re: Liz Cheney officially endorses Kamala Harris

Germany is a federated system.

It has a blended private and government system like we do. You can buy premium coverage, but everyone is covered. They control costs instead of letting pharma ream the taxpayer. Though people grumble everywhere about healthcare, their system is popular there.

And what's woke about having health insurance?

You called me woke, presumably because I advocate for covering all citizens.

Are all OECD countries woke? If that's the case, you have a weird definition.

Come find me at the LSU tailgate and ask for TigerDoc and I'll regale you with the glorious tales of my medical career.

I only make merry at games. If wanna piece of me, you gotta get in my Sonic queue.

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And when we're done scrapping I'll lurn ya good about comparative healthcare systems of the world.

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You won't be able to talk, but bless your heart.

There’s a reason democrats have put Medicare for all/single payer on hold.

1) would require the largest middle class tax increase in the history of the nation. And it wouldn’t necessarily be the case that people would pay less on taxes than they do for health insurance. People like me who choose to have HDHP with HSAs would almost certainly be worse off.

2) if the single payer system uses Medicare reimbursements across the board, you’d risk a potentially catastrophic supply shock as hospitals and providers see revenue drop by 30% or so. Would also impact nurse salaries.

3) one of the main reasons Americans spend more on healthcare is because we use more healthcare. The average American is on generous PPO plans that allow easy access to costly specialists and very few restrictions on dubious “medically necessary” procedures that aren’t technically medically necessary. For example, heart stents and knee replacements are much easier to get in America than in Europe, because European nations more tightly approve the procedures. European systems more closely resemble HMOs, which were met with anger by Americans when they became somewhat prevalent in the 70s and 80s.

4) to piggy back off point 3, the great health commentator Megan mcardle often talks about “path dependency” when it comes to healthcare reform. Our policy choices are restricted by decisions we made decades ago. Healthcare consumers are used to lavish options and lack of cost control. On the other hand, European nations generally enacted their systems before healthcare was an intricate section of the economy. In the words of Megan mcardle: “it is much more politically difficult to take something away from someone than from controlling access to something they never had”. Europeans are completely fine, for example, with needing to see a general practitioner before a specialist, because they never knew a system different. Americans are used to a system where they can just call up a specialist and get an appointment. Good luck taking that away

Really good post and those are all reasonable points that anyone who wants to expand coverage in the US has to contend with and the Clintons didn't reckon with it fully enough in the 90's and the result was the healthcare lobby beating them. Obama's attempt really acknowledged path dependency and made sure that the existing players knew they would get profitable business from the expansion and they were able to get it through and defend it successfully from repeal. It's so popular now that even reactionaries like Jeff Landry have made their peace with it. Any attempts to get broader coverage from what we have now will probably have to build on what's already there, expanding eligibility of current programs, etc.

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Can you expand on that or else run along?

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Sure thing: You are an imbecile if you think the federal government of the United States, circa 2024, can afford to "insure" every single citizen and non-citizen of this country.

Maybe if our government was actually "America first," we could, but they're not, and they're not going to be anytime soon.

The national debt is at 35.5 trillion dollars, and the interest on that debt is three BILLION DOLLARS per DAY and growing by the literal second.

Currently, roughly half of the country pay any income tax. Your candidate has introduced 20 million illegal aliens from 3rd world shitholes, and they're paying them billions per year to feed on taxpayers -now you want to insure them? Who's going to pay for it? Me? So I need to pay even more taxes to insure Linda and LaDarrel's fat diabetic asses on top of my own family while they continually shovel processed garbage that people in "healthcare" say is good for them and chase it down with your pills? I need to pay even more in taxes to insure Abdullahi and his illegal Somalian occupants? How are you paying for it, because I personally am burned out on the taxes and morons like you throwing my money around with your wants and desires. You're not entitled to anymore of my money, even though your debauched, incompetent federal reserve will just print what they can't make up in stealing from taxpayers.

You want even more national debt? When does it stop, doc sawbones?

Germany is smaller than Texas. Do you understand logistics and land mass? Do you understand that Germany has 84 million people? Your candidate imported over a quarter of their population into this country from lovely socialist strongholds like Venezuela, et al, in the last 3 ½ years - should we pay for them, too? Your savior, i.e., Barack Obama, already tried universal healthcare in a trial run. We saw how positive of an impact that had, but your virtue signal is noted.

On what planet do you live?

This is a prime example of why we engineers are so much smarter than you run-of-the-mill MD's/pharmaceutical drones: You're living in an abstract, utopian fairytale while I'm living in actual reality. As a demographic, you are dismal businessmen. That's showing right now, because only an incapable hospitalist/ med administrator would believe this federal government can feasibly and effectively insure every single occupant of this country in 2024. Just like healthcare systems are incompetent, the federal government can't even run an ice cream stand, and yet here we are with the former telling us we need latter running healthcare.

I hope to god you're not a practicing physician, and if you are, good luck to your patients. Would I love for every single natural born native of this country to have world class healthcare for free? Absolutely. But only a clown of a man believes it can be done here and now and by this government.

My retort is not hard to understand for those with logical, critical thinking. Your position, on the other stand, will prove to be a difficult one to construct. Again, that's the difference between an engineer's skillset and an MD: we can't afford to be wrong, and if the numbers don't add up, it's back to drawing table.

Name a similar country or shut the frick up, but please, for the love of god, save the word salads and choose one of the above.

Who gives a rat's arse who that loser votes for, really!

Let me guess, Adam K is too?!?!

Soft neocons, period.