Quote:
Originally Posted by saden1
Your statement implied that everyone pays that 20% which is not true with respect to the elderly and very poor. You neglect the fact that there's is a monthly ceiling for co-payments which means you never pay more than the ceiling in any given month (the cost is capped monthly but if you can't afford the 20% the government will assist you). In 1999 this ceiling was roughly $600 ($330 for those with low income and $1140 for those with significant income). The effective co-payment for the elderly was 7.3%.
Also, contribution to the program is a percentage based on your income (~4%) sorta like social security with everyone getting the same deal. There's government control across the board (drugs prices, profit margins on drugs, procedures prices, private insurance prices, level of interaction between doctors and private insurers, etc, etc). It's a highly complex system to say the least.
This my friend is a full blown socialized health care system. Let's just say I like it and I'm glad you like it too.
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that's probably because the point was obama wants full socialized health care eventually and how he'd pay for it without tax increases. the japanese system was a footnote example, not an essay, cause again, that really was tangential to the discussion at hand, so i didn't think it was necessary.
i mean, i could levy the same statement back at you about every rash generalization you've made in this thread, so it seems like a silly thing to say. I'm glad you learned something though, and hopefully some of the baseless mccain crap can be shown the door.
neither one is perfect and neither one is really what i want, but i'll always choose smaller government and less senseless taxing (libertarian).
i'm all for social programs, but only if they can prevent abuse and show a clear economic/social benefit and a sane payment system, which most don't.
i mean, if someone went ahead and said social security is going to be killed off completely, they'd have my vote (since i save and invest and would get an amazingly better return on that money than some crap annuity when i'm 70), but it'll never happen. even if they just gave people the option to opt out and lose whatever they've contributed thusfar, i'd be jumping at it.
tax and legalize prostitution, drill where you can safely drill without massive eco-damage, i mean, there's a lot of small issues that make sense and would be very easy to implement (and added together, you'd get a better economy, less wasteful spending, more tax revenue, cheaper energy, less dependence etc), but there's so much that's verbotten it's stupid.
there was an actual argument over building a 120mill$ bridge to nowhere for a tiny (<100 i think) village... relocation across the water body or private cessna's for every person would have been cheaper, and they actually had to waste time entertaining that kind of crap. honestly the amount of pork in our spending is almost nothing compared to the budget or other nations, but hearing about it just rankles at how wasteful some people can be.