The Trump Presidency - how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Hair

Fire chiefs and some captains in Boston make over $200k. Meanwhile, some towns have volunteer firefighters who earn $0. There's a friggin' admin at BFD that made more in OT than their actual salary. You just brought up possibly the best example of how scum politicians help scum unions make a ton of dough at my expense in a market that the government has monopolized, as evidence that we desperately need to hand over healthcare entire to the government... I'm not convinced :lol:

oh my... You screwed up firefighting too? It doesn't produce any wealth, it just reduces losses. You invest to reduce losses, not to generate something more. If the 200k man prevents more than 200k losses to society, then it is a good investment, otherwise it is stealing money.

If you give these sectors to the government, of course you risk paying more than the perfect scenario. If you hand this over to private, it will end even worse, particularly with healthcare; the only limit to what a person will pay for healthcare is basically what all they have. Therefore, the only limit to what a company can ask is just how much money the patient has. There's no market when there are no such limits.
 
I think you misunderstand "volunteer" fire fighters. They don't work for free. It's just that they don't work full time at the station during their shifts and have "day jobs". They still get paid at least per call (based on the type of call) plus bonuses for completing training/ refresher courses. All supported by taxes.

Source: Father was a volunteer fireman/EMT/rescue diver while his full time job was a welder in a factory.
 
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Well... yes... that's exactly it actually. It's one of the reason I oppose government-run (almost) anything - because people don't get a choice when the .gov is in control!.

They've had a choice now and for a long time in private schools, as you say. Why get rid of the public option?
 
I think you misunderstand "volunteer" fire fighters. They stunt work for free. It's just that they don't work full time at the station during their shifts and have "day jobs". They still get paid at least per call (based on the type of call) plus bonuses for completing training/ refresher courses. All supported by taxes.

Source: Father was a volunteer fireman/EMT/rescue diver while his full time job was a welder in a factory.
I think even that can vary. The local VFD is funded through the Department of Conservation and the receive no payment for their services.

Of course there's the subscription fire service , but that's a whole other ball of wax.
 
Charter schools as I understand it are very suspicious in character because they're not 100% privately funded and depend on certain subsidies which again depend on how well the students are doing, which makes it profitable to report students doing better than they actually are.

Second point, nobody is arguing for a monopoly on healthcare by the government. But there must be a baseline for everyone, the same as education.

Are private schools better than public schools? Probably, not the point. The point is what if you just did away with public education? Just have a whole strata of society grow up without education? Enjoy your populist uprising in 2 or 3 generations time. Stupid people are easy to manipulate and to bring to political extremism.
Actually considering that private schools need to attract students to make any money I could see them doing some "creative" things to appear more successful. We seen this on every level when student performance starts getting tied with budgets and teacher salaries.

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We shouldn't get rid of the public option. We should improve it. Unfortunately, we can't seem to be able to.
That's a different problem though. The issue with charter schools is that because they are tax funded they take away from "regular" schools. It's makes the entire school system worse because the public schools with real oversight get boned and have trouble attracting good teachers, charter schools are not held to same standards but also are can pop at any point without notice so you end up with shit teachers that can't be fired in PS. Then you have shit teachers who can't teach in charter and good teachers in private, which of course is not affordable for great many people.
 
We shouldn't get rid of the public option. We should improve it. Unfortunately, we can't seem to be able to.

So how does this not apply to health?
 
Well... yes... that's exactly it actually. It's one of the reason I oppose government-run (almost) anything - because people don't get a choice when the .gov is in control! It's also one of the reasons people hate Obamacare so much - "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" was a big fat lie.

Here's the funny thing. Over here in The Soviet Socialist Republic of Norway, with our socialized health care.. you can.
 
Actually considering that private schools need to attract students to make any money I could see them doing some "creative" things to appear more successful. We seen this on every level when student performance starts getting tied with budgets and teacher salaries.

That's exactly what happens.

When I was in school, state-funded -free- school was the top you could get, while private schools were out there trying to recruit -paying- customers, so they just were jokes in terms of didactics.

It was very well known that if you were not able to be admitted to the next year in school, or you didn't want to study at all, you could pay a very nice sum to go to private schools and get your diploma without paying any effort. They were called "diplomifici" (diploma-factories).

They were notorious at all levels, everybody knew they were bad, but you still got your piece of paper, and beureaucracy cares more about paper than about real education, so...

This has been true for decades before my school years, and has been true for decades after that. Now the distance has reduced, but not because private schools have improved, rather because publics-funded schools are leveling down. And why is that? Because public-funded schools have seen increasing budget reductions and an increase in beureaucracy and testings.

LeVeL said:
"if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" was a big fat lie.

Actually, that's what happens here.
 
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Here's the funny thing. Over here in The Soviet Socialist Republic of Norway, with our socialized health care.. you can.

Out of curiosity do you guys also have fully cash private practices? Or some sort of private insurance for things the gov doesn't cover?

@Lev, the ACA was/is a disaster but it's not a disaster due to governmental ineptitude it's a disaster due to all of the special interests pulling the blanket towards themselves. All that was really needed was expansion of medicaid to cover anyone who can't afford private insurance and provisions that didn't allow insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions* (or have gov step in and cover treatment for those specifically).

*Bad choices or not, having a healthy (ier) working and contributing citizens is a net positive on society.
 
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Fully cash? I can't speak for Norway, but in my mind that's for getting bullets out of your body without any paper trail...
 
Fully cash? I can't speak for Norway, but in my mind that's for getting bullets out of your body without any paper trail...

Well I have a guy for that... But stateside say plastic surgery wouldn't be covered by any insurance no matter what and things like elective procedures might not be, say a vasectomy is not covered by all plans.
 
Out of curiosity do you guys also have fully cash private practices? Or some sort of private insurance for things the gov doesn't cover?

The Soviet Socialist Republic of Germany does, in a way. Take dental as an example - the public insurance covers some types of filling, you can pay up yourself or have private insurance for fancier types of fillings. You mentioned plastic surgery... those are covered in only very few cases, usually where the surgery is necessary for leading a normal life.
 
Out of curiosity do you guys also have fully cash private practices? Or some sort of private insurance for things the gov doesn't cover?

Yes, we do. Providers like Volvat and Aleris are examples of this. Also, if you sign a private insurance policy you are still covered by the state.

When it comes to health care I used to think like conservatives in the US: "Why pay for something I won't need? I'm young and healthy, I want to pay less tax!" I wasn't too vocal about it because I knew it was good to have a safety net there, should something happen. And yes, two years ago something did happen, and now I'm very grateful for our healthcare system, I'm glad I didn't have to start my working career having to pay off not only a student loan (no tuition, so relatively small), but also a $100'000+ health care bill. Being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 28 was no fun, and I'm sure it would have been even worse to be told that it probably wouldn't have been covered on a private plan, as the insurance company would probably have labelled a cancer a "pre-existing condition". Screening, diagnosing, surgery and treatment (chemotherapy), as well as CT+MR scans every 6 months for the next 10 years surely isn't cheap.
 
Yes, we do. Providers like Volvat and Aleris are examples of this. Also, if you sign a private insurance policy you are still covered by the state.

When it comes to health care I used to think like conservatives in the US: "Why pay for something I won't need? I'm young and healthy, I want to pay less tax!" I wasn't too vocal about it because I knew it was good to have a safety net there, should something happen. And yes, two years ago something did happen, and now I'm very grateful for our healthcare system, I'm glad I didn't have to start my working career having to pay off not only a student loan (no tuition, so relatively small), but also a $100'000+ health care bill. Being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 28 was no fun, and I'm sure it would have been even worse to be told that it probably wouldn't have been covered on a private plan, as the insurance company would probably have labelled a cancer a "pre-existing condition". Screening, diagnosing, surgery and treatment (chemotherapy), as well as CT+MR scans every 6 months for the next 10 years surely isn't cheap.

Damn dude... Yeah that's kind of the thing, I've changed my opinion after seeing some real world data and having kids, right now my kids and my wife are all on my insurance that I have through work, which costs $400+ a month in the first place, that's on top of all the taxes I end up paying. I mentioned before but between fed and state we basically pay as much as a German.
 
How do you know he is a kid?
 
If I were the kid's parents I would be filing a lawsuit against CNN right about now, and possibly filing criminal charges.
 
It was reported that he's 15yo. Allegedly. Even if he was an adult, this would still be outrageous, but by all means continue to ignore the main point.

The main point continues to be that it was outrageous for the President to tweet the video, regardless of who created it. Is it outrageous that CNN is going after the kid? Yes. Is it the more important problem here? No.
 
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