Topic: Bernie Sanders is the Frontrunner for the Dems - page 6. (Read 1023 times)

Though not explicitly mentioned by the U.S. constitution, the right to education has been recognized by several major international conventions, many of which the U.S. is regular participant. The U.S. also signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which right to education is an article. You can say that this is not legally-binding, but to think that the U.S. government is interested in denying any citizen of education would be mistaken, as this protection is routinely upheld by supreme courts around the country.


Again, legally speaking, you are correct. Its not a "right." However, I believe that it should be (along with education) as its just common sense if you care at all about the prosperity of your nation. You can disagree with my previously stated rationale as to why I think it should be a right, and we can agree to disagree.


This is just nonsense. First of all, the president doesn't have that kind of power. Second of all, when did Bernie say he wants to "do away" with ALL private insurance, virtually or otherwise? Third of all, to think that Bernie's vision of universal healthcare will come to full fruition is naive. Of course it would ultimately be just some watered-down compromise where the jobs of those possessing the most well-funded health insurance and hospital corporation lobbyists will remain protected, and likely Bernie won't even affect any real change in the industry, similar to what happened with Obama.

However, its still a step in the right direction - that we're at least willing to look at solutions to a massive problem - as the current healthcare system is heavily flawed and entirely unsustainable.

No one has a right to the time and resources of others.

Still don't agree that even that is a "right". There are lots of reasons to justify it or even make it mandatory but can't see how it's a right in any way. Once you make it mandatory then you can say it's your right (not be prevented from it) to go through it but you still can't say it's a fundamental right of a person. i.e. you are not born with any rights. Well. Unless you're religious then the whole "god given rights" thing comes into play and it has to be figured out what that actually entails which would then be set out in something like the constitution. Which does not say what your rights are other than what rights the government can't take away or infringe upon etc.


Different discussion. My point was simply that it's not a right but I see so many claiming it is and they can never make a good argument for it other than say "I think it is".



Bernie will do away with virtually ALL private insurance (effectively killing off a lot of companies). That's the plan and what I thought we were talking about in general. He's acknowledged that all those people will be out of work and he needs to allocate billions I think it was to deal with that until they can be transitioned to other employment.

I wasn't even thinking about higher education, I was thinking about grades K-12, which is not only a fundamental right but mandatory...


Why not make it one?


I don't really understand how this addresses what I was saying in the slightest. I never suggested the government close any business, but you ran away with this notion for some reason. The existence of a medicare for all-type program (or "Public Option" as it was called in the Obama era) would place increased competition on for-profit insurers. Some of the more unsustainable ones would indeed go out of business, as they probably should. There are private insurers in every country that has socialized medicine, as it remains an economically-driven necessity. Nobody, however socialist they may be, is forcing any of them to close, and nobody thinks that would be a good idea.

US healthcare system is thoroughly fucked. You don't need Bernie or some fancy charts to tell you that. And the reasons for it being so fucked all point to the privatization of things that are not privatized in other countries that do it at a lower cost and make it available to everyone.

Typically in this healthcare debate people inside the US can't imagine the system without private insurers taking 30% off the top of all medical expenses, and without private hospitals gouging their patients with all those $2000 MRIs, whereas people outside the US can't imagine a $2000 MRI and that $30 million people have no healthcare other than emergency room and subsequent personal bankruptcy.

It's not "socialist" to have a healthy population. Growing a new human is very costly. It's much more "capitalist" to take care of the existing ones. And it would be a major boost to the economy - particularly for small businesses who can't afford to provide health insurance benefits - to have the cost shared, just like other infrastructure such as roads.


Neither do private health insurance plans in the US, these things are usually separate.

None of that is a right. You know. Back in the day, I mostly paid my way through my higher education by taking terms off to work etc. Jobs did the same thing. Woz did the same thing. That's what people did instead of expecting others to hold their hand and give them things. You want something, go make it happen instead of thinking you're entitled to things you're not. Most that go onto higher education don't even know what they want to do. But they're conditioned to think it's what they should do so they can start generating taxes and racking up debt, become wage slaves, as quickly as possible. There is really no rush to run off and get a higher education.


That's the only argument that holds sway. If the society/country decides it's in their best interest to pay for those things then fine. But it's not a right.



Awesome. Just let the government decide what companies should and should not exist based on... what... "feelings"... Yeah, ok then. Let's not take a more practical approach to phasing them out or working with them to shift to other things or writing actually good laws/regulations that would keep them from exploiting people. That would be far too rational. Fuck the "bad" companies. Which ones would be next I wonder? Well.. we can't shut them all down. Oh I know. The government will just take them on instead and will justify it cause.. they're "bad".. Yeah.. And people like you wonder why some get all up in arms about socialism.

Biden just won South Carolina. That was a surprise to me because it looked like his campaign was over. Sanders came second.

This just opened up the race again. Most notably but not really surprising Bloomberg had another bad day.

Based on the fact that its a required element for survival. I mean, I personally haven't been to a doctor in 10 years, but that doesn't mean its a good idea, or that everyone else should be so lucky. Similar to how education is a right, if a society wants its population to prosper, it should be willing to shoulder the responsibility of insuring their basic healthcare needs.

Of course you can't prevent people from living unhealthy lifestyles, but you can tax them for it, which then goes to paying for health insurance. Smokers for instance are already taxed quite a bit in addition to having to pay higher health insurance costs (much of the time).


If you are referencing the health insurance industry plan administrators, brokers, sales agents, reps, etc., then my response is good, fuck 'em. They should have never had those jobs in the first place. Middle-manning health insurance is a dirty business.

Based on what? I would just love to hear a good justification for that.

Really? Ok. Well if you're going to throw out "far less", you have to compare apples to apples which no one ever does.

The one country I did look into since it always comes up is Canada. It does not cover dental. It does not cover eyecare. And up until recently they had to pay a monthly fee but that's 100% put onto the companies now (i.e. not just their employees that they would pay for previously but also every citizen). There could be other fees that I never came across as well. Bernie wants to do all the things they don't do. As much as Canadians love their healthcare and would never give it up, they also recognize the flaws and issues with it. Long wait times for some things are one of them. But for other things, it's better. It can also depend on the region and so on and so forth. Things are never as "perfect" as the pro universal healthcare people claim and the other side cherry picks things as well.

As for other countries, you have to look into each one. Not all of them cover everything like Bernie wants to do and those that might, have other issues or ways they handle it. So the blanket "well other countries do it soooooo", is just disingenuous at best as it's not giving the public all the information they should have in order to make an intelligent decision.

Bottom line though, it will improve things for the lower end of people and it won't be as "top notch" for the upper end that pay for that premium. Assuming of course Bernie doesn't fold on allowing people to still get their own insurance which I think would go a long way to "selling" it.

I personally think that upending a whole list of things for the "revolution" is just ludicrous when the same things could be achieved from well thought out incremental changes so that the impacts could be measured to ensure the end goals are achieved. But that would be too rational and logical I guess and we live in a time of "feelings".

Edit: By the way. It's well known that a shit load of people are going to be put out of work by Bernie's plan. Can someone tell me what he's going to do with basically forcing companies to close down? Seems like no one cares that the government would end up doing that. An entire industry decimated it looks like to me.

I'm far from an expert on this stuff.  But all of these countries have some form of Government run Universal Healthcare and they're able to do it for way less.  I'm definitely not 100% confident that we won't find a way to fuck it up if we try, but looking at the numbers I feel kind of optimistic it might work.  The fact that our insurance companies primary motivation is to make as much profit as possible has to be a major factor as to why healthcare in America costs way more than anywhere else in the world.

Yeah... that's what I said. His plan is supposedly less cost, but he is also going to expand coverage. How does that work exactly?

3.6 trillion x 10 years = 36 trillion

36 trillion > 30 trillion

(and that's not from 2018, I believe we're expecting 2019 numbers to go up a couple points)

you just need to spend more to save lives than to kill. cut the military budget. tax the rich. it will work perfectly.

every civilized country does it. it is very weird to have people against it. well, not sure if we should call them "people". I don't know what they are.


this anti-human extremism should be considered a kind of illness. really weird.

That's LESS than current healthcare spending. So your argument is he is going to expand coverage while cutting costs? Cool story bro. Bernouts can't even do simple math.

I've done a bunch of research on different proposals and third party audits of them. 
He was referring to the cost over 10 years.
$30 trillion over 10 years = $3 trillion a year.

$30-$40 trillion over 10 years, not just for 1 year.

From the 60 Minutes interview:


The reason why Obama's ACA didn't really work is because he let the Public Option go out of a "compromise." However, the Public Option was the one part that really would have kept a degree of competitiveness in the healthcare industry, forcing health insurers to stop charging ridiculous rates knowing they would lose customers to those enrolling in the Public Option.

Having said that, $30 to $40 trillion over 10 years still seems unreasonably high. Healthcare shouldn't cost $10k a year. The whole system is still a disgusting racket.

Bernie said "$30 trillion just for medicare for all" in that video you didn't bother watching. Which is it? I suppose you know more about his platform than he does?

Agree with pretty much all of this except I don't think the risk of corruption driving up the costs is that significant.  Americans already spend more than pretty much any other country in the world per capita in a very broken healthcare industry.  It's expected to be well over 3.6 trillion in 2020 (well over $10k per person) .  The only way I see medicare for all becoming a reality is if they pass a very light version of it and can prove it's more cost effective.

Whether we are paying more taxes or private insurance companies doesn't really matter imo, as long as it's less than we're paying now.

Everyone else has already figured out a way to do it:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita#/media/File:OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg

It appears Medicare and Medicaid already cost about 1.1 trillion. (I'm including the amount states pay for their various Medicaid programs, in addition to federal fund.) The 1.75 figure seems a bit on the low side, especially since Bernie seems to want to eliminate copays and deductiblse. Plus it would cover everybody, not just the disabled, elderly and poor. 3.5 trillion seems more like it. That is assuming that the program doesn't become infiltrated with corrupt politicians and officials dipping into the big till. However, I doubt that Bernie would get the bill to fit all of his wishes. I'm thinking he'll probably get some version of Medicare for all who want it, if the Republicans don't control the House and/or the Senate. That's a big if.