Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?

[ChuckMK23]

Those ACA subsidies are like crack cocaine . . . . gonna be really, really tough for "some" to give them up.

Its the role of government to keep people healthy, alive and free from suffering.

In my humble, non economist view, the Debt/deficit is just a number that has an impact on the financial markets at large. Its not in any way something that private citizens should concern themselves with. It has no corollary to kitchen table budgets that we do at home.

It does seem to get thrown around by both political parties. Neither have the will or motivation to do much about it.

 

[sevenhelmet]

Its the role of government to keep people healthy, alive and free from suffering.

In my humble, non economist view, the Debt/deficit is just a number that has an impact on the financial markets at large. Its not in any way something that private citizens should concern themselves with. It has no corollary to kitchen table budgets that we do at home.

It does seem to get thrown around by both political parties. Neither have the will or motivation to do much about it.

I respectfully disagree. While it is true that debt doesn't work the same way for government that it does for households, it does have an effect on the broader economy, and as such, John Q. Citizen. There's also the issue of having a system where deficit spending is assumed, ostensibly to maintain John Q. Citizen's standard of living. That's a big problem that I don't see a lot of constructive solutions being put forth on. Our options would seem to be twofold:

1.) Continue deficit spending until something breaks (bond markets, inflation, or some other form of devaluation) or
2.) Stop deficit spending at the cost of a lot of human suffering and economic pain.

Either option seems to lead to economic pain at some point. Neither option will fix the horrible trainwreck of organized crime that is American healthcare.

 

[Spekkio]

Its the role of government to keep people healthy, alive and free from suffering.

This is a red herring when it comes to the ACA.

The key word / tricky phrase is 'pass through,' which refers to the amount of tax increase or subsidy that is actually passed onto the consumer in terms of price changes. It's variable and depends on quite a few factors. The 'pass through' for Biden's tax subsidies on leasing foreign EVs was damn near 100% because the market sucked and they depreciate like milk, so you could have leased a Chinese or Korean econobox EV prior to 2025 for about $150-200 / mo and $0 down.

However, for a relatively inelastic and important service like health insurance, the pass through is probably less than 30%. Which means most of the $1.5 trillion spent on the issue is going into the pockets of rich C-suite executives and board members. That's aside from the secondary effect of wage suppression when you tie employment to healthcare.

The unspoken goal of the ACA isn't to make healthcare 'cheap;' it was to keep hospitals in business and ensure that they get paid for providing healthcare services. The consolidation of healthcare into a handful of regional providers is an outgrowth of this.

From a philosophical standpoint, I'm not opposed to government sponsored healthcare as long as we adopt Japan's system that raises costs astronomically or outright drops you if your BMI is over 25 (and yes, the inability for insurance to actually charge based on health risk assessment factors is also a huge reason why I dislike the bill). But federally provided healthcare is extremely unpopular among patients and providers (just look at the abortion debate as to why), and you'd have to put healthcare providers on government salaried payroll to make it work.

Of note, there is absolutely nothing stopping any individual state from publicizing its medical care. States like NY, CA, MA, CT could all do it if they wanted to. They don't, not only because it's way less popular than the internet pretends it is, but also because big insurance and big hospitals overwhelmingly donate to the DNC. It has nothing to do with Republicans in Congress stonewalling the issue.

Anyway... if you want to fix the national deficit, you need to fix healthcare.