USA Politics

Invader said:
Well, that's a great way to debate.  "We're right, they're stupid, we don't have to argue."

In any case, I don't agree that private business is always more efficient than government.  In my high school class, a girl changed from a private school to our school because the teaching there was crap.  I'd have preferred her to stay in the old school, but that's another story... 

As for free education, I will probably be paying for it manyfold in taxes once I graduate, but if it cost as much as in the US, I could never have had it in the first place.
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When I read your words "free", I just lost patience.  Though I see you've added to it.  ;)

In terms of private or public school issue, when you're taxed regardless, there will be more money in public sector.  People generally do not want to pay for the same thing twice.  Unless your family is in the richest bracket, private schools are not a viable choice.  The higher concentration of money in public sector means that better teachers are more likely to find jobs there.  But they also have a higher sway through the political process to increase their pay at the taxpayer's expense.  Ontario (Canada) has a strong teacher's union with a lot of political power.   
 
Hell, they own the fucking Maple Leafs!

bearfan said:
Fantastic news, a major part of the Health Care Law, the insurance mandate, has been struck down in Federal court.  Obviously more appeals and courts to come.
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This will be interesting to see what happens. If the Supreme Court interprets this as being against the Constitution, then a lot of previous regulations could be undone. I find myself wondering what might happen in that case.

(I say interesting from the standpoint of a political observer. I feel for the people who's health insurance costs will skyrocket as a result.)
 
With education and private schools, where you have cases of the same school or district with high drop out rates, high crime rates in the school, and kids graduating with minimal skills, it is IMO a moral imperitive to get these kids out of that school, be it secular, a Catholic school, whatever.  Otherwise tax payers are truly throwing money down the drain and a generation of kids is hosed. 
If this health care ruling stands, much of the rest of the bill needs to be redone as there is no way to pay for it:  which is exactly what I want to see happen and go back and do something better
 
I believe in giving people a fighting chance to make it or break it on their own.
By not doing what it can to provide equal access to health care and education, a society is essentially giving the wealthy an opportunity to start the game with an extra player on the field.
Bureaucrats will mismanage things, of that there is no doubt. However, communities pay a lower price for bureaucracy than the alternate costs posed by poverty.
If we can help — and we can — why not do it?
 
Certainly all citizens should have access to health care, however that does not mean we should accept a horrible plan that will run way over cost and does nothing to address the rising costs.  I am 90% opposed to the law that passed and think we should scrap all of it and start back over with somehing that will not turn into Medicare/Social Security.
 
I am not informed enough to argue the finer points of your law.
But what is wrong with medicare as a concept?
 
Financially it cannot work without pouring more and more money into it, they pay out high benefits and do not take in near enough in premiums to cover them.  To keep the program moving, they cut payments to doctors and stick the states with costs. 

One big flaws , IMO, with medicare and Social Security is that that when the programs were designed, no one had a concept that people would live longer and that the issues have become so politically charged that is is almost impossible to reform them to face these realities.  I think this is common in most government programs, these two happen to be the biggest.
 
Still, Medicare and Social Security only really take up the same amount of the budget each approximately as defense spending. While I'm not opposed to the ideas that the two could be reformed, I think that scrapping them would be very difficult to do.

I'm curious to know, Bearfan...what sort of health care reform would you have gone for?
 
bearfan said:
One big flaws , IMO, with medicare and Social Security is that that when the programs were designed, no one had a concept that people would live longer and that the issues have become so politically charged that is is almost impossible to reform them to face these realities.   I think this is common in most government programs, these two happen to be the biggest.
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I couldn't agree more. These systems needed to be updated/revamped decades ago... but as LC said, getting rid of them isn't the solution either.
 
Social Security and Medicare were designed to be self funding programs, they will reach a point (without reform) where that will no longer be the case and their costs will rise at a rapid rate and/or Social Security/Mediacare (which are separate from Income Taxes) will need to go up. 

As for medical reform.

The parts of the current law I like are things like making insurance portable, eliminating the ability to deny based on some conditions, and if I recall there were some provisions for preventative care which made sense.

Think i would have liked to have seen

Reform of Malpractice insurance/tort reform to lower cost to doctors as well as eliminate medically un-necesary tests that are done to prevent lawsuits.

I think it is great that there are some many medications being developed, but I think if they can regulate legal products like tobacco and booze, there is a need to regulate drug commercials.  I think there are too many people that say I can just take this cholesterol pill versus take a walk and not eat as much crap.

On the plus for drug companies, tort reform would benefit them and I think they should get further tax breaks for R&D and be able to hold onto their patents longer

For younger people, in many cases it makes no sense to pay for full coverage, I think MSAs are a much better option.  Once place I worked had a terrific plan for young single people (that would grow nicely if they started early).  You buy catostrophic coverage for next to nothing and put the rest of what would be the premium into a MSA.  Based on a group discount you pay 50 to see a doctor, reduced rates for other treatments and the money is tax free.  I think this is a batter solution to rationing care, it puts the decision in the hands of the patient.  I think too much now we see doctors for colds and other things because you can pay a $20 co-pay, so there is no real cost (or savings) to not seeing a doctor when not needed.  With technology now there are online things/phone calls you should be able to make to say "here are my symptoms, should I come in now or give it a day to run it's course".  We are turning into a bunch of wimps who go to a doctor for a hang nail anymore.

I think with any system change, Medicare, Social Security.Health Care, you have to bite the bullet and let people alive now and over a certain age keep doing things the way they are done, but for younger people get them on a more modern system and find a way to eat the short term cost for long term benefit, but elected officials rarely think that way
 
I have no problem with "grandfathering" in change, but I also like the idea of tort reform. I always have.

However.

I have said a few times that I think the best answer to the US problem would be a very firmly regulated insurance industry, rather like Switzerland. Switzerland also has required purchasing of health care from several companies, who essentially are restricted on what they can do, and what they must offer. In other words, while there are different packages available, health care items deemed 100% mandatory are always covered.

One of the big problems in the US was caps. As I understand the issue (and given the complexity, I do not claim I can be without error), insurance companies claim that they had to cap insured people because of profitability. That's fine - I can appreciate that insurance companies have a duty to their shareholders. So the option was to get more people insured, especially younger people, to allow the insurance companies to make more money, and eliminate things like caps and the desire to turn away people with critical illnesses.

Given the average American's resistance to government programs and the way Medicare has gone, I don't necessarily think a full state-run option is a good idea. The public option intrigued me, and I think it could help if it was run exactly as a company, with very strict government regulation on what the government can and cannot do (let's look at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and learn some lessons), but I doubt that could happen. I feel I can trust certain governments to be responsible, but the American government's not one of them. I think that there's a culture in the United States that runs against that, and maybe that's one of the things that is different from Europe to the United States: in the United States, a lot of people want the government to stay out of their business, and in Europe, they want them deeper.

So, I really do think that insurance companies should be regulated strictly. I think everyone should have to buy insurance, and the government can provide tax incentives for poorer households to make this happen. There's definitely a place for tort reform in there as well. But in the end, it's gotta bring costs down.

As an aside, it should be noted that increasing the health of people during their working years will help cut Medicare costs too.

ANYWAY.

All that aside, if the SCOTUS decides that the health care law is unconstitutional, the government will have to go back to the drawing board. I have some ideas on that, but I'm not going to get into them, yet. However, what the Democrats put forward is still better than what existed, even if not much better.
 
In a better world, this would be handled at the state level, the health care/education needs/etc are vastly different from Wyoming to Florida, metro areas to rural.  I question how a one size fits all scheme would work.

One other thing I would like to see are the co-ops that were discussed and set up in a similar way to Credit Unions.  This would be a huge help to self-employed, small businesses, and individuals.
 
An act to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy has just received cloture in the Senate, 63-33, with 4 senators abstaining. Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins & Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Scott Brown (R-MA), and George Voinovich (R-OH) voted for cloture. Senators Manchin (D-WV), Gregg (R-NH), Hatch (R-UT), and Bunning (R-KY) abstained.

Incredible.
 
In the US Senate, a Senator has the right to debate an issue for as long as they'd want. The only way to get a Senator to shut up is to vote for cloture, which limits debate and allows the matter to proceed to a final vote. You need 6/10th of the Senate to agree to cloture to move to a final vote.

If 41 Senators agree to not vote for cloture, this is a filibuster.
 
The repeal of Dont Ask seems like a sure thing at this point, DREAM act, as expected, went down in flames as did the budget for next year.
 
Wasn't that the omnibus spending bill that went down?

For reference, I'm not surprised about DREAM. I also don't think it's necessarily a good act. Immigration reform should be comprehensive.
 
LooseCannon said:
Wasn't that the omnibus spending bill that went down?

For reference, I'm not surprised about DREAM. I also don't think it's necessarily a good act. Immigration reform should be comprehensive.
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You are right, it was the spending bill which was pulled in favor of a shorter term funding bill.  I agree about the DREAM act, I am not sure that would be a very good idea in a more comprehensive bill, and certainly not as a stand-alone bill.   
 
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