This.

So who ultimately decides this?



Clearly unacceptable given that we have limited resources.

There's no easy answer, but I think a trend towards more heavily taxing the rich and providing needed coverage for those who we'd all agree are in need (for example high-success rate operations on children that couldn't otherwise afford it) would be a good start that's highly unlikely to cause unintended consequences.

As far as specific application, though, it requires a lot more strategic planning.

This post was edited by Voyaging on Nov 16 2014 08:52pm

Not that limited...

The standard treatment for every disease and even some cosmetic surgery should be available free from the government. We manage this with a lower GDP.

Are we talking about taxing wealth or income? In terms of income, the rich pay far more than everyone else already (over 50% of income taxes).

Perhaps we could implement sin taxes and restrict EBT cards to healthy foods only (since poor people eat the worst). With less people having chronic illness, we could use those resources to pay for other procedures/treatments.



You have waiting lists for many procedures. In America, you're only on a waiting list if you can't afford a picture. Someone has to be screwed out of healthcare, it's just a matter of who. In addition, there are some expensive drugs that you won't cover (I don't blame your government for making those decisions).

depends on when you treat it, all treatment is easier in the early stages of medical problems
i'd fully support reshaping schools to have a more rigorous physical fitness programs comparable to what you'd achieve in the military
physical fitness would go a long way towards fixing a lot of the problems people face with their health

healthcare costs should be covered by the government, the delivery of the services should be privatized

astronomical costs for low chance of survival should not be covered by the govt but people should have the option of private insurance to cover these cases - the ones that cannot must be let go as it is too costly to treat them on everyone else's dime

the thresh hold we use to judge whether something is too costly would be up for debatable of course


why do people keep bringing this up as if it's a valid point? you're relying on bad math and emotional appeal

when you earn most of the income, you're going to pay (or you should pay) most of the taxes in a progressive tax system, this is a no brainer

This post was edited by duffman316 on Nov 16 2014 09:08pm

I think the AMA could establish standards for us.

If the rich earned 80% of all income and paid 80% of all income tax, that would translate to a flat tax system. Since we have a progressive tax system, the rich would pay something like 60% of all income taxes even though they only earn 50% of all income (I don't know the exact numbers, just giving an example).

Only income tax is progressive. The problem is the super rich earn their income through capital gains which is taxed at an abysmal 15% at most.

I don't know if it's a problem given that capital gains makes up less than 4-7% of the income tax revenue. If you wanted to tax it as income, you would have to allow people to deduct inflation which would be pretty annoying. A better way of doing it is to have special accounts with 0% capital gains tax (and charge it as income whenever you take money out of it).

I think if we're talking about universal healthcare, the minimum tax bracket should be 25% and go up to 60% at the highest level.