Cruz v Sanders Obamacare/Health Care Debate Question

Hey lefties - I think Cruz easily beat socialist Bernie's ass. Far better debate & showed how choice is vital in all of this.
This is a real nation
Not only that it's a capitalist nation
Very few people want that to change
Universal healthcare is a great ideal. Everyone having cars is a great ideal.
It won't happen.
Not like this
We need to reduce prices of drugs
That is a bipartisan goal
But how would YOU lower costs? Poke them with a stick?
end for-profit healthcare corporations?
And where do you get the money to do that?
Ok first let me break it down
You're saying you will make it illegal to sell healthcare. Then, you will federalise healthcare. So now the federal government has to pay for healthcare
How on earth can you raise that much money?
For a consistent amount of time?
Or here's what we'll do
Make competition. This will force the prices down. Increase choices. For all the many folk who can't afford certain plans, they will be given a way out of paying for something they don't want to pay for
Now far less people are not covered for fiscal reasons
Now, incentivise health insurance providers to sell a variety of products
This results in a smaller tax increase, much lower drug prices, variety, and affordability
well?

Healthcare coops to change the organic composition of capital found in ghem so they can profit at lower prices

Then create one big coop

Then automate it

...

This is your brain on ideology.

Once again demonstrating the absolutely pointless nature of most debates in the American political system. Everyone just comes in to look for their reasons to say /ourguy/ won; it's just a spectacle sport.

How could Cruz possibly win when his basic attack is against all welfare programs and private property, yet on Israel Cruz is FOR massive welfare for Israel and the mass theft of land from Palestine.

For cruz the debate was one massive hypocrisy, for Sanders it was the real deal.

Congratulations on your M.S.

OP Here-
I do have to say I liked Bernie a lot & was plugging for him throughout the primaries - would've voted from him over Trump - ultimately voted Gary. Thought Cruz was a joke for a while too - but just gotta say as a moderate Bernie's way too left & Cruz reeled it in.

regulations are necessary
In addition we receive the best health care in the world

If you stole the assets of google Apple and Facebook you get universal healthcare for a year
Do you know how much money Apple google and Facebook have?

Basically you can't have "universal healthcare" (like "all the other nations of the developed world) without seriously reducing the quality.

There's an alternate solution
Competition
Is there any competition in pharma? No
If you have competition prices are driven lower
That takes care of prices
Now, another way to make the insurance more affordable
Do you want to pay for maternity insurance for yourself?
Life isn't clean
You can't just stick a label of life and death and magically have the money
I wish you could
But we dont have the money
The other "socialist" countries have Crappier care than us

My friend (who's a commie) tried to argue we should cut back from the military & pull out of "bullshit wars where we're spending millions bombing third world countries & should seriously reduce or eliminate the army"

That's stupid
Impractical
And unreasonable
Dangerous
Unsafe
And North Korea just tested a missile today
Now isn't the time

You're expecting everyone to get full coverage for low prices
Where does the money come from?
No military? Triple taxes?

There is a solution - it involves regulation & competition

literally every other country on earth has healthcare op.

literally every other country

go ahead and privatize the fire departments and police while you're at it too, since those "socialist institutions" are so terrible in america as well right

OP Again

It's not that universal healthcare isn't a good idea - it sounds wonderful - but its just not feasible or possible atm. The federal gov just doesnt have the funds to do it - at least not at the same high quality/constant rate of availability as our health care currently has.

I don't get Americans, they spend literally half of their budget on the military but universal healthcare is an impossibility

This is the problem with our world. Being a geopolitically successful nation is more important than helping ill people. Somehow I fear that not even WW3 would get us past the neo-imperial stage. Also privatising the medicine sector for the sake of competition could possibly have the opposite effect. Not a race to the top. Instead, you get a race to the bottom.

also, no offence, however, could you write like a normal human being?

I know this is "crazy" but I think drugs should be among the most expensive things. Why? Because what's more valuable than life? People should be punished for bourgeois luxuries. Either they have their life saving drugs or their half jewish mongrel supreme gentlemen decadent BMW owners.

That is not as crazy as it is retarded. That would just mean that the richest would be able to pay for, and the "middle class" would have to choose between life in poverty or death. While the poor would have no choice and either suffer their illness or die at worst.

The american federal government spends more per capita on healthcare than any nation in the world. We can afford a system like any civilized country has, because we are indeed already paying for it, as a single-payer system.

Jesus Christ that spacing is giving me cancer
>>>/reddit/

No, its a standard for just about every country on earth except us, and we have more than enough resources at our disposal to make it happen if we're willing to make allocations to it.
If by that you mean private insurance as the primary means of covering healthcare costs and negotiating prices, ideally yes. Even if not that far, even if it's just providing a public option, the larger number of people enrolled in comparison to private insurance as well as the removal of profit motive permits a strategy is essentially that of collective bargaining. Through a socialized healthcare system, you can more effectively negotiate with drug companies for lower prices because if a company refuses to sell at the agreed prices, they lose virtually all domestic business: that's too big of a market to pass up on.
It's been shown time and time again that socialized healthcare is consistently cheaper than privatized. The only difference is that socialized healthcare has greater front-end cost while privatized is more cumulative.
Except prices have not gone down even when competition is currently quite "abundant." This is the case both before and after Obamacare, a program which actually in many ways benefited private healthcare providers by mandating that all people who can afford it MUST have health insurance. The choices in the end don't matter all that much: the amount that the individual ends up paying is usually pretty similar, just with slight differences in things like copay and monthly rates.
That's vague as hell to the point of meaninglessness.


The World Health Organization ranks us lower than the top 25 in the world in terms of quality, though we spend BY FAR the most on healthcare. Every country above us has highly socialized healthcare systems that have often been in operation for over 50 years now. The faults in our healthcare system are largely a result of existing privatization; I think it goes without saying that demanding greater privatization will not fix that problem.
We spend 16% of our budget currently on the military without having a significant rival nation that would necessitate maintaining such a large military in response. We could cut that budget to 1/3 of what it currently is and still be on par with China and ahead of Russia in terms of spending.

Also your posting format is cancer. Don't bother posting if you're going to be that reddit-tier.

1) """Choice""" in capitalism is meaningless if you don't have money. I don't live in an apartment with 3 other people because that's my preference, I do so because that's the cheapest option.
2) "Offer a variety of products" is code for "screw the poor".
3) Socialized healthcare systems, on the whole, cost less than private systems.

You have zero evidence for that. All evidence is to the contrary.

NO. You have receive the worst care healthcare compared to every other developed nation.

Hey OP, here's an idea: there is a huge problem with costs concerning individual drugs that are coming onto the market, and its these "private" costs that the drug companies ultimately bitch about whenever we get down to brass tacks over price negotiations. I am talking abut drug patents and the market surrounding them.

A good idea would first be to itemize each and every cost that it takes to research and test the drug, then the cost to manufacture each drug. The information is published so the public can scrutinize it. Then the government buys the drug at no more than 10% or 15% markup. Guaranteed base profit in order to amortize the cost of research. Companies make a decent profit in order to amortize the cost.

More to the point, the government can something like a "Certificate of Amortization" whereby once the cost of research is paid off, the drug goes into the public domain. and anyone and everyone could manufacture it if they have the right tools. The company is free to keep producing the drug, but they no longer have a monopoly, and more importantly, we can keep assholes like Shkreli from privatizing it and raising its price beyond the affordability level of most people who actually need the drug. The government keeps a copy of all the research locked in a blind trust/safety deposit box until the "Certificate of Amortization" expires to prevent the company from acting in bad faith by shipping all intellectual property out of the country just before the expiration date, and will produce the drug at cut rates if the company decides to do anything stupid. Researchers get money for new drugs, corporations do not realize obscene profits, just modest ones like they are supposed to.

Ultimately, it's corporate lobbyists that keep our costs up and sensible regulation like this from getting passed. Corporations like these that want to make money off sick people should be treated the same way as war profiteering defense contractors.

Same could go for tuition at medical colleges: free medical school, just you have to enter a Medical Service like the military does, or work for the NHS system in Great Britain; become a flight surgeon in the Air Force or something. That way you increase the available personnel for purposes of keeping costs down. Same would apply for post-secondary education/retraining. Nothing is impossible.

This is OP Back Again:

The biggest weaknsss in all your arguments is practicality

Take four cups. Fill one to half and one to full
Decrease our military by 33%, and increase the other military by 50%
Oh shit they are ahead
This is not a static world
We cannot cut military

As for cutting useless government departments
That's what the GOP wants to do
With education
The amount of money given to any "useless govt department" adds up to a fraction of a percent
It's not even close to enough

the problem with your planof federalizing healthcare
is that it's tyranny

In response to it "being the standard" or the "everyone else does it" argument:
This is America
we don't do what other countries do
that's the point
we are a free nation, one that stands for freedom and capitalism
I know you don't like that
but that's the truth
it is freedom
freedoms a bitch

My commie friend, one I mentioned last time, argued that "It's freedom for huge comapnies, a small percent of people, 1/10th of 1%, dominating
THEY are the tyranny
The government is of the people
At least it should be, but right now its in bed with those people
Because the state is an apparatus to defend the 1%
THAT is tyranny"

To which I say,
are the 1% not the people?
but they are still the people
it's capitalism
if you work hard, you get farther ahead

So my friend goes "I cant believe your actually making that argument
"If you work hard you get far" That is literally not the reality"

it's not
but it's the concept
It's what the majority of america believes in
socialism doesn't work

Sorry, that's just how it is