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re: Which, if any, liberal policies do you align with?
Posted on 1/29/26 at 12:59 pm to wackatimesthree
Posted on 1/29/26 at 12:59 pm to wackatimesthree
Totally fair. There are dichotomies in life. But, I'd like to hear your alternatives. As always I promise to hear them out and consider them 
3
Posted on 1/29/26 at 1:01 pm to Ingeniero
quote:
I like parental leave for both parents after the birth of a child. My wife and I had it when our son was born and it was incredibly helpful. In our case, it got both of us back to work at 100% faster than we would've if we went back as zombies right away. It also gives the middle class a chance to reproduce and maybe turn the tide.
Paid maternity leave is for communists
In fact anything to make work place conditions better will be shite on by the "purists"
Posted on 1/29/26 at 1:03 pm to theliontamer
quote:
Which, if any, liberal policies do you align with?
Legalize drugs.
Legalize prostitution.
Support Ukraine.
Gay marriage.
Change the US to the metric system.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 2:28 pm to theballguy
quote:
But, I'd like to hear your alternatives.
I'll give you my suggestion, but first I want to lay the foundation for my reasoning.
3rd party pay inherently causes both prices and usage to be artificially inflated.
A provides the service
B receives the service
C pays for the service
A&B are both incentivized to provide/consume services that they wouldn't otherwise suggest/choose. Why not? They aren't paying for it or risking turning a patient off by trying to suggest too many services for them to pay for.
A is incentivized to charge the highest rate that C will pay.
C is not really very concerned about A's fees because health insurance is a very inelastic good with zero truly equivalent substitute goods. So C knows that all he has to do is raise B's premiums and/or lower Bs deductibles and/or deny more coverage to pay for whatever fees C charges, and there's not much B can do about it...he's got to keep paying his premiums.
Now, this death cycle is somewhat mitigated by competition, but only somewhat. Because:
1. Insurance companies set rates regionally because it costs more or less to insure any given population due to the area they live in (demographics, cost of living, etc.). So people who think opening up competition across state lines fixes the problem would be shocked to understand that if they currently live in an area that is a below average region, they could potentially find themselves paying MORE due to "competition" than they did before because the new average would be calculated nationwide.
2. The effect of competition is hugely blunted by the sheer number of contracts/plans that insurance companies issue. For example, there are over 55,000 different BC/BS plans nationwide. For competition to work, there has to be enough transparency and information for people to compare prices. That's impossible with so many different plans and policies. This is also why blaming hospitals for "surprise billing" is bogus. Many times it's simply impossible to know what the insurance company is going to do before they do it.
So going to a system in which we still have a 3rd party payer and that payer is the government is one of the worst solutions possible. You still have the problems inherent in a 3rd party system that I typed above, but now it the insurance company has even MORE ability to tell you to go kick rocks, because the insurance company is the federal government, and there is no other competition in that scenario.
And what happens in a government system like that isn't that premiums keep going up and up—because if people get pissed off about that, they start voting people out of office—what happens is that they start paying doctors less and less and denying more and more coverage.
Only a small percentage of the population are doctors; they can't vote you out by themselves. And only a small percentage of people in any given election cycle are going to have been denied coverage on XYZ procedure, but EVERYBODY is pissed by a 30% premium hike, and they are pissed all at the same time.
So here's what you would most likely see with a "single payer" system. You'd have a low premium, just like with Medicare, but taxes would go up.
Massively. From AI:
quote:
Implementing a national single-payer healthcare system in the U.S. would require massive tax increases, with estimates suggesting federal revenue would need to rise by roughly $25 trillion to $35 trillion over a decade.
This could necessitate a 20-25% income surtax, a 32% payroll tax, or doubling all current federal income/corporate taxes.
Key details on the financial impact of a single-payer system:
Total Costs: The system, often described as "Medicare for All," could cost an additional $32 trillion over 10 years, increasing federal budget commitments by roughly 10.7% to 12.7% of GDP.
Required Tax Hikes: To fund this, proposed models include a 25% income surtax, a 42% value-added tax (VAT), or a 32% payroll tax.
Revenue Limits: Analysts note that taxing only high earners is insufficient to fund the plan, requiring broad-based tax increases affecting most Americans,
And you would STILL see care being limited relative to the current system and doctors would STILL make less money, so the quality of the providers, facilities, and equipment would likely still go down, even with that kind of tax hike.
AND, since it would still be a system that involved filing claims and being reimbursed, you wouldn't save any administrative expenses.
Just like the triangle of A-B-C above, health care operates in a similar concept. You have Availability (Quantity), Quality, and Cost.
There's no way to improve one of those without suffering losses in at least one of the other two. You can increase availability, but you can only do it by decreasing quality or increasing cost, for example. That's the BEST case scenario, sacrificing one or two variables in order to improve the third.
A single payer system manages to decrease all three. Because even if everyone in the country has a policy, if the policy covers fewer services, you can't even claim an improvement in availability.
This has become long already. I'm going to approach this as a 3 part post with this being part one. I'll come back to this later with the subsequent 2 posts. In part 2 I'll explain why I think a total cash system is a loser, and in Part 3 I will tell you what I would do.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 2:31 pm to theliontamer
Literally only one thing. I should be able to have the freedom to grow a plant on my taxed property and smoke it without the fear of arrest or losing my job. I can drink a bottle whiskey every night and no one cares.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 2:32 pm to theliontamer
Yeah I cant think of anything. Stephen Miller is too moderate for my tastes.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 2:39 pm to Powerman
quote:
Paid maternity leave is for communists
it is. a woman should be on maternity leave until her kids reach the age of 5 years old. government should not incentivize abandoning your child for half a day so your wife can do some bullshite job that's way less important than mothering her child.
putting your kids in daycare shouldn't be illegal, but it should be disincentivized.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 2:41 pm to theliontamer
I used to be pretty moderate with my views. The left has gone so far left that I feel like Pat Buchanan these days.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 2:44 pm to mtb010
quote:
I can drink a bottle whiskey every night and no one cares.
I'm thinking, depending on the size of the bottle, you'd eventually lose your job over that too.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 3:00 pm to TigerAxeOK
quote:
I perfectly align with the 1990s Clinton Administration's border and immigration policies.
Ironically, that makes me literally a Nazi today.
He also reformed the welfare system but good luuck getting anybody here to believe it.
For me, it's sensible enviromental regulations, legalization of marijuana and expanded background checks for gun buyers.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 3:03 pm to SirWinston
quote:
I think abortion should be safe, legal and rare.
Why should it be rare?
Posted on 1/29/26 at 3:05 pm to Jake88
quote:
Opposing school vouchers for private education
So big gov should determine where you spend your tax dollars for your kid’s education?
Posted on 1/29/26 at 3:34 pm to theliontamer
Probably 95% of them only 10-15 years ago.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 5:35 pm to theballguy
quote:
theballguy
Part 2
This post is about why switching to an all-cash system would be an even bigger disaster than single payer.
Foundational principles:
1. People forget that the medical procedures and technologies that are commonly used today have only been around for 100 years or less.
Significantly less in most cases.
Like, probably 80%+ have only been around since about the time my parent's were born and probably 50%+ have only been around since I was born.
And they rely heavily on technology, and that technology was expensive to develop.
And as technology has advanced, we've become less and less willing to allow anyone to not have access to it. So we'll spend $250,000 for cancer treatment for a 77 year old so that she can live another 5 years.
That tremendously burdens the system for everyone else.
And again, remember, it didn't used to be that way. People didn't used to expect someone that age to get treatment like that (or whatever treatment like that that existed back then) when they were already so close to the end of their lives.
We haven't had to figure out how to allocate these resources across an entire population for very long. And they are priced like scarce resources, they aren't priced like readily available resources.
2. Clinics and hospitals and doctors and medical tech companies, including pharmaceutical companies, are able to provide the products and services they currently provide due to the amount of revenue that is available now.
You change the amount of revenue that is available now and you will change the entire landscape of health care.
Keep this fact in mind going forward: Almost 60% of Americans wouldn't have the money to cover an unexpected expense of even $1,000. 80% of Americans have $5,000 or less in savings.
So you are talking about a HUGE portion of America that would be unable to pay for a heart cath, a meniscus surgery, a screw put in a bone, a gall bladder or appendix removed, a C section, or a joint replacement, much less a heart bypass, a tumor removed, cancer treatment, etc., etc., etc. even if a cash system caused the price to significantly shrink (which it would).
And who is going to loan them the money when they need it for something like that?
So what happens is that hospitals and clinics start closing. Not all of them, but only the busiest would survive. Tech companies stop developing new products and pharmaceutical companies stop researching new drugs because there's not enough money left it in. Clinics and hospitals can't afford to buy new equipment any more, so they use what they have for much longer than they otherwise would. It becomes old, unreliable, and obsolete.
Doctors don't make as much money, so you have the same problem as you would in the single payer scenario.
And if you live in a rural area and the nearest hospital to you used to be 20 minutes away, now it might be 2 hours away.
So even if you are one of the Americans who can afford to pay for your care, you still need enough other Americans to be able to do so to keep a facility open...you and the rest of the 20% can't pay for a hospital to stay open all by yourselves.
Again, availability, cost, and quality. This solution improves cost, but nosedives availability and degrades quality.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 5:48 pm to theliontamer
The Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 5:52 pm to CDawson
quote:No, YOU can determine to pay for private school or let your kids go to public school. You shouldn't be given a handout from big government. The amount of taxes you pay towards public schools in 5 years doesn't come close to the cost of a year of private school tuition. If you have 2 or more kids it's an even larger handout. In La. private Catholic school tuition costs 12k per year or more. Multiply by 5 years for 8th-12th and it's at least 60k per kid. You're not paying that in dedicated school taxes.
So big gov should determine where you spend your tax dollars for your kid’s education?
This post was edited on 1/29/26 at 5:58 pm
Posted on 1/29/26 at 10:28 pm to theballguy
quote:
theballguy
O.k.,
Part 3.
The problem, again, is that you have three variables and you can't improve all three. Improving one or two is going to cost you in the other one or two.
So I think we need to lay out the choices and prioritize the three.
Choice number one: We maintain quality and maintain/decrease price by reducing availability. That means that we maintain insurance but in one way or another we cut down on care. (But we can't cut down too much or we have the same problem as going to a cash system.). We could do that by declining coverage for people over a certain age for expensive treatments (they can still have them, but they would need to pay for them out of their own pockets). We could do it by not subsidizing people who can't afford insurance and not requiring hospitals to deliver care for people with no money. We could do it they way we used to by allowing insurance companies to kick people off the plans if they cost the insurance company too much money. Or a combination of all three. But in some way we'd have to eliminate some significant percentage of the most expensive patients.
My suggestion is that if we choose this route we heavily incentivize people to be healthier. Perhaps come up with some metric for denying coverage that takes health status into account; in other words, someone who is a healthy weight and doesn't smoke who gets cancer at age 75 gets treatment, but someone who smokes 2 packs a day doesn't. Someone who is a healthy weight gets a knee replacement, someone who is going to put 400lbs of weight on the new knee doesn't. Have Medicare cover gym memberships and incentivize private health plans to do the same (as long as you use it). Incentivize citizens by giving tax breaks for maintaining healthy weight, not smoking, etc. Incentivize restaurants and grocery stores to eschew processed and otherwise unhealthy foods with tax breaks. Make PE a real class in school that really requires physical exertion and helps kids get in shape and stay that way, including instruction on nutrition and health.
Choice number two: We prioritize availability at the expense of cost. We just raise taxes and premiums, no matter how much it costs to create/maintain universal coverage and not deny coverage. This is what most of the rest of the world has done. The strategies for improving health could also apply to this option (any of them, actually).
For this option I would do away with Medicare/Medicaid and instead institute public clinics alongside private insurance. Just like public vs private schools.
Any citizen could use the public clinics. No insurance to file. You just show your proof of citizenship and you get care. Most of the best facilities and providers would probably be in the private clinics, and those with private insurance could use them. There would be fewer of them, of course. The hospital closest to you would probably be a public facility.
Choice number three—You can try the plan where everyone has a catastrophic policy for expensive cases but everyone pays cash for routine care. The problem with this one is that I highly doubt a threshold line could be established that would solve any of the problems. Either too much of the care would be on a cash basis, which would cause the problems of an all cash system, or too much would be insurance, which wouldn't move the needle.
What Would I Do—Honestly, I would try to go back to a system that as closely resembled insurance before the ACA as possible. For patients who got dropped from private plans due to being too expensive (which I would establish with a government regulated formula), I would allow them to enroll in Medicare or Medicaid AS LONG AS they met certain lifestyle requirements—they could have a grace period to get in shape, but they'd get dropped from Medicare if they weren't making progress. Personal responsibility would have to be a requirement for taxpayer subsidized insurance. I would also set limits on Medicare/Medicaid paying for for people over certain ages getting expensive care. I would enact all of the incentive plans I typed out above (and any others I could think of) to encourage healthier Americans.
The system we had back then could have been optimized with a few relatively minor tweaks that required more personal responsibility. Trying to solve it by making huge changes in the system is what caused what we have now.
Posted on 1/29/26 at 10:37 pm to theliontamer
(no message)
This post was edited on 1/29/26 at 10:38 pm
Posted on 1/29/26 at 10:39 pm to theliontamer
Not one that I’ve seen yet
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