Taxes on everyone? Including the poor? Or just the 1% who don’t pay taxes anyway? Or taxes that fall put the burden on the middle class as usual?
You having fun running around moving all these goal posts? You must get tired… how about you just leave the goal posts in one place?
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Let the filthy poors die, right?
I know when I was in the UK I just sat around at home all day, luxuriating in my universal healthcare. No reason to get a job for me, I had it made!
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These muthafuckas.
The only reason I own an iphone at all is because Apple literally made me a deal I couldn’t refuse; 1 penny, plus the original retail tax on a late model (5S at the time), along with the contract that I would have signed anyway.
That’s $50 for a $500 retail value phone.
Additionally, anything name brand brand I own came second hand; and having been one of the working poor pretty much my whole life, I was hip to thrift shops long before ‘Mackelmore’ came along.
#Chaffetz can go fuck himself with an iphone gen 1, sideways.
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As one of the Americans that the GOP is condemning to a slow and painful death, allow me to explain.
I have no other worth than making money for corporations. I can do this directly, such as laboring for low wages while the owning class makes obscene profits, or indirectly, by being imprisoned in a for-profit prison at taxpayer expense. The income tax I pay is seen not as an investment in my country, but as a sign of my gullibility, since savvy rich people pay at a lower rate, and often a smaller amount. (Donald Trump famously pays no tax at all.)
The ideal American, from the corporate viewpoint, would take an expensive cruise upon retirement, and then die after a short but expensive illness that would wipe out the family’s savings, thus enriching the cruise-line and the local hospital.
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Hey, I am all for starting a Policy or Governance thread. Because that is precisely what you are alluding to, and which I believe 99% of us agree–it isn’t that we shouldn’t have a republic, state, or country, it is how it is divided.
That, in my opinion, is a useful discussion.
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Another Canuck here, in the same confused boat. I thought this kind of crap was all about business and economics? When you wind up with people who can’t work (read: contribute taxes) because they can’t afford to seek medical help, who exactly does that help? Why is no one playing the long game in US 'health’care?!
I have a monthly prescription for a stupid, shitty chronic disease that showed up – surprise!! – in my early thirties. That prescription costs $1700/month (in CANADA - or about two iPhone 7s), but between my work benefits and my provincial pharmacare plan, I pay $5 a YEAR in dispensing fees. (Without work benefits the cost would be the same to me.)
In turn, 20 years worth of studies demonstrate that this disease-modifying drug will keep me employed vastly longer, with greatly reduced disability, thereby I’ll be contributing more taxes and purchasing power, along with the service/product I provide through my job (produced in Canada and sold to a great portion of Canadians, the knock-on effects of which mean MOAR Canadians remain employed, buy products that provide a 5% tax, etc.)
I can provide a list of a bunch of people who benefit from my receiving those drugs, which I could never in my wildest dreams pay out of pocket. So, for this relatively minor version of this depressingly common disease, how many Americans are walking around untreated, thereby cutting short their ‘productive’ lives…?
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… which is right about at the median income level in the U.S. So, not the low-income group of people Chaffetz was asked about who would no longer get health care under the proposed new plan.
The two answers are not talking about the same group, and they are not answered in the same way. They are not the same.
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Don’t Tell mr. Pants, but I’m moving into your shed 
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It is certainly a bit snide; but Chaffetz’s ‘point’ remains pretty pitiful.
Even if we chose the 256GB iPhone 7 as a benchmark(mathematically convenient, since they cost $1000); I pay .65 iphones a month just to stay insured(medical only, no dental). If I am irresponsible enough to actually require medical care; there are deductibles, copays, the ‘we apparently compute “reasonable and customary” based on what a simpler but vaguely analogous procedure cost in about 1985’ trick;and (unless I’d sprung for the policy that was closer to 1.4 iphones a month) total refusal to cover anything ‘out of network’, period, not even at the ‘reasonable and customary’ rate.
And that’s to cover a single person.
Insurance costs are easily high enough that even someone who buys a phone every year and has a pretty indulgent data plan isn’t close to being able to just close the gap by getting a prepaid burner instead; and the fact that insurance costs are largely static, between the occasional price increases, only makes your actual medical bills fixed if you studiously avoid ever actually requiring medical care.
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Don’t say that. Other than Trump, everyone knows that healthcare is complicated.
- Preventative medicine
- An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It costs far less to take care of cancer when it’s caught early, or to deal with a cleanly broken bone rather than a badly-healed one, or to provide free immunizations as opposed to dealing with outbreaks.
I injured my ankle about two years ago. I went to a walk-in clinic, got an order for an x-ray, got the x-ray done, and got the results back telling me it was a sprain and would heal on its own. Total cost to me: $20 for a tensor and Voltaren. The doctor’s visit, X-ray, and prescription were all covered by my tax-provided OHIP (the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, or more generically, Medicare). Because I didn’t have to pay for the doctor, I can go for the little things and have them taken care of while they’re still little things.
- A vastly simplified billing system.
- If I go to an Ontario hospital and I’m an Ontario resident (like most people in Ontario hospitals), the majority of my care will be billed to OHIP. If I want a private room, then that will be an extra bill, but the vast majority of the billing is done to the provincial Medicare plans, which makes it really easy to standardize the forms.
- Government-set rates
- In the U.S., doctors work at the rate the market can sustain, which is based on what the hospitals are willing to pay, which is based on what the insurance companies are willing to pay, which is based on what consumers can afford to pay. So, it’s in everybody’s interest (except for the consumer) to make those fees as high as possible.
- In Canada, the rate that a hospital charges for a procedure is set by the province, which limits the amount that hospitals get paid, which limits the amount that doctors get paid. It means that doctors get paid substantially less in Canada than they do in the U.S. (and insurance and hospital corporations are much less profitable). Yes, some doctors get their M.D. and then go across the border to the U.S. to get paid more, but enough stay to make the system work.
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And of course, that’s just the cost of insurance - if you have any actual medical issues, there’s copays and deductibles. Most plans I’ve seen even under the ACA have a five-iphone deductible, and 200-600 text message deductible for medications.
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I pay $446 dollars a month for our health plan. That’s before co-pays or deductibles. Exclusive of those premiums, our medical expenses run to several thousand dollars a year (somewhere between $5k and $10K).
And we’re getting off cheaply.
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I get that, but where is the money coming from in the long run when your tax-paying public can’t work or pay for basic healthcare, or are, you know, DEAD? The moneybags idea is the unbelievably short game. The stupid certainly burns…
This is like my deciding not to water my garden because I don’t want to pay for the water. Take that, stupid vegetables! Works ok … for a week or two…
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Exercise is a very good preventative medicine.
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Pretty sure that to Chaffetz 50K is low income…
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I still go back to they were both snide remarks made by career politicians. No difference in content. Both the current ACA and the new policies put forth by the Republican House members is unsustainable. I don’t have the answers by any means. My comment was merely to highlight that both parties are the same.
“In the long run” is a problem for next quarter’s profits. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.
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Bullshit.
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