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And yet one of the reasons given for why 'Medicare for all' is a bad idea is that the reimbursement rates providers get from government programs are lower than what private insurers will pay for a given action or procedure and doctors and hospitals wouldn't make enough money to want to remain as providers without the reimbursement rates they get from private insurers.
Can't have it both ways
In a world of mandated lower reimbursement rates, the way for health providers to make enough money to want to remain providers is to yank costs out of the system -- specifically administrative costs.
Unfortunately, those administrative costs walk on two legs and are breadwinners for their families.
I love how Google keyboard on my devices can turn a simple declarative sentence from a 200-word vocabulary into a line from a lost Marlowe play, using words that Bill and Chris threw in to amuse each other and haven't been used since. A north american googling LTTE should not come up with forty cites for the Tamil Tigers.
On the other hand, a LTTE I just read mildly noted that very few people object to giving up private insurance at 65. With that in mind, a vast number of the arguments against MFA/single-payer/etc. become pretty absurd.
Do many people voluntarily “give up” private insurance at 65? Folks I have talked to actually pay for a supplemental policy after 65 because Medicare is pretty lacking compared to their previous private group insurance. My parents would be financially devastated if they did not have additional insurance. I will be doing that myself.
Do many people voluntarily “give up” private insurance at 65? Folks I have talked to actually pay for a supplemental policy after 65 because Medicare is pretty lacking compared to their previous private group insurance. My parents would be financially devastated if they did not have additional insurance. I will be doing that myself.
Going with a usually low-cost supplemental, umbrella or LTC policy is not a huge step away from giving up private insurance altogether, especially considering that insurance at that age is absolutely stratospheric in cost. Other than LTC, it's for people who can't OOP a few thousand a year in prescriptions etc. and can't stand the thought of not having a private room.
So yes, a vast majority of people do go on public welfare coverage at 65 or so and are as smug about that entitlement as they are nasty about extending it to anyone else, in any form.
We have gone the other direction. Society provides all sorts of safety nets that support the physically and mentally impaired individuals. A great many of them reproduce. Some of the most impaired seem to settle in as breeders.
The movie Idiocracy seems to be playing out in real time. There doesn't seem to be too many Nuclear Physicists having 4-6 children, but every welfare queen slurping down Big Gulps, chowing down on McDonalds and spending the remainder of her money on tattoos and hair dye seems to be breeding prolifically....and usually not with an Engineer or Doctor either, but most commonly with the worst ghetto thugs and trailer trash she can find.
But Darwin never said anything about the survival of the most intelligent, per se. If survival of "the fittest" means that you can pop out kids and get welfare checks then your lineage will survive and proliferate. We live in an upside down world.
The movie Idiocracy seems to be playing out in real time. There doesn't seem to be too many Nuclear Physicists having 4-6 children, but every welfare queen slurping down Big Gulps, chowing down on McDonalds and spending the remainder of her money on tattoos and hair dye seems to be breeding prolifically...
You could, like, actually check the stats on that instead of repeating the Cadillac Welfare Queen trope as if it ever happened.
The movie Idiocracy seems to be playing out in real time. There doesn't seem to be too many Nuclear Physicists having 4-6 children, but every welfare queen slurping down Big Gulps, chowing down on McDonalds and spending the remainder of her money on tattoos and hair dye seems to be breeding prolifically....and usually not with an Engineer or Doctor either, but most commonly with the worst ghetto thugs and trailer trash she can find.
But Darwin never said anything about the survival of the most intelligent, per se. If survival of "the fittest" means that you can pop out kids and get welfare checks then your lineage will survive and proliferate. We live in an upside down world.
With more education comes fewer children. The less educated have fewer children. That has been the case for most of human history. It will continue to be the case. (Specifically - educating the women)
There is a bit of an inversion today in that the very rich have more children than the educated middle class, but still less than the poor.
The Social Darwinists of the 19th century said the same kinds of things... I don't think you want to go there because there is only one logical conclusion to that type of thinking. If you want the poor to have fewer children - give them more education so they become more like the educated middle class. Probably the most effective means would be bussing for K-12.
I love how Google keyboard on my devices can turn a simple declarative sentence from a 200-word vocabulary into a line from a lost Marlowe play, using words that Bill and Chris threw in to amuse each other and haven't been used since. A north american googling LTTE should not come up with forty cites for the Tamil Tigers.
And what if modern medicine has peaked? At least temporarily.
The best contributors to first world health weren’t even medical advances; clean drinking water, climate control, sanitation services, antibacterials, antiseptics, pest control, etc ...
Ever since we achieved IV fluids, antibiotics, supplemental O2, antihistamines, laboratory & imaging diagnostics, prenatal care, sterile surgery, insulin, albuterol & a few others; it’s been nothing but politics & pharma fiddle-f****ng around. For a fee, of course.
Now we have a CDC using the playbook written by Big Tobacco & Cold War competition that outlasted the Cold War. It’s still about swagger, which has no place in medical science.
It seems our life expectancy has peaked as well
See, I don’t think the very recent demographic indicators of ‘the fittest’ are sustainable & if socio-economic status winds up having a detrimental impact on health & mortality; things could start looking very different, very soon.
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