per capita income.

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Beaconator, Mar 11, 2019.

  1. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    And the CDC, and state schools that produce doctors, and medicare, and so on.
    Sort of. No one will give you a car for free. Unfair! What if it's a poor woman who has to drive 50 miles to work to feed her three starving kids?
    In some cases, yes. Certainly not all.
    Not good at all. But we can always make it worse if we try.
    So you are advocating a two-tier system; very basic care for free and "advanced" services (transplants, HIV treatment etc) for pay. That could work. It worked in Oregon.
     
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    And they are desirable not for profit social services, are they not?
    State does provide transportation to medicaid recipients. Busses run on a regular schedule.
    Then, instead of making it worse, why not make it better, cheaper, and more efficient?
    We make it worse by allowing insurance companies to control administrative services and collect vulgar profits for their non-healthcare services.
    However it works in reality, there is one undeniable benefit from nonprofit administrative services. The saving on the profit motive wherever possible, will immediately have a positive impact on available resources. Universal healthcare is one of those desirable non-profit social services in an otherwise capitalist economic system.
     
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  5. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    to buy a house it costs around 110k to have the mortgage
    add on top of that children
    living costs
    entertainment money
    savings money

    the current cost for a house is around 170k per year income
    that is obtained by 2 incomes mostly as it leverages the living costs down against the over all income and tax rate.

    how many hours a week does a doctor work ? 65 ? (roughly between 45 to 65) most work around 55 hours a week.

    that is $24.00 per hour after tax
    for a fully qualified doctor working a 55 hour week.

    now you need to apply the same economics to other critical systems jobs
    politicians
    police
    ambulance
    fire
    military

    That is $970.00 in the hand per week for a 40 hour normal working week. for the rest of their lives as the highest ranking official pay grade.

    it would be a great way to remove all the rotten politicians if you could make bribery illegal(lobby payments)

    but when you come down to it. asserting that Doctors take the full brunt of the moral and social accountability for the costs of the system they are serving sounds like idle transference or intentional game playing.

    1st the politicians
    2nd the military
    3rd the police
    4th the fire & ambulance
    5th the Doctors & Brain surgeons and pediatric heart surgeons ?


    while the over all intent to control the USA cannibalistic profiteering of the medical industry may be commendable.
    it is never going to work unless it is applied as a moral principal to the over all economic mechanism.

    keep in mind what you are missing is the inflationary free market effect of currency markets & national pricing indexes.
    there is a need to prevent massive shorting on the markets against deflationary leveraging otherwise the market drives its self into destruction.
    ... but that's a different thread
     
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  7. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    soo
    your saying a lack of ability to victimise employees is unfair to the company's that employ them ?
     
  8. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    How about just shutting down the stock markets and currency speculators?
    Try that for a year, see what happens.
     
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  9. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    it would be the real world effect of what should have happened in the 2008 global crash.

    just block all trading for 12 months
    nothing is allowed to be opened on the markets.
    only closed and closed at no profit by government tax department
    lol!
    i would pay to watch that story
     
  10. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    Have you ever analyzed who benefits most from the occasional COLA adjustment in salaried personnel.

    COLA is is defined as an actual cost adjustment, but is calaculated and distributed as a percentage of income.
    2% COLA increase on 1,000 salary (20), per month, and a COLA increase on a 100,000 dollar salary (2000) per month.

    Instead of a "cost-of-living" increase, we get a "cost-of-lifestyle" increase.

    Neat trick, huh..........

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  11. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Or 1987, or 1929 ...
    The damn thing goes in utterly predictably cycles.
    Should the whole world really be held hostage by a bunch of frat boys playing roulette?
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    I am all for that. The government doesn't have the best record there.
    And we will make it even worse by allowing faceless government bureaucrats to decide what healthcare you deserve, and what to deny you because it doesn't fit into their cost schedule.
     
  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Nope, not at all.
     
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    Medicare is not a successful program? It would be better if there was no insurence co involved at all, for any reason. The VA is a single tier system, no?
    https://www.va.gov/healthbenefits/cost/index.asp

    If you check out this site, you'll see that the basic idea is great, until they introduce the existence of private insurance for co-payments, etc. These are the things that make it complicated.

    The principle should be that if you feel poorly, you can go to a doctor, get a diagnosis and prescription and go home. Doctor submits bill to government for reimbursement, end of story.
    You keep insisting that my proposal gives any diagnostic powers to bureaucrats. This is not true. The doctor or hospital makes the diagnosis, prescribes the medicine or procedure, submits the bill to the government for payment and that's it.

    This is precisely the problem we have today. For-profit Insurance companies are administrative services which determine what healtcare you deserve. If they cannot make a profit, they deny services such as pre-existing conditions.

    Get rid of all the middle men and pay universal healthcare from a universal healthcare fund. Everyone contributes according to their ability and rerceives full healthcare services.


    https://www.economist.com/united-st...r-american-health-care-can-be-found-in-europe


    Canada and Europe all have successful programs which give better healthcare for less cost to patients or tax payers.

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    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  15. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Actually, Canada is struggling with health-care issues. Because there is so much private enterprise involved - privately-owned hospital level as well as what the public hospitals have to buy from private vendors - it's expensive. Because it administered provincially, it's vulnerable to local tampering, becomes unevenly distributed, so that one province gets better quality care than another - and of course rural communities suffer a chronic shortage of doctors. And because politicians have agendas, every time a conservative majority comes to power, they privatize more of it, the costs go up; add a little baksheesh and skimming, the costs go up; they raise the public insurance premiums and cut some of the services covered.
    I'm inclined to trust faceless bureaucrats a lot more than in-your-face elected 'representatives'.
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    Why is it US citizens can buy US manufactured prescription drugs cheaper in Canada than in the US, the country of manufacture?
    ======
    But representatives have nothing to do with it, other than voting for a budget.
    The actual hands-on medical service is a priori over all other considerations.

    It is never the medical personnel or the faceless bureaucrats, they all work for salaries.
    IMO, it's the "stockholders" in the for-profit insurance administrations, which expect a profit on their investment. This is not trivial to the overall cost of health care delivery.

    This expense is avoided with a government service. All people are investors (tax-payers) and share equally in the services for the common good. The military is a perfect example.
    A lot of companies make a profit on arms and supplies. But the military itself does not make a profit. Soldiers are salaried personnel.

    As you observed, privatization shows a rising cost in services in direct proportion to the amount of privatization.

    And so it is with heath care. Structure it so that the government DHW can structure an efficient reimbursement, without losing billions on "profits" which are in direct conflict with the "needs" of a patient.
    If you want to pay for additional services other than comprehensive healthcare for all, no problem. Private duty medical arrangements are plenty.

    In principle, a democratic government is a not-for-profit social/economic service cooperative for the "common good" and employs a lot of faceless bureaucrats. The difference is the government does not make a profit on the services it provides.

    Private businesses do and free enterprise is another ideal concept. And there is a world of opportunity, apart from universal health care, that supports a thriving free market economy.

    Any abuse of the public trust should not dictate the principal intent of the governing function. It should be corrected and protected from abuse, not modified to accommodate the abuse..
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  17. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    That's complicated. First, the drugs are cheaper because they're bought in enormous bulk orders, so the markup is only at the end-dispenser. Many drugs are covered by some form of public or private insurance, and only paid-up Canadian citizens are supposed to get those benefits (plus, many if not most pharmacy chains have been defrauding the government scheme, as well as demanding kick-backs from the pharmaceutical companies to carry their brand. But that doesn't show up in the price to the user until a year or two later, as it adds to inflation.)
    Of course, Americans are not supposed to have access.
    But then, a lot of Americans are also Canadians, taking advantage of both worlds.
    No, legislators have a lot more power than that. They can make and change policy, apply and remove regulations, reorganize administrative jurisdictions - make big improvements and big messes.
     
  18. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Absobloominutely! Check the garbage pickup or snow removal contracts of any township in North America.
    1. The township is strapped for cash, so the council decides to put one of these services up for tender.
    2. They make a contract with the lowest bidder, who promises to pick up the garbage or clear the roads 20% cheaper than the township has been able to do it. (The councillors know this is because the goddam public service union insists on high wages and safe working conditions for way too many employees.)
    3. The township shuts down its own operations, fires all the employees and sells off all the trucks and ploughs (probably to the new contractor) at auction - pretty cheap, but they can still show a net saving at the end of the fiscal year.
    4. The contract is for three years. During that time, the contractor hires the most junior 70% of the old employees at 70% of their former salary, fewer vacation/sick days and no pension and increased work hours. They deliver a pretty good service - not quite as good as before, but nobody's screaming.
    5. When the three years is up, they renegotiate. Price goes up, service is reduced, some people are made redundant.
    What can the township do? Their only recourse is to wait another three years, then put out a new tender and get screwed by some other contractor.
    Here's a really scary example: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/water-privatization-facts-and-figures
     
  19. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    All true, but if they truly represent their constituency, they cannot make or direct a profit.

    Take the profit out of the equation and you save money. It cannot be more simple than that.

    People have some strange notion that government takes their money. This is not true. Government provides services for the common good and it is supposed to do so without a profit motive.

    That is how it is supposed to work. If it doesn't, then the politics are messed, up not the goals. This is why there is a new outcry and demand for regulating the influence Big Money (for profit corp) has on current lawmakers. How many lobbyist have too much influence on the legislative process.

    IMO, the SCOTUS was hopelessly wrong in the Citizens United case. It allowed for the purchase of favors from legislators.
    This is why we have oversight commissions, to keep the system free from malfeasance.
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2019
  20. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Well, there you see the central problem of democracy as practised in capitalist countries. What is a particular representative's "constituency"? Their backers? Their class-mates? Their ideological fellow-travelers? Their business associates? The party caucus?
    To whom do they need to keep promises: the powerful interest-bloc that finances their campaign or some raggle-taggle citizens who happen to live in their riding and can't do them any favours?

    I'll do you one step more simple: take money out of politics and public works altogether.

    Of course. And it works surprisingly well most of the time. The roads do get cleared. The fires do get put out. The harbours have customs officers and ice-breakers when needed. Robbers and rapists do get arrested and tried and imprisoned. Meat does get inspected. A very great deal that we take for granted is done for us that we sorely miss when for some reason it isn't done.
    And it's almost always done more efficiently, reliably and cheaply by the civil service than by private enterprise.
    (When referring to 'faceless bureaucrats', people have no idea whom they're talking about: a competent and conscientious fellow citizen who cares about the service for which he or she is responsible and has no vested interest to consider other than their professional reputation. The reason you don't see their face is that, unlike politicians, they're not grandstanding; they just get on with the job.)
     
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  21. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    Enlightened citizens of a great and benign country, an example of humanity to the world.
    The strange thing is that underprivileged people usually work harder for less money that the privileged rich, who have inherited their wealth and never worked a day in their lives.
    I totally agree with the first. But if we apply this to public works, then we are dealing with profit motive again and less than full measure gets applied to the "public works", without sufficient regulation.
    A perfect example is the Deepwater Horizon Oil-spill, where inferior valves were installed by the billion dollar oil company to save a few hundred thousand dollars. We all witnessed and are still affected by the result of that brilliant idea of for-profit cost cutting a decade ago.
    I agree completely.
    I cannot agree more.
    That's the true spirit of being Human, IMO.
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2019
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Yep. They have a choice - get screwed by the same company, get screwed by some other company, or get screwed by the town worker's union.
     
  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    OTOH, if it becomes a government service, it just needs to pay for salaries and equipment (purchased per lowest bid). Worker's Unions may negotiate for favorable perks, but in the long run, the working class returns every penny back into the economy, whereas the wealthy just pile up the money in trust funds and passive income investments.

    The military has plenty of surplus heavy equipment. When I was working for the Nisqually Tribe, I acquired two good running but "expired" 5 ton trucks for free from the military base next-door to the reservation. These trucks were not tagged by the safety Lockout/Tagout program and thus useable for other than military service.

    This was a judicious long term use of servicable equipment at a much greater savings than outsourcing these public services to private for-profit co.

    It just takes a little creative thinking along the lines of "one man's trash is another man's treasure" to enable public services to perform waste free for the "public good".
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2019

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