Why are we a divided Nation?

Cancer is always treated immediately. A bad knee cannot kill you.

Meantime, I still don't know what you're getting at when you say you never wait to see your doctor. What does that have to do with public health? Do you even understand what public health is? I think you cannot, given you keep mentioning doctors appointments. FTR: Doctors and specialists are not employed by the Govt. They are private practitioners just as in America. The waiting time to see your doctor has nothing to do with how he's paid (ie, via the public purse, or via your wallet), it's a function of how busy his/her practice is.

It's a really odd but common misunderstanding of public health, so you're not alone. Though where you folk got the idea that public health means doctors become employees of the Govt, is anyone's guess. Movies, maybe? Sci Fi novels?

 

And they're always 'fair' waits. Most reasonable people would not want to see more urgent cases bumped for our sprained ankle.

 

Im not sure how you translated my post into doctors becoming government employees. The one thing you and I agree on is that Canadians have to wait for rationed care. Americans can ensure their loved ones don't spend 6 months in pain waiting for what you consider a better option. Canadians can come to the US if the ability to walk is important to them.

 

This is easy to explain: minorities. When your country is 90-99% white, socialism doesn't cost nearly as much. When your country is 34% minority as the US is, socialism is unaffordable. It's like the difference between socialistic policies in Boulder, CO, vs. socialistic policies in Detroit, MI. What Boulder can afford with a black population of 1% is very different from what Detroit can afford with its black population of 80%. And while the income difference between the US and Sweden is considerably less than the income difference between Detroit and Boulder, the difference isn't enough to offset the fact that Sweden is just 8% non-white. For every dollar of tax money spent on welfare programs in the US, 61¢ goes to blacks & Hispanics. Meanwhile, whites pay 75¢ of every tax dollar collected. In America today, whites contribute $2,795 per capita more in taxes than they cost in social welfare services. Blacks, on the other hand, cost $10,016 per capita more in social welfare services than they pay in taxes. Hispanics cost $7,298 more in services than they pay in taxes. Each. Per year.

https://thealternativehypothesis.or...fiscal-impact-of-whites-blacks-and-hispanics/

Increasing that cost by any more social welfare spending than we're already spending is just unrealistic. Furthermore, any "soak the rich" scheme has to take into account that the top 20% of all income earners already pay 95% of all income taxes. The next two quintiles (40%) pay just 5% of all income taxes, the lowest 40% nothing.

"If you break the income tax universe into what we call quintiles, so equal sized 20 percent columns, the first two columns, the first quintile and the lower quintile, don't pay any taxes at all. In fact they net positive. We pay them when they file a tax return."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/omb-top-20-pay-95-of-taxes-middle-class-single-digits

 

We have better medicine, too. The only reason we don't have better outcomes is minorities drag down our numbers. Life expectancies among white, non-Hispanics is equal to or greater than white life expectancies in any other country. The longest lived ethnic group on the planet is Japanese women... in the US. They live longer here than they do in Japan.

 

There are a great many reasons for that, almost none of which would be solved by socialized health care. About the only one that would be solved is legal costs. If you couldn't sue your doctor or hospital anymore, medical costs would certainly go down. But would the reasons for suing your doctor or hospital go away, or would they actually become more numerous?

 

I think you should present all your unsults and autrocities, in your rational and brilliant manner, of course.

Homosexuals, brainwashing impressionable young children in school, with the full support of liberals, the Democrat dominated congress, obsessed with Trump hatred, unable to do its job, unable to do anything but obsess on impeachment and obstruction, Antifa, beating people, stopping traffic, twelve sick candidates for office of president, each one trying to show further leftist extremism than the next. These are autrocities, as you call them. You have a truly dizzying intellect.

 

Not all Americans can ensure their loved ones don't spend 6 months in pain. A significant number of Americans cannot participate in health care because of insurance restrictions. Industry controls the dispensing of healthcare, private insurance companies. That is a foolish system and wasteful.

 

But Canada has more ethnic diversity per capita and just as many minorities as you do and while we do not have the deep pockets of third world poverty you do except perhaps on aboriginal reserves, we certainly have deep issues of homelessness and social welfare similar to that in the United States. So, with roughly one tenth of the population and tax base we can still afford a universal health system and a variety of social programs to at least attempt to relieve poverty.

You are attempting to make this an argument about race which is a very American thing to do. But let's look at who holds the majority of the wealth in the US and then compare that to your site's analysis (which they fully admit is not peer-reviewed and maintains an alt.right bias - their own words on their about us tab, not mine):

Ownership of wealth by percintile:



Ownership of wealth by race:



These statistics are valid right up to the 2016 election of Trump so the numbers are bound to be skewed by the tax reform legislation. At any rate, now your onerous tax disparity argument does not look so unfair to the wealthy does it.

Is there any evidence that minorities actually increase health care costs? Not according to actual medical research:

More than half of Americans think immigrants are at least partly responsible for the nation's high health care costs.
Moreover, there's a widespread notion that immigrants — especially those in the country illegally — are siphoning off resources intended to pay for the health care of native-born Americans.

Dr. J. Wesley Boyd, a psychiatrist and ethicist at Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance, says many Americans "just have this sort of general conception that foreigners who are coming across our borders trying to get a better life for themselves...[are] all just moochers."
Boyd spends a lot of his time advocating for immigrants — in particular, testifying on behalf of those seeking asylum. So he was receptive when Tufts Medical School student Lila Flavin proposed a deep dive into the question: Just how much of a drain on the U.S. health care system are immigrants?

Their analysis, published in the International Journal of Health Services, may surprise many.
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2018/08/08/immigrants-health-care-cost

Here is a link to the abstract from the study Boyd is citing:

"Abstract
In health care policy debates, discussion centers around the often-misperceived costs of providing medical care to immigrants. This review seeks to compare health care expenditures of U.S. immigrants to those of U.S.-born individuals and evaluate the role which immigrants play in the rising cost of health care. We systematically examined all post-2000, peer-reviewed studies in PubMed related to health care expenditures by immigrants written in English in the United States. The reviewers extracted data independently using a standardized approach. Immigrants’ overall expenditures were one-half to two-thirds those of U.S.-born individuals, across all assessed age groups, regardless of immigration status. Per capita expenditures from private and public insurance sources were lower for immigrants, particularly expenditures for undocumented immigrants. Immigrant individuals made larger out-of-pocket health care payments compared to U.S.-born individuals. Overall, immigrants almost certainly paid more toward medical expenses than they withdrew, providing a low-risk pool that subsidized the public and private health insurance markets. We conclude that insurance and medical care should be made more available to immigrants rather than less so."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0020731418791963

Here is further study from the libertarian Rand corporation which makes several arguments including that immigrants underutilized the health care resources for several reasons among which are that they tend to be healthier than Americans:

so? Working within Los Angeles County, which has the largest concentration of immigrants in the nation, RAND Corporation researchers analyzed information from the Los Angeles Family Neighborhood Survey, which interviewed families in 65 county neighborhoods during 2000 and 2001. Nonelderly participants — those between 18 and 64 — were asked about their health status, whether they had health insurance, the type and amount of care used, and the type of immigrant they were. After deriving estimates for the county, researchers extrapolated the estimates to the national level.

• 
  
  
  • Of the $430 billion in national medical spending in 2000, native-born residents accounted for 87 percent of the population but for 91.5 percent of the spending. Foreign-born residents, who include undocumented immigrants, accounted for 13 percent of the population but for only 8.5 percent of the spending. Undocumented immigrants — 3.2 percent of the population — accounted for only about 1.5 percent of medical costs.
  • Foreign-born residents use less funding from public insurers (such as Medicare and Medicaid) and pay more out-of-pocket costs for health care than do native-born residents — a pattern that is even more pronounced for undocumented immigrants.
  • The lower medical spending is driven by lower utilization of services. Utilization data from Los Angeles County show that many foreign-born residents had almost no contact with the formal health care system. For example, whereas only about a tenth of native-born residents had never had a checkup, that fraction jumped to a quarter for foreign-born residents and to a third for undocumented immigrants. Moreover, because Los Angeles County is known as an immigrant-friendly location for services, the estimates for the nation may be lower for undocumented immigrant service use and, thus, may be lower for medical costs.
  • A number of reasons account for the lower utilization, but one key reason is that immigrants — especially the undocumented — appear to be healthier than native-born residents.

The policy debate over immigration should focus not on health care costs but rather on a fuller analysis of all the fiscal benefits and costs of immigrants. Such an analysis should incorporate the taxes paid by immigrants and also the other public benefits received — in particular, public school costs — where the public costs for all types of immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, is likely to be much larger than those for nonimmigrants.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9230.html

Here is another research article cited by Reuters:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...althcare-than-people-born-in-us-idUSKCN1LT3BW

Yes but as a said above, you are not taking into account that the top 20% also earn over 90% of the countries wealth according to Survey of Consumer Finances. Also the latest figures I was able to google for the top 20% was 88% of total taxes paid not 95%.

Also keep in mind that the marginal tax rate for highest earner was as high as 95% during the most prosperous era of American history and that it is not where near that now.

 

Unsults and autrocities? Lol that's what happens when my sausage fingers try to type on a phone keyboard without spell check, I suppose.......but thanks for pointing that out.

I am not gay so I am fairly neutral on LGBQ issues but generally I feel that with all the hatred and violence in the world, more people loving each other in the manner they choose is fine by me. I am not sure if your issue with gay rights is religious or whether or not you are just repressing your own discomfort with your own sexuality but can you provide any evidence that young children are being brainwashed in school other than there being a general move towards tolerance to people who have traditionally been excluded from openly taking part in society?

While I agree in general that the consumption with Russia interfering in the election is somewhat unproductive, mostly because America interferes in the democratic processes of nations all over the world, there are good reasons for the movement to impeach a president who's incompetence and criminality are unprecedented in modern times. I know a lot more about Trump's history with Russian oligarchs and mobsters going back decades than you probably do and that is where the real rub lies but that is for another thread.

Trump's abuse of office and enriching himself and his family at the expense of the American taxpayer is in the open for everyone with a clear mind not fogged by sycophantic loyalty to a conman to see. His incompetence and unfitness for office are destroying what is left of Americas reputation in the world and destabilizing entire regions of the globe including Syria, China and anywhere else this administration bumbles it's inept attempts at engaging the world. At this point, Congress has a duty to proceed with impeachment and the cracks in Republican support are already showing so he may not even survive trial in the Senate as the public becomes more and more tired of Trump's criminality, vulgarity and abuse of the office of president.

Nothing about white supremacists beating people, running innocent women over, chanting anti-Semetic and racist chants in public commons? Yet Anti-fascists who oppose them are your big beef? Interesting that!
I suppose you feel Antifa and BLM are the biggest problems facing America these days while the rise of right-wing extremist and nationalist groups such as the Posse, Proud Boys or Aryan Nation is not even worth mentioning?

Why are these candidates "sick"? They are largely products of the same political system that barfed up as grotesque, crass and vulgar a figure as Donald Trump. Are they "sick" just because you disagree with their policies?

At any rate, why are you shouting at me about them. There are perhaps 2, three at the most of them whose policies I would endorse. The rest of them are corporate democrats who serve the interests of their donors and lobbyists. If that is sick then it's just business as usual in the piggy trough that is Washington politics and they are hardly different than the greed-mongers that the Republicans regularly turn out except they may be slightly more moderate on social issues.

I would say they are more the same boring right-wing whining points you'd find on Breitbart or Fox rather than atrocities. You can insult my intellect all you want. I know who I am and what I stand for and I can argue them coherently even with the odd typo. Can You?

Spewing your moral outrage on anyone you disagree with or dares question your dear leader is not really showing brilliant intellect either is it?

Can you do better than this and actually discuss or support an argument?

 

President Trump gives away his annual salary. He doesn't enrich himself. You're confused. You're projecting your heroes, Joe Biden and Hillary The Crook.



[QUOT]Nothing about white supremacists beating people, running innocent women over, chanting anti-Semetic and racist chants in public commons? Yet Anti-fascists who oppose them are your big beef? Interesting that!

[/QUOTE]

You have no idea whereof you speak. Candace Owens testified before Congress that white supremacists are not even in the top 100 problems facing black Americans. She is black and you live in Canada, so your opinions mean zero compared to hers. But you repeat them ad nauseum, as told to do by your Leftist handlers.

No more from you, ever.
ciao

 

I'm not a "lefty," so cut the BS. What makes you think House Democrats won't impeach Trump? Based on what we know at this point, Trump won't be convicted by the Senate.

 

Lefties never admit to being Lefties. They claim "middle of the road" or "independent."
Yeah, right. And socialism is just groovy...….

 

Where's the evidence regardless of who ought to provide it or what it might be.

You're babbling.

 

Why keep mentioning your 30 minute wait for doctor appointment? Doctors aren't public servants, so that's not even remotely relevant to a discussion of the merits of public health.

And at no point have I denied non-essential procedures must wait. On the contrary, I stated that that's a GOOD thing. No one wants a 65 year old wanting knee repair so he can keep playing golf, bumping a child needing life-saving surgery. Do they? Would you want that? It takes a little maturity and sense of fair play to adjust to triaged medicine, but it's 100% superior to anything driven by dollars.

 

You missed the question, so I enlarged it.

 

The U.S. was always a divided nation. This keeps her strong.

 

"The lion does not turn around when a small dog barks." - Nigerian Proverb

 

Didn't that Civil War make us "strong" - with 500,000 men killed, on a far smaller population base. "Strength." Yes sir, pitbull.
The more divisive, the "stronger," right? The hell with "One nation, under God." The hell with "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all." Hell with that. Kneel during the national anthem.
That "keeps her strong." So does burning the flag, stepping on it, and letting men use women's rest rooms. Yes sir!

 

There are also many other people who fight all this.
Lots of pissed off Rednecks who voted for Trump, even if he's a dumb idiot.
Where's your problem?

Your enemies are the reason why you are what you are.
No patriotic rage boys without crazy leftists.

 

You're not big on history, are you. What good did it do for "pissed off" Germans to fight the Nazis in the 1930s?
What good did it do the Soviet citizens to fight the communists? Good guys were murdered by the millions.
Being "pissed off" and "rage" didn't help at all.

"That isn't right. It isn't even wrong." - Linus Pauling

I did not become who I am because of "enemies." More people acting more and more crazy does NOT improve me.
Explain to someone else how more crazies acting crazier improves you. I don't want to hear another word of it.
ciao

 

It really helps a lot, if you're a people who believe in democracy and freedom. Germans and Russians of the last century didn't.
You know what happened to them ...

 

So what if he says he gives his salary away. His children's businesses are profiting and he is using using his real estate to curry favour for foreigners for influence. That's not to mention his past dealings with Russian gangsters like Felix Sater among many others.

Biden and Hilary are not my heroes. I am a realist and don't follow any politicians blindly the way you do with Trump. Neither of those two represent policies I support.

Who cares what Candace Owen testified in congress. Hate crimes against minorities including Muslims and Jews are rising all over the place including here in Canada and so is white nationalism. That is documented fact and yet all your worried about is a few Antifa activists raising their voices and the maybe the inconvenience of a climate protest.

And I don't have leftist handlers. That's your imagination.

Well you're the one who jumped me on this thread with insults and hostility. So now you got some of it back and were completely unable to defend youself or answer a few questions so you're gonna run away pouting like a little baby. Typical Trumper behavior when they get called on their bs.

Good. You've shown you have nothing intelligent or relevent to say anyway.

 

Ooh, a pattern of running away in hissy fit and calling people names when you can't back up anything you say.

That's hilarious. Why don't you just stop posting or go somewhere where Trumpers can go to help each other over their hurt feelings as the rising tide of his own bs gets the dear leader impeached.

 

From that article: "Others have called attention to lower health spending among immigrants. But the new study raises a pointed question: Do immigrants cost the U.S. health system more than they pay in? The new study can't definitively answer that question [emphasis added], but Boyd, the senior author, says it points in that direction." Meanwhile, the actual figures state that Hispanics cost $7,000 more per year in government services than they pay in. Medical care is just ONE aspect of those costs. Others are education (Hispanics have far more children than native whites, and education costs are approximately $8,000 per child per year, depending on the county), housing, direct financial subsidies, and food stamps. Some 70% of Hispanic families are on food stamps. Those are people costing us money, not paying in.

As for the wealthy, they are already paying a top rate of 37%. How much higher do you want to raise it? And as for the 95% thing, the effective tax rate wasn't much higher then than it is now.



What's more, in those days, there were far more tax loopholes to keep money out of the counting for that 90% rate, and much of the income of the wealthy came in the form of tax-free bonds. And then excessively high tax rates skew economic behavior, making the wealthy do more to avoid the taxes than to use their money to stimulate the economy. When Reagan reduced tax rates greatly in the early 1980s, there was a rush of money out of low paying but tax free bonds into the stock market and entrepreneurial ventures, which contributed to the eight year long economic boom of the 80s. Ratcheting up tax rates won't increase government coffers, but it WILL cripple capital investing.

Oh, yes, almost forgot. Your claim about Canada is bullshit. Canada is still 77.7% white, with most of your "ethnics" being southeast Asian, who have higher IQ's and higher average incomes than native whites. You have just 3.4% blacks and just 1.3% Hispanics. So don't sell me any line about what you can afford vis-a-vis what we can afford.