That plays on both sides too. I think there is acceptance for the public school system simply because a lot of people of voting age have already spent a huge chunk of their life in it. Couple that with the core education ignoring critical thinking for the larger part of your first 2 decades in the system, and this is what you get.
7 Likes
Hillary of 2015 will not go all-out to kick Insuranceâs ass, like Hillary of 1992 tried to do and instead got HER ass kicked. If she gets in, I expect a worsening health insurance situation and rollback of large portions of the ACA.
The ACA is not the panacea, btw. It did better at insuring the uninsured who drag down the system, and cut back some of the worst draconian practices like purges and refusal for pre-existing conditions. But itâs still a boon for insurance companies and never cut them down to size, really at all. Get Bernie in there and we might have a shot at a better health insurance system. Might. We need a different Congress, though.
Iâm 100% for single-payer as described in that PHNP link you posted. How to get there is:
???
The amount of evil that runs through this nation is very high.
6 Likes
You realize that there is an entire segment of hard core right wing Christians in America who take their kids out of our godless schools, right?
8 Likes
But the NHS is organised differently, mostly because itâs not an insurance but funded by taxes. afaik the ACA mandates the purchase of a health care insurence (or a comparable QoS).
2 Likes
We donât have âgovernment schoolsâ in the UK. We have state schools (and state medical care). The government is not the state, but the people might be. The education and health care systems belong to us and the job of the government is to manage them properly with as little interference as possible.
8 Likes
This.
And itâs also worth noting, that even purely from a fiscal standpoint, itâs cheaper to pay for the care before hand rather than have them stumble into an emergency room after years of neglect. Youâd think the fiscally conservative would get that.
âLiving it up in rehabâ is a thing? That doesnât sound like a thing. That canât be a thing. Also: see above point.
10 Likes
The current government are trying their best to ensure we donât have state education or healthcare anymore though. Bastards.
5 Likes
Ah, I see the point now. Ignorant socialist that I am, I still find it hard to grok how, in seeking to avoid the twin âsocialistâ evils of death panels and excessive bureaucracy, Americans have wound up with a mandatory system of both, in the form of insurance companies.
23 Likes
Thatâs exactly right. You see, individual Americans choose for themselves to be born without health insurance and/or perfect health, so whatever befalls them during their lives is due to FREEDOM! Freedom is good. Lather, rinse, repeat.
11 Likes
Donât forget the other communist affectations Americans seem strangely used to: a postal service, police force, highway systems, etc.
7 Likes
I cannot like this enough!
3 Likes
I donât think you can sweep aside the voucher question as @navarro illustrated above. They havenât scored complete victory, but the right is constantly chipping away at the public-ness of public schools. The more a person tilts to the right, the more likely they are to try to avoid public schools, the furthest right/religious end up homeschooling or in religious schools (of course, far lefties homeschool too, to some degree, and for similar ideological-purity reasons).
The effect of local property-tax funding canât be ignored either, and is basically a system where parents âbuyâ their way into better school by buying more expensive homes in âdesirableâ neighborhoods. The belief in parentsâ ârightâ to the school they bought their way into is laid bare when protests arise over busing and integration (see recent stories about Brooklyn integration efforts for evidence that this way of thinking is actually all over the political spectrumâŚ)
Local school boards are also a way to reduce the central-planning feeling of socialist endeavors like public schools. They return the control to the local tyrant-wannabeâs who hate federal socialism and âtyrannyâ, but love local conservative control and cronyism.
So basically, to get socialized health care in the US, all we need is quality of care that depends on the tax bracket of your district and hyper-local boards making fine-grained decisions about what should and should not be coveredâŚ*shivers*
7 Likes
Elected Death Panels?
3 Likes
Thanks everyone for your thoughtful comments!
3 Likes
Have you ever gone to a (corporate-owned) walk-in clinic? Because thatâs pretty much exactly what those are like. Except more expensive, and with more paperwork due to insurance and such.
5 Likes
I often wonder to what extent lack of insurance drives people to stay at jobs instead of starting their own business. I know plenty of two income families where one spouse is the employee-with-benefits spouse â and the other gets to be the one without benefits starting/owning a small business. But I bet there are MILLIONS of people who stay put out of fear of having no insurance, or the prohibitive cost of insurance.
On top of that, the taxpayer is already footing the bill for the old (medicare), the very poor (medicaid), every federal employee, every state employee, every local employee (including all public school teachers, all cops, and likely dependents for all these people b/c generally itâs better insurance than the public sector)⌠and on top of that those with insurance from their employeer ⌠thatâs a tax break for the employer and employee. Bottom line is, the taxpayer is already paying for many many many people to be insured. My bro-in-law argued that itâs âpart of my compensation package - I work for thatâ. Yes, yes you do - but the taxpayer is still paying for it.
8 Likes
I hate to have to agree with you!! But you are right.
Why not? Seriously, why is this taken for granted? Why donât you have the right to food when the alternative of living off of the land is not permitted? We traded that away as a cost for having civilization. Civilization should in turn ensure that no one is hungry, because the purpose of the endeavor is to improve life.
How does he think private insurance works right now? Where do you think those premiums he and his employer pays go? Someone in the pool is getting a liver transplant due to alcoholic cirrhosis. I guarantee it. Someone else is undergoing costly continuing care for renal failure on âhisâ dime. Money doesnât spontaneously combust into existence for his insurance company to use.
8 Likes
not all public school teachers get medical insurance from the state. in texas we get whatever local contribution our district gives (in mine itâs $120/month) and then we pay the difference for our premium. in our district a silver plan that covers spouse and children costs $450/month over the subsidy from the district. i get my health insurance through my wifeâs employer because they offer a higher subsidy of health insurance than my district does for a better plan.
1 Like
Funding comes through taxation so the government can take a strategic view, but operationally they are on stickier ground. (What do you mean, weâve overspent? Cuts? Sorry, didnât get that email. Now fuck off, weâre busy. Canât you see weâve got patients to attend to?)
Osbourne (or whoever) can throw a political tantrum and rig the regulator, but publicly it doesnât look good failing clinically outstanding hospitals. He will lie and make noises about deficit reduction to try to unfoot any opposition, but he will pay up.
Government (and corporate) narratives here canât play to atavistic fears of government control and rugged individualism and independence. It doesnât exist. There is uncertainty since the seventies what direction education and health care should take with greater demand, which the right can exploit, but if governments take what we think is ours we get angry. There is some leverage with hard-working families and benefits but even that is limited. Still I donât trust them.
If they do manage to privatise the NHS do I get a gun instead?
1 Like
