Originally Posted by
43Inches
I was pointing at the two opposite ends of the spectrum. Modern democracies sit in the middle somewhere but lean to the left, so you get a mix of everything. It's quite obvious that there will be things that have to be forced on people, ie don't kill your neighbour, otherwise you are forced into jail. Something like medicare is a simple argument that the whole population must be in it or the system doesn't work. Should it have been farmed out as a separate 'tax', well that's political, as making you see how much it costs makes you feel like you don't need it and encourage moves towards privatisation and user pays systems. If the tax system also gave you a bill for our defense budget you would feel the same so they don't play with that so they can adjust it at will.
The other option to medicare is insurance based user pays, which in the US is pretty much un-affordable by the lower socioeconomic populations. So they just take their chances uninsured and usually with no way to afford the medical bills.
It also creates a free-for-all where the medical system is designed to benefit ONLY the profit motive of the insurance companies.
I often equate Medicare with the TAC in Victoria, having lived in other States, such as NSW, the cost of TAC 3rd party coverage in Victoria is chicken feed compared with the obscene 'green slip' system in NSW which is at least 3-4 times as much and only covers the basics, whereas in Victoria, if you are incapacitated, TAC as it's non-profit, has the capability to supply, for example, a person to mow your lawns (pay for it that is) until you are recovered. Why?? because the GREED element is removed as TAC is non-profit with any excess being piped into items such as the above or into road safety initiatives.
In large populations, single payer is ALWAYS going to be the better option - imagine if, like in the past, you had to pay a private police force to protect you or the fire brigade and they just drove past if your premium was late or unpaid. That's a crap system. The problem is that most Americans call that 'socialism' yet they have more publicly funded policing than just about any other country and their military is largely a smorgasbord of unnecessary expenditure - i.e. 'socialism' to get the vote of a Senator or a Representative in a certain district. The US DoD is the very essence of socialism by the US definition.
Truth is, they, and most people who throw the term around wouldn't actually know socialism if it stood up in their morning corn flakes. If they knew anything about it they would recognise it because, as in the Soviet days, their 'corn-flakes' would be a box containing hundreds of little plastic cosmonauts with a single plastic bag contain a single cornflake (crop failures).
That's because 'socialism' is actually ownership of ALL the means of production by the State/people via the State - what we have is a mixed system, where some things that are more logically done by the government because of economies of scale are done for the common good - just look at the cost of our system in Australia, something like 9% of GDP and in the US it used to be 17%, probably more now, and nearly 50m are not covered.
I'm happy to live in such a society where a child who has a rare disease gets to live a near normal life because all of us effectively throw in fractions of a cent each to get him/her the million dollar drug - whereas the US attitude is "sucks to be you, sell your house for 12 months worth of medicine".
Still, for a corrupt government that throws up 'voter ID' as a thought bubble when there are so many other REAL problems to be solved, such as election funding corruption, who knows what we'll end up with if this mob stays in - it's clear at this point they have no shame regarding doing anything to get their miserable a-ses re-elected.
Have no doubt if the AEC didn't exist they'd be gerrymandering to hell.