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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@Fighteer: From family (anecdotal) experience, the VA system needs to be fed to a wood chipper given how impossible it is to get them to do anything correctly. So I'm definitely not in favor of expanding government provision of healthcare until I personally can be assured that I, personally, will not be randomly juggled between insane asylums by bureaucrats like my uncle was.
The biggest issue with single-payer in the United States is the biggest issue with everything the United States government controls... The Republicans will try to keep defunding it in their attempts to prove that government doesn't work.
edited 10th Feb '16 9:34:34 AM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food Badly@Nihlus1: The fact that Sanders' plan has gaps is not an argument against the idea of single-payer. It is an argument against Sanders' proposed implementation.
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The VA is a victim of the general "starve the beast" mentality in Congress — take away its administrative funding and then call it a failure when it naturally breaks down. As I understand it, the quality of care given to veterans who get in the door is fine.
edited 10th Feb '16 9:57:21 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Oh that, I finally got around to reading it. It's wrong.
- He incorrectly assumes administrative savings of only 4.7 percent of expenditures, based on projections of administrative savings under Vermont's proposed reform.
- Thorpe assumes huge increases in the utilization of care, increases far beyond those that were seen when national health insurance was implemented in Canada, and much larger than is possible given the supply of doctors and hospital beds.
- Thorpe assumes that the program would be a huge bonanza for state governments, projecting that the federal government would relieve them of 10 percent of their current spending for Medicaid and CHIP — equivalent to about $20 billion annually.
- Thorpe's analysis also ignores the large savings that would accrue to state and local governments — and hence taxpayers — because they would be relieved of the costs of private coverage for public employees.
- Thorpe's analysis also apparently ignores the huge tax subsidies that currently support private insurance, which are listed as "Tax Expenditures" in the federal government's official budget documents.
- Thorpe assumes zero cost savings under single-payer on prescription drugs and devices.
Thorpe does not give actual figures for how many additional doctor visits and hospital stays he predicts. He thinks ten percent of spending for Medicaid will drop. That's not how single payer works.
Another. State and local government spent $177 billion last year on employee health benefits - about $120 billion more than state and local government would pay under the 6.2 percent payroll tax that Senator Sanders has proposed.
Nations with single-payer systems have in every case used their clout as a huge purchaser to lower drug prices by about 50 percent. In fact, the U.S. Defense Department and VA system have also been able to realize such savings.
So no, a deeply flawed analysis by former Bill Clinton's Deputy Assistant Secretary doesn't make Sanders a moron.
edited 10th Feb '16 10:10:53 AM by Luminosity
@Fighteer: Well (and again, this is my secondhand experience), getting in the door wasn't the problem, the problem was getting information out of them or getting them to listen to involved family members when making decisions about a mental patient.
Private hospitals are a lot more likely to listen to the person with the power of attorney than government bureaucracies.
- Sanders: 60.3%
- Clinton: 38.0%
- Trump: 35.3%
- Kasich: 15.8%
- Cruz: 11.7%
- Bush: 11.0%
- Robot: 10.6%
edited 10th Feb '16 11:09:11 AM by Luminosity
Oh, wow, Sanders did break 60 percent. That's really good for him. Also, lol @ "robot".
edited 10th Feb '16 11:11:13 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yeah. 60% is a solid punch to Clinton, even with Sanders being the expected winner.
That said, Clinton still has the edge. The superdelegates love her and don't care what the Democratic base wants, and Super Tuesday is strongly in her favor. And fortunately for us but unfortunately for Sanders, there's no way Bernie will riot if he wins the states but loses by superdelegates.
Anyway, I posted that to point out that Sanders' plan called for physically impossible things and none of the "economists" he hired to analyze it pointed this out before now, not necessarily because I agreed with 100% of what the author was saying. That said the article you posted is pretty much full of crap.
I like how they ignore both the negative spending and the Sanders' campaign attempted rebuttal:
Furthermore:
Thorpe, similarly, estimates that you'd need a 14.3 percent payroll tax on employers for a national single-payer plan, and a 5.7 percent income-based premium, for a combined 20 percent tax — about what Vermont estimated.
That's much higher than Sanders's campaign is suggesting; they want a 6.2 percent payroll tax and a 2.2 percent income-based premium, along with a large number of other tax increases on the wealthy.
I can see why they ignored it though, Sanders's policy director Warren Gunnels did such a great job of refuting it:
Side note: Thorpe did once do a consulting assignment for BCBS, conducting "a study a decade or so ago looking at the racial and income characteristics of who enrolls in Medicare + Choice [now called Medicare Advantage] plans," per his recollection. But he's an academic who's broadly respected across the spectrum, and who's been sympathetic to single-payer in the past. The Sanders campaign's characterization here seems unfair, even ad hominem.
edited 10th Feb '16 11:33:12 AM by Nihlus1
Part of the issue with the VA is one that's afflicting all agencies right now, but them in particular - outdated computer systems. As the ad for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee has been pointing out, it's woefully unprepared for female-related medical claims, and the actual operating systems in use can sometimes date back to the '70s. That's just a recipe for disaster when it comes to timely, effective treatment, especially for anyone that moves, as those files don't transfer easy.
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"Such bold claims shouldn't go baseless. Please find a credible source that explains exactly how Sanders backpedeled from his numbers.
Ah, very well, that is what I shall focus on then. Saying things are physically impossible without explaining why they're physically impossible isn't very helpful of a citation. Furthermore, your claim that Sanders hired economists to analyze the plan in his favor rings hollow in the light of Thrope's explicit ties to the Clintons.
Do you support the TPP?
Good. I remember one of the things she said was that if she became president, all citizens would be "required" to buy smartphones so she could regularly poll them on policy issues. Nuts to that, I want to keep my dumbphone!
...Oh, and she wouldn't let go of the Planned Parenthood thing. Feh.
edited 10th Feb '16 12:48:24 PM by speedyboris

Wanted to address a quote from the previous page:
"Christ Christie should drop out. He's become a much more hostile ideologue in recent years. Remember when he shook Obama's hand in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and refused to play partisan politics? Contrast that with all the trash he's talked about the president since entering the race. Politics changes people for the worse."
Indeed. I actually sorta liked Chris Christie during that time, since he appeared willing to work with others. But ever since Bridgegate I've lost more and more respect for him, and on this campaign trail I found him positively obnoxious (although he's certainly not the only one). So I'm not at all upset he's dropped out of the race.
edited 10th Feb '16 9:02:12 AM by speedyboris