On your property? Nothing. If you and your neighbor both want to ban certain knives? Again, nothing. If you and your neighbor want to ban knives on a third neighbor’s property? A lot.
If you earn in a society, then you have already given back to it. You would be unable to earn anything, if those paying you did not believe what you offer is more valuable than what they pay you. You would not sell if you didn’t believe the payment is more valuable than your product.
The TOP rate… as in the VERY TOP, the Bill Gates level ppl… according to what I’ve kearned about the way their taxes, they’re only gonna pay that rate on every yen over a certain amount.
Japan’s national insurance is paid based on individual yearly income… so in essence, the premium is only as much as you can afford without going broke… unlike some insurance in the states where you pay $300 a month to not afford the co pay or deductible 
Priorities.
“The average household spends an average of $3,008 per year on dining out, the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
“Health care – 5.9 percent, or $2,979
Entertainment – 5.6 percent, or $2,827”
That only is true if you are being paid by society for work that benefits society. If you aren’t, you still benefit from society.
I don’t care what they are spending it on as long as they get to decide. The more freedom, the better.
Ok bro, i get it, geez. You like paying out the ass for healthcare, good for you. You stick to that I’m sure it’ll really turn out great for you…
But I used to be a poor American making less that $12/hr part time while I was in school, I couldn’t afford insurance…
not everyone who doesn’t have insurance goes out to eat every day or spends that amount of money on entertainment… trust me I was there at that income level for about 10yrs before I graduated and got a good job…,
I think his point is that you could have, you just didn’t value insurance as much as some other thing you spent your money on at the time (College tuition, car payment, beer). It doesn’t really matter though as it would be a poor financial decision to pay for health insurance while being a healthy 20 year old making $12/hr. What a person values changes over time and we spend what dollars we have accordingly.
Interesting. Who determines what is of benefit?
You understand that if Person A is paying less, then Person B is paying more, right? So, at best, some people benefit while others suffer.
There’s a limit to this line of thought though. I’ll totally agree that many people fall into that line of argument, but I spent many, many months drinking milk to get calories at the end of the month because I didn’t have enough money to both eat groceries and hit rent.
Sure, a lot of people make dumb decisions. But there’s also a significant chunk of young folks that are relatively responsible with their very limited cash, that would seriously struggle to get health insurance prior to the ACA. I still hate the ACA, but I won’t deny that because I was one of those people years ago.
Yep, I’ve been there. Let me just say I ate a lot of rice.
But why would a healthy responsible young person want to buy health insurance? At least not a level of coverage that the ACA requires, maybe some catastrophic type of coverage would suffice. It’s just a stupid decision to make financially. Maybe they just want it, okay. Then if you want it bad enough, buy it. At 20 I’m sure a lot of people want a BMW but drive a civic. Most people can count on one hand the amount of times they went to the doctor in their 20’s. Usually for an accident or STD.
Society, duh.
Late reply but been busy at work:
To get a quicker treatment.
Trying to make it short, and keep in mind what I’m saying is how things work in Italy, every country has its own rules for healthcare.
When you go to ER you’re given a color code - white, green, yellow, red, with white being the lightest non dangerous stuff and red being life or death emergencies. The more severe your code is, the less your tircket costs, with yellow being almost free and red being free.
In my case, I have a thumb tendinopathy - I didn’t go to ER, I went through my family doctor who prescribed me the treatments. Since it’s not a serious thing, I’ll have to pay tickets as I said above. While generic treatments are quick to get done, some stuff like specialistic visits for non serious matters can require a lot of time, going through the national sanitary system I’d have to wait until August 29, while going to a private clinic I’ll have to wait maybe one or two weeks.
If I had something more serious, like a broken wrist, getting a surgery would have required just a few days via national system.
How so? This is the misinformation I’m talking about, you’re not forced to receive treatments first of all, and the number of procedures depends on your condition.
There aren’t countless way to fix a broken bone for example, while you may get different options for something like cancer or birth. A friend of mine recently gave birth and she gave her own specific instructions for it.
Taxes on healthcare are really the tip of the iceberg and something I’d gladly pay along with taxes for education and schools.
Let’s not fool ourselves here, I have friends who lived and still live in the US, the sister of my best friend has been living in Florida for 10+ years and she’s married there. I know of hospital bills that amount to thousands of dollars for just a few days stay for a non serious condition, up to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for surgeries or more serious conditions that require people to stay at the hospital multiple weeks a year.
I’d rather have a chunk of my monthly wage go into healthcare every month knowing that whenever I need a treatment I only need to pay a basic ticket, than finding myself in a position where I have to churn out a ridicolously high amount of money for a serious condition. And also knowing that my taxes allow other people to get their treatments just the same way without being left to die. As I said, I consider this a very basic matter of democracy and civilization.
And make no mistake, the healthcare taxes (and education taxes) are just a part of the taxes we pay, that’s not where the real waste happens, sadly.
It’s not a perfect system either, any time you have a system, you’ll have individuals trying to take advantage of it by skirming around the borders or just straight out break the law, there is corruption and money grabbing in our healthcare system, but you can bet it happens in every single kind of system.
By the way, if you’re in doubt, we might compare the average life span of a country like Italy and Japan to any US country you want. Easy access to healthcare DOES have an influence in that.
About the specific case of this kid, I’m not really sure what to say. On one side, I don’t think the court or any major/superior power should have the final word, on the other side, as I explained above, I live in a country where we have the opposite problem, with severely ill people wishing to die and not being allowed to.
I can say with absolute certainty that the issue is not as simple as some posts here and linked articles make it to be. There seems to be a lot of people simply writing it down to a life vs non life scenario, while the real talk should be about quality of life.
An interesting post, thanks. I dont have a problem with people thinking the way you do above here–that’s a decision that depends on your personal perspective, so fair play.
That said, wait times and cancer survival rate differences are a real thing. I don’t begrudge you your opinion stated here, it’s certainly rational, but at the same time my opinion is that I have exactly zero faith the government can or will effectively administer a system like that here in the US. I also have deep reservations about giving the government more power when they’ve constantly shown themselves deficient in using the powers they currently have. Like giving a 20th credit card to a person who has maxed out the last 19 credit cards, I don’t think it’s wise.
I do agree that as far as “providing for the General Welfare” healthcare is much closer to a right than most other things the government currently does. However, that is balanced against the issue of the individual always having primacy in issues of life choices, which is also fundamental to our country.
Yes, but so do myriad other things as well. The US has the highest rate of obesity in the world by a very long margin, along with all the things that go on with that, including shortened life expectancy. So making that comparison is not nearly as simple or as obvious as you might like.
You’re damn right. If you’re not first, you’re last.
Agreed, good post. It seems to me that there are really two typed of people when it comes to this topic (with varying degrees, of course). One group believes the(a) government can and should provide basic healthcare and they can do it more efficiently than private insurers. The other thinks the opposite. That the government will be incredibly inefficient at administering healthcare, it won’t cost less than we currently spend, and care will actually suffer.
I think, assuming logic is involved, both groups have a point. As I’ve said in the past, I’d be much more obliged to a “universal” basic healthcare plan paid for via taxes if the US federal government weren’t already excessively bloated and if the government hasn’t been shown to repeatedly waste billions of dollars and if the ability for the program to grow was extremely difficult.
As we know, those "if"s are not going to happen, which is why I am generally against single-payer or any other universal system here.
Of course, you can’t separate the concept of a universal/socialistic healthcare plan from those facts. An unbloated, non-wasteful government couldn’t conceive such a program.
Reminds me of the conundrum that is Zep. Wants Universal Healthcare administered by the federal government while simultaneously wanting every healthcare treatment imaginable available and unregulated. If he had any brain cells they’d commit seppuku.
Considering only the intelligent people, I tend to agree. There are points to be made in both directions regarding economy of scale as it relates to universal healthcare. That’s why I usually only get upset when encountering Zep-like hysterical creatures on the topic.
I unabashedly consider the “inefficient government” side the stronger, but then it fits my bias. Even more important to me than the inefficiency is the fundamental philosophical trouble I have giving that much power to any government monopoly. BUT none of that means there are zero rational reasons to support the other side.
Yep, pretty much. Also, you know, no track record of veterans dying from poor waits and conditions in VA care. But yeah.