Lack of adequately trained physicians, which is mostly due to our broken educational system, and unwillingness of US-born doctors to live and work in rural areas. Both these factors are partly related to greed, though.
For a very long time the USA has been importing doctors under the FMG system to staff medical facilities outside the high-$$$ metropolitan areas. Ironically, since foreign trained physicians usually have to repeat most of their training to get accredited in the USA, it’s not unlikely that statistically they are better healers.
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Man, if Trump is the one who ultimately makes Single Payer happen I’m going to feel kind of weird about his inevitable impeachment.
(I’m still going to support it of course, but I will feel kind of weird about it.)
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No, I honestly believe that single payer healthcare is normal, effective, and easily possible here in the United States. My point is that the people making decisions about said healthcare, Republicans and Democrats alike, are inherently biased (and aided by the current political climate) to not make a decision; to commit to a series of untenable plans to repeal, revoke, revise, replace, whatever you like, in order to draw attention to their cause(s). The stall tactic pays more dividends than a solution.
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Believe me, impeachment of Trump is the feverish wet dream of the Republican leadership. Here’s a Pro Tip: REMEMBER TO IMPEACH PENCE FIRST.
Nixon gave us the EPA before he turfed himself out, so consider it the silver lining I guess.
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You are right, and I hereby apologize to you and to @KathyPartdeux.
I have worked with physicians who were involved in the AICD fine-a-thon that CMS carried out a couple of years ago, and I stand by those doctors.
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It’s easy to be in favor of higher income taxes if you’ve sheltered your millions in income. I’m just selectively bashing the rich people whose views I oppose, just like you are.
No, I’m bashing the practise of tax evasion regardless of political affiliation. You, on the other hand, are indeed being selective based on political affiliation, excusing those who have sheltered their millions but still aren’t in favour of higher income taxes (because they agree with you on that kneejerk position).
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I’ll assume that you understand the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. Who are you aware of who’s broken the tax laws, and which did they break??
I am aware of the difference. I was talking about tax evasion. If you want a few dozen American names spanning the political spectrum who fraudulently used offshore accounts to hide assets from the IRS and other U.S. authorities, check out the Panama Papers.
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IIRC, there were very few Americans in the Panama Papers.
The usual explanation for that was “money-laundering is so easy to do in Delaware that there is no need for American kleptocrats to go offshore”.
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Correct, only a few dozen. But he asked for names, and they’re in there.
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Oh, money laundering is such an unpleasant phrase. We here in Delaware prefer to consider it as washing your corporate sins away through small contributions to our State’s coffers. Think of it like a plenary indulgence; purchase of a few LLC charters will restore your company’s soiled virtues nearly painlessly!
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It must be a source of anger and frustration for those who voted twice for Obama that he did essentially nothing to prosecute bank fraudsters, mortgage gamblers, tax evaders, etc. etc.
I wonder why not?
If you voted for him under the impression that he would, you have my sympathy.
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Unlike his mouth-breathing opponents, most of those who voted for Obama understood that he wasn’t anything close to a “socialist.” Anyone who didn’t understand that he bought into the same version of neoliberalism-lite that the DNC did was fooling himself.
Not that I blame voters for rolling the dice that Obama might go after them; the alternative of yet another GOP candidate steeped in “free” market fundamentalism only guaranteed that they wouldn’t be prosecuted. Imagine the kind of idiot who was angry at those who precipitated the crash of 2007 but still voted for McCain or (snort) Barr in 2008. Really, what kind of moron votes for less financial regulation after a crisis like that?
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In the early oughts, I saw houses in my community going up in price to 2x-3x what the people who currently lived in them could afford to pay. Sold my house a little bit after the peak and the proceeds have helped support my life style ever since. Anyone with three functioning neurons who was not part of the con should have seen the bubble for what it was.
Was Dubya one of the conned or part of the con? Dunno, but I do believe that what could have precluded the crash of 2007-8 would be for him to go on the record in 2004 to the effect that any institution whose portfolio was heavy in mortgage-backed securities was on its own. That “bailout” was a word that he would henceforth use only to describe what his dad did every birthday. (Edit: If Obama had voted against the bailouts, I may very well have voted for him.)
Well, what we have now is financial regulation that not only does not break up the TBTF banks, it defines and solidifies their position. Kind of like a cure for HIV that involves infecting the patient with Ebola. Can’t blame conservatives or libertarians for it, either.
Yeah, so hard to figure out that one, what was with Prince Bush not being part of the tradition of wealthy GOP establishment candidates since 1980 saying “regulation ba-a-a-d” lest they lose the votes of temporarily embarrassed libertarian and conservative millionaires and the donations of actual multi-millionaire conservatives. So puzzling that the crisis would have happened under his watch.
Not at all. We all remember GOP Congresspeople’s strong demands in 2008 that financial regulations be increased, and all the protests by libertarians and conservatives demanding it. If only Obama and the Dems had listened to their demands and co-operated in pushing through legislation with teeth.
[this has been a brief visit to Libertarian Bizarro World]
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In my section of libertarian world, companies with failed business models get to fail. And I was not the only one in 2008 with that opinion.
Final House vote on the 2008 bank bailout - The revised HR1424 was received from the Senate by the House, and on October 3, it voted 263-171 to enact the bill into law. Democrats voted 172 to 63 in favor of the legislation, while Republicans voted 108 to 91 against it.
My Republican “representative” voted for every single version of the bank bailout, including the original “blank check and to hell with balance” proposal, despite a torrent of calls to his office from his constituents asking him not to. (I called him 3 times myself.)
As for being a principled libertarian, I’m sorry (and very sympathetic; I voted Green!) but Libertarianism has been stigmatized by its lunatic fringe, and your opposition is going to work to maintain that stigma. Gary Johnson’s blundering didn’t help any, either.
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There are a couple of posters on BB who like to whack on me with libertarian strawmen all the time.
On a scale of Randian fundamentalism=0 to North Korea=10, I’m probably about a 2.5 to 3, and I’m closer to Rand Paul than to anyone the LP has run lately.
