Where Do YOU Stand On These 3 Issues?
1) Illegal Immigration:
For me, it is pretty simple: It needs to be stopped! While I do agree there are much needed reforms to be made, Open Borders is a non-starter. A secure border is necessary for National Security, Human Rights, and health reasons.
2) Campaign Funding
I am against anyone donating more than $100 to a political campaign. Any more than that, and the contribution becomes a bribe IMHO. It is true that this amount will not raise enough money to buy television/print ads, but I believe we can design a system to supply airtime and coverage to everyone running equally.
3) Healthcare
I personally find it disgusting that so much of the costs of modern healthcare goes towards corporate profits. The profiteering of pain and misery is an affront to basic morality. I equate it with people who fight dogs or chickens for a living. They too disgust me! This does NOT mean that I do not support making money and profit off of elective, non-essential medical procedures.
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The biggest problem isn't those sneaking across the border in the middle of the night, it is those overstaying their visa's. This can be solved through the use of technology like we do with people placed under house arrest--monitoring devices!
Do you mean they would have to wear an electronic anklet?
I do believe we could come up with a fashionable bracelet that would do the same job and also provide useful tools at the same time like a smart watch does. We could also link it to an app that they would have on a smartphone where they could keep INS appraised of not only their location, but their travel plans as well. The app could be linked to such things as Waze or Google maps for providing directions, Travelocity or TripAdvisor to get them cheap tickets and recommend places to visit, and other such things to enhance their visit. No need to make them feel like a prisoner!
And while we're at it-- why not use these devices on those exceptionally evil folks who contribute more than $100 to a political campaign as well!
I think court-ordered wiretaps would do more good on those folks,,,
I won't discuss illegal immigration until punishment for those that indirectly invited them here and then facilitated their stay by employing them and skirting legal documentation of their status is included. the starting point is the day ronny raygun granted amnesty in the 80's. the federal fine precedent for undocumented workers being here without a work visa was set by ICE at $800 per day.
enforce it against those that employed them, I don't care what side of the political aisle they sit on. first we need to alter/negate corporate bankruptcy laws for immigration violations and make those in the executive chain of those employment decisions and board members financially responsible as well, right down to all financial assets held by immediate family members with forensic financial research. any attempts shown to hide assets means mandatory minimum 10 year federal prison time with no commutations, pardons, or parole.
if undocumented workers brought their underage kids with them, give those kids a path to citizenship. if their kids were born here, they are citizens. if they served in the US military, they are citizens. federally standardize documentation for employment by legislation. make employers also responsible for restitution plus interest for any state and federal entitlements paid to undocumented workers and their families by taxpayers. for those undocumented workers that have no interest in becoming US citizens, pay them a percentage bounty to turn in their employers, fingerprint them, and send them back to their countries at their own expense with a warning that if they come back without a visa they will be federally prosecuted for violating US immigration law twice.
give the undocumented employers an out to sponsor citizenship for each of those undocumented workers and family members at half a million dollars per, payable to the US treasury. do the math on that at 20+ million undocumented persons here. fix the immigration problem, fix a major part of the federal deficit, fix corporate abuse of wage suppression by hiring undocumented workers, and shed a shitload of 6/7 figure do next to nothing for a paycheck executive/board positions in corporate america.
That, in a nutshell, has been my proposed answer to the problem from the beginning. No need for mass deportations if they can't find a job or a place to live!
I would be willing to let them follow the same path that documented immigrants have to follow to gain citizenship, but once they turn 18, the parents should be sent home and put at the back of the line for getting in the right way.
GREAT IDEA! Watch how fast those employers decide that paying a little more in hourly wages to a legal citizen is cheaper than facing that fine! BOOM! Problem solved!
Campaign ads should be treated as PSA's and be broadcast/printed free of charge. A set number should be allowed to the candidates, and they must address their stance on current issues, not attack ads against opponents.
you already know my viewpoints on this and we're both pretty much aligned on the subject. I'm not going back to look for it. make it extremely financially painful to spend more than $250 to support any candidate. federally standardize mail in ballots and/or make election day a paid holiday. tax the living fuck out of PAC's and lobbyists to fund elections, and toss any FEC law breakers and vote suppressors into prison and throw away the key.
Medical research should be the purview of the Government via Universities/Government Laboratories with a focus on finding cures, not just treating symptoms of major and minor illnesses. Cosmetic research should remain with private companies without any government funded research.
use extreme IRS tax leverage to negotiate fairness from organizations that own hospitals, big pharma, and medical insurance providers. end the corporate shell games that have essentially turned health care into socialized medicine with the taxpayers footing the bill. current events have clearly illustrated that healthcare is now a national security issue.
Which to me is just another reason that we should have Socialized Medicine for everything from a checkup to open heart surgery! Now your tummy tuck? Well, let's just say that unless it presents a problem for your internal organs, you're on your own to get that done...
I agree. those that want non-essential cosmetic surgeries can pay the price. let the wealthy feast upon each other at their own expense.
It’s so much more complicated than that. Who decides what is elective surgery and what isn’t? Some bureaucrat in DC? No thanks. I prefer to leave that where it belongs. Between the patient and the doctor.
Socialized medicine will take many decisions like that away from the people. You say if people want “elective surgery” they should pay for it out of their own pocket. That discriminates against people who can’t afford it. Lower income people.
When in doubt I tend to error on the side of liberty and not bureaucratic prohibition social medicine promises to offer.
Good! Poor people don't need cosmetic surgery that goes wrong and they spend months or years recovering from it, missing work, loosing everything they have because they have no income. Leave that to the rich assholes who can afford not to work!
My guess would be:
As to this:
No it wouldn't, at least when it comes to Essential Healthcare. Remember, I'm the one saying that Government should be only providing oversight of the success rate of the facility and providing the facilities and supplies. The actual decisions on treatment are being left to the healthcare professionals and the patients.
Sooner or later we will be moving into Socialized Healthcare. Keep in mind we are the LAST 1st World country that doesn't have it , and yet Third World countries such as Cuba do. Saying we can't do it because we have other problems with bureaucracy is a defeatist stance. Instead of saying " We Can't ", try figuring out what protections would need to be built into the system that would address your concerns. Share your ideas so that when we finally do move forward with Socialized Medicine, at least you will have helped to educate people on the pitfalls to be aware of and how we can avoid them.
Wow, that’s really nice of you to be making decisions like that for people of less means comrade. Not all cosmetic surgery are face lifts and tummy tucks you know. And rich assholes? Really? I think you might be living in the wrong country.
I guess I might be one of those rich assholes. And like many of my fellow rich asshole I worked my ass off to get there. I take great umbrage to comments like that and is one of the reasons I chaff at any mention of socialized medicine. No way hard working “rich assholes” deserve that kind of attitude after all we have done for this country. No way!
Yeah, tell it to the Canadians that have to come here to get surgeries done because theIr socialized medicine capacity controls elongate wait time significantly. And that’s just one example. The Fed can’t even run the VA well. Arguably a form of socialized medicine and thats for like 30-40 times fewer people. Our Fed as they stand now running a whole country single payer socialized health care system has clusterfuck written all over it.
Your rose colored glasses view of socialized medicine will come at a significant cost in a time when most localities are having trouble convincing tax payers to pass simple operational millages all over the country. And you think people are going to readily accept the MUCH greater tax increases that socialized medicine will require?
Guess again my friend. Guess again.
Who's paying for their elective surgeries now??? Oh yeah; THEY ARE!
Have you actually read the replies I've been posting where that fact was acknowledged already? Once again, whether or not a treatment is essential to the well being of the patient would be decided by their healthcare professionals. Even then, like now, they would have a right to a second opinion.
Only you would know for sure about that.
What kind of surgeries are wait-listed? Oh yeah, elective surgeries . They go behind those that need the surgeries more than they do. But I guess if you are as rich as you claim to be, you could just put your own surgeon on staff in your private clinic and avoid those wait times...
Yep, taxes would go up. According to this breakdown analysis it would cost on average a little less than $1,000 per person in increased taxes to cover everyone! Considering my employer and I pay $1,400 X 12 = $16,500 per year, I would see a big savings in my costs per year (projected to be about $6,862) . Enough that even if my employer, who pays half my costs, were to pay the same amount they currently do, it would cover 1.2 more people than myself alone. So let's add that extra $1,000 to my original costs of $6,862 and subtract it from my current costs on just my end of my insurance through work and I still wind up saving $382 just on payments alone. Throw in only having to pay 20% of my $7500 per year of deductibles and my co-pays to match the Netherlands model these figures were derived from and, damn ! that Universal Care is looking better and better all the time!
Sorry, but the actual facts are not on your side on this one...
Bullshit. Most insurance plans do pay for elective surgeries. Usually not 100% but to say that they don’t pay is BS.
So that isn’t done now in the present system?
That comment doesn’t even rate a reply.
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Really? So where is the estimated 3+ trillion a year going to come from?
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Hmmm, you mean the same ones that I already stated my proposal would cover???
On the other hand, yeah, you would still be paying for that Botox, and liposuction, and bigger tits...
Source
Where did I say that? You forget that I am trying to get us to where we are enjoying the same or better quality of care we receive now, but with lowered costs by eliminating the Profiteering off of Pain and Suffering.
Already covered in the provided link above, but to make it easier, here it is again .
Nah, I’m not going to play this BS ticket game with you.
Having lived most of my life in Canada I think I have a natural preference for:
All of the above sound better than what we are subjected to now.
One area the US is definitely getting boned on. We pay more for our meds than most other countries and that has to stop. But I have news for you. Right now the US is effectively funding a lot of other countries lower drug costs.
If and when that stops, drug costs will go up for everywhere else. No doubt about it.
This does NOT mean that I do not support making money and profit off of elective, non-essential medical procedures.
So...who decides what medical procedures are essential...and which are not? You? Me? Donald Trump? AOC? Jared or Ivanka?
Do you really need that brow lift or that botox injection or that liposuction?
Watch Nip/Tuck sometime (it's on Hulu). They really get into the unnecessariness of certain plastic surgery procedures
Those are already pretty well established within the medial community. Commonly known as "elective" surgeries/procedures. Granted, some things will be in a "gray" area that will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis, like a nose job to cure apnea, and that should be decided by a board of professionals within those fields.
Elective, non-essential medical procedures (e.g. vanity operations like unnecessary nose jobs) are not covered by Canada's health plan, but I knew a plastic surgeon and he made more money than most doctors.
Well, two out for three ain't bad ..... well its really one and two half's.
Full agreement on #1
Partial on #2. I agree something needs to be done to get lobbyists out of politics as much as possible but a $100 limit? Sounds low. I might agree with something more like maybe a $1000. 1000 bucks still buys diddly squat in influence by itself.
Still, i think its much more complicated than just donation limits
Partial on #3
I'm 100% against putting the Government in charge of anything as large as healthcare. They prove time and time again they can't handle it. Much smaller things they already manage poorly: USPS ..... the VA ... Social Security ..... etc
I was in healthcare when the Fed instituted DRG's. It was a massive clusterfuck. I believe the answer is cooperative, non bureaucratic co-ownership of it all between the Fed and private industry. Both sides will have to give, take and cooperate for it to work. Is that possible? Yes i think it is but a lot of people would need to put their big boy pants for it to work.
That might not be possible but i am very confident putting it all in the Feds hands is a massive goat rodeo waiting to happen.
I'm thinking more along the lines of Government oversight and paying for essential services and staffing, but actual healthcare professionals running the facilities. IOW's, doctors and nurses have free rein to treat the patient as they deem fit, and Uncle Sam pays for it all. The treatment centers are tracked for how well their success rate is and how they do with patient satisfaction on treatments received. If they fall below standard metrics established by the medical community, their administrators are replaced by a candidate selected by the government oversight committee composed of healthcare professionals.
Pipe dream ime. I watched a doctor run (via the board of control in the 80’s) hospital get run into the ground and require bankruptcy.
Some of the worse business people I’ve ever seen were doctors and nurses. Most are great doctors and nurses. That doesn’t automatically make them good business people. And a bureaucrat? Don’t even start.
There isn’t enough money in the world if Docs and the Fed are running things.
What you describe sounds more like a lack of training and education. Most hospitals effective are run by Administrators with medical backgrounds aren't they?
Not from my experience.
Most hospital administrators I dealt with had a hospital administration degree. Effectively a masters in health care administration.
And don’t get me wrong. Many of them weren’t very impressive either.
Most docs and nurses get very little business training unless they carve out more years to do it. Some do. Most don’t
The proposed limit is set ridiculously low because even the Poor could scrape that much together if they really want to. This is to ensure that EVERYONE gets represented, not just big money donors. If someone is a big enough ass, enough Poor people will scrape together a $100 bucks each just to make sure he/she knows not to mess with them.
No one is stoping the poor from donating what they can right now. Bernie is proof of that and look where that got him.
It’s naive imo to think that Joe Smuckatelli donating a dollar is going to get noticed as much as even the hundred dollar donor.
Besides the rich bastards will find a way to get our thieves in Congress. They always do. You’ll have to put full time investigators on every congressperson in order to track it and maybe keep them in check.
I remember a time when we couldn't travel to the moon, Dick Tracy's talking watch was a fantasy, and the only portable music player was a phonograph player.
See what we can do when we put our minds to it?
A minimum life sentence for bribing an official and a death penalty for accepting a bribe as a public official, should cure that problem!
Oh yeah, Soros is probably rubbing one off right now at the thought of a Biden presidency.
If he can still rub one off that is
I admire your confidence in the current system. Me ..... I admit I’ve been jaded by it.
That seems to happen with time as I was like you not that long ago friend.
I'm as jaded as you which is why I proposed that it be the men and women in the trenches making the calls on treatment, I want to eliminate the profit margins and install oversight, not add beucracy to the medical field. Therein lies the problem. You have vastly more experience than I on the caregiving end from the comments you've posted.How would you suggest this could be done in such a way that we do not diminish quality of care or increase wait times for treatment?
1) Illegal Immigration: I am against it, but I do feel that those who are here and didn't just come over the board, should have a pathway to citizenship.
2) Campaign Funding: I think that there should be a set amount and that corporations have to abide by that set amount which should be no more than a citizen can make. I am also against all PAC's. All of these things take away the power from the people.
3) Healthcare: I am totally with you.
For me, it is pretty simple: As these illegals are rounded up take them to Fort Bragg, NC. Load them all onto C-130's and C-17's all with T-10D parachutes. Fly over the border they entered from and out they go.
It's a win-win. The 82d Airborne and 173rd Airborne Brigade have Jumpmasters that could training. As for the Air Force it would help pilots and Loadmasters with their qualifications..
This is nothing more than LEGALIZED BRIBERY. For those running for a federal office, they are already have the money. They want the office, they pay for everything out of their own pockets..
There is absolutely no reason medications should be as high as they are. This is a result of many other issues in the healthcare realm / profession. While I do think there needs to be far better regulation, the ACA is NOT the answer. It has added to the problems instead of resolving it. In a nut shell the government needs to stay the fuck out of it. They don't know what they are doing and what little they have done was done at their benefit, not ours.
This is my response on this topic I posted earlier. Basically we would be replacing the owners of the facilities (Profiteers) with a non-profit entity (government):
I would have to ensure there is some kind of audit to keep prices in check. Nobody from the government. We see how that corruption works.
I did 26 years in the military. One thing that is done at the leadership levels (Sergeant and above) are annual, documented reviews that are sent and kept on file. I'd be all for something like that being done. It would weed out those who do the bare minimum and could be used for promotions into administrative positions and additional training.
And yet some shitbirds still rise to the top. Albeit in much smaller percentages. It’s a great concept and I’m all for it but it still is only as strong as it’s weakest link and if you were in 26 years, you likely had more than one weak link above you in that time.
By the way, respect for making 26 years. I was ready to get the hell out after one hitch.
And they will. Honestly there is no way to stop every single one of them. But reality of it is, the result could be a much better system.
I thought about getting out after one. Took a serious look at the pros and cons. Fortunately there were more pros for me. I learned to actually enjoy being paid to jump from planes so it made it more tolerable.
1) don't really give a shit, all it means to me is cheaper groceries.
2) all campaigns need to be federally funded at the extact same rate for each candidate who is able to amass signatures that are at least 3% of the states voting population. All private donations, pacs etc should be banned completely.
3) give me medicare for all. I am already paying twice for healthcare and yet if I were to leave my job my family wouldn't have coverage. At least then I could make a career change and not worry about what we are going to do if one of us gets hurt. Besides, the US spends significantly more for similar or worse results, so whatever.
I'm almost to that point as well. The middle class is already getting raped on family premiums that exceed our monthly mortgage payment, and we get to enjoy annual double digit premium percentage increases for reduced coverage and even greater max out of pocket risk. So at this point, even if they triple the take for Medicare in payroll taxes, most in my position will at least not be forced to sacrifice our kid's college education to pay Obamacare premiums plus the big out of pocket deductibles and the ever increasing max out of pocket costs beyond the deductible. At least here in California that is the case.
If they do go single payer, they will definitely need to come up with something that works better than Medicare though. That program is already not sustainable in its current form.
Not for me here in So Cal. My Plan has no monthly cost, all Tier 1 drugs are no deductible, Doctor and Specialist visits are no deductible, and hospital stays are no deductible and unlimited. That is what my health insurance plan is for 2020. And I have Medicare Complete with HMO.
That may all change next next year, but, that is what it is for me this year.