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1. If the economy were good, we wouldn't be going further into deficit....we were paying it down before. Now we have to borrow more to makes ends meet (the government).
Technically true, but just for the record, we haven't had a surplus since 2001. It's been a long time.
Indubitably, a healthier population, with less obesity, better diet and more partaking of exercise, means lower healthcare costs, and probably also higher productivity and all sorts of cascading improvements. But is this the principal source of our high health-care costs? The anecdotal number is $13K/year on every man/woman/child in America, in annual healthcare spending. That supports at lot of jobs – good, high-paying jobs.
To really reduce costs, we need to start paying our MDs like we pay our PhDs, and our LPNs like we pay our paralegals or admin-assistants. But if we did that, we’d take away opportunity from lots of motivated, ambitious people. We would excise a large chunk of our economy.
Then there’s the question of how much of really costly healthcare is in the final months of life, typically in deep old age. Take a well-disciplined upper-middle-class professional, who regularly runs in community 5Ks, eats organic foods and watches his weight. He makes it to age 80, costing the healthcare system very little… and then gets Alzheimer’s. Five years later, he gets pancreatic cancer. Finally he dies at 86, having cost the system $2M in care, in the final 5-6 years of life. Meanwhile, Joe Sixpack smokes two packs a day. He’s fat and sedentary. He gets hooked on opiates, and goes on disability at age 45. At 55 he gets a diabetic stroke, and dies. Sure, society lost Joe’s productivity, and had to support him as a parasite, whereas the aforementioned upper-middle-class guy was an electrical engineer at NASA. But in the end, who cost the system more?
Cost-savings involves harsh compromises. Some people are going to essentially be sentenced death. Many will lose well-paying jobs. The whole economy would have to get reorganized, finding other sources for driving profits and employing clever, ambitious people.
Some of our problems stem from laziness, bad judgment, collective denial. We want something for nothing, in any of a number of imaginable forms. There are real savings to be attained from better discipline and personal initiative. Your point is well-taken! But so many of our problems stem from prosperity itself. We wouldn’t have such runaway healthcare costs if we didn’t have so many advanced technologies that defer death from dreadful diseases. If many of our children died from typhoid in youth, our women died from childbirth, our youth from tuberculosis, our peasants from malnutrition, our sailors from scurvy, our soldiers from trench-foot, our middle-aged men from prostate cancer, our miners from black-lung, our welders and blacksmiths from noxious gasses, and so forth…. If we accepted losing 2 out of 5 children as being normal, and living to 55 as being exceptionally old, then our healthcare costs – not to mention retirement-costs – might be substantially lower.
But prosperity is costly. If we all diet and forego soft-drinks or alcohol or processed foods, we might reduce the per-capita annual healthcare cost from $13K to $11K. That’s a worthy goal, and again, not one that I dismiss peremptorily. But it’s still too much. The debt will still grow. To really cut costs, we have to accept a lower standard of living. We either take the “liberal” approach, of much higher taxes and reduced personal-choice, or the “conservative” approach of sink-or-swim cruelty.
Simply put, to be sustainable, life has to get worse.
This is the same argument people make for not saving money and continuing with consumerism. Ultimately, health care spending is unsustainable. The only question of how it will stop is either by taking pro-active measures or by a major crisis. We get to choose.
Pretty much any transition you make will hurt some people in the short run. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make it. If we don't, more people will be hurt in the long run if we don't.
Only for certain values of "worse." Most of which would devolve to some form of "losing freedom." That's the conservative view in general, that the quixotic notion of small government and the idea that every vague concept of freedom takes precedence over... rationality.
So we ban sugar-loaded, high-calorie drinks. The notions of lost freedom are hard to justify except in that irrational way.
Or we ban all marketing of grossly unhealthy foods and the like. How's that freedom, or "worse," for you?
I understand the logic you are putting forth. However I don't agree with it.
I like that the government has forced cig makers to disclose the danger of smoking. That is an example of good government.
I don't agree with banning smoking. It's a personal choice if someone wants to harm themself. As long as it's not done around me I couldn't care less what others do.
I enjoy drinking Diet Coke. Every afternoon after exercising I eat lunch and plop down on the sofa to browse the internet and drink a DC. I would be pretty upset if the government felt they now needed to make my decision for me and say I can't drink a DC, I must drink water.
And if you ban sugary drinks, you might as well include OJ, Apple, and Grape juices which have more calories than a regular can of Coke or Pepsi by volume.
Only for certain values of "worse." Most of which would devolve to some form of "losing freedom." That's the conservative view in general, that the quixotic notion of small government and the idea that every vague concept of freedom takes precedence over... rationality.
So we ban sugar-loaded, high-calorie drinks. The notions of lost freedom are hard to justify except in that irrational way.
Or we ban all marketing of grossly unhealthy foods and the like. How's that freedom, or "worse," for you?
That is a subtle and potentially invidious debate.
I am not, for example, German… nor do I spend these days much time in Germany. But if Germany were to pass speed-limit laws on all of its Autobahns, I would feel a profound regret and diminution of personal freedom. That such restrictions perhaps advance the cause of road-safety, energy efficiency or environmental vitality, are small consolation.
Neither do I care for sugary, technologically-produced drinks. I drink mostly tea – Earl Gray, without sugar or other additives. The 64-oz “super big gulp” strikes me as being decadent and jejune. But to ban it, or even to tax it to oblivion? I don’t know. Part of me relishes seeing the Bubbas be reduced to peasant-hood. It would be… sweet. But part dreads the slippery-slope. “First they came for the…”
Freedom is a sensation, an abstraction, a mental state. To what extent denying a hysterical child a second helping of ice-cream is a diminution of freedom, is a subtle debate. Who, in the analogy, stands for the parents? Religion? Government? Big-business? Community organizations? Workers’ Soviets?
Quixotic notions, to borrow your phrase, are inevitable. They apply to the lone pioneer in the West… benefiting from free government-land. They also apply to a benevolent central government – or a local one. They apply to wise city-fathers, steering our town toward righteousness. They apply to the truculent priest, exhorting us to moral goodness and simplicity. They apply in all cases. All solutions are Quixotic, as all are attempts to ignore the problem.
I don't believe the right to market anything to anyone, completely caveat emptor, is a reasonable practice. Those who do maintain it's some kind of level playing field when it's anything but.
I don't believe the right to market anything to anyone, completely caveat emptor, is a reasonable practice. Those who do maintain it's some kind of level playing field when it's anything but.
You can make that argument about anything linked to bad outcomes. Example, red meat has been linked to cancer, we should ban that. Alcohol also causes cancer - BAN IT.
Because the economy IS bad, prices keep increasing health insurance is not affordable housing is not affordable grocery is getting more expensive. This county is turning into a hell hole, I’m seriously considering moving to Northern Europe where people actually have something called a high quality of life
I'm very perplexed as to why I STILL hear all these people say the economy is still bad, just like they said not long after 2008 all the way to 2014.
Why?
-Unemployment is at a nearly 5 decade low.
-3% GDP growth +/-
-All time low African American and Hispanic unemployment rate.
-Consumer confidence at an all time high
-Stock market at an all time high
-Wager keeping up with inflation
-Biggest wage gains among low-income people.
And on and on, and on...............
So WHY do I keep hearing people say its a struggle in "this" economy?
In my particular industry, there is a worker SHORTAGE and companies are betting for qualified applicants. Just recently, I was given a job offer literally 2 minutes after finishing the interview. This is just one of many examples.
So what gives? Why do I keep hearing so many people give the impression the economy is still bad like it was 2008-2014?
In my area of Central Georgia, home values have just now barely recovered to 2006 levels in many neighborhoods, hourly pay is stagnant, but all costs especially health care and higher ed (including tech school...needed to fill open jobs) continue to skyrocket. It has been a great recovery, but not a recovery enjoyed by all.
In my area of Central Georgia, home values have just now barely recovered to 2006 levels in many neighborhoods, hourly pay is stagnant, but all costs especially health care and higher ed (including tech school...needed to fill open jobs) continue to skyrocket. It has been a great recovery, but not a recovery enjoyed by all.
Here, here! PM me if you want to start a club...
I go to Georgia several times annually, and can confirm not everyone is in Atlanta metro. I grew up in small town NC and moved to the state capital when I was 26. Tons more opportunities. But not everyone can do that.
I am sad for my family still living in small town NC, they are lucky to have retired (from better paying jobs, elsewhere) but manufacturing seems to be stuck at 10-12/hr like it was 15 years ago. We have one unionized Freightliner plant that lays new hires off before they reach top pay. The seniority in hourly production there has a huge hole between <3 and >20 years tenure. As in not a single one.
First-year teachers, police, fire all start at $28k/year. EMT's even less.
The best you can hope for is a city job and that's a lottery.
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