People talking about dismantling the military to pay for health care distract themselves from the fact that the health care system already holds all the money that is needed for single payer health-care. Which is what the people making money off this system want. They want people to blame the military, because that doesn’t solve shit.
For example, the entire admin back end can be civil service. (Some of it already is) and contracting needs to go die in a dumpster fire. You’ve got at least 30,000 infantrymen sitting around doing nothing on any given day. Take a survey of their skills and start assigning additional duties. You can always fall back on contractors if you run out of grunts.
Also, for the love of God stop maintaining an entire mechanized army. You don’t need to mount every soldier at the same time. Yes it’s awesome. But most infantry units aren’t going much of anywhere once they’re dug in.
Until superheroes or the Carebears become real we will need a military. The things I mentioned don’t touch the power projection debate on purpose. That’s a whole ideology thing that people need to be voting for and stuff. I’m taking about ways to save money whether we pull back or not.
Source: Ukraine. Gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for an accord specifying its borders and promising peace. Almost immediately got invaded by a nuclear power with an army after making political decisions on its own. If it had kept its nuclear weapons, Russia would not have been so cavalier about straight up invading. Disarmament is a lie.
Disarmament of an actual nuclear power has been done once. South Africa.
Ukraine never owned or controlled those nukes. They were guarded by Russian soldiers. They would have had to attack Russian soldiers, somehow repulse a Russian counterattack without Western aid, and then reprogram them since they didn’t have launch codes. Ukraine got the best concessions they could for giving Russia back the Russian nukes.
Ironically, without the “bigger threat” of the USA, they’d likely be at odds against each other. China still wants Outer Manchuria back, a region it was forced to cede to Russia back in 1860. Iran wants to be the de facto power of the muslim world, but has to deal with many other muslim countries that don’t want it, plus Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are countries that Russia would prefer to have control over.
I doubt China would steamroll them. People thought Russia would steamroll Ukraine, it very clearly didn’t. Besides, China isn’t exactly a loved country, it has “allies” that would likely abandon them on the first opportunity and many countries that would love to see them getting kicked in the proverbial nuts.
Any militaristic action of China against any of those big targets would trigger a response from several countries. While everyone will talk peace, in reality a good portion would try to play the war up for as long as possible, to bleed both dry.
They also distract themselves from the fact that a single payer system would be cheaper so we could actually afford more military with one. No dismantling needed.
I feel vindicated. Not 15 days ago I complained about paying more in taxes AND health insurance. And I’ve been saying it for over a decade. Fuck private healthcare, it serves no purpose for the people.
Yep, this is why I argue with people who say, we should raise taxes to fund it…no fuck that, we can afford it now already without having to raise taxes even a penny.
I have to say, being on Medicaid through college showed just how true this is. Being able to put my health first, rather than worry about if I could afford a doctor visit (or an ER visit), was great. The peace of mind of knowing that I would pay $0 for ANYTHING medical lead to me putting my health first.
The one potential charge you could get was for going to the ER for something deemed a “non-emergency.” Even then I didn’t worry about whether I could go to the ER after whiffing it off my longboard and smacking my head into the pavement because… well, the non-emergency charge was $8.
Imagine not having to choose between taking your kid to the doctor for $300 and a sick note for sniffles or letting him tough it out and get marked truant.
This may not be a popular question, but: Would Americans be willing to pay less?
No really. This would mean a lot of good jobs being cut. Yes, they are jobs that provide no benefit to the public (rather the opposite), but thinking about the big picture isn’t very American. Americans like to side with the little guy.
It gets worse. It would mean a huge pay cut for doctors. They are way overpaid compared to doctors anywhere else. Would Americans side with themselves the people the government or those nice family doctors?
First of all what? Typically the highest paid members of hospital staff of “Administrators” who have completely shifted health care into a for-profit business. If the government regulated them out of their jobs and there were price caps set in place instead of wasting hundreds of hours decoding billing and fighting insurance companies doctors would very likely make more. They would also be more likely to actually try to help you versus hit unrealistic patient exam quotas to try and extract as much money from insurance to benefit the administration staff. Hell new doctors in medical school are pretty much unpaid and forced to work hours that somehow circumvent labor laws. The whole medical industry needs to be overhauled. Getting rid of middle management would free up capital that could be properly reinvested into the hospital for better equipment, wages etc.
I expect that’s politically the way to go; not that I know anything about that. You get rid of a few inefficiencies and pay off other stakeholders with most of the gains.
The fact remains, if you want to lower health care costs to levels comparable to other countries, you have to lower all the costs to comparable levels, including doctor’s pay.
I don’t think you understand just how much bloated administrative costs and bureaucracy account for the U.S.‘s healthcare spending. It’s absolutely NOT doctors’ salaries accounting for the literally billions we are spending and no doctor’s shouldn’t be paid less to do the same job. Remove the middle men and ghoulish profiteering from healthcare.
The US can pay doctors as much as it wants. If Americans think that doctors deserve more than they get in other countries, that’s not for me to judge. Mind, that it does imply that the US is more unequal than other countries, because Americans want it to be.
True, merely lowering the administrative overhead will also go some ways to lower costs. But here, too, I wonder if Americans are really willing to do that. Sure, everyone wants to get rid of the useless middle men, but that’s not anyone’s job description.
Education costs in the US are also astronomically higher than other countries, which when you’re indebted 250-500k as soon as you graduate medical school, you are going to command a higher wage to make payments. The Education system in the US suffers from the same “we should run this like a business” greed that the medical industry does and should absolutely be reformed. Cause freedom isn’t free but it can be financed 🙄
Are you calling for profit insurance the little guy? I don’t know why people think doctors would be the ones taking the hit and not the for profit corporations.
No. I am asking if Americans would actually be willing to see cuts happen.
To answer your implied question: Because corporations don’t consume. They don’t go on holidays, live in mansions, … There is nothing there which can take the hit.
Employees receive pay. What you describe is called “fringe benefits”. It’s not unusual.
If you want to know something about these things, health care statistics, executive pay, or whatever, just ask. I am patient with you, because it is obvious that you are a minor. However, if you want to know more, then I expect you to keep the childishness out of “my reality”. Ok?
BUT, small businesses would benefit, and entrepreneurs, if they didn’t have to worry about health insurance. Doctors offices costs would come down without a lot of complicated billing stuff to do. Billing specialists would lose their jobs. Of my circle of people - husband would lose his job unless it was a Germany style system, and two other people I know.
If you want some sort of employment program, the medical system here is a shit way to go about it. Why not pay people to do something with a good impact on the land or the people?
And again - universal, tax-paid coverage would favor small business, it’s easier to take a risk when it doesn’t mean you might go bankrupt from a medical issue.
small businesses would benefit, and entrepreneurs,
Quite possible. Rates of self-employment are higher in France and Germany (2022 OECD stats). I’m not sure if that figure should be taken at face value, though.
unless it was a Germany style system
You mean a system with mandatory insurance? Administrative costs are substantially higher in US health care. Anything to bring quality and costs more in line with peer countries would mean a substantial hit, regardless of the system adopted.
Why not pay people to do something with a good impact on the land or the people?
Good question. Just a cursory glance into the statistics will tell anyone that the US system is dysfunctional. It’s been that way for decades or longer. I don’t even know when it became obvious that it wasn’t doing as well as its peers. And yet, there hasn’t been a lot of effort to improve it (Kudos to Obama, though). Maybe Americans just don’t want to do what it takes. Maybe they just want a better outcome, without all the small, necessary steps to get there.
On Unless it was a Germany style system (sorry I don’t know how to do the inline quotes yet)
I mean that Germany uses highly regulated private insurance plans to get to universal coverage. That would probably be an easier sell here, than a one plan to rule them all NHS. Not saying it’s a better idea. I have argued for YEARS that single payer would be a good idea here because we already have Medicare, just expand it to everyone and audit the fuck out of the providers would be cheapest and most efficient.
As you americans tell it: That’s bullsh*t. I see you guys getting fucked everyday by corporate. It’s hard to believe this is the U.S that holds international power… it looks like a Circus on fire looking inside from the outside.
Yeah that’s pretty informative. I am not sure how well the recommendation for implementing it in the US would work though. It’s probably the best chance anyone in the US has for government funded healthcare, but it would mean people in the poorest states would get the worst healthcare. It would probably still be a step up and we could give solutions to that problem later.
Year over year my insurance at huge companies would get both worse and costlier. It was to the point that the insurance that was costing me $200/mo was literally just acting as a safeguard against something costing me $10,000- which would have financially ruined anybody at those jobs anyway
I get the sentiment, but it actually would be a positive thing. Most people in these industries are there because the jobs were available and paid well, even if those jobs only existed to produce more unjustifiable profits for the bloated system.
Remove the jobs, and those people might actually go on to play productive rather than parasitic roles in society.
By contributing to the building up of the productive forces. Fuck this stagnation bullshit, invest in infrastructure and urbanization, invest in clean energy, and automation. Cut out meaningless jobs.
How timely! American here who just received a bill for scoping my sinuses by an ENT specialist: insurance covered $28 out of the $415 procedure. This is on top of the $70 copay I owe for the $195 office visit. So all accounting factored in, I owe $450 for what I thought was going to be $70.
Because it was billed through insurance, the provider’s hands are tied in terms of further negotiation. I would bet if I had gone in as a cash patient, I’d be much better off.
The icing on the cake is that the scoping procedure was non-conclusive.
The US healthcare insurance system is the ultimate way to make money fast, for little effort. As long as you’re on the right side of it, that is.
The worst is that insurance companies “cover” things and that’s all they can say before anything is done. After, when billed, they can say “we cover 5% of the final bill. See? We covered it.” And we have no idea how much we will need to pay for standard necessary procedures.
Fuck. Canadian here who is just aghast at the charge. Had a friend go through the same procedure but essentially never paid a dime. We don’t even pay MSP any more but back when we did it was locked to your income bracket and while I had some bumpercrop years (my base rate is 33 bucks an hour and I work 12 hour days standard with time and a half applied for everything past 8 hours for 2019 I worked 11 months with routine 60 hour weeks) my payments never crested $250 for a quarterly payment. Heck I didn’t even realize that they stopped charging for two years because I had the thing rigged to autopay.
Heck a friend of mine’s Dad needed emergency hospital transfer from a small town and they used a helicopter ambulance and the family was never charged.
People want to complain that we’re slower and that people have to actually wait in waiting rooms and sure, non life-threatening stuff needs to be put in a queue but from what I have heard from my US buddies wait times at least are pretty comparable.
I swear people who talk about waiting have never visited an ER for something mundane because it’s the only option opened after 6, or who never had to meet with a specialist, or get a procedure that requires one.
Story time. January 2019. I have a 6 month old baby with mysterious rash. Pediatrician has us cut out common allergens and he clears up. Tells us to book with a pediatric allergist.
Now, I don’t live in BFE. I live in Southeastern MA. By no means an area underserved by doctors. The doctor refers us to Boston Children’s Hospital. It’s an hour and a half away without traffic, or 2 hours and 3 transfers on public transit.
The first appointment available was in October. Kids 7 months old at this point and already getting appointments for longer than that out.
We get put on a cancellation list and around March we get a call for him to be seen and get a scratch test. We take it, we are going on vacation 3 days after that and we’d love to know exactly what to avoid.
Kid lights up like a damn Christmas tree, but only one food allergy (peanuts) and it comes in like 1.5x the diameter of positive control.
Next, because of his age, they want to get him into an exposure therapy study, but he needs a good challenge first and they would call us when we got back from vacation.
Well, we came back from vacation the first week of March, 2019. BCH was now not scheduling any challenges due to the pandemic. Try again after Easter when the whole thing blows over. Then a month later. And another month.
Eventually they are booking again and after getting through the backlog of people that were cancelled due to the pandemic , the next appointment is 14 months out. By that point he’s too old for the study and we neeed to wait till he’s 4.
Well, now he’s 4. We book an appointment for his food challenge. The old scratch test is no longer good. He needs another one. Next booking for that is 10 months out, again. As luck would have it, though, we called back over and over again and eventually got a booking for his scratch test.
That was back in August. We booked his food challenge while we were in the office. It will be next October, barring any more global catastrophes or blind luck on the cancellation list. He will be five.
It’s amazing to me that there’s a person who can beat me at Smash Bros who has been waiting for a doctors appointment for nearly his entire life. And people tell me healthcare in America is fine. Those motherfuckers don’t know about this. They don’t know how much it costs every time he’s out of school for a couple of days with a fever and the school wants a doctor’s note. They don’t know that after wages, the single biggest part of their compensation package is their employers portion of their health insurance. In fact, depending on their job, it may even be more than their wages.
That last bit is important. People don’t realize how much their healthcare actually costs. They see the pre-tax line item for their share of premiums, never their employers. They see that as separate from the Medicare pre-tax item, and the vision and dental, all of which they don’t see the employers portion. They might see the bills if they got the high deductible plan, but they’re somewhat expected because “they got the ‘cheap’ plan”.
See up here people go all “I had to wait six months for a specialist! Bloody socialized medicine!” lt’s a blindness caused by not having anything to compare to and buying into the American political lies about our own system. That kind of wait time for a scratch test is insane even by our standards.
I admit that I technically have a horse in the US healthcare system. The industry I work in contracts our labour vs the US market because they don’t have to pay in to sponsor our medical insurance policy coverage. Technically speaking if the US fixed it’s healthcare my job would be less competitive.
Kellogg would be rotating in his grave. The dude was OBSESSED with the healthfulness of cereal (or at least his weird version of it) and his company namesake basically peddles candy in cereal form to children.
Dude thought that meat and flavorful food caused sexual desire and lead to masturbation. He was an anti-masturbation crusader and invented his breakfast cereal to help decrease sexual desire.
For those who are interested, the population of those countries combined is roughly the same as the US: 331,137,369 compared to 339,996,563 for the US.
But the cost of the US Healthcare generally shouldn’t be ignored either. And it seems to be by a good majority of our politicians.
IMHO, our population should give us MORE leverage to get cost reductions but it’s just not going to happen. We need a severe overhaul of our healthcare system and the people who benefit from our current system have too much power and influence.
It should though because economy of scale works to make things cheaper, not more expensive. They’re literally ignoring basic economics to make that argument.
Not always, and not that I disagree with your point either. The US healthcare system is so over bloated with administration that it’s likely experiencing diseconomies of scale instead
Well that’s the issue. We don’t have a single system. We have an industry. I also love how that link completely dodges the motivation to raise prices purely for profit. But even with that, we already know the legitimate cost problem is due to multiple middle man companies that provide no value and just take money. And the more care they deny, the more money they make. So it’s a combination of problems. We have to pay them enough for them to employ people to find reasons to deny care.
These stats are easy to find. The US spends a much higher percentage of its GDP on health care (16.6%) than anyone else. The difference is bigger than the entire US military budget. If the US cut its health care spending to the level of France (12.1%) or Germany (12.7%), it could more than double its military spending.
It terms of actual resources, the difference is even bigger, as US-Americans work much more than Europeans. I’m not sure what for.
ETA: At the same time, the US has a younger population, which should not really need as much care.
Chile started using these some years back. I honestly like them. We also did the mascot ban as well, so no Tony the Tiger, and even Pringles cans have a censored face
The question I have, are sales of these products down? Do these implementations work to reduce unhealthy consumption? Are hospitals and medical offices seeing less revenue? If they don’t actually work, what will?
At least according to the studies, and reports from people I work with and friends, yes, they do seem to work. Here you can read a Google translated article talking about the effects since the law came into effect in Chile in 2016: …translate.goog/…/ley-de-etiquetado-evaluando-sus…
It’s good to note that another consequence of this law, is that apart from the mascots being prohibited, it’s also prohibited to play ads for unhealthy foods (not sure if they need to specifically target children, or not) aren’t allowed until after a certain hour in the evening, like 9:00pm or something.
We don’t have that sort of data, at least not enough to determine a causal link. But the cereal manufacturers have tons of research on the best way to sell cereal. So consider the inverse. Would a cereal company need to place a cartoon mascot on the box to help sell unhealthy food to children? Would they fight so hard to keep them there if it wasn’t effective?
Every medical scientist would agree that too much sugar is unhealthy. And looking at the nutritional info on the box, these foods have too much sugar. What good is a mascot in the face of cold, hard science? If it appeals to children, they will apply pressure to their parents who will purchase the food “as a treat.” And as a treat, a little sugar isn’t a big deal. But those kids could be equally excited about a pack of candy or some cookies, which are actual treats, not a part of your daily routine. Without Tony El Tigre, Frosted Flakes look like sugar coated khaki pocket lint. They might enjoy eating them, but they won’t clamor for them in the grocery aisle.
conservatives like to squeek “that’s against god’s will” but when conservative needs a heart stent or pacemaker to keep him alive, then god’s will is not an issue. when conservative needs a kidney transplant, cancer treatment, or even glasses - there’s no questioning against how god created their bodies.
as always, there’s no biblical preachings when their asses and their life comfort are in question.
I have begun to interrupt myself on the many, many occasions when I realize the American Right does not care about ideological inconsistency and that I cannot better understand them or help anyone by recognizing them. It’s no fun but it’s less taxing than trying to understand their contradictory opinions.
By extension, even something as trivial as wearing clothes is against gods will. If their god didn’t want people to see everyone in their birth suit, then we would’ve had in built clothing that wasn’t form fitting and had a sac of air to turn everyone into a blob.
This just made me realize something. Hatred of knowledge is baked into the Bible.
Clothes weren’t a trivial thing for Adam and Eve. When they ate fruit from the tree of knowledge they learned that they should be ashamed of their nakedness and began wearing “clothes”. That was what tipped God off to the fact that they had eaten the fruit and is why they were kicked out of Eden.
So, according to the Bible, wearing clothes literally is against the will of God. Everything else we do with our knowledge is too since the ability to have knowledge derives from eating that fruit.
That’s some good pedantry. “The tree of knowledge” is common shorthand for “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. For example, take christianity.com.
Edit: I didn’t mean to ignore your real point. It seems to me that “knowledge of good and evil” is what leads people to oppose things like IVF. They believe that they understand what is good and what is evil and are imposing their opinions on everyone else.
Your argument appeared to be predicated upon “knowledge”, not “knowledge of good and evil”, hence the need for clarification. There is of course more to knowledge than good and evil.
I read some bickering about this amongst conservatives, and the reasoning seems to be:
Conception should occur from sex because of the love between husband, wife, and God or something
Typically, they’ll harvest(?) multiple embryos, check if they are viable or have genetic abnormalities, then discard those that aren’t viable or will result in major disabilities. To them, this is killing those unviable/unhealthy “babies”. Sometimes the couple will freeze multiple embryos as backups, but not need them after a successful pregnancy (or more). Those microscopic globs of cells that they call babies are then “murdered”. Their point is that this results in more deaths than lives.
I’m curious what their opinion would be if a woman wanted IVF after 5 miscarriages, was unable to get the treatment, and went on to have 7 more miscarriages, still without having a successful birth. To be real, fundie couples who refuse contraceptives and are hell bent on having a child could go through many more miscarriages than that.
The proclamations they make are all to get their way and not about religion at all. These people grab at anything to pass laws they want.
Alabama claims destroying embryos is against God’s will yet not long ago they executed a prisoner using nitrogen gas which caused that person to suffer for several minutes before dying. The state claims it was a success. If they were so concerned with God’s will they shouldn’t have done that.
Scientific discovery, cars and antibiotics are not against Christian beliefs but I’m sure if a person singles out a single passage, then twist and spin it you could make life itself blasphemous.
These government folks passing crap laws are just using anything they can to get their way, similar to how children behave.
If nutrition labels bothers them so much, why not just make the cereal more nutritious and less full of shit? It’s not hard to see that there is a solution that doesn’t involve looking like a villain with an army of lawyers to fight a label.
Because changing your product, which specifically appeals to the target purchasers because of what you’re changing, is going to make your product revenue take a nose dive? It should be obvious why they’re fighting it with lawyers. Hopefully the laws are ironclad and upheld so Kellogg’s gets their shit pushed in.
This seems like it has ramifications far beyond IVF.
What happens to the morning after pill?
What happens when an embryo doesn’t implant correctly? Or when a woman miscarries at 10 weeks? Will the woman be blamed based on myths about what causes miscarriages? Will a woman who exercised strenuously be accused of manslaughter or murder?
For these people, the answer to all of those is: yes, outlaw birth control and prosecute women for miscarrying.
Fascism doesn’t have to make sense and the cruelty is the point.
However “these people” aren’t a majority. Even in the US, and even in conservative states, the Republicans have faced legislative loss after legislative loss due to the overturning of Roe v Wade. This is one of the reasons why it’s particularly important to go out and vote, because conservative institutions are acting even crazier than their usual electorate and need to be put in check.
Unfortunately, “these people” seem to have taken over the Alabama Supreme Court and, possibly the US Supreme Court (we’ll see how they rule when this gets to them).
Hopefully, since Alabama’s Supreme Court justices are elected, they will be voted out over this ruling. Also, hopefully rationality will prevail at the US Supreme Court.
To save some people a click, growth hormone apparently used to be extracted from the brains of human cadavers in the UK and some children treated with this later developed Alzheimer’s, some of them as early as their 30’s.
Worth reading the whole article, very interesting!
But they’re dried grapes and mostly without added sugar. We shouldn’t need to live in a world where raisins are sold “now with less sugar”. Humans spent hundreds of years cultivating eating grapes to be as sweet as they are…
Opining about fruit being too sweet is always an interesting conversation to have with folks. It always take a second for their brain to catch up when you start talking about selective breeding for certain traits eventually having negative effects. That’s when you pull the bait-and-switch and mention the evils of dog breeding. Poor pugs/bulldogs.
Actually fruits are pretty great for us, if they aren’t highly processed.
Better to eat an apple than drink apple juice, also better to eat an apple than just about anything from the supermarket that isn’t fresh.
Of course, you still need a balanced diet, and you can’t get nearly all the necessary nutrients from just apples. Still, assuming an otherwise nutrient-complete diet, it’s a lot less healthy to eat a slice of frozen pizza than an apple or a banana. (the apple might even contain less available sugar than the pizza slice - people often overestimate how much sugar fruits really contain)
The “stuff removed” bit is more important than you seem to give it credit for. Take out all the fiber and water and sure it’s still the same sugars that are left over, but we didn’t evolve to consume large quantities of pure sugar, so it spikes our insulin and gets stored as excess fat.
Fruit juice is pretty unhealthy, because all the sugar is more available due to all the fiber being stripped out and you can consume a dozen apples’ worth in a few minutes, which you wouldn’t do with actual apples.
Sure, there’s not that much fiber left in raisins either. But in the context of musli they can be combined with whole grains and nuts, so you get enough fiber back to make the sugar less quickly digested and thus more healthy.
A third of the entire cereal mix being sugar is definitely worse than musli with raisins (which comes to about 10g of sugar per 100g), especially considering that a good portion of the rest of the mass in the case of musli is made up of fiber, proteins and healthy fats.
Adding sugar isn’t just “another big issue”, it’s the big issue. Eating fresh fruits is a non-issue, and usually so is eating dried fruits in moderation.
I’ve been trying to think of things commonly sold in supermarkets that are not fresh and that are more healthy than fruits, and after a few minutes I have to say I came up blank.
Maybe vegetable soup? Not sure if you can get a good soup at the supermarket.
Whole grains, lentils, frozen vegetables, plenty of meats, fish, eggs. These come to mind. In the perfect world I would give fruits a blanket stamp of approval (I know right, the self-importance). But almost nobody I know don’t already have plenty of sugar in their diet, which means fruits just compound that. That’s not to mention that selective breeding has made our fruits unnecessarily sweet (try the most popular apple types after not having any sweets for a few weeks).
Of course though, there are lots of fruits and many of them are great as long as they’re not processed (e.g. smoothies).
I generally just go for vegetables. Getting into them can be tough but once you do they’re a game changer for your palate.
Pedanticism aside, fruits are miles better than almost any sweets. So if you do manage to replace cake time with fruit time, congrats. That’s a huge step.
I think you’re both on the same side of things but had a comm glitch on the word “fresh”. You think of fresh as being totally unprocessed, Wols think of fresh as being minimally processed (I believe they count whole grains, legumes, and dried vegetables as fresh)
That does indeed seem like the hangup in this case, and it’s on me; I should have used a less vague word or else clarify.
To me fresh is anything that hasn’t been processed for preservation (except drying). So cheese isn’t fresh, heat treated milk/cream isn’t fresh, smoked and cooked meats aren’t fresh, pickled foods aren’t fresh, frozen foods aren’t fresh and anything with actual preservatives added is definitely not fresh.
“raw” would probably have been the better word to use.
Also, having thought about my own understanding of the word a bit more in depth, I’ll concede that some pickled veggies are pretty healthy, as well as yoghurt.
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