Just give everyone a voucher and let them buy their own health insurance using it.
The amount of paperwork, and details to keep track of and calculate was absolutely unreal. I have BOXES full of paper from medicare, there was so much I could barely keep up.
The worst was the arcane and utterly confusing rules on eligibility: if this, or if that, or you live here, or there, for these dates, and that deadline. I felt like I needed an AI just to figure it all out (and in hindsight my understanding was completely wrong, and I chose the wrong option).
Sounds like you need a better system in the US. Maybe not so many different stakeholders in the system?
They have to compete with each other, if they were confusing no one would sign up.
> Sounds like you need a better system in the US.
It does work for most people, it's the edge cases that fail.
> Maybe not so many different stakeholders in the system?
Making medicare normal would require much higher taxes (medicare/medicaid hospital payments are below costs and are subsidized by commercial plans). People would then save money on commercial plans.
Net dollars would not change, or maybe go down, but the distribution would change, some winners, some losers.
- Banking regulations
- government backed healthcare
- gun control
- education system
They outspend nearly everyone on public health and education and yet still have outcomes in the lower half of the developed world for what those programs are supposed to address. And instead of actually owning up to the poor outcomes and trying to fix them they just blame blacks and latinos for pulling down the average.
That might be a good idea. In fact, it is very likely a good idea, for some global notion of 'good.' But people on Medicare would be, shall we say, vocal in their complaint.
If we stopped doing that hospitals could publish actual prices for procedures - same price for everybody, insurance or not. Then people could actually shop around and healthcare costs would drop.
But today prices have to be secret and impossible to understand or the way commercial plans fund medicare would collapse.
Handing out "free" money has worked so well for higher education. How will vouchers solve the problem of skyrocketing health care costs?
And parent even used the sarcasm tag. :-) Parent doesn't need it explained, but some American citizens apparently do: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescription...
Saying that there are some people ignorant of what they are voting for is not news. Stating that one side has ignorant voters carries implications that the other side is correct and right thinking.
"Stating that one side has ignorant voters carries implications that the other side is correct and right thinking."
No it doesn't. Why would you say that? I can't even.
Not that I think Trump will bring that. The office of President is not that important. But I'm talking about what a certain set of voters says they want, not what will actually happen if they vote that way.
It makes me think of Sam Altman's recent article about Trump. He said he was taking some risk by writing that, and some commenters here praised his bravery in taking a public stand on this. It's ridiculous. Bravery would be a prominent techie taking a stand for Trump. He's not going to suffer any consequences for publishing that. Nobody's going to knock on his door and haul him off at 3AM, or deny him entrance into any organizations, or even shoot him dirty looks on the street.
No, I don't feel comfortable writing this comment. For the record, I don't like Clinton or Trump. But it's better for the rest of the world for Clinton to lose.
I'm sorry, what? You can certainly call it prejudice. There's plenty of trump supporters who aren't bigots, but there's also a lot of them who are, and Trump's campaign has been majorly based on demagoguery, bigotism and xenophobia.
If you're voicing/implying support for someone whose campaign is built on racism, don't be surprised if you're getting dirty looks.
As for dirty looks, that's what they are. You're accusing "the other side" of projection when you yourself are interpreting a look as "I want to kill you". Jeez.
Edit:
> But it's better for the rest of the world for Clinton to lose.
I appreciate the conendrum the US is facing in this election cycle, but if you're going to make decisions based on their worldwide implications, you should ask around in the rest of the world. Clinton is an inconsequential establishment politician; Trump is a loose cannon who "won't rule out using nukes in Europe". As someone living in said Europe, I really wonder how you got to that conclusion.
And you weren't with me to see that look. It was incredibly hostile. No I don't think he literally wanted to kill me, but he had the same look as a person who would. (From movies)
Trump publicly stated his support for the Iraq war during an interview in 2002. He's since backpedaled claiming that he was against it "before it started" but all indications are that he was, at most, neutral on the war before it started (being against the war after it starts is kind of irrelevant).
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/19/donald-trump...
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/02/donald-trump-and-the-iraq-w...
> A lot of anti-Trump people accuse Trump supporters of bigotry and exclusion, but I think that's projection on their part.
A lot of Trump supporters are really good at ignoring the obvious terrible things about Trump and his campaign and latching onto the one or two things they like about him. You can't honestly claim that there is no bigotry or exclusion in Trump's campaigning. He's called for a ban on Muslims entering the country. He's called for building a huge wall along the Mexican border and deporting 11 million immigrants. Plus, you know, the "rapists and murderers" comment about Mexicans entering the US.
If you think that Trump is the better candidate in spite of his obvious shortcomings, you should have the honesty to say so, rather than pretend his shortcomings aren't real.
Also, when trump completely fucks the US economy, the rest of us will get fucked no matter how much we do or don't care about your neck of the woods.
Second-hand anecdotes of people claiming they'll vote for Trump just to see the system come down is not data.
Without data, it may be such a minority of people that it's not worth significant consideration in a discussion. I'm apt to believe it's an extreme minority given it's an extreme view.
In any case you're probably right. Most people who voted to exit the EU probably weren't uninformed. Google data only represents correlation. General buzz about brexit is a more likely explanation for the search trends. Occam's razor dominates.
The government benefits the people enormously. Yes, it has a lot of problems, but we're way better off with it than without it. I can totally understand a desire for reform, but simply tearing it down is insane.
Unfortunately, in the US, both parties colluded to work for their corporate sponsors, not the people who vote for them, so they both need to be disrupted somehow.
Most voters understand it, and that explains the anti-establishment voting in this election (Sanders/Trump)