My heart wasn't in this from the beginning but man, does the USA health care system suck. It would be nice to show the research that the "top of the line" healthcare still leads to non-optimum outcomes. I know people with cancer that visited the USA for treatment as a last ditch effort, because it was the absolute best available.

Here, healthcare is free for kids under 18 with no own risk. Adults have a 875 EUR a year own risk unless it's a chronic condition or if it's a visit to the GP - which is always free. They fulfil a "gate watcher" function and will send you to specialists if needed. You can never go directly to a specialist, except the physiotherapist. After that there's no co-payments or deductibles or whatever.

There's a basic insurance that's government mandated, provided for by for-profit insurance companies and prices negotiated by them with health care providers. The insurance for that is at its cheapest at around 85 EUR per month per person. You can top that off with private plans for dental care, alternative medicine, extra physiotherapy etc. etc.

The basic insurance doesn't cover everything but I've never had a situation I had discussions about coverage with my insurance company until actually this year. But that concerned one of the private plans for alternative medicine (don't ask, it's not for me but the wifey).

So now you can't count either. Wonderful.

Oh good. Now we also know that you don't know what an argument is and that you swallow propaganda like a prostitute.

Great argument. Oh wait, there's isn't one as usual. Carry on.

That doesn't make the plans unrealistic though. It's a matter of political will and saying something is unrealistic is an excuse for people not to try.

https://www.nu.nl/279380/video/johnson-ik-schudde-handen-in-ziekenhuis-met-coronapatienten.html?jwsource=cl

ok... let's hope he's seeing Trump soon?

I'm under the impression his paradoxes were about mathematics.

Every administration has done it. — NOS4A2

Oh, so he did do it. Thanks for admitting to it finally.

Tu quoque isn't an argument but the way. Only kids think it is.

Nah. Michael's two for two. Barr's opinion counts for nothing as he's a Trump stooge.

Most of the Western world has those policies and has no problems paying for them. There's nothing unrealistic about them.

Globally certainly, locally it's upper middle class with a fair margin from the upper class (15000 eur yearly in disposable income more and it would be upper class).

Looks like they decided to hand the election to Trump. Nice.

Yeah. The USA is a nice place to visit....

My youngest son developed epileptic seizures after about a week from being born. They ran a different test for about 2 weeks and he was hospitalised and monitored for 2.5 weeks. He received medicine for months, had physiotherapy for a year and logopedistic training to aid him with learning to swallow.

I saw the bills and the total in two years would've bankrupted me twice over. I didn't pay anything though as this was fully covered by insurance. I took 40 hours of paid care leave and called in sick the first few days, which is accepted in the Netherlands - it's assumed stress in such an event means you cannot work anyways.

Later in the year I agreed to take every other Wednesday off and work the other Wednesday from home to allow my wife some time off from taking care of the kids.

What would this have looked like in the US system?

Or you can stop wanting to be saved by "leaders".

If you pay private insurance, you're paying more than you would with taxes with less coverage. You can get covered for everything I mentioned and more for less $$$ overall when you choose a socialized system.

Actually, America has a much poorer healthcare system than other countries with socialized healthcare systems. We rank 55th globally for maternal health outcomes.... Behind Russia! Our sworn mortal enemy! (Jk) — Artemis

There's a difference between the quality of healthcare available and the number of people that can afford it. If people don't take out insurance and can't afford healthcare out of pocket then that's not my problem. That the majority of americans make stupid choices by not getting insurance, or waiting with it until they have a pre-existing condition, doesn't mean I should pay for those bad decisions; your statistics are therefore meaningless. I might pay more for my insurance but I have access to the best healthcare the world has to offer.

America likes to pretend it and its basically unfettered capitalism with almost zero social safety net are the holy grail for innovation, but in reality, we're really scrambling to stay in the world leadership for that.

The top two are Switzerland and Sweden, which both have heavily socialist democratic governments.

That really depends on what metric. Most high tech? USA. Most patents filed? USA.

I'm already looking forward to the Democratic establishment not understanding how that could've happened. Just like when they forwarded one of the most hated women in politics like last time.

Well, let's see. Taking my disposable income, so after taxes, social security and pension contributions it looks like this:

Mortgage makes up about 33%.
Upkeep House 2.5%
Gas, water, light, phones is another 5%,
all insurances, including health insurance 5%
Car and petrol 4%
Daycare kids 3%
4 Holidays a year 17-20%
Food 10%
Clothing and birthday gifts 10%

We also just build an extension to the house and bought a lot of furniture,so the buffer is lower than I'd have it normally.

Probably the main difference is that I don't need to save for my pension from my disposable income. So I really only need savings to replace stuff if it breaks.

errr... I'm not American so I've got excellent social security but I do pay about 52% taxes after deductibles. I wouldn't know what a realistic upper middle class US family income would look like.

2. Your scenario sounds cushy on the face of it. But bam, your wife gets pregnant with a special needs child and/or you get a permanent, costly, and disabling disease and/or the market crashes and/or you simply get fired because of down-sizing/you were replaced by a robot/you were replaced by someone younger.... Etc etc etc. None of these things are entirely in your control, and all of them mean you're just one step away from financial hardship or even ruin. The social safety net is there to make sure that even if tragedy happens to you, you won't become destitute. Only if you're so rich that you can afford any and all of those disasters, would it make sense to say taxes aren't in your interest. — Artemis

These are all insurable events that don't require government involvement. I've got insurance except for becoming jobless but with my skill set that will be when hell freezes over. Why should I pay taxes for those people who go destitute because they failed to take out insurance? Where's the fairness in that?

1. If the trickle-down effect worked at all (which is what I think your first idea there is alluding to) then America would already have solved poverty and have a flourishing middle class, because we do have most of the money globally. While wages have gone up for the 1% however and they have received countless tax cuts, for decades the wages of workers have been stagnant and their costs of living have gone up. — Artemis

Imagine how much worse things would be if a lot of money would've been wasted on taxes and ineffectual government programs? That wages are stagnant are a reality of supply and demand. With the loose immigration, sanctuary cities and whatnot it is no wonder that workers wages are stagnating as supply continues to increase. Close the borders, stop doling out green cards and this will solve itself.

But then there's also just the average day math. You have health insurance, but how much does it cost you over a year or a lifetime? How much would you have to pay in taxes for the same thing but better (because you'd be guaranteed coverage)? You'll pay less overall with universal healthcare, because you're not paying the salaries of millionaire and billionaire corporate execs. — Artemis

No country covers all types of care, or care at any price. So guaranteed coverage is really a lie. Government tends to be far less efficient in allocating resources and the US litigious society makes healthcare expensive due to insurance cost and administrative overhead.

Furthermore, the best healthcare in the world is available in the US, because hospitals compete with each other driving up quality. Countries with universal healthcare have fixed maximum rates for medical personnel because otherwise their system would be as expensive as the USA and this stifles innovation.

OK. I'm curious so I'll try to play devil's advocate to the best of my ability. Let's say I think lower corporate taxes will benefit the economy because it will mean shareholders will invest profits to increase productivity and therefore employment. I also think lower income taxes should be passed. I don't really care how that's financed. As far as I'm concerned those can be financed through debt, printing money, slashing healthcare or lowering defense spending. My personal situation can be assumed to be as follows: I have a mortgage on my house with a fixed rate for the next 5 years that my wife and I can easily pay for an amount of about 65% of the value of my house, 100k USD income, a decent pension scheme, 8000 USD in savings and health insurance.

"just"? Language in politics is paramount. Climate change wasn't a thing until maybe 10 years ago. Only if people talk about something will it become part of the mainstream agenda. And it's not just Medicare of course but a whole gamut of collectivist policies people should talk and hear about.

huh, rereading my own posts I did the same: using cfr and mortality rate interchangeably that is.

Could you perhaps be confusing the case fatality rate with the mortality rate?

What are you basing the .3 to 1% on? I haven't seen CFR estimates that low and it seems more like the numbers I saw for the mortality rate (which includes the types of cases that aren't reported and therefore not considered a "case" with respect to the CFR).

Ok, so why isn't someone, who believes lower taxes are better, not just wrong but also irrational?

This might just be semantics. Just to check : can someone be wrong and still be considered rational?

Yeah, you obviously didn't read the declaration. It doesn't promote immigration. It promotes safe immigration while being "determined to address the root causes of large movements of refugees and migrants". It isn't legally binding and it doesn't detract from a State's sovereignty to decide what its immigration laws should be like in any way.

For those who want to read the actual thing instead of the xenophobic bullshit being peddled: New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants

Fine. I'd probably stop caring about healthcare around 100 kUSD as well. The point remains that you will fundamentally misunderstand, and in the process alienate, the people you so desparately want to convince to prioritise other (mutual) interests.

I voted other. It's a duopoly politically speaking and economically it's an oligarchy. The latter' s stranglehold on the political system isn't perfect but pretty close.

Why is it irrational? If I make 1 million USD a year then social security isn't an issue and it isn't irrational. If I ideologically believe tax is theft, then it isn't irrational.

There are a lot of assumptions underlying your conclusion it is irrational to believe lower taxes are better. You can disagree with these people, but you cannot claim someone holding that position is irrational.

I'm afraid that by focusing on the illustrative example as my "argument" you missed the actual argument. If people vote on single issues then a two-party system will inevatibly cause them to vote against some of their interests because two parties can never align their policies in such a way as to cater to a majority of individual interests. Only a multi-party system would be able to do that.

This means voters do not vote against their interest, but that they prioritise their interests and vote accordingly. What you do is project your own priorities on them and then don't understand their voting behaviour (how can they not see that lower taxes and no universal healthcare is bad for them!). Answer: they don't think it's as important as wanting to overturn Roe vs. Wade. It's not ignorant, stupid or irrational to do so.

If I may butt in. US voters don't have choices when it comes to candidates. As a result, people will tend to vote based on a single or two issues that matter the most to them. For instance, anti-abortion and lower taxes. You end up with Trump regardless of all the other crap that includes.

That may look like voting against your own interests to some, but that's because they are projecting their own "big issues" on those that voted differently. Obviously, if you are more community-minded and think social justice is very important, it looks like Trump voters voted against their own interests. And they did by that specific standard but it would be wrong to think they voted irrationally. They still voted in favour of other personal interests.

Now, if the political landscape would offer more policy combinations, that would include for instance, "lower taxes but in favour of abortion" you'd see people would actually be capable to truly vote in accordance with their interests. So don't blame the voters, blame the system.

Going on those numbers and transposing it to Covid-19 would mean 875-1,750 million infected and with a worst case fatality rate of about 2% would mean 17,500,000 to 35,000,000 million deaths. And that's assuming I can correct the infection by dividing by the R0 of Swine Flu and multiplying it with the R0 of Covid-19, which is probably wrong as transmission is an exponential function.

For perspective: the lower bound with this conservative estimate is the equivalent of the entire population of the Netherlands.

I think precisely that because the draconic measures that China enacted aren't quickly used in the Netherlands and neigbouring countries we do run a reasonable risk of this becoming endemic.

The Swine Flu had a mortality rate of .02% and an R0 of 1.2 to 1.6. It's not at all comparable with Covid-19. Covid-19 has an estimated mortality rate of 50 to 100 times higher and currently the R0 of Covid-19 is estimated at 2.2. Covid-19 is both more deadly and more contagious than the Swine Flu. So again, I think you're underestimating the risk a bit here.

On a final note, my parents and my wife's parents are in an at-risk age category, with a case fatality rate of 8% and my dad in particular has a chronic respiratory disease, which increases it by another 8%. So that's 16% chance for my dad, which is too high for my liking.

I'm not expecting world-shattering consequences from this virus. But it should definitely be taken more seriously than SARS or Swine Flu.

Your issues are relevant but they are small compared to the real problem the USA has and that's that it's basically not a democracy. In a way you fail to see the forest for the trees. Getting only your "big" issues is a pyrrhic victory and they will be just as easily lost in the next election if the vocabulary of political discourse doesn't take a wild swing to more collectivism through solidarity and the strong carrying the weak. Only if everyone talks about Medicare for all and a majority of republicans understands it instead of reflexively dismissing it due to ideology or party loyalty.

I actually think you're downplaying the risk of covid-19 a bit too much. The comparison with ebola isn't warranted because the incubation time of ebola is much shorter, so it's easier to contain than covid. And that's the main problem here that we're looking at a situation where enough people get infected: the disease turns endemic and we have a seasonal, highly contagious disease with an average mortality rate between 1% or 2%. Like regular flu it cannot be contained like the plague either.

Fair point. I'll stop using it.

They lost last time and it didn't stop them. It seems many Bernie voters realise this is not just about winning or losing. Perhaps that also means they realise it's not going to change over night, not by one man and not without continued political engagement.

What other things would you have expected from the government? I think to some extent they couldn't have acted differently, in part because the US is ideologically constrained not to nationalise or use the power of eminent domain.

That at least would've wiped out stock and bond holder value. Although they'd probably have court cases for years to establish the "just compensation" in such an event.