Healthcare is NOT for The Poor

The Obama plan is a middle-class plan.
(Contrary to what you may have heard.)

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Obama
• McCain
• Healthcare
• plan
• middle
• class
• insurance
• industry
• medicaid
• Joe
• Felice

[CluppHead]

Why can't it be based on a percentage of your income? Healthcare is equally important for all sides of the spectrum, so why not make it a flat percentage based on what you make? Without of course, the cherry picking, and making private companies equally available to everyone. I'm guessing the rich wouldn't feel that it's fair to them. Even though they would be feeling the same pinch as everyone else. And these are the same problems we have with tax rates. JOe, feed me more knowledge!!

[JoeFelice]

Medicare and Medicaid are paid for through a flat tax on income called the payroll tax. However, the rich don't pay as much. There is a maximum to the payroll tax above which you don't have to pay. (The term for this is regressive tax, whereas the income tax is progressive because the rich pay a higher percent.)

Universal healthcare will probably be paid for like this one day, but corporate and conservative resistance in both parties makes it a long journey from here to there.

[CluppHead]

Wow, thank you for the quick response. I'm pretty much a layman when it comes to this stuff. But since leaving the military and shaking the brainwashing off, I've become much more interested. I feel so worn out and lied to that i don't know who to believe anymore. I don't watch t.v. anymore because of the lack of truth behind the reporting. So here I am on youtube. Thanks alot and i'll stay tuned. The government controls education, and purposely makes us ignorant to politics. ^^

[JoeFelice]

Yes, avoid TV. I recommend an information diet of Wikipedia, newspapers, and public radio.

[vgmaster2000]

I hear a lot of people say that wiki is not a reliable source.

[JoeFelice]

So the way to look at Wikipedia is that it's not an authority on its own. It's a summary of what is printed in real sources. Good entries have a lot of citations that you can check and have a lot of activity on their history and discussion pages. It's true that topics of low interest can be skewed, but the ones dealing with major news issues get enough attention to be good.

If you're ever skeptical, or need a real quote, click through to the references, where the original information is.

[4thkind]

healthcare is super

im from Germany and now i live in China i really miss germans healthcare system its fair and solid.

cant understand that not all Americans say yeah lets get it.

maybe the Country of God has Egoistic People?

[bwilljt]

Not npr Joe Felice. I am a conservative (fiscally anyway-who gives a shit if gay people get married) from southern Miss who can spell and has all my teeth dammit. Wiki and a variety of newspapers-fine. But npr? Look, I consider myself a thinking man who loves to hear and actually consider opposing view points instead of just thinking of a comeback while the other person is talking, which is so pervasive these days. I even change my mind when exposed to new ideas occasionally, but npr is so bias

[andercert70]

@andercert70 "Class war" may not be an accurate phrase, but the Middle Class has been shrinking in this country for half a century due to policies that seem designed to do so. Maybe it's coincidence, but since the wealthy run our government...

[andercert70]

As far as a "class war," the wealthy are never fighting "The Poor" they already are powerless, they're fighting the "Middle Class" because they don't want one. They prefer their to be only Poor and Rich and no in between. That's why Republicans and most Democrats wouldn't go for all and out single payer health care. That's why workers rights are being challenged around the country by Republican governors.

[LibertyDownUnder]

@whoo689, try explaining your point in less words with less insults and I'll be able to answer you.

[whoo689]

You can refer to me as "libertarian mugged by reality." The thing about libertarianism is that it's large on rhetoric and baseless theories but short on actual FACTS and empirically-proven economics. All the libertarians' favorite books are simply irrational "logic" passed off as "truth." Austrian economics, for instance. What a crock of shit! It's just neoclassical on steroids with an anti-monetary policy view thrown in there like a side dish.

[whoo689]

@LibertyDownUnder So can it with the whole "government always fails" nonsense, as if the private sector is INFALLIBLE. Want more proof? Go to the website "Government is good" on google and EDUCATE yourself. Maybe you'll learn something, like I did (and changed from a libertarian into a more sensible LEFT-libertarian with brains).

The private and public sectors both have good and bad. Markets and governments can fail. But that's why we need to LEARN from our mistakes, not generalize.

[whoo689]

@LibertyDownUnder Government agents make sure that our food and drug supplies are reasonably healthy and safe. Before that, many large corporations can (and did) give us all kinds of tainted shit for consumption, and in the days when mass communication wasn't as easy or as fast as the online age, we badly-needed an agency like the FDA to keep them in check. It's still good to have the FDA to have that peace of mind anyway. I know, the FDA's got a lot of problems, but still..

[whoo689]

@LibertyDownUnder Government has made millions of working poor and poor people's lives better, as well as many middle-class Americans, who can't afford basic amenities like healthcare, by providing necessary assistance. You know this as the "welfare state." And no, it does NOT "subsidize poverty", at least not to the extent that you deluded libertarians have been led to believe. The American and European welfare states are not nearly as lax in rules and conditions as you might think.

[whoo689]

@LibertyDownUnder And you SERIOUSLY can't think of even one exmaple of "things the gov't makes better when it gets involved"? Are you THAT clueless, or do you just not wanna look it up because you're a lazy fuck? How about POLLUTION? For all the whining you types do about the EPA and pollution regulations, the fact is that ever since these regulations first came about in the 1970s, pollution has GONE DOWN SIGNIFICANTLY, and part of that does have to do with the laws. No coincidence

[whoo689]

No country on Earth has managed to have an affordable, quality HC system that's least-regulated. IT WON'T WORK! Every quality healthcare system has a fair amount of government intervention, including ours. And for all the bitching about "socialized medicine", the fact is that the HIGHEST-QUALITY HC systems in "socialist Europe" are actually those with a MIX of private and public, not ones like the British and Canadian systems.