Why are people so keen on gov't run healthcare again?

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May 12 03:12 PM US/Eastern
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The financial health of Social Security and Medicare, the government's two biggest benefit programs, have worsened because of the severe recession, and Medicare is now paying out more than it receives.

Trustees of the programs said Tuesday that Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2016, one year sooner than projected last year, and the giant trust fund will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner.

Medicare is in even worse shape. The trustees said the program for hospital expenses will pay out more in benefits than it collects this year and will be insolvent by 2017, two years earlier than the date projected in last year's report.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the head of the trustees group, said the new reports were a reminder that "the longer we wait to address the long-term solvency of Medicare and Social Security, the sooner those challenges will be upon us and the harder the options will be."

Geithner said that President Barack Obama was committed to working with Congress to find ways to control runaway growth in both public and private health care expenditures, noting the promise Monday by major health care providers to trim costs by $2 trillion over the next decade.

Social Security and Medicare finances worsen

The government can't even handle Social Security and Medicare, which are targeted at a relatively small portion of the nation's population, yet most of you Obama supporters are probably delighted that we'll likely have some form of national healthcare coverage before the end of Obama's first term.

Barring a return to Pre-Reagan tax levels (Top marginal rate was like 70 percent), I just don't see the shit happening feasibly and even then it's a stretch 'cause all you'll be doing is punishing achievement. How many of you, if you ever become successful will want to pay 70 percent of your income to the federal government? And we're not even talking state, county, and muncipal taxes like some of you in NY or Cali pay. If we're in debt NOW, what makes you think we're gonna get out of the shit in the future?

Shit is funny as fuck to me.

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Because I can't afford the healthcare I need.

So you feel it's prudent to force someone else to pay for you?

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Ok, but let's take a look at this government's track record...

The Department of Education has been an abysmal failure if it's goal was to increase the academic performance of American students.

Medicare and Social Security are going to become insolvent in the next 20 years.

So then the question has to be asked: Is it responsible for us to expand government control over even more aspects of American life when it has failed dismally in practically every thing it has ever done on this level?

You say it's important that healthcare should be provided by 'the masses', but when the agent of the masses, the government, is largely incompetent in providing it at a satisfactory level and has problems funding it, why should we allow them to expand their scope and reach?

That's the logic I'm having trouble wrapping my head around.

I'm against all of these programs in principle, but even stepping back from my ideology, I'm seeing that they can't execute properly.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Hawkeye

What is so scary about publicly funded healthcare anyway? I've never understood why Americans are so afraid of healing their sick.

See, that's a false premise. You think the main objection to socialized medicine is that people don't want poor people to be able to get healthcare when no one has ever said that.

People who oppose a single-payer healthcare system in the United States are proponents of federalism and believe that the federal government should interfere in the lives of its citizens as little as possible. When you control someone's health care, you effectively control their life because you can then withhold that health care for whatever reason you choose, whether it be because you have personal habits the government deems 'irresponsible' or some other undisclosed reason.

People who oppose government-funded health care have an issue with the government's past track record in these over-arching social programs - that is, they don't work very well. They disagree with the very premise that you give benefits to one segment of the population at the expense of another.

That's a far cry from 'Americans don't want to heal their sick'

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

Yeah if you already have decent healthcare the prospect of a single-payer system reducing your quality of care becomes worrying. It also happens that a majority of Americans already have good health coverage, which is a significant reason for political opposition to single-payer, and the exact reason that single-payer healthcare reform is not on the table and won't be perhaps for decades, rendering the point of this thread utterly moot.

Then again, millions of blacks die prematurely from cardiovascular disease, prostate cancer, cervical cancer, etc, in rates far exceeding that of whites because they have poor healthcare coverage or no healthcare coverage at all. Night Phoenix himself had a crisis of faith in our corporatist healthcare system when he lost his job and the health insurance that was attached to it. So unemployment spooks a nigga, but now that he's back on the horse his new job is just going to last forever and he'll never have to worry about health coverage again.

So lemme see if I understand your argument correctly...

Because at some point in the future, I may lose my job and the health insurance that comes along with it, I should therefore be supportive of a socialist health care system even though I'm not confident in the abilities of the federal government to adequately fund it when it can't even make Social Security and Medicare solvent?

Is that your argument?

I was speaking idiomatically.

See, that argument makes no sense at all - not the part about wanting health care coverage, because everyone naturally wants that. It's the fact that the government can't handle what it has on its plate now, so adding a full-fledged health care plan to the billet is sure to be an abysmal failure.

How ya doing, buddy?

Because providing for the common defense is the primary function of the federal government. You don't compromise the nation's defense to fund a program that's naturally insolvent by design.

But let me humor you - we have for ease of math's sake, a 500 billion dollar defense budget. How much do you cut from the Department of Defense to bolster social programs? 10%? 20%? 50%? Give me a percentage that you feel is appropriate to cut our nation's defense by.

I also wonder if Pang has caught on to the fact that he's been on my ignore list for months and I can't see shit he posts. I'm fairly sure he's been replying to me the entire thread. *shrugs*

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In fairness - any ship can be sunk, Brady. It's not like we have some revolutionary Adamantium plating with which we can armor our warships with (which, if we did, would be fucking awesome). However, just because a diesel submarine is capable of killing a carrier doesn't mean that we wasted money on carrier groups. Know why? Because the purpose of the carrier group is to protect the carrier - that's why you have dedicated ASW frigates and a pair of 688 Los Angeles-class subs protecting the ship from anti-submarine threats.

Besides, you can't project force with a frigate and destroyer navy. You can with aircraft carriers, which is why we have them.

And some of the cuts they're making to the defense budget I really don't have a problem with - we don't need all the F-22s the Air Force wants because no one challenges us in the air.

The more I think about it, some of our defense spending does need to be trimmed, if only to move us away from building up an even more formidable "I'm going to be fighting an opponent with tank divisions and full air wings" capability to fighting a "I'm going to be fighting guys who are highly mobile and have no intention on waiting around for a US tank regiment to run me over" capability.

If some of that savings can be funnelled into making Medicare and SS solvent, cool.

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One of the few things that kept the US from invading Iran were those wargames that demonstrated their Sunfire missiles would turn US carrier groups into billion dollar coffins. There is no defense against anti-ship missile systems, and AEGIS can be easily overwhelmed. The days of the surface navy have been over since the 50's.

I'm well aware of that exercise - the OPFOR commander actually got mad because the Admirals and Generals running the op made them start over because the OPFOR was a little too successful for their liking.

And you're wrong - AEGIS is a defense against anti-ship missile systems. The main problem with the SS-N-2 Sunburn or the Silkworm missile is that it's hypersonic, which means that the time to engage it with the SM-2 and SM-3 missiles is dramatically cut down.

Regardless - a ship is a fool to fight a fort. That's always been a linchpin of naval warfare.

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Aren't you black and a "rapper" (or whatever it is you kids call being a bum these days), therefore doubly likely to benefit from universal health-care?

What does that have to do with anything? Yes, I'm an emcee (and I'll rhyme circles around 90% of niggas you can put up against me), but I'm also college educated, so calling me a bum is the furthest you can get from the truth. Understand this, you arrogant bastard: I'm ten times the musician you'll ever be and just because I'm black and a 'rapper' as you put it doesn't mean I would want to or have to support this socialist bullshit the left is peddling.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

How is that an 'over-simplification', kind sir? The people the government considers rich pays the vast majority of taxes, so what is inaccurate, distorted, or misleading about the statement this 'JewishNegroe' made?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

So - now that this reform bill is going to make it through the Senate more than likely - is virtually anyone satisfied with it? To me, this bill honestly makes no sense.From the WSJ:

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From the outset, the White House's core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they're sticking to that story. "Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills," Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.

The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.

These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like "community rating" because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.

As for the White House's line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed "waste," even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. "The oft-heard promise 'we will find out what works and what does not' scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice," the Stanford professor wrote.

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