Uhh what?

So if you have a larger GDP you need to spend more on health care? I don't follow your logic here.

Perhaps you meant to break down GDP per capita? That's what we're talking about here, is total spending per person.

Care to explain your "basic economics" a little further?

Where did i say it was not stalled? and where did i say they are shipping oil?

If they had it secured they would be pulling out. Did i say pull out? I said quite the opposite.

good for you, you educated me on 2 point i already knew.

Spending per person does not me each person spent that. Your logic breaks down there. And yes through inflation and the limited availability of a product (health care) makes it more expensive when there is more money in the system. If there is less money in the system it would cost less.

We see inflation where the money goes first, the banks, wall street, military industrial complex, and health care.

Bush started the fire and Obama threw on the gasoline
Same with the economy

with that said I do admit that the US does spend more % per GDP 14%ish to the other countries 9%ish, again due to inflationary problems.

No of course it doesn't mean each person spent that. It does however mean that's how much was spent on each person. So in the US you're spending twice as much as we are in Canada on each person, while only making on average $1500 or so more.

The fact is the private insurance layer in the US simply adds costs overall while not covering as many people.

Now I recognize that while when taken as a whole, US healthcare does not rank very high but despite that some of the best helathcare is available in the US. That is to say, if you have money and you get cancer, well fuck yeah you want to go to the Mayo Clinic. However, if you're a regular joe working 9-5 in the US that's probably not a real option for you. So for maybe 5% of the population the US has the absolute best healthcare in the World. Unfortunately, for everybody else it's mostly below average and in some cases dismal.

I'm an advocate of a two-tier system. Offer fundamentally sound public healthcare and allow for private healthcare by choice.

Another way to start slashing money out of the "wasted" portion of your Health Care spending would be to make some fundamental changes to your Tort laws. That's a topic for an entirely different thread though.

It appears to be foreign investors that are interested in building a pipeline...not the U.S. and that the natural gas will be sent to India...not to the U.S. The U.S. has an abundance of natural gas as well as oil. We prefer to buy and use up the oil resources from other countries and preserve our oil reserves for ourselves when the world supply dries up.

I agree, the system as it is now is totally fucked. I think we should outlaw insurance all together. But thats never going to happen.

Anyone know if this chart is accurate?

http://reason.com/assets/mc/jtaylor/VeroCosts.jpg

Goes with this article.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/0...educe-health-c

So you for taking away insurance from sick kids. Ok I have you on record for killing children.

See all the anti-"Obamacre" idiots think they will have to pay for the healthcare for the poor. As if they aren't paying now. Let's see, when some poor person get sick or hurt where do they go? The ER even if it's not an emergency. The ER is the MOST expensive option. Now since they are poor they are not going to pay the bill. Well who will? YOU the Obamacare hater. Why? Because the hopsitals not going to eat cost they'll pass the cost along to PAYING customers which means mostly INSURANCE companies. And your insurance company isn'y going to eat the cost. They will pass it on to YOU. So if you wonder why your health insurance rates keeps going up now you now why. Now if these people had health insurance they would go to the doctor at 1/10 the cost. Why people can't figure this out is beyond me.

the uneducated take on obamacare is fascinating.

Postal Service...

Pfft...just once I would love to hear an educated response out of your mouth... Even if I don't agree with it, it would be better than the typical gibberish 'like above' b.s. that we get from you.

Hey SHIT FOR BRAINS , try googling State Children's Health Insurance Program

How can you function with such a low IQ? Did you hire a monkey to post for you?

To be fair... the post office is mandated to be revenue neutral, year over year. Then up until the 80's taxes paid for the postal service, after that stamps did. For a long time (up until recent years) they ran in the green, as high as a billion profit each year. But that isn't factored into the budget role over for them.

So a 2 billion dollar loss this year for them, still puts them in the green overall.

Weren't they talking about cutting saturday delivery?

That's the major problem with government run agencies, they run on projected budgets. They didn't factor in email!!!

Check again, their rates are higher than fedex and ups for ground and air... that's why they're failing... They have a monopoly on standard mail so nobody can compete... On top of that, their service blows and isn't even competitive with the private sector.

Also you need to take into account they're also sucking up tax dollars just to keep operating...

Good intentions and I DO agree with closing the border, HOWEVER, the drug trade does not go away... there is NO stopping the drug trade unless you make drugs legal.

You can NOT repeal the law of supply and demand. There will ALWAYS be a demand which means there will always be a supply.

Best thing to do is regulate drugs to make sure people are actually getting clean drugs and in the proper concentrations. You also significantly lower the cost meaning a) no reason for illegal drug trade any more as there aren't black market margins b) addicts no longer need to steal and mug people for the cash to be able to afford their next fix.

To me this is completely common sense... You can't stop it so you might as well make it safe... prohibition doesn't work.

Depending on the package size.. and if you're sending within your Country. It's pretty cheap to send a package with a scan card through usps or candian post, with a tracking number, for just a few bucks total.

If you need to send something big or to another Country, yes another service is probably cheaper.

They don't use tax dollars to operate, they fund themselves through stamps and are given a budget on the amount spent/earned the year before. They are in the green overall.

It's a problem when it screws them. Or like some people, they only see the budget as a factor for profit or loss, which is crazy. As long as it stays in the green, overall.. then it's ran fine.

Edit: Always room for improvements though, and some incentives for them to improve, would always be welcomed in my book.

If we made them legal, healthcare would bog down big time for all the drug use by idiots in this country.
I will agree to make medical marijuana legal in all states and that would cut down a lot of the drug traffic. But the US can close the Mexican border and can patrol for submarines and boats effectively. They would figure out how to make it here and then some government officials would start to do something about it. But Mexico would have a near impossible time trying to export to the US. That would put them out of business.

Columbia has no problem importing massive amounts of cocaine... it's going to get here, undoubtedly. When there's a margin as high as there is in the black market... people will FIND a way.

Medical marijuana will do absolutely nothing to curb marijuana use for non patients. The demand will still be there.

On the healthcare costs... I doubt they'd go up much at all, most likely they'd be reduced. With far less drug related violence (read, almost none) there would be far less patients requiring ER services from gun shots, stabbings, etc...

In fact I'd be fine with adding a tax to drugs which a portion of goes to rehabilitation and treatment for addicts (as well as clean needles available to anyone in order to reduce the spread of disease). I'm not against taxation of goods... I'm only against income taxes ;) The benefits of legalizing and regulating drugs are enormous. Ask any kid in middle or high school what's easier to get, alcohol or weed? Weed is #1, EVERYONE knows a dealer at school. Alcohol you have to know somebody that's going to buy it for you and willing to take the risk...

EDIT: The goals are skewed now a days... The government wants to wage a multi billion dollar war on drugs in order to protect citizens from the harmful drugs that are out there... it doesn't work, and that's just a fact if you look at any statistics over the years.

What the goal SHOULD be is to protect all citizens from drug related violence and slow the spread of disease caused from sharing needles. Stop trying to restrict the freedom and rights of individual grown adults. We don't need a nanny. If someone wants to smoke weed they are entitled to do so, it is their inalienable right to do so! If they want to do a few lines of coke, so be it, it's their life and I'm not going to tell them how to live it. Instead you have dirty drugs and bad concentrations of drugs causing the majority of drug use deaths and you have drug related violence responsible for more deaths than the users! IMO it is a crime against humanity to keep the prohibition on drugs when so many lives could be saved just by regulating the content and removing drugs from the black market.

While I personally am unsure that legalizing all drugs is a good thing, one argument for it is that it will actually cost us less even with the increase in junkies we are likely to see. The thought is that the billions and billions we spend fighting an ineffective drug war could be used for eduction and rehab. We could also sell and tax those drugs and make a lot of money that way. The cost of this education, prevention and treatment would only be a small percentage of what we would save by no longer fighting the drug war.

Shutting down the border is a good thing, but it will do nothing to stop the drugs from coming into the US. Read a book called Killing Pablo. It is about the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar. At the height of his power he had a couple of 747 planes that were gutted and filled fully with coke that he flew into the US. If one got caught, he didn't care because the other six got through.

So long as there is a demand for it there will be people who find a way to supply it.