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Tim Cook and Other Tech Executives to Meet With President Obama to Discuss NSA Surveillance and Health Care Website
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Never said what you have left is fair. Far from it. The point was to counter the hot steaming dump you were taking on the 60% who can only dream of getting the percentage you have left.
PS- love your use of the word "entitled". *snicker* Irony has no bounds.
This is no fallacy...a free market is where businesses compete to provide high quality products at low prices. Our healthcare system does not operate in this manner, hence runaway costs and declining quality.
"Government" and "value" should never be used in the same sentence. Government has zero incentive to provide good value, where as businesses in a free market must provide good value and good quality in order to survive. Value and quality is rewarded in a free market, whereas waste, fraud, and abuse is rewarded in the government.
You are completely ignoring many costs for your $48/m healthcare plan, most importantly, the VAT. You also ignore the ramifications of government in healthcare, including the discouraging of individuals to become doctors, and the shortage of certain types of drs vs the surplus as other types of doctors. There is way too much to explain there, but I recommend readings, such as "Catastrophic Care" by David Goldhill which can dive into these issues in great detail.
The healthcare system prior to world war 2, even though you claim yielded poor results, was what put america towards the top in life expectancy. I don't want to go back to the technology of the early 1900s. but I do want to go back to the free market in healthcare of the early 1900s where healthcare providers competed by providing high quality care at low costs, and treated patients as customers vs pawns in an insurance payment scheme. Check this cool graph out to see how life expectancy actually leveled off and dropped in relation to the rest of the world post WW2 era.
www.bit.ly/1hrjEgc
I was also trying to understand who really is responsible for the 460b deficit in 2008 to the 1.4T in 2009...was that ALL bush?
Other than winning elections
Private companies are perfectly capable of being abusive, see the banking industry as an example.
The $8/month I pay is the tax
.There's not a shortage of people wanting to become doctors here...
You'd expect America to have been #1 in life expectancy as the richest country that hadn't been ravaged by war.
Well you can blame Clinton for deregulating the banks, but given Bush was handed a surplus much of the blame lies with him. And obviously the Democratic congress share some of the blame, and Obama should be "blamed" for ~$200 billion of the stimulus plan.
Other than winning elections
Private companies are perfectly capable of being abusive, see the banking industry as an example.
The $8/month I pay is the tax
There's not a shortage of people wanting to become doctors here...
You'd expect America to have been #1 in life expectancy as the richest country that hadn't been ravaged by war.
Well you can blame Clinton for deregulating the banks, but given Bush was handed a surplus much of the blame lies with him. And obviously the Democratic congress share some of the blame, and Obama should be "blamed" for ~$200 billion of the stimulus plan.
Politicians win elections by promising free stuff. That's it.
Doesn't much of the funding for universal healthcare in the UK come from the VAT? Unless you don't buy anything, you're paying dearly.
No Dr. shortage in the UK? Sure there is, and there's a huge Dr. shortage (of many kinds) in the States, whereas there's huge surpluses of Drs of other types. (just google "Doctor shortage UK" for tons of refs). Wouldn't be that bad in a free market where shortages and surpluses are corrected via pricing and feedback mechanisms.
Are you insinuating that America was not #1 in health prior to WW2 because of the lack of the government's involvement in healthcare? How about other factors...? Lifestyle, culture, etc...why ignore the sharp decline in life expectancy (relative to other countries) after the injection of the government in the healthcare system?
A little ignorant (but very common) to think that bank de-regulation and too little government was at all responsible for the financial collapse in 08. In truth, too MUCH government involvement is what caused the financial collapse. For example, government incentives to provide risky loans without actually having to bear any risk, incentivized banks to issue risky loans, since government was there to bail them out. Not to mention the easy money policies instituted by the federal reserve, causing a bubble in real-estate prices. Big government is responsible for bailouts, so if you oppose bailouts, then you oppose big government. Banks aren't stupid...they are not in the business to take on risky loans to the point of being unprofitable. These loans were profitable because they knew they would be able to reap the rewards without having to bear the risk.
As for who's responsible for the 480B deficient in 08 and the 1.4B deficit in 09, it was either democrats or republicans, so the answer is to vote for neither.
Right, and how do they pay for that free stuff? Magic beans?
If they borrow the money they have to pay interest and you can't do that indefinitely (additionally the opposition complains loudly), if they raise taxes people aren't happy. So if they could make efficiency savings to provide the free stuff wouldn't that be the best choice all round?
The US spends far more than we do on healthcare.
US: 17.9% of GDP
UK: 9.3% of GDP
(source)
Why ignore the fact that a) there is government involvement in healthcare in every country, and b) that the US economy has shrunk massively compared to the rest of the world since World War 2.
Source?
Given the US effectively only has two choices how exactly do you manage that?
You say "magic beans" but yea...pretty much...the government prints magic beans, aka FIAT currency, and like you said, raises taxes, and borrows the rest. Logically, yes, the government has incentive to reduce spending, in order to reduce taxes, but clearly, logic escapes the government. Taxes only go up, not to mention the hidden tax which (inflation) which, particularly republicans, are notorious for (i.e., through "tax cuts" not supported by spending cuts). In reality, there is zero accountability, and our ignorant population continues to get suckered in to voting for candidates that promise them free stuff. Further, rich lobbyists support the election of candidates simply so that elected officials kick back money their way. Only big government has the power to spend money in favor of rich corporations at the expense of everyone else. Big government is the problem, not the solution.
Never meant to imply that the US spends less on healthcare. The reason for this is because of a perverse system of our "insurance pay all" mentality, combined with government provisions designed to be politically popular by appearing to protect citizens from greedy insurance companies (when the greedy insurance companies actually sponsor government involvement, as it gives them excuses to raise premiums to comply with government regulations). Again, there are many readings on this that can examine these issues in great detail, but the bottom line is, government is not accountable for anything ever, so involving them in healthcare has and will continue to make things worse.
Here's a good read on government's role on the housing bubble responsible which was a major part of the financial collapse in 2008.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-credit-crisis.asp
It would take hours to find sources identifying all the government policies and subsidies responsible for the housing bubble, but there were many government policies that were designed to sound good politically by making it easier for people to attain the American dream of home ownership (such as Bush's housing downpayment assistance back in the early 2000s, government backed loans to first time homebuyers with poor credit, low interest rates, etc.). All these contributed to distort the housing market to the point of a boom and bust bubble. Of course, we're doing it again with our "cheap money" and stimulus policies.
The deficit declined substantially when sequestration was installed, a R initiative Obama opposed vehemently.
cites:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/sequester
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_sequestration_in_2013
https://www.cbo.gov/taxonomy/term/33/featured
Surprised that MacRumors would repeat this popular misconception.
PRISM does NOT have "direct access to user data".
It is only a standardized way of sending a legal request to one of those companies to review and, most of the time, comply with, by searching their OWN data servers by themselves.
Which is why Cook was able to publicly state that NSA did not have direct access to Apple servers. Well, duh, Tim. NSA never asked for it.
You mean, the article titled, "Likely Unconstitutional" ? By a judge who was famous for first ruling that Guantanamo prisoners had no rights to counsel, and then after being rebuked by an appeals court, changing his tune.
Btw, a week later, a different US District Judge ruled the meta data collection IS constitutional.
So it's up in the air still.
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It's not about active spying. What all these programs are about, is making sure that useful clues are available LONGER than usual, so that IF the need arises, and a court agrees, investigators would have a way to search for past information that otherwise might've disappeared.
It's similar to the way some countries use cameras. Nobody looks at the stored videos unless a crime occurs and a court orders access. Then they become invaluable to solve some cases.
An example of data use would be something like the Times Square bombing attempt. After they found the previous owner of the SUV, they used her phone meta data to see who had called her to buy it. Then they took that anonymous phone number and cross-referenced who else it had called over time, then cross-referenced those and discovered both his name and the Pakistan terrorist camp connection. The end result was that investigators were able to figure out who the bomber was and at the last second take him off a plane at JFK that was headed overseas. This is the kind of historical data "googling" that they want / need to do, when courts warrant the necessity.
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