[Zagadka]

I was going to post this in the polls thread, but I hate when people derail that.

Should childless, able-bodied adults in your state be required to work as a condition for receiving Medicaid?

Anyway; I've always this problem with this question; so if unemployment is high and out of your control, so you can't find a job, then get sick... you're what, just gonna drive into the desert and bury yourself? I completely see the argument, and I completely agree that forms of social welfare should have strings attached, but it seems like a lot of the time you're just dumping people into a perpetual downward spiral that is very difficult to recover from. You can break a bone and be down $11k in the US.

I mean, I'd prefer vocational training, pushing GEDs, providing enough medical coverage (obviously in my view as part of the national), and limiting the length of coverage for able-bodied childless people. The arguments around this topic generally throw most of that (other than the length of coverage) out the window.

[Suntzu]

Work, school, vocational training, public service, something besides sitting on your donkey.

[Zagadka]

Sounds good. But some people would point out that public service would cost jerbs or something (I've had this discussion a few times before)

[Suntzu]

It they can't find something, put them to work pick up trash along side the road. It will only put volunteers out of work.

[skinster]

Health care shouldn't be daylight-robbery like what it is in the US.

[Decky]

Yes of course, people who don't work (aristocrats, landlords, businessmen etc) should all be in gulags.

[Sivad]

The Medicaid Work Requirements Could Make it Impossible to Qualify for Medicaid in Most States
In all but five states, a minimum-wage worker abiding by the Trump administration’s proposed work requirements would earn too much to qualify for Medicaid.

[Suntzu]

Yes of course, people who don't work (aristocrats, landlords, businessmen etc) should all be in gulags.

I like the French solution better! Just cut of their heads.

[Unperson-K]

Health care shouldn't be daylight-robbery like what it is in the US.

A year ago in Russia, I broke my arm when I slipped and fell on the ice. The first treatment, at an accident and emergency department, was free. The second treatment, at a private clinic, was 2,500 roubles (about $45). For me, a foreigner with a high-paying job, this was nothing: even in terms of the local average monthly salary (about 33,000 roubles), it is affordable. As an employee of a state institution (a university), I also have medical insurance, so the full cost could be claimed back.

According to the 2017 article I cite below, the cost of repairing a broken bone in the US is $1,200 with insurance. The second link suggests $2,500 for a non-surgical repair. Without insurance, the cost would be dramatically higher, close to $10,000, according to a 2006 Washington Post article.

So the question has to be asked: how can the United States, the world's richest country, go around calling other countries shitholes when it seems to be unable to provide its own citizens with affordable medical care?

http://nordic.businessinsider.com/heres ... ld-2017-7/

https://www.lendingpoint.com/blog/broke ... ay-for-it/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00882.html

[Heisenberg]

I try not to think too much about the absolute insanity of American healthcare, since it has the unpleasant affect of making me wonder whether Osama bin Laden might have had a point about the West.

[Decky]

I try not to think too much about the absolute insanity of American healthcare, since it has the unpleasant affect of making me wonder whether Osama bin Laden might have had a point about the West.

It is hardly fair to tar the whole west with the same brush, the United States is a shithole of course everyone knows that but acting like the entire west is identical is odd.

[quetzalcoatl]

I am in principle opposed to all conditional or means-tested benefit programs.

What we should do is have a UBI (Universal Basic Income) combined with a voluntary JG (Jobs Guarantee).

The UBI would provide a basic income to all citizens (regardless of age, employment status, or wealth) equivalent to 40 hours of minimum wage. It is a base to blunt the edge of poverty.

The JG would provide employment to those unable to find private employment. It would be entirely voluntary - i.e., the basic income described above would not be dependent on accepting a job. The unemployed who accept a JG job would add the additional income to the money provided by UBI.

Some form of UHC (Universal Health Care) should be in the mix, in order to prevent medical impoverishment.

This is eminently practical and achievable, and the total cost is not excessive, compared to the cost of unemployment, homelessness, and untreated sickness. In the US, the existence of a permanent hereditary underclass (bottom ~40%) is the nation's worst existential threat; if uncorrected, this will destroy representative democracy in the US. It's amazing to me that more conservatives aren't taking up this challenge.

[Rancid]

Health care shouldn't be daylight-robbery like what it is in the US.

Indeed, the key issue is that health care in the US is an industry.

[Tainari88]

I am in principle opposed to all conditional or means-tested benefit programs.

What we should do is have a UBI (Universal Basic Income) combined with a voluntary JG (Jobs Guarantee).

The UBI would provide a basic income to all citizens (regardless of age, employment status, or wealth) equivalent to 40 hours of minimum wage. It is a base to blunt the edge of poverty.

The JG would provide employment to those unable to find private employment. It would be entirely voluntary - i.e., the basic income described above would not be dependent on accepting a job. The unemployed who accept a JG job would add the additional income to the money provided by UBI.

Some form of UHC (Universal Health Care) should be in the mix, in order to prevent medical impoverishment.

This is eminently practical and achievable, and the total cost is not excessive, compared to the cost of unemployment, homelessness, and untreated sickness. In the US, the existence of a permanent hereditary underclass (bottom ~40%) is the nation's worst existential threat; if uncorrected, this will destroy representative democracy in the US. It's amazing to me that more conservatives aren't taking up this challenge.

Don't you get why they don't? For many conservatives they want to keep poor people in deep suffering. Make sure people fear losing jobs so much they accept any working conditions and they fail to organize. Keep people living in deep fear forever. I find them basically evil, satanic, heartless and malevolent human beings with absolutely no sense of social responsibility. I really hate conservative thinking. They really are about in biblical language THE SATAN in the world. I wish they would just say, "we worship the devil. We love racism, discrimination, keeping poor people in misery and suffering and poverty, we hate humanity and human beings unless they have big bank accounts, we are petty and spiteful, greed minded and miserly...stingy in spirit, stingy in materialism, hate families and hate people. But we hide behind religion, we hide behind wealth. We worship mundane power and mundane and worldly crap but spout Christian charity." I find them total devilish, the worst of the scum of the Earth with their hypocritical bullshit political proposals that only favor already powerful, greedy, wealthy mostly white people who refuse to share a damn thing with the poor or the working people.

They are evil incarnate. The vast majority of the conservatives? Ignorant, foolish, wealthy, with money, never study history, petty, miserly, selfish, narcississtic and self absorbed, lying, greedy and hypocritical and the very opposite of Christ like in thought, behavior and action.

So, don't be surprised they work actively against the Basic Minimum Income, want to leave old seniors and single mothers working with low wages without a food stamps and etc. That is their MO. Make everyone suffer because they want to CRUSH everyone like Devils.

Good luck with them. I have no hope for such evil people.

[quetzalcoatl]

Don't you get why they don't? For many conservatives they want to keep poor people in deep suffering...So, don't be surprised they work actively against the Basic Minimum Income, want to leave old seniors and single mothers working with low wages without a food stamps and etc. That is their MO. Make everyone suffer because they want to CRUSH everyone like Devils.

Good luck with them. I have no hope for such evil people.

I don't disagree. My hope is that a kind of MAD(Mutual Assured Destruction) caution might overrule their greed. The current direction of events is undermining the basis of their own existence, so they might want to take notice.

[Politiks]

Indeed, the key issue is that health care in the US is an industry.

The problem with health care in USA isn't health care itself, you're blaming a symptom for a disease. The root of the problem is big pharma, health care,public hospitals or lack of it are just tentacles of a larger machine.

USA produces in large scale medicine, prosthetics, X Ray machines, the material to maintain those xr machines, brain scan machines...the list is so long I would be here all day. Private sector is responsible for producing almost everything a hospital needs. Most countries that have public health care the State plays a big part in producing medicines. The reason why a country like Brazil or Germany can afford to break so many patents of medicine is because they belong to the State not private companies.

A public Hospital or Clinic is the last end of the entire process. Big Pharma is to health care what Bayer-Monsanto is to what Americans get in their supermarkets.

[Tainari88]

I don't disagree. My hope is that a kind of MAD(Mutual Assured Destruction) caution might overrule their greed. The current direction of events is undermining the basis of their own existence, so they might want to take notice.

I have learned Feathered Serpent, that the hallmark of that kind of thinking is so circumscribed to their own immediate shit thoughts that one person asked one of them to think about their own grandchildren and the future generations and he replied: "I will not be around then. I need to get mine while I can." That sums it up for that kind of total selfishness.

Climate denying types, and people who hate scientific explanations but refuse to be true Christians. It is very hard to be a true Christian if they believe in being Christ like. They have to get rid of mundane money worship. They have to serve people who are not like them and even people who hate them actively and still love them and serve them. Share everything. True spirituality Quetzalcoatl is hard as hell to do. It is hard. For only the most advanced in spirit people.

Not even the threat of nuclear war fazes their retrograde selves. They are so worried about something. The most fear-mongering people in the world are they. They fear the aliens from the dark skinned hordes from across the border. Because everyone knows if you are white you are naturally superior. Anyone with that shit in the head Quetzalcoatl? They won't be reasoned with. Emotionally based and fear infused people. Totally into what pscyhologists know are fear based mentalities. In the history of the world they capitalized on mob fears...of the xenophobe, mysoginist, racial purists, etc. They fear 'contamination' by dark races, by communists, by socialists, by poor people....all of their fears are about giving up power to women, or dark people, or poor people, or people who they would rather blow up the entire world in some nuclear fiery horror rather than share power with....because if you lose power? You are polluted. Only they are the purest of the pure. Total delusion. Alienation and fear. They worship the worst in human nature.

It is madness. That is how Auschwitz happens, or genocides or discrimination that ends in mass death is about. Fear. Hatred. Rage, and every negative emotion in the world. People who can't realize that a black person is a person. A human being just like they are and have to insist on separate bathrooms and deny Black people human rights? They are bereft. Sick in the head people and need some heavy psychological work. But?

They live in total denial. Refuse to get some help. And they love power and become intransigent in anything that is about being fair. Unjust to the core.

It is a hard challenge.