Ocasio-Cortez Wants to Spend $40T on Progressive Programs. Free Health Care for All?

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Lanyap

Elite Member
Dec 23, 2000
8,100
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5. Change American culture. We eat nothing but fatty foods, drive everywhere, don’t exercise, and sit on our ass watching TV all day. Then and only then do you save money.


Don't forget about all of the sugar we ingest, eating processed food with additives and preservatives and sitting on our asses playing video games and posting in ATOT and ATPN.
 

UglyCasanova

Lifer
Mar 25, 2001
19,275
1,361
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Don't forget about all of the sugar we ingest, eating processed food with additives and preservatives and sitting on our asses playing video games and posting in ATOT and ATPN.


Yep. And I’m perfectly fine taxing foods with added sugars honestly. It’s being put in everything, things that you’d never realize it was in. It’s having a detrimental effect on society and I get the pushback that we need to be more self responsible but it’s poisoning our bodies and the nutritional facts label is buried and misleading (a thing that is obviously one serving counted as three for instance).
 
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Feb 4, 2009
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Ok then

6. Stop spending $100k a month to keep grandma alive (albeit in bed hooked up to tubes and barely lucid). Americans need to com to grips with death and focus on enjoying life rather than simply prolonging it

This is actually a great point, I’ve read half our lifetime medical expenses occur in the last 6-12 month of us being alive.
However guys like him were yelling about death pools 8 years ago.

**not sure if Casanova was one of them, I’m generalizing.
 

Ventanni

Golden Member
Jul 25, 2011
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That might help a bit, but it won't fix the problem. Eventually, no matter how healthy they live, everyone gets sick and dies. And that's where the true health costs lie.

Plus guy, it's not fatty foods, it's sugary foods. Obesity is never a good thing, all else being equal, but being obese AND diabetic is the big problem.

He's not entirely wrong though. Heck, you're both right, it's just a different approach to solving a problem. Dietary choices have a way of compounding health issues, especially as one ages. The worse the average diet, the more health issues a society experiences. Individual cases may differ, but super easy to see with data.
 

Homerboy

Lifer
Mar 1, 2000
30,856
4,974
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Jim Carrey was on Real Time with Bill Maher last week.

At one point he said: (paraphrased)

"Americans are always so amazed Canadians are so nice. Yeah. You know why we're so friendly? Because we have healthcare.

Critics will say there's long lines and no one gets treatment. That's bullshit. I never waited in a line. It's great. More importantly, it's about taking care of other people. Nobody gets denied."

I'm struggling how we'd be able to fit that into that "FYGM" approach to things down here...
 
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OutHouse

Lifer
Jun 5, 2000
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I am 100% in support of this. We spend a huge amount of money to prolong living in situations where we already know it’s over and no decent quality of life can be salvaged. I see no reason to do this.

Bring out the death squads
 

blackangst1

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
22,914
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They'll pack up and leave to where?

Communist China which just put Fan Bing Bing in prison for evading taxes?
Russia?
Europe with a 55-70% tax?

For the last 40 years the top 1% has gotten away with increasing their wealth a 1000% while the rest of us have been living with low wages.

Higher Education for all so we don't hand out H1B's and Medicare for all make sense.. a lot more sense than some infrastructure bill.

Ive read the Bahamas, France, and Curaçao are popular destinations.
 

MooseNSquirrel

Platinum Member
Feb 26, 2009
2,587
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Based on my research, I'm not aware of any country (Canada being an example) that doesn't have a massive "2nd Coverage" market - because the bare coverage is comparitaively dog shit with insane wait times.

Feel free to correct me if wrong there - i can't speak behalf on a country I haven't lived in. The basic message was that if you're in the middle to upper class (basically anyone on AT), just about everyone had 2nd coverage.

So to the point of budget replacing other coverages, how do you defend that against everyone needing 2nd coverage?
Not worth replying to hyperbole bolstered by simplistic theories, but still worth ponting out they yave better outcomes.
 
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brycejones

Lifer
Oct 18, 2005
25,992
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Funny, it's the socialist liberals in this thread calling to kravokian granny

Uglygoatboy is now a socialist liberal? How far to the right are you?

Although even in this thread no one called for hooking granny up to a suicide machine which is what you just technically said. Good job you beat the fuck out of that straw person again. Why do you hate the straw people?
 
Feb 4, 2009
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This could be a good area for a Republican President to lead.
Funny, it's the socialist liberals in this thread calling to kravokian granny

Point is do what you hate to do for best results.

For example Republicans need to figure out what taxes to raise and what areas of defense spending is wasted to get a good result.
Democrats need to figure out what aspects of social services need to be cut because they are not performing. Republicans need to be onboard about how taxation should work to pay for the programs.
Democrats need to work on next tax cut for businesses
 
Last edited:
Mar 11, 2004
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lol, return of the death panels!

If someone wishes to spend millions of dollars on prolonging their life for a few extra, painful days, weeks, or months that's their business. I see no reason why other people should pay for it though as it's not helpful.

This mentality will cause problems. If people decided to just die instead of try to fight cancer, it will hamper developing cancer treatment for everyone, including kids and younger adults. There are reasons you do things that won't make fiscal sense in medicine, because they can have benefits that won't show up on a balance sheet any time soon.

Also, unless I'm mistaken, people absolutely do have the right to choose to just die instead of fight, so your best hope of getting that thinking through is to push for legalized assisted suicide.

And FYI, you're paying for it either which way, be it fully socialized health care or via "free market" capitalism, with some few exceptions (very wealthy people that pay for special treatment out of pocket - although I have a hunch this number is quite low and that even the very wealthy use insurance).
 
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Nov 8, 2012
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Point is do what you hate to do for best results.

For example Republicans need to figure out what taxes to raise and what areas of defense spending is wasted to get a good result.
Democrats need to figure out what aspects of social services need to be cut because they are not performing. Republicans need to be onboard about how taxation should work to pay for the programs.
Personally I think anything that is run by government (Federal, State, and Local) should be audited on a consistent basis.

Similar to stats that you can look up on how efficient or contributing a nonprofit is, the government should have efficiency standards that are consistently evaluated. If they are below performance, that is an indication that reform is needed.

Corporations have to answer to stakeholders, government has to be held accountable or they will (naturally) not strive to perform well.
 
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fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
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This mentality will cause problems. If people decided to just die instead of try to fight cancer, it will hamper developing cancer treatment for everyone, including kids and younger adults. There are reasons you do things that won't make fiscal sense in medicine, because they can have benefits that won't show up on a balance sheet any time soon.

Is your argument that these incentives spur investment in research? If so, I would argue we could just invest in research instead and skip the middle man.

And to be clear, I'm not saying anyone stricken with cancer shouldn't be treated. I'm a cancer survivor, after all! As cancer treatments go though, some therapies offer little additional life or quality of life but are very expensive. I would rather spend those health care dollars on other people and other things where they would do more good.

Also, unless I'm mistaken, people absolutely do have the right to choose to just die instead of fight, so your best hope of getting that thinking through is to push for legalized assisted suicide.

I'm also a fan of legal assisted suicide but I think establishing something like the UK's NICE is what we need here.

And FYI, you're paying for it either which way, be it fully socialized health care or via "free market" capitalism, with some few exceptions (very wealthy people that pay for special treatment out of pocket - although I have a hunch this number is quite low and that even the very wealthy use insurance).

I'm paying for it in a 'free market' sense if my private plan covers such things, yes. We are all paying for it for people on Medicare though, I agree. My argument is that we should stop because that money can be better spent.
 
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