Progressive Politics
Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)
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Universal healthcare would cost the government an additinal $0.00 because Medicare and Medicaid are stupid expensive already.
The US already spends more per-person than most states with socialized medical care. The difference is that in America that money goes to insurance companies and billionaires sitting at home while in socialized medical schemes it goes to doctors and nurses and for medications and facilities.
The US already spends more per-person than most states with socialized medical care.
The US spends more than twice as much per capita on healthcare than every other nation on Earth. You don't have to water this down with "most".
I think merelly "spends more per-person" is nowhere strong enough to really illustrate how bad things are.
For example, the United States spends more than TWICE per-person in Healthcare than the United Kingdom.
In fact judging by this it spends almost twice as much as the European country which has a 69% higher GDP per-capita - Luxembourg.
And even with such much higher spending levels, based on this healthcare outcomes are actually worse.
Healthcare in the US is world-beating by a large marge in how spectacularly inneficient it is.
This country was founded by rich capitalist for rich capitalist. The suffering and the threat of increasing suffering is the point.
US spends more on government healthcare than Canada ($9195/capita vs $5000), which has universal healthcare for all. As % of GDP, for total healthcare, US is 17%, Canada is 12%
Universal healthcare would actually be an investment in the people of this nation and has the potential to increase the GDP
Who would work for army and ice then
And generations of people who hate us.
The US necessarily wouldn't even need to spend more on healthcare to improve the health of it's citizens; a lot couls be achieved with stricter food regulations, like limiting the usage of corn syrup or sugar content in some groceries. Making food healthier means less obesity means less strain on the healthcare system.
In a Universal healtcare system, there is a monetary incentive for the autorities to make laws and regulations to prevent disease - prevention is a lot cheaper than fixing things after the damage is done.
In a pure for profit healthcare system there is no such incentive for the autorities - in some ways, there might even be the opposite incentive, depending on the levels of Corruption and how much more profit the Healthcare sector can make if people are more sick: after all, when a country spends twice as much as a percentage of the GDP in Healthcare, that means there's a lot more money to be made in Healthcare, and private interests have an incentive to buy politicians and regulators to help them profit as much as possible.
Beyond this there is also the whole "doing what's best for our people" incentive, which is the US is so weak that it doesn't even apply to some obviously bad things (for example, easy availability of guns, which is definitelly bad for people's health) much less to more subtle pathways to damage people's health such as unhealthy food.
Universal healthcare also allows the state to have enormous negotiation power. Some European countries co-operate to get even better prices on pharmaceuticals, just imagine the state placing on the table that best offer will give you access to a market of 340 million people, gouging nada.
Excellent points!
Fat people often just get scolded by doctors for being fat and are not offered any actual care. Lots of fat people refuse to go to the doctor unless they're practically dying because it can be humiliating and/or traumatic. Also BMI is anti-science bullshit. Refined sugar is not good for you, but don't blame fat people for straining the system. Blame the system for straining fat people.
We have poor nutritional education in the USA as well. With the addition of blaming addicts for their behavior than those who are addicting them. Looking at you sugar/HFCS in everything. A lot of it is not so obvious. We've literally been led to believe that FAT is bad for us, it's what makes you fat. Not that carbs and sugars are what cause you to be fat.
A lot of people's bodies just want to be larger than other people's. This isn't about willpower and education, it's about recognizing diversity.
Yes we make it worse with our decisions as a society, but some people are gonna be fatter regardless.
I don't eat nearly as much food as I used to, and now exercise more regularly by going to the pool every other day. The doctor still thinks I am not doing enough. Here's the thing: my intake of food is about 1/3rd of a close relative.
Between the doctor's skepticism when I tell them that I have done things differently, and the lack of weight loss from a changing lifestyle, I am coming to a conclusion: don't trust this doctor, and genetics is definitely a factor.
It is my hope for AI doctors to become reliable someday. My human doctor doesn't really look at me, and doesn't listen, and I hate talking. I prefer writing, because talking is hard. Being raised in the boonies, conversation in realtime isn't a skill of mine.
Also need to subsidize grocery distribution into food deserts. Many people don’t even have access to fresh produce if they wanted it.
Ah yes, who dosent know what american tax dollars are also paying for those at least 2x russian weapon systemes that did sneak into the compilation......
yeah at least two of the cwis and I think that ripple rocket launch at 0:14 are russian.
I think the point is valid tho.
Yeah, that bugged me more then it should.
Burning money for no reason other than hate and greed.
I do not have a full grasp on economics; my expertise lies elsewhere. But with all the money these goons spend, what’s even the point of a monetary system? They just do whatever they want anyway, using whatever resources the other rich goons give them, while everyone else just takes what little they leave for us. There is no way the government is paying the debt.
The US national debt is $38 trillion, soon to be $39 trillion.
Am I crazy or did Trump play this song at a rally and then I had a stroke?
So you're either crazy or had a stroke...
I mean, those aren't mutually exclusive
Do they not launch torpedos underwater anymore?
Except for on submarines, where there isn't a deck, deck-launched torpedoes have been normal for about as long as torpedoes have been used. It's much more of a nuisance to do things underwater than above the surface, so unless you've got a good reason, like being a submarine, generally we don't.
The history of torpedoes is fun. The original ones were attached to a spar at the front of boats. The boat had a steam engine which they used to get up to speed to try to ambush and ram enemy capital ships. The threat these boats posed to capital ships gave rise to "torpoedo boat destroyers", which we just call "destroyers" today.
The first kinds of torpedo boats that launched stand-alone torpedoes did use torpedo tubes, but they weren't underwater. Underwater launching of torpedoes only started when torpedo boats evolved into U-boats (undersea boats, a.k.a. submarines). Destroyers remained torpedo boat destroyers, but now rather than hunting small, fast boats on the surface using small, fast guns, they hunted stealthy boats that were underwater with depth charges.
From submarines, sure. Not from ships. Ships launching torpedoes from tubes above water has been a thing for a really long time.
subs do. helos drop air launched units like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_46_torpedo, and boats use things like ASROC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RUR-5_ASROC and surface torpedo tubes like the mk32 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_32_surface_vessel_torpedo_tubes
Man, CIWS platforms are so cool.
But no way it is that expensive. Maybe 1/10the of that.
About $3500/second in ammunition alone.
They're also saving you money. You spend $1000 on ammunition to prevent the sinking of a $1 billion ship.
It's too bad they can't just use one of those money guns to shoot money directly
Too bad you can't use the resources that it takes for a multi-trillion dollar weapons industry to uh... no, wait. You totally could.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex