WINGNUT, on 23 March 2010 - 01:24 PM, said:
I'll take my chances with my own money, my own, skills and my initiative. My wife and I worked hard to get educated and employed in jobs that provide the benefits my family needs. I doubt any politician or wonk knows whats best for me an mine.
Fair enough, but as you know you're already indirectly paying for the inefficient monstrosity that is the US healthcare system. Something that costs at least twice as much as is necessary while at the same time performing sub par is hardly something to cheer for. That's how it was last week, last month, last year. I don't quite see how this bill is making things worse. Projections are this will save money in the long run, even though not much improvement is expected. I can't help but feel that you are ignoring the fact that horribly efficient and expensive healthcare has already been in place for many years. 16% of GDP is rediculous any way you slice it, no?
I only bring up Europe because I expected our "socialist" health system to be hopelessly inefficient. Imagine my surprise to see the US manages to spend around double for less. From that perspective, hypothetically switching to something based on the european model could save trillions of dollars to the tax payer. Hypothetically obviously practically impossible.
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Lets see, Greece is in good shape, and so is France. Huh,wuh?.
Irrelevant because they are not in that position because of healthcare. Besides, not all US states are doing so hot either.
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I say again, 300 million folks in the U.S. vs. what, 25 million in Scandinavia?
The scale is indeed different so you can't draw any 1 to 1 comparisons. I only brought it up because someone seemed to think healthcare was the single cause for public debt.
However, that doesn't mean lessons cannot be drawn about how to organise healthcare efficiently. Either way the economies are of different scale too, US vs scandinavia. But it seems to me that good folks like yourself would rather pay more money rather than less just to keep to government from meddling in "your own matters".
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Name one govt program not rife with graft, corruption, over spending, fraud, inefficiency, red tape, and dumb bastards administering the BS.
Impossible, it's still the government. It's never going to be efficient. But there are levels of bad. And either way, government is a necessary evil. You take the good with the bad.
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as soon as the dollar is done with its present devaluation.
It's been going up since before new year and is still strong at 1.35 to the euro. It's been as low as ~1.60 2 years ago.
Edited by JCviggen, 23 March 2010 - 05:32 PM.