Socialism

[Lemons]

Imagine a work party, everyone brings a dish to the potluck. 1, 2, maybe 3 people forget. Not a big deal, there's still enough food to go around right? everyone gets a little less, but there's enough to survive right because you have enough people who did their part and brought something.

Now imagine all of the employees from surrounding business show up bring nothing but help themselves to everyone else's dishes, you quickly run out of food.

this is what would happen with socialism + open borders.

BERNIE KNOWS THIS, HE SAID IT 5 YEARS AGO!!!

That is exactly what happens. The Canadian welfare system is very good, making Canada a wonderful place to live for free if you are coming from a country in destitute, dirt poverty. While I could not live on welfare, to people coming from say Syria or Somalia, on the Canadian welfare system they live better than they could dream to in their home countries.

While I support immigration, and I think to a point we have a moral and ethical responsibility to take in refugees, we need to put limits and better screening for those who wish to enter. On the domestic side, when a family with no income and five kids can get up to $3,000 per month in cash, plus another $1,000 to $2,000 in benefits, free healthcare and an entire bunch of other benefits, some just decide not to work. I actually don't blame them!

Who pays for all of this? Us tax payers. Canada is only slightly socialist where many working people pay over 50% of their earned incomes in various taxes. That is what a socialist orientated system causes.

We have the same system. People here are always bitching about paying for food stamps, paying for welfare, etc. No different. Canada just has more money because their military budget is a fraction of what the US is.

And a lot of those Syrians and others wouldn't have dreamed living in a snow covered country. They would still be in Syria if it was a peaceful place.

[Lemons]

Everyone following this topic should read this reply you posted above.

I don't own a business but I work for a small business owner. I'm sure what he provides for us is not cheap. I do all my annual doctors visits now because I'm afraid to get sick. Really nothing is free so the question to ask is what's best? Have people kill themselves meeting deductibles and health care providers lose their minds dealing with insurance companies? Or do something where hopefully everyone pays on a sliding scale.

Idk about medical but I can speak for prosthetics- artificial limb makers. They've been struggling with Medicare audits years after being paid. Other insurances audit too and in some instances retract payments. If doctors don't have the proper information in their notes when they prescribe a device the prosthetist gets screwed. I see friends who are doctors or nurse practitioners on vacation who spend much of it catching up on the charting that going electronic was supposed to fix. And I don't think it's for their benefit. I think it's so insurances can decide if treatment is justified or not. This has been a problem for a long time and it's only getting worse. I'm not sure what Sanders wants to do is the answer but something has to change. We the patients and the doctors are the ones suffering.

Obama care is the worst thing that ever happened to this country's medical care. It continues to get worse each year both with plan selection and premium. I was still working for one of the top carriers when this insanity first started the phased roll out. The documentation that was demanded under this wonderful legacy of Barry's was insanely, unduly burdensome.

Most carriers have been driven out of business, at least where I am. The choices left are bad and worse. Some specialties there is one physician in the network for a 100 miles or more. My brother in law pays about $1900 a month for him, my sister and 2 kids. And it's a $5,000 deductible plan per person. The burden of Obama care is literally crushing. It's so convoluted and so jacked up there is no way it can ever be unwound without further damaging available care.

The screeching about $5B for the wall? That's what Barry spent on the website that people were supposed to use to go sign up on that never worked. Funny, isn't it? I just ran across that somewhere a couple of days ago. Think of everything that $5B could have paid for - could have maybe supplemented some prescriptions so seniors don't fall in the doughnut hole on Medicare, no?

Imagine these imbeciles want to lord over managing all healthcare for all citizens. They can't deal with what they're actually SUPPOSED to be dealing with like the DMV, the IRS, etc. I absolutely do not want some bureaucrat deciding whether or not I need a surgery or whether or not my life is worth saving as you see with "socialised medicine". That would be the absolute worst move on earth. LindaRuns in Canada has been very open on here about what it's like. We can also ask the parents of that little boy Alfie in the UK where the government decided he wasn't worth trying to save, then BLOCKED his parents from taking him to Italy where doctors were willing to try to help him. BLOCKED them and it wouldn't have cost the UK for his treatments. The doctor in Italy took pity of them. But the UK decided. It's a frightening prospect to have our care rationed even more than it is now.

What a bunch of garbage with no facts to back it up. Just an anecdote of a brother in law. The plan is working in states where they wanted it to work. It's a disaster in republican states where they want it to fail. As simple as that.

Look at Massachusetts, the first state to have their own Obamacare. Everyone is required to have insurance or pay a tax penalty. If you don't have insurance you can get a state subsidizes one. Massachusetts is economically healthy, always in the top ten for best state economy, and their people are physically healthy and they virtually all have health insurance. States can do it if it's a priority, it's not.

Massachusetts has the least amount of people uninsured followed by Vermont, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Iowa, Connecticut, New York. The states with the worst health care are Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida,. See a pattern? It's a blue and red pattern in case you don't see it. It's not rocket science.

It's also not a priority for Trump because he has done nothing. Zero towards improving the system. So enough about Obama. Blame the current administration for not fulfilling a campaign promise to repeal and replace it with something better.

[Deleted User 876]

No, he didn’t say that it is free, he says It should be. He thinks that everyone should have health coverage and pay nothing out of pocket when they visit the doctor.

That’s usually the way it goes. Socialism works for the very rich or for the poor. It screws the hardworking middle class. Politicians who pander socialism are just saying that they’ll play Robin Hood and take from the “rich” (middle class) and give to the poor. But they’re certainly not about to give up their luxuries and “equalize” society. Bernie advocates “free Medicare for all” but when he needs medical attention, you can be sure he’ll pay top dollar for a top notch one.
Seahorse he thinks all of America should have mediocre health care and mediocre education because he wants those free-for-all, he should live that way himself or shut his pie hole.

Medicare has never been free. Has Bernie said it is?

And he wants to do it by charging everyone 4% of their income, except those who make less than $29000 a year. So someone who had the unmitigated gall to get an education so they are able to earn more would be forced to subsidize those who have no marketable skills. A person whose taxable income is $100,000 a year would be paying $4,000 a year for the SAME healthcare that someone with a taxable income of $30,000 pays only $1,200 for. That's NOT "equality".

And like all things when the government gets control, if people stop working as hard because there's no point, causing revenues to drop, the powers that be will just raise the tax rate to make up for it, because the people no longer have control of how much they're willing to pay. So it may start at "only 4%", but it will NOT end there.

The real solution to the ridiculous cost of health care is to (1) get rid of insurance companies - they're just middlemen who use most of your premiums to pay their own people and their own people's insurance; (2) crack down on gouging by pharmaceutical companies; (3) make people responsible for their own health care - when they have to start paying out of their own pockets they'll think harder about running to the ER for a runny nose, smoking, watching their eating habits, and so on.

[WellPreserved]

No, he didn’t say that it is free, he says It should be. He thinks that everyone should have health coverage and pay nothing out of pocket when they visit the doctor.

Medicare has never been free. Has Bernie said it is?

And he wants to do it by charging everyone 4% of their income, except those who make less than $29000 a year. So someone who had the unmitigated gall to get an education so they are able to earn more would be forced to subsidize those who have no marketable skills. A person whose taxable income is $100,000 a year would be paying $4,000 a year for the SAME healthcare that someone with a taxable income of $30,000 pays only $1,200 for. That's NOT "equality".

And like all things when the government gets control, if people stop working as hard because there's no point, causing revenues to drop, the powers that be will just raise the tax rate to make up for it, because the people no longer have control of how much they're willing to pay. So it may start at "only 4%", but it will NOT end there.

The real solution to the ridiculous cost of health care is to (1) get rid of insurance companies - they're just middlemen who use most of your premiums to pay their own people and their own people's insurance; (2) crack down on gouging by pharmaceutical companies; (3) make people responsible for their own health care - when they have to start paying out of their own pockets they'll think harder about running to the ER for a runny nose, smoking, watching their eating habits, and so on.

Our health insurance for a family of four has always cost us more than 4% of our income even when we were making 6 digits.

When you say "get rid of insurance companies", what do you mean. Government run insurance or no insurance?

[WellPreserved]

No, he didn’t say that it is free, he says It should be. He thinks that everyone should have health coverage and pay nothing out of pocket when they visit the doctor.

Medicare has never been free. Has Bernie said it is?

And he wants to do it by charging everyone 4% of their income, except those who make less than $29000 a year. So someone who had the unmitigated gall to get an education so they are able to earn more would be forced to subsidize those who have no marketable skills. A person whose taxable income is $100,000 a year would be paying $4,000 a year for the SAME healthcare that someone with a taxable income of $30,000 pays only $1,200 for. That's NOT "equality".

And like all things when the government gets control, if people stop working as hard because there's no point, causing revenues to drop, the powers that be will just raise the tax rate to make up for it, because the people no longer have control of how much they're willing to pay. So it may start at "only 4%", but it will NOT end there.

The real solution to the ridiculous cost of health care is to (1) get rid of insurance companies - they're just middlemen who use most of your premiums to pay their own people and their own people's insurance; (2) crack down on gouging by pharmaceutical companies; (3) make people responsible for their own health care - when they have to start paying out of their own pockets they'll think harder about running to the ER for a runny nose, smoking, watching their eating habits, and so on.

$4000 a year for a family making $100000 a year would be a considerable savings. The average cost of healthcare for a family of 4 is $20,000 a year. At 4% a family doesn't come close to covering that expense until they are earning $500,000.

[Linda_Runs]

50% is really high imo. Do you think this effects morale of people?

When all things considered, it is about 50%. Our personal income tax is about 33%, plus there are a myriad of other taxes such as health services tax, fuel tax, carbon tax, property tax, capital gains tax, goods and services tax and so on.

So to answer your question, Canadian are tired of being taxed to death with more and more tax initiatives coming up every year.

The taxes really don't sound much different from the US.

When I was in Florida about two or so weeks ago, the prices were much the same as here, including gas. When I was discussing the idea of a state-run medicare system with a resident there, I was curious what was left to tax for it. There is already income tax, similar to ours; taxes on the gas are much the same, but ours include highways for the most part, where in Florida there are tolls everywhere; and property taxes are high there too.

[Linda_Runs]

Thank you for your reply. It’s something I’ve been curious about for a while.

So many are in the work to survive category. Aside from my concerns with what could happen if Sanders implements his end goal plan and the uncertainty of the direction future elected officials could take it, I have concerns over how it would effect our economy as well as our overall morale. So many already work to survive. It’s seen more common in lower income brackets. There’s absolutely no way to implement such a level of change without something significantly raising taxes and there’s always a trickle down effect. I am concerned that more and more will end up feeling they are just working to survive. We, US, do a disservice by trying to compare the positive outcomes in other countries, such as Nordic countries, when our whole infrastructure, including society and culture, is not similar. It’s like trying to turn an apple into a tomato just because they are both fruits.

I heard an estimate that a national health care system in the U.S. similar to Canada's would cost in the area of three trillion dollars, or about $8,000 or so per citizen per year. Very similar to what many Americans pay to HMOs and that middle class Canadians pay in health care taxes now.

I was in Florida two weeks ago and talking to some there about the cost of living. Florida is very expensive to live in and quite taxed for an American state. Even the price of gas is not much less than in Canada. So the question is, what will the government tax to support a national health care system?

For anyone's information, Canada does NOT have a national medicare system; it is provincially (state) run and regionally controlled.

$8000 per citizen per year? How's that? I have never heard of anyone paying $32000 a year for insurance (especially an HMO) for their family of four.

Question is, what part of Florida were you visiting.

Sorry, I meant per family (typically of four). Good observation from you! My bad!

[Linda_Runs]

Imagine a work party, everyone brings a dish to the potluck. 1, 2, maybe 3 people forget. Not a big deal, there's still enough food to go around right? everyone gets a little less, but there's enough to survive right because you have enough people who did their part and brought something.

Now imagine all of the employees from surrounding business show up bring nothing but help themselves to everyone else's dishes, you quickly run out of food.

this is what would happen with socialism + open borders.

BERNIE KNOWS THIS, HE SAID IT 5 YEARS AGO!!!

That is exactly what happens. The Canadian welfare system is very good, making Canada a wonderful place to live for free if you are coming from a country in destitute, dirt poverty. While I could not live on welfare, to people coming from say Syria or Somalia, on the Canadian welfare system they live better than they could dream to in their home countries.

While I support immigration, and I think to a point we have a moral and ethical responsibility to take in refugees, we need to put limits and better screening for those who wish to enter. On the domestic side, when a family with no income and five kids can get up to $3,000 per month in cash, plus another $1,000 to $2,000 in benefits, free healthcare and an entire bunch of other benefits, some just decide not to work. I actually don't blame them!

Who pays for all of this? Us tax payers. Canada is only slightly socialist where many working people pay over 50% of their earned incomes in various taxes. That is what a socialist orientated system causes.

We have the same system. People here are always bitching about paying for food stamps, paying for welfare, etc. No different. Canada just has more money because their military budget is a fraction of what the US is.

And a lot of those Syrians and others wouldn't have dreamed living in a snow covered country. They would still be in Syria if it was a peaceful place.

Yes, our military budget is a fraction, at about 1/3 of the GDP compared to the U.S. This government, like all our Liberal governments in the past, put no emphasis on a strong and capable military or law enforcement. The problem for Canada is that, while Canada spends 1/3 of what it should, it still remains the second largest country in the world to keep sovereign.

[Della]

When all things considered, it is about 50%. Our personal income tax is about 33%, plus there are a myriad of other taxes such as health services tax, fuel tax, carbon tax, property tax, capital gains tax, goods and services tax and so on.

So to answer your question, Canadian are tired of being taxed to death with more and more tax initiatives coming up every year.

The taxes really don't sound much different from the US.

When I was in Florida about two or so weeks ago, the prices were much the same as here, including gas. When I was discussing the idea of a state-run medicare system with a resident there, I was curious what was left to tax for it. There is already income tax, similar to ours; taxes on the gas are much the same, but ours include highways for the most part, where in Florida there are tolls everywhere; and property taxes are high there too.

No state run Medicare, but it does have a Medicaid program although the state didn't expand it. There's no state income tax in Florida. The fuel taxes are $.42/gal state and $.184/gal federal (with some localities charging an additional $.12/gal). Around 60% of the federal taxes are spent on highways (good grief, the road construction going on is never ending!). Toll roads are mostly in the lower half of the state, although we did recently wind up with one in NE FL. The state base sales tax is 6% with some counties/municipalities adding up to 2.5% by referendum. My property taxes are $2300/year for almost 2 acres and a 4/2.

Were you in Central or South Florida?

[Linda_Runs]

The taxes really don't sound much different from the US.

When I was in Florida about two or so weeks ago, the prices were much the same as here, including gas. When I was discussing the idea of a state-run medicare system with a resident there, I was curious what was left to tax for it. There is already income tax, similar to ours; taxes on the gas are much the same, but ours include highways for the most part, where in Florida there are tolls everywhere; and property taxes are high there too.

No state run Medicare, but it does have a Medicaid program although the state didn't expand it. There's no state income tax in Florida. The fuel taxes are $.42/gal state and $.184/gal federal (with some localities charging an additional $.12/gal). Around 60% of the federal taxes are spent on highways (good grief, the road construction going on is never ending!). Toll roads are mostly in the lower half of the state, although we did recently wind up with one in NE FL. The state base sales tax is 6% with some counties/municipalities adding up to 2.5% by referendum. My property taxes are $2300/year for almost 2 acres and a 4/2.

Were you in Central or South Florida?

We were in Orlando. I know Florida doesn't have a state fun medicare program like Canada, but we were just discussing the idea to see what some local residents thought about it. Florida pays income tax through their property taxes if I was understanding correctly. Sales tax was 7% on my receipts. Some gas stations we passed had prices about $2.49 to $2.79 per gallon.

We pay income tax at a rate of about 33%, plus our property taxes are about $6,800 per year on our medium sized, suburban home. Our health services and sales taxes are 13% on most things besides food. There are other taxes too such as carbon tax, land transfer tax and other regulatory charges and taxes.