My Hero Of The Moment Drops Out

[Steve]

My take. Cut BOTH corporate and social welfare. Social welfare needs to be changed as well as cut. Current system is not 'family' friendly, that is..okay...bad word here...'traditional family' friendly. Where you have a mommy AND a daddy.

SuaDum is right about the corporate welfare system. Through the ExIm Bank (Export/Import Bank) and other governmental and quasi-governmental organizations we subsidize, tax abate, etc. big businesses. Farming is no longer a family business. Corporate farms make the vast majority of farming and we subsidize many commodities under the guise or rather lie of 'saving the small farmer'.

The social welfare system is broken. The social welfare system though is inexplicably tied to the education system as well. They go hand in hand.

I'm an advocate of a flat tax if we have to have an income tax (and we did well from 1776 to 1914 without one by the way). A flat tax is fair. Everyone, rich and poor contributes and the rich end up paying more than the poor anyway. I can even go for any income below the poverty level not be taxed.

The way the social security system is set up its a ponzi or pyramid scheme. If you or I did the same thing it would be illegal. True. Paying those leaving with the money from those coming in is illegal, but not if you stamp 'U.S. Government' on it. We should slowly elmininate it as the birth rate and survival rate of Americans can not sustain this already corrupt system. Replace it with what though? Well, instead of borrowing money from China and the rest of the world, why not from our own citizens with a guaranteed interest rate to be redistributed back to them at retirement? Or have the option to invest part of it in the market? Okay, may be not the best solution but its a start.

National healthcare can not work unless a few things happen. The government can set up its own form of the AMA. The American Medical Association, medical schools as well, arbitrarily sets the number of people who can be in medical school low to ensure high wages and a paucity of doctors. Government owned universities (state schools), should expand the numbers in med schools. The argument the AMA says is that they ensure the quality of doctors under their rigid guidelines. Most of us are well aware of doctors in LOS and other places who provide basic medical care as good if not better than at home. In fact, many of us go to LOS to have dental and medical procedures done because of the price. Are Canadian, British or French or even LOS doctors so poorly trained they are not good enough for Americans? Many would come but can't get the work visas. Many Pakistani, Indian and subcontinent doctors have higher medical test scores than most American doctors.

And as far as the cost of medicine. I've proposed this already. The UN as a group offer financial rewards for cures or medicines. Say 50 billion tax free (USD, pounds, euros whatever) for a reliable cure for cancer or HIV. That amount would more than cover the cost of R&D and a more than healthy profit. Depending on the disease it could be 100 billion or whatever amount. Spread out amongst over 200 or more nations, its peanuts.

I don't believe in a national health care program. For one is that each state or region has its own needs. Why can't each state come up with its own? The state's will make mistakes but the one that is the most successful will be copied. The government is a poor distributer of services. Always has been, always will be. The closer it is to the people (state, county, local), the better it will be controlled and monitored and less corruption.

 

I'm going off on a tangent as usual. Anyway, just a few thoughts.

 

[Hugh_Hoy]

Steve...interesting proposals/points you made about medicine/medical care. I'll share some thoughts I heard a couple of weeks ago expressed by a surgeon I know. I think his exact words were: "We'd be in trouble if we didn't have doctors coming from abroad working here". He went on to explain that many fewer qualified people are applying to medical school in the U.S. than, say, 20 years ago. He said that it was much more difficult to get into medical then than it is now; that anybody who is qualified can get in. This is into a U.S. medical school; not some school in the Carribean. The doctor noted the many years of going to school just to get the MD degree; plus, another 2-6 years for specializing (such as orthopedics/neurosurgery, etc.) All of that time out of the work force and piling up debt in the form of tuition loans and loans for everyday expenses. Then, maybe another 200-500 thousand dollars to set up a practice. Then, the long hours and workweeks, continuing education throughout your career...it's just too gruling for anybody but the most dedicated. Yeah, they get paid handsomely in many/most cases. But their lives are put on hold til they're almost middle aged and then just paying off their debt for their schooling, etc. Not a path I'd want to consider.

 

HH