Utah voters: Expand Medicare.
Utah elected politicians: Nope.
Itās not just Medicare. They did the same thing with the marijuana legalization prop that passed. A lot of people are rightfully pissed off, but the defense from Republican voters is pretty laughable. They range from āWeāre a Republic, not a Democracy!ā to ā I promise Iām not making this up ā āThe propositions were unfairly weighted to urban voters over rural votersā.
Here, just trawled through a comment section and found a perfect example!
I love some things about this state, but good lord some days do I just want to burn it all down.
Also, the way the voting is allowed in a proposition, the large urban areas get an unfair voting power.
Translation: Those votes count. We canāt have that.
Well, I would say that even āliberalā states do the same thing. California passed an $6.8b proposition to build a high speed rail line and somehow it was determined that the money amount meant nothing, that had taxpayers known it was going to be $85b (and growing) they would have been just as in favor of it.
California also has this history of passing propositions and then having them declared unconstitutional. Although I think now they must pass that test prior to the election rather than after.
I doubt youāre gonna find many takers for āCaliforniaās concept of having specific spending mandated by plebiscite is a great idea that should be adopted anywhere.ā
LOL Who didnāt see this coming. Merced to Bakersfield, brilliant.
I think you got the wrong thread, dude.
The thread being posted in is the least of the things wrong with him, tbh.
I am happy to see this happen. But the only reason to keep spending money (the Merced to Bakersfield part) is so the state doesnāt have to return $3.5b to the feds. I think we need only one guess as to where Trump would try to put that money.
No one really did, because itās been in a mire for years with seemingly no progress.
The little construction done was done thru my city, Fresno. They have actually moved a couple miles of Highway 99 and demolished a swath thru downtown. Dozens of businesses were moved. They have built bridges, and in at least one case they will be rebuilding a bridge as the original didnāt pass inspection.
The unions love the work of course. Although the local carpenters rep even admitted to us (my company was union) that the project probably should never have been authorized.
This was an interesting read. Has some good information about various approaches and proposals (beyond the campaign trail rhetoric).
I donāt agree with his sweeping dismissal of āpublic optionā as a crutch for private insurance, though. Heās assuming that 1) politics would allow for sweeping away private insurance entirely and 2) that the public option wouldnāt provide enough coverage that using it alone would be feasible. Properly crafted public option proposals could get around those issues, so dismissing the entire concept strikes me as a poor approach.
Along those lines, hereās the Health Care Industryās (among others) first salvo against the Green New Deal:
Problems with the data behind that article (which of course, isnāt mentioned):
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Itās over 10 years.(mentioned, but still they love to do that for any proposal)
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When talking about Health Care, all they talk about is the Cost. There is no mention whatsoever about what we are currently paying. They also appear to possibly double-count current Medicare and Medicaid spending, but itās tough to tell.
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Along those lines, it assumes that the cost of doing nothing is zero.
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Housing and Job initiatives I havenāt dug into yet, but Iāll assume that they completely ignore the financial returns of those initiatives and focus solely on Cost.
Source summary:
2017 data on Health Care spending:
Historical spending and increase numbers on US Health Care Spending:
I think that is one of the most balanced and fact based summaries of why health care is so expensive in the US, Iāve seen. TheBalance appears to be a pretty good website a rebranding of about.com
Thanks. I wanted to do the (minor) research because every time a number is thrown out, it is usually to scare people and not engage in looking at actual benefits, as well as opportunity costs, and the numbers are pretty much always skewed to try to misinform people.
In this case, the $36 trillion number (the largest single number in the āreportā) for health care completely ignores the $34 trillion we would spend if rates didnāt increase at all. With a compounded rate increase of just 4%, we blow by that $36 trillion over 10 years pretty quickly at our current spend rate of $3.4 trillion annually.
As I said, I havenāt looked at the housing/jobs portion of the package thus far, just the hideously misleading Health Care number, which assumes we arenāt spending anything on health care currently, or what will happen to those out of pocket costs if we donāt do something more.
Not sure where this goes, guess Iāll put it here.
Thatās all well and good if you donāt require the ānursingā part of a nursing home. But then you are comparing Holiday Inn against a regular home.
Look for my upcoming facebook post in the Daily Mail laying out why it is cheaper for me to drive to the mall rather than taking a plane.
Iām not endorsing the plan. That said, independent living (not nursing home) apartments average $2500 per month nationally, and assisted living (not nursing home) apartments average $3700 per month nationally. Iām sure you can find a budget serviced apartment under $1800 in some markets, but heās not far wrong about the costs.
I am fairly certain this isnāt a real āplanā but it does point out that you can get about 100% of an independent living apartment at a hotel.
Some of the biggest issues for the elderly that donāt require nursing care is dealing with regular house/apartment stuff. Canāt fix the broken bulbs, tv broken, falling behind on cleaning/laundry. That would all be taken care of at a hotel for a fraction of the cost.
But, those independent living places offer things a holiday Inn cannot, like faster access to medical care, senior catered trips/excursions, a community of peers to visit with, and in unit kitchens and other amenities.
Yes, agree.