to actually pay for it.

So financial its literally impossible to do.

s0nicfan posted...

Closest estimate was probably Bernie's M4A plan back in the 2016 primaries:
https://www.bbc.com/news/51662741

So M4A would cost about 17.5 trillion over a decade, so about 1.75 trillion a year. I'm using Bernie's updated estimate and not the $40 trillion he first said it would cost for fairness, but I'll add that multiple groups have done the math and say his 17 trillion figure is way under. Nevertheless... For comparison, the entire federal budget for 2023 is 1.7 trillion. So M4A would require literally doubling the budget. If it's closer to the $30T number, it would require roughly tripling the national budget.

In terms of what that means for individual taxes, it's sort of an unknown. The BBC link above has one potential breakdown on how the money will be raised, but there's no estimate on individual impact and every analysis of Bernie's tax proposal showed that it only raises roughly half of what he would need for his plans overall, so something significant would have to give to actually pay for it.

Yikes. Definitely would need some major increases somewhere to cover that. That is scary expensive, but still it would be nice, just scary expensive.

Oh and thank you for your detailed summary.

How will they pay for the universal Healthcare if they don't have any tax money

Mistere_Man posted...

Yikes. Definitely would need some major increases somewhere to cover that. That is scary expensive, but still it would be nice, just scary expensive.

Oh and thank you for your detailed summary.

It would at the very least require the government legislating drastic decreases in medical costs, including salaries. Doctors in countries with government healthcare generally make a third to a half of what they make in the US, so to make the numbers work you'd need that to happen, but since college is so expensive in the US it would make it functionally terrible to become a doctor because the tuition wouldn't ever get repaid with EU doctor rates, so you'd need to alter tuitions as well or risk collapsing the medical industry when everyone stops getting degrees in medicine. The problem with ANY "just do X" solution to something like medicine is you also need to factor in the ripple effects in industries that are tightly coupled to medicine. Address one without the rest of them and you've created a solution that can only make things worse.

The other part is, of course, a country of ~350 million with drastic demographic differences is a lot harder to manage than a country like Finland which has half the population of NJ over 1/30th the land. Countries like India or China claim to have universal healthcare, so presumably it's possible, but I don't think we've seen an effective, EU style healthcare system implemented in a country with more than a few tens of millions of people anywhere in the world.

I don't think the "too many people" argument really tracks because you also have more hospitals and doctors.

And from what I understand American wait times aren't much different from any other wait times. Do you guys really show up to the hospital and get seen immediately?

Supersex420 posted...

I don't think the "too many people" argument really tracks because you also have more hospitals and doctors.

And from what I understand American wait times aren't much different from any other wait times. Do you guys really show up to the hospital and get seen immediately?

Distribution of population has more to do with hospital count vs population size. Again, when you're 30X larger than most european countries and actively trying to make it so someone doesn't have to drive an hour to find a hospital, you're going to end up with hospitals in areas that simply aren't going to be as busy. That's a lot more overhead expenses because they all have to stay stocked and staffed. Not every cost will increase linearly. Things like individual drug prices should increase at a less-than-linear rate because of bulk savings, but things like the relative overhead cost per person will increase more than linearly.

s0nicfan posted...

Distribution of population has more to do with hospital count vs population size. Again, when you're 30X larger than most european countries and actively trying to make it so someone doesn't have to drive an hour to find a hospital, you're going to end up with hospitals in areas that simply aren't going to be as busy. That's a lot more overhead expenses because they all have to stay stocked and staffed. Not every cost will increase linearly. Things like individual drug prices should increase at a less-than-linear rate because of bulk savings, but things like the relative overhead cost per person will increase more than linearly.

So you're saying the unevenly distributed hospitals already existed and have to be costed under the current system?

I don't think the cost will be worse than the current cost of a poorly managed system. The cost maybe be greater, but spending more funds isn't as bad as badly spending less funds.

You're looking at it from a penny pinching perspective but you're already spending those pennies anyway. The money you would lose by spending on the initial cost is a cost, but that seems to be the point of having money in the first place- the US is a wealthy country, it's not like people are asking Bagladesh to do this.

Supersex420 posted...

So you're saying the unevenly distributed hospitals already existed and have to be costed under the current system?

I don't think the cost will be worse than the current cost of a poorly managed system. The cost maybe be greater, but spending more funds isn't as bad as badly spending less funds.

You're looking at it from a penny pinching perspective but you're already spending those pennies anyway. The money you would lose by spending on the initial cost is a cost, but that seems to be the point of having money in the first place- the US is a wealthy country, it's not like people are asking Bagladesh to do this.

You need to think long term if you want the system to be sustainable. Otherwise healthcare will just be like pensions in 30 years in that nobody young will get it to make sure the system doesn't collapse for the people actively using it. You need to consider whether those changes will impact the related professions, whether it will impact companies abandoning the sector, what it may mean for where research get conducted and thus the turnaround time of new medicine. Right now a hospital that can't pay its bills just closes, and then people are suddenly without access to healthcare. A universal system would need to ensure universal access, which means holding up "unprofitable" locations. Yes, healthcare shouldn't be a profit-driven system, but unless you're suggesting the government literally take over every hospital in the country (which would itself be a giant disaster) then you have to work within the confines of what's out there.

I'm not saying it's impossible. Just that not fucking up healthcare for everyone is going to be a delicate operation that is going to touch many aspects of society and anyone proposing a solution that JUST impacts healthcare either has no idea what they're doing or lying to your face about the impact it will have.

Next guy has no intention of resigning

that chart is ridiculous. why do govts expect people to go into STEM when they spend that much on STEM and edu?

I do refuse, but they keep taking it out of my paycheck

Republicans and right-wingers and Christians dont like the idea of free healthcare since that constitutes helping others

TC is gone

Dan_Haren- posted...

Why should I pay the healthcare bills of someone who smokes, drinks, does IV drugs, is overweight by 200 lbs and eats little ceasars twice a day?

Why should people pay for your public education when it's clearly not working?