We disagree. Think of it like this: instead of depending on the cheapest insurance company your employer can find for things like heart attack, stroke and cancer, you have Medicare/Medicaid pushing the cost down for you, standardizing the costs and codes, ensuring treatment and if preferable, providing care. This needs to happen because too much of the country isn't working between the ages of 50-65 and we're relying on your insurance company to subsidize the system for the tremendous amount of Baby Boomers in that bracket. If your insurance is so swank that it's preferable, use it. The benefit of single-payer to them is they remove the baseline that they are currently responsible for. Right now, they have to account for millions of people that are receiving care that never pay into the system. The people who don't have insurance can go to the ER and get care that is ultimately never paid for and subsidized by the entities who do pay: insurance companies. Having single payer provides economies of scale, as well. One system paying for the (theoretically speaking here) 10,000 knee surgeries and 5,000 mastectomies occurring around the country as opposed to one company arguing over the price of these 50 in this state and another company arguing over the price of these 200 in that state. The insurance companies thrive off of bureaucracy that slows the fucking economy down (http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/americas/reducing-the-drag-on-the-american-economy, http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2...policies-economists-love-and-politicians-hate, http://www.jct.gov/x-66-08.pdf). The insurance companies have a very unclear path to profitability when it costs them six figures to treat someone for cancer. They put pressure on the employers to fire said cancer patient and lower their costs. That person typically continues to get treatment, however, and we as a society bear that cost directly. I am all for a system that says "above X dollars of care in the next year? You're the government's problem!" because the government is ultimately responsible to us as a group, we can influence policy to say "I don't want my taxes paying for the treatment of X." Insurance companies can say, I'll pay for that as part of our Fucky Suck Gold Benefit Package.
I think there is part of the discussion on medicaid that is being left out. A large part of the reason that medicaid is accepted at a dramatically lower level is that it doesn't get paid to the service provider in anywhere near a timely manner. From my understanding, talking to medical professionals and people involved in AR for hospitals, states and the federal government are years behind in payment in some instances. There are whole hospital systems around the country that are barely hanging on right now because of lack of payment for services rendered. This also accounts for why you hear the free market utopia cases of doctors not accepting any insurance at all and providing their services for what sounds like a pittance. I agree our system is broken and the private insurance industry is gross but throwing everyone on medicaid, based on what I am hearing from service providers, is a recipe for disaster.
Can you provide some sources for that? I know the government is slow to pay, but I'm curious about cases where payment is years behind.
Sure http://news.keepmecurrent.com/medicaid-payment-delays-hurting-hospitals/ http://www.stltoday.com/business/lo...cle_ff7f7131-cd01-5028-a85b-8bcedc4ca256.html EDIT: Here is an interesting study on the subject as well: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/28/1/w17.full If you couple the lower rate of reimbursement for medicaid with the longer payment times, it's no small wonder it won't work out. The problem the Government never seems to understand is that you are paying a hospital which is a commercial business for services rendered. That business has bills to pay, their vendors demand prompt payment and don't care what the reason is you are late, they want their money, usually net 30. If they Government wants this to work they need to start becoming efficient and cut down on all the bullshit make-work nonsense they love to do. If they can't figure that out (which I doubt they will) then the medicaid issue will continue to get worse.
Anyone else watch Rachel Maddow take a shit on her own career last night? She teased this big reveal about Trump's tax returns and released his 1040 from 2005. It showed nothing other than he paid taxes.
It showed that in 2005 he paid 24% in taxes because of the Alternative Minimum Tax which stopped him from paying 3.48% in taxes that year. It also shows that his stance to eliminate the AMT has nothing to do with helping Americans and everything to do with helping himself. So instead of watching Rachel Maddow take a shit on her career I saw her provide a valuable service. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/09/trum...ive-minimum-tax-hitting-the-middle-class.html https://www.dcreport.org/2017/03/14/taxes/
The report was so worthless the journalist who initially received it in the mail suggested it might actually have been Trump that leaked it.
This is what I don't get. They're trying to make a scandal out of everything. Trump isn't exactly that hard to criticize, but they just look ridiculous trying to go after him over every little thing 24/7. I don't know that it matters, but maybe make it a little less obvious that your reporting is trying to force your agenda down people's throats. Didn't they learn anything from the election? I guess not. Also, Rachel Maddow is terrible. I have no idea how anyone can take people like her seriously.
I watched about 30 seconds of the feed and the guy who leaked it was talking about how the informations shows we should be concerned with Trumps Alantic City mob ties and such, talking points from 7 months ago, I figured they didn't show anything actually concerning and flipped it off. Im not familiar with the tax code, does showing that he paid so much income tax in 2005 kind of prove he didn't take the opportunity to write off his losses (from the huge loss reported in earlier during the debates)? The assertion was that he could still be paying nothing in income taxes because of that hit.
Well Rachel Maddow isn't the Democratic party. She is now just trying to get ratings and viewership and leaking that you have Trump's tax returns is a great way to do it. Of course, if there is no substance and instead it is 2005 tax returns and only the front page and it basically shows absolutely nothing, her credibility is now completely shot. She will have trouble recovering from this. And as someone mentioned above it takes away from the far more important issue of Health Care reform. She only has her own self-interest at heart here.
Not necessarily, he can chose to not roll forward that tax loss and take other deductions. This was just the 1040 of his return. His overall taxes are likely very complicated. Large tax accounting firms have specialized groups that prepare returns of high net-worth individuals.
Did Rachel Maddow have credibility before? I always lumped her and Olberman in with O'Reily and Hannity. They just have a liberal spin instead of a conservative one. They are all pandering hacks, and I'm sure their audience will still return.
Sorry I am not an avid watcher of US cable news. My overall understanding was that in terms of credibility it went CNN>MSNBC>Fox News. But I think I may have been misinformed and as you say, they are all hacks.
Yeah, and that's why all these pundit comedy shows do so well. Jackasses will never get sick of hearing that they're better than 'those people' and that those people are the cause of every problem ever. I do like the irony in constantly calling people retards, racists, misogynists, and every ism in the book, and then complaining that they're the assholes. They're all about the same. For my money CNN is the worst. All the other networks constantly spin things, but CNN seems to outright and purposely lie the most often.
Is it a safe bet that Trump planted those tax returns? It shows that he isn't a tax cheat and really throws shade on that tax return argument. Now nobody is talking about Reublicare and the fact that the CBO just poopoo-ed it big time.
Meh, it's one little piece from 12 years ago. You'd have to think if all of his returns were like that he would have released all of it by now.