US Election 2016

[quote]Okay. Like other systems around the world, employers and individuals will not buy health insurance from private companies which in turn make the payouts to hospitals and doctors. Instead, they will pay higher taxes (or user fees, as in Taiwan) to a government system which will make payouts to either private hospitals and doctors, or government hospitals.

Costs will probably not be equal, since the US pays much more than other systems for comparable coverage, so there probably will be a large savings, which can either be left with the taxpayer or used to improve the system[/quote]

Fantastic news! I thought that I had heard that Taiwan’s health care/national insurance system were facing HUGE deficits. So glad to hear that there is money to spare. I am sure that Bernie is familiar with Taiwan’s health care system and no doubt wishes to emulate its successes. :whistle:

The NHI is currently in the black. Its premium base – as anyone who owns a busines or has investments in Taiwan can attest to – expanded in 2013 and now covers costs+ I haven’t minded paying the extra premiums because Taiwan’s single payer health care system works well for me and is light years ahead of the predatory U.S. health care payer system where patients live in dread of hospital bills.

[quote]Except for the first three years since implementation (1995-1998), annual growth in expenditures in Taiwan’s NHI had typically outstripped revenues. In the period 1996-2008, for example, NHI revenues increased at an annual rate of 4.43 percent while expenditures increased at an annual rate of 5.33 percent. A major health care reform—the Second-Generation NHI (G2-NHI)—implemented in January 2013 reversed the NHI’s financial difficulties. Prior to the G2-NHI reform, the NHI’s revenue was derived primarily from payroll-based premiums. But payroll represented just 60 percent of total national income in Taiwan. The G2-NHI reform established a supplemental premium base. Supplemental premiums now are levied on six additional sources of non-regular-payroll income, namely, bonuses, rent, interest, dividends, professional fees, and pay from second jobs. With the additional supplemental premiums, the total premium base now covers 90 percent of Taiwan’s total national income. The reform has enabled the NHI to not only cover its annual health care expenditures, but also to eliminate accumulated deficits from prior years. In fact, the NHI now has a sizable surplus, something it had not seen since 1998. The NHI’s sound financial status is expected to last through at least 2017.

NHI’s high performance explained

Taiwan’s NHI may be said to be a high performing health care system compared with many other health care systems around the world. In terms of cost-effectiveness, Taiwan’s system outperforms the U.S. system, which spends more than 17 percent of U.S. GDP but, before the ACA was passed in 2010, left some 50 million, or 16 percent of Americans uninsured. The ACA is expected to cover an estimated 30 million Americans by 2020—a goal that may or may not be reached. Even if it is, an estimated 20 million Americans may still remain uninsured at that time.

A main reason for NHI’s high performance is the ability of the government, as the single payer, to set and regulate fees, and impose a global budget system that caps total NHI expenditure.[/quote]

Two comments. Taiwan’s health care system may be in a good position now and that’s great… I hope that it is able to pay off the $5 billion debt that it has racked up. The article that you cited also noted that Taiwan’s medical providers scored a “D” in terms of service, consultation quality. And it noted that with the ageing population, the costs are set to soar. Now, this is true of many other developed societies as well, but I take your point that it appears to be working well. The only issue would be in terms of innovation. While much is made of the 16% that America spends on health care, is it not also true that this also heavily HEAVILY subsidizes the rest of the world in terms of medical and pharmaceutical innovation? IF the US spent 6% like everyone else, where would Taiwan’s health care system “steal” the product innovation that it benefits from in terms of generic substitutes? The American health care system is the best in the world but it also suffers at the lower end and those issues are more behavioral and lifestyle issues that have nothing to do with money spent. This is like comparing Taiwanese public schools with American ones and being amazed and how high the test scores are in the former. No?

Not necessarily; allowing for “cash cow” products to command “high” prices for too long, just sets incentives to not spent a lota money on R&D. Real new drugs, especially & predominately highly specialized ones (unlikely to generate a high turnover) origin mostly from startups, which in turn often are spin-offs of university labs. Guess everyone
bothering reading this is aware of the typical big player pharma company expenditure structure .

Lifestyle of course is of major importance, these japanese don’t live longer (and healthier) cuz they have exclusive access to some miracle potion :whistle:

Moving on, everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting for the first Democratic Party debate…what, that was two days ago?
No, I didn’t watch it either, but I never watch debates anyway- not very visually/aurally oriented; put it in print.

So, Bernie put up a decent job, but was shaky on foreign policy- he could have brought out Hillary’s hawkishness more, which would have helped him with that crowd. He also got zapped on being too pro-gun. He did well with his anti-inequality theme, but Clinton held her own when it came down to details i.e. on banking reform.

I have to agree with the MSM: Hillary was the big winner. Relaxed, competent, on top of details- she should get a boost in the polls as doubters swing back. Her defence of her TPP position was total bullshit, however, and looked it. A better debating opponent could have brought her out on Mid-East hawkishness, tying it to her Iraq vote, but the “Obama picked me as SoS” was a good ploy.

She was also lucky in timing. Without the Benghazi/e-mails having been very publicly revealed as total Republican kabuki in the last week, she could have had some tough moments there. In spite of the Mods attempt to stir it up, Bernie nailed it for her.

O’Malley is running for veep/Cabinet/future considerations; Chaffee and Webb should be gone next time.

And Clinton did well enough that if Biden does come in the meme won’t be “Respected Elder VP Comes to the Rescue”, it’ll be “Crazy Old Uncle Joe in Vanity Run.”

Compared to the Republican debates…'nuff said.

Would you really say the Republican debates are any different? Are not candidates camouflaging positions and tacking to the right/left to gather votes to win? I don’t see this as somehow ridiculous on one side and celebrated cerebral celerity on the other. And really, isn’t Bernie Sanders one of the most ridiculous candidates that America has seen in quite some time? Talk about “vanity runs,” but in his case I suppose it would be “vanity walker?”

Our middlemen are better than your middlemen!

In an age in which banking, buying and traveling, to name a few, have gone online, eliiminating the middleman, watching a bunch of political hacks bottom feeding for votes is as exciting as watching network television.

Would you really say the Republican debates are any different? Are not candidates camouflaging positions and tacking to the right/left to gather votes to win? I don’t see this as somehow ridiculous on one side and celebrated cerebral celerity on the other. And really, isn’t Bernie Sanders one of the most ridiculous candidates that America has seen in quite some time? Talk about “vanity runs,” but in his case I suppose it would be “vanity walker?”[/quote]

Because he supports what the American people say they support, but not the 158 Families?

On a non-issue base, you can compare the candidates from both sides, even though one side is totally divorced from reality :slight_smile:
(Your chice as to which may differ)

1)the Establishment: Hillary= Jeb!/Rubio

  1. the Ideologues: Sanders (socialist)= Cruz (hard right)/Paul (libertarian)/ Huckabee (Christianist).
    Though they may think they have a chance to win, their main function is to pull the party away from the center and toward their particular ideals (Jindal should have been in category one; he jumped in here to get noticed- didn’t work)

  2. The Understudies: O’Mally= Fiorina
    Running for Veep/Cabinet/ future considerations.

  3. The Contrarians: Webb=Kasich
    Reaching out to the other side;“I didn’t leave my party, my party left me.” Trying to reconstruct the Good Ol’ Days: white-working-class/Harry Truman for Webb; decent Mid-Westerner/“I Like Ike” for Kasich. (Christie would have/should have been here and in category one.)

  4. The “LookatMes”: Chafee=Graham
    Vanity candidates embarrassing themselves and everyone who knows them.

So, have we left anybody out? Oh. right, the two guys with 50% of Republican support in the polls: an ego-crazed ignorant billionaire Know-Nothing; and a paranoid ignorant conspiracy-nut Christian-Dominionist (who has just taken a two-week break in the midst of his campaign to flog his book, enabling the proceeds to flow into his own pocket.)

Equivalents on the Democratic side? Glenn Greenwald; George Soros (nope, not American) Saul Alinsky (wait, he’s dead), Noam Chomsky? Any of them at 25% support?

Hopefully we’ll get self-government before we get self-driving cars. Wouldn’t it be much simpler if we, the people, made all the major policy decisions for ourselves rather than wasting all this time every four years on pointless political drama over middlemen who’ve sold their souls to finance their election campaigns? And in the end, after all that drama, all we get is another war pimp who throws us a few bones to keep us docile rather than the Nobel Peace Prize winner we bargained for because we’re not the ones paying his or her bills.

So, no go, Joe.

Webb’s been pressured out by the party leadership. Not ideologically pure enough.

Yea, it’s a conspiracy. That he was polling under 1% has nothing to do with it.

Two best comments from others I’ve seen on Hillary testifying on Benghazi:

-“If the RNC should be forced to pay for the Benghazi committee until now, in all fairness the DNC should be forced to pay for today.”

-“It reminds me of the scene in the Avengers where the Black Widow is tied to a chair being interrogated and gets a phone call, and she says: " I can’t leave now. I’m in the middle of an interrogation. This moron is giving me everything.” "

Would you really say the Republican debates are any different?[/quote]

If we needed proof, the latest Republican debate just gave it

[quote]
I don’t see this as somehow ridiculous on one side and celebrated cerebral celerity on the other. walker?"[/quote]

The Dems may not be displaying total celebrated cerebral celerity, but the Republicans are indeed somehow ridiculous- almost completely ridiculous, actually.

I don’t think ANY of the Republicans campaigning rise to the level of a Bernie Sanders and who were the other two chipmunks in the Democrat debate? Sheldon someone? and that other character? sorry, their names escape me…

How can they handle ISIS or Putin if they can’t handle CNBC? The birthplace of the Tea Party is too liberal for them to face?

An old quip fits: “They are indeed shining wits, as the Rev. Spooner would say.”

[quote=“MikeN”]How can they handle ISIS or Putin if they can’t handle CNBC? The birthplace of the Tea Party is too liberal for them to face?
[/quote]

Seems to me they’re cleaning the floor with CNBC right now. Of course, if they’d shown some backbone and realism earlier, it wouldn’t have gotten this far in the first place.

About time they showed some fighting spirit, although CNBC is a weak target these days. Their ratings are dying. But it’s a start.

Newt Gingrich was a false start. The rest weren’t ready to back him up at that time.

Don’t want to resurrect a dead horse, but this should be mentioned in passing as it’s almost certainly going to impact the elections at all levels:

news.investors.com/blogs-capital … starts.htm

[quote=“rowland”][quote=“MikeN”]How can they handle ISIS or Putin if they can’t handle CNBC? The birthplace of the Tea Party is too liberal for them to face?
[/quote]

Seems to me they’re cleaning the floor with CNBC right now. Of course, if they’d shown some backbone and realism earlier, it wouldn’t have gotten this far in the first place.

About time they showed some fighting spirit, although CNBC is a weak target these days. Their ratings are dying. But it’s a start.

Newt Gingrich was a false start. The rest weren’t ready to back him up at that time.[/quote]
CNBC is not liked by liberals because they’re too conservative. Now they’re not liked by conservatives because they dared ask tough questions in a debate. So nobody likes them.

Republicans hate being asked tough questions for a simple reason: because they can’t answer them. So they dismiss them by calling them “gotcha questions”.

Media: “So, what newspapers do you read?”
Republican: “Hurr… durrr… Fox News! … duh… Jesus!.. durr…”
Media: “Just asking.”
Republican: “WAAAAAHHHH! Unfair! The MEDIA is making ME look like a fool!! They asked a GOTCHA QUESTION!”

Sorry, but politicians worth their salt welcome tough questions.

Those “softballs” delivered at the Democratic debate:

[quote] First question to Clinton:

You were against same-sex marriage. Now you're for it. You defended President Obama's immigration policies. Now you say they're too harsh. You supported his trade deal dozen of times. You even called it the "gold standard". Now, suddenly, last week, you're against it.

Will you say anything to get elected?

Follow-up:

Secretary Clinton, though, with all due respect, the question is really about political expediency. Just in July, New Hampshire, you told the crowd you'd, quote, "take a back seat to no one when it comes to progressive values." Last month in Ohio, you said you plead guilty to, quote, "being kind of moderate and center."

Do you change your political identity based on who you're talking to?

First question to Sanders:

Senator Sanders. A Gallup poll says half the country would not put a socialist in the White House. You call yourself a democratic socialist. How can any kind of socialist win a general election in the United States? 

First follow-up:

You - the - the Republican attack ad against you in a general election - it writes itself. You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you're not a capitalist. Doesn't that ad write itself?

More softballs:

Governor Chafee, you've been everything but a socialist. When you were senator from Rhode Island, you were a Republican. When you were elected governor, you were an independent. You've only been a Democrat for little more than two years. Why should Democratic voters trust you won't change again?


Governor O'Malley, the concern of voters about you is that you tout our record as Baltimore's mayor. As we all know, we all saw it. That city exploded in riots and violence in April. The current top prosecutor in Baltimore, also a Democrat, blames your zero tolerance policies for sowing the seeds of unrest. Why should Americans trust you with the country when they see what's going on in the city that you ran for more than seven years?


Senator Webb, in 2006, you called affirmative action "state-sponsored racism." In 2010, you wrote an op/ed saying it discriminates against whites. Given that nearly half the Democratic Party is non-white, aren't you out of step with where the Democratic Party is now?

[/quote]

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