Democratic Debate

[Althea]

Apparently so... Althea apparently knows more about my and my employer's tax forms and health insurance than I do...

LMAO...so clueless. I know exactly what your W 2 looks like w/respect to health insurance.

[Althea]

Why not both?

Because the pool of taxpayer money goes first to an inflated tuition payment. I'm assuming that the greater expense...housing...isn't covered under this program. So...the student still exits college with huge debt.

Assuming they leave debt free...the taxpayer overpaid for the tuition. Then, the student has to find employment as most grads do. What about this program makes that any easier? That's why I favor trade schools. You cannot outsource plumbing/electrical/mechanical work.

If a low income student wants to study medicine/law/engineering etc, then this program would make sense. For most, it doesn't.

[Althea]

Then you haven't been paying attention. They tout liberal arts degree is worthless.

Education should be free.....any education.

Exclusion is what is wrong with America today.

Americans always want to exclude instead of include.

There is enough to go around.

I don't care what others say. A liberal arts degree is worthless. So are quite a few others, but you don't click links. Perhaps we should spend more money on public education, so students don't exit high school illiterate?

[Althea]

A couple things about this:

Right now, your doctor colludes with your insurance company to set artificially high costs for everything so that both can mutually benefit from a business perspective. The current system is modeled on volume instead of outcomes. When you don't have the payor and the provider colluding to make a profit for both, you commence an actual negotiation. The payor isn't concerned with making a profit in M4A, it is only concerned with lowering costs. That results in the payor, who has the bargaining power, negotiating with your doctor instead of colluding with them. That forces the provider to improve its outcomes in order to get patients.

If all providers are reimbursed at the same rate -so no more private insurance collusion- that levels the playing field and forces doctors to compete for your care. How do they compete for your care if they're all reimbursed at the same rate? By improving health outcomes. You can't competitively shop for health care right now...you might think your doctor is good, but you have no frame of reference for that. You should competitively shop for health care the same way you competitively shop for any other product or service. Right now, you are only competitively shopping for who reimburses your provider, not for who provides you with the best care. That's because of the private insurance business model, which is to take in as much in premiums as they can, and pay out as little in reimbursement as they can get away with. Nothing in that equation has anything to do with improving your health.

Now, for the sustainability...we already are spending $33T over the next 10 years in the current system. M4A saves us at least $1T, and probably much more as costs come down because there's no longer collusion between the insurer and provider to set artificially high costs so both can profit at your expense. So we are already spending a shitload of money on health care and we will if nothing changes. In the end, M4A is just as sustainable as the current system, so long as there's a tax that funds it in lieu of OOPE.

Providers get paid a fraction of what they charge the insurance companies. In fact, they pay Medicare negotiated rates. Still, everything you reference can be achieved by a public option to start.

Give the profiteers some competition.

However...remember when HMOs were all the rage? They actually made it better for doctors to deny service. This is a tough balancing act.

[Althea]

Hello gfm7175,



That depends on who your employer's customers are.

What is their flavor of wealth extraction?

That too. But both parties in this scenario are taking a tax credit for any premium costs.

[Althea]

Why would they pay the 4% tax on personal income and the 7.5% tax on business income? Wouldn't it be one or the other if they owned their own business?

Also, with M4A, the Medicare portion (2.9%) of the Self Employment Tax goes away, leaving just the FICA SS Payroll tax of 12.4%.

Under Sanders' '16 plan, self employed people are both the employee, and employer. We pay it all. More than likely, it would be treated like FICA. The tax is paid on the net business income, and then Fed income taxes are computed.

[Althea]

Let's skip all your propaganda bullshit and get to the core issue. We know you want Chinese global dominance because you think their gov't is morally pure and superior to ours.

Wow...you're getting dumber and dumber.

[Bigdog]

That too. But both parties in this scenario are taking a tax credit for any premium costs.

Is the credit applied to taxes owed, ... or is it applied in order to reduce gross income before it is taxed?

[Bigdog]

I don't care what others say. A liberal arts degree is worthless. So are quite a few others, but you don't click links. Perhaps we should spend more money on public education, so students don't exit high school illiterate?

Yep, we already have free gov't public education ... and politicians have been promising to fix it for 50 years.

[Althea]

I think when people start inserting their subjective worth on certain degrees, you lose the entire point.

Those degrees you might think of as "lesser" also form the foundation of advanced degree work. Sociology, for example, might seem like a worthless major. But then when you ace your sociology degree, that opens up the door for you to go for a Master's, or a teaching certificate, or a PHD. Also, massive corporations are desperate to hire sociology and psychology majors because of the insight they can give to customer acquisition. You have to understand the psychology of your customer base in order to market to them.

Sure...but they only hire so many human resources staff. And most of the time, they're looking for a master's degree. Is that also free under this plan?

In my view, getting a college degree isn't the only component of attending college. You also learn critical thinking skills, analysis skills, and other intangibles that can't be quantified by a degree. Exposure to other cultures, ideas, perspectives...all that happens in higher education and it doesn't happen in the workforce. The intangible skills you learn at college also play a major part in making you employable. The Chairman of WarnerMedia, Bob Greenblatt, was a theater major in college.

Very true.


That should already be instilled from more than a decade of public school, though. Maybe the problem is the level of achievement that is evident in today's high school grads?

But yes...moving out of the house and experiencing college has myriad benefits. I just question whether or not it's a worthwhile investment from the taxpayer, when the money could create public sector jobs for many who exit high school?

[Althea]

Is the credit applied to taxes owed, ... or is it applied in order to reduce gross income before it is taxed?

Ask your accountant. If you have one.

[Althea]

Yep, we already have free gov't public education ... and politicians have been promising to fix it for 50 years.

The problem is with the way it's funded. It should be funded via income taxes, not just property taxes. The areas with higher taxes/property values tend to have better school funding.

[Bigdog]

Ask your accountant. If you have one.

Stop pretending you know what you're talking about, Assholea

[Bigdog]

The problem is with the way it's funded. It should be funded via income taxes, not just property taxes. The areas with higher taxes/property values tend to have better school funding.

That's a propaganda lie.

New York City and Baltimore city are ranked 1 and 2 for most money spent per student. The economics of scale don't seem to apply to anything gubmint run.

[USFREEDOM911]

Right Wing talking point? I've never heard any of the morons here reference liberal arts degrees. Psych degrees are right ahead of it w/respect to worthlessness. You don't click links, so I don't know how to have this discussion with you. This is one of hundreds of links that show which degrees will pay the worst return.
I'm against the mindset that you must have a college degree in order to exist in this economy. That's last century's thinking.

I don't believe in throwing good money away, just to give kids a 4 year vacation from life. If they want to create a program of approved fields of study that one can get for 'free', then I might be swayed.

Again...we already have debt forgiveness programs in place. We can do means testing for 'free' tuition, but an across the board program of free tuition doesn't make one bit of sense.

Trade schools? That's a different story.


Most useless degrees

https://www.thesimpledollar.com/10-w...-earn-in-2015/

Free Education is not "free"; because the money has to come from somewhere, seeing as how the Collage(s) aren't just going to eat the loss.