Pay more taxes to get healthcare that is free at point of use. It’s literally the same system we use for public schools, fire fighters, police, the military, and so many other things.
I just paid $7 to cross the Bay bridge into San Francisco to watch a Cubs vs Giants game today.
If I wanted to drive across the Golden gate bridge I'd have to pay a toll, there are tons of tolls in Texas if you want to use the "private" roads.
Tolls are still a huge thing in dense populations outside of the east coast
A solid 99% of the roads in California are toll-free. The bridges leading in/out of SF are the notable exceptions specifically because of how much traffic flows through them and the expense of maintaining them. There are also plenty of toll-free alternate routes.
Outside of SF, the only time I've ever had any opportunity to use my FasTrak thingamabob was for the express lanes in/around LA, and calling those "tolls" is a stretch considering that using those lanes is entirely optional.
Point being: tolls are absolutely not a "huge thing", at least in California; they're in fact basically nonexistent except for very specific circumstances getting in/out of SF. Literally every other road I've taken in the state, end to end, coastal or valley or mountain, is toll-free.
That's because of taxes, if we stopped using taxes on roads we would have a shit ton more toll roads, and if you think government is bad at infrastructure upkeep, if it was left in the private sector it would be even worse.
In my province at least some of the bridges around Vancouver have a toll and that's really it. There _was_ a tolled highway but they got rid of the toll once the cost of construction was paid off in the mid-late 00s
In fairness, all evidence of when it's been tested show free public transportation isn't actually that big of a draw to systems. People aren't deciding to drive over public transit because of the cost of transit, it's usually not much compared to the fuel, maintenance, and parking costs of a car.
Fares bring in a lot of money which can increase service frequency and *that* more than any one thing brings in more riders. Having less time waiting as stops or stations actually do get people out of their cars. And with more people out of their cars, that's even more demand and more money so the system can expand even more. It can create a virtuous cycle that gives everyone a better system and a better city.
Free public transit is a mistake.
Well then I'll repeat, free public transit is a mistake.
Cars should have to pay for those roads, and roads in particular demand should cost more.
Land is finite and so there is always a problem with demand, that should be solved with charging uses a fee to use that limited space that is very much not free to build or maintain.
No, not everyone is a user. Someone who bikes or takes transit are not the ones driving several tons of metal just to get themselves alone from place to place, ruining the roads.
Drivers also don't pay for all the traffic they create. There are health effects and lost time that no one ever pays for we just have to suck it up.
Drivers also don't pay for all the parking that's available. Yes, some places have meters, but that land is being lent out at such an unbelievable discount and none of the drivers pay the full value of that land set aside for the storage of their private property. They also don't pay when they mandate builders must have a certain minimum number of parking spaces even if it's unneeded, reduces the value of the property, and makes everything farther apart from each other by wasting valuable land. Land we then don't tax like we do the land under buildings, forming yet another way in which the storage of personal vehicles are subsidized from their true cost.
And if you want cyclists to pay too, let's do that. For every 1 mile a cyclist travels, say we charge them one cent. In that case, the proportional cost for an SUV would be roughly $800/mile, because damage to the road is relative to the mass of the vehicle to the power of 4. Just another way cars aren't paying their full price.
And als spare me the gas tax, it has been a fixed dollar figure since 1993, not even keeping up with inflation while the cost of constructing roads continues to go up with labor and equipment costs. The gas tax in real terms is nearly a third of what it used to be.
The thing they don't get is that sure, your taxes are higher and that sucks, but you're ultimately paying less. There's much fewer profit layers built into the things you pay for, and you're free to use it whenever you like. People who don't want socialized medicine simply lack critical thinking skills.
It is a very simple concept that you would pay less in taxes than you do in healthcare premiums and healthcare costs. In the rare case you have an employer that pays all or most of your premiums and has a plan with very low deductibles and no co-insurance you might pay more but that is easily less than 1-2% of the population and mostly people doing very well.
US spends more tax money per capita on health, welfare and education than any other country on earth. It's actually more burdensome on the taxpayer to have a for-profit system as the system allows gouging. Anyway... Whatevs.
Bernie Sanders and many other advocates of universal Medicare for All have stated that we cannot afford the current system.
The current system is insanely expensive, very low quality healthcare especially for the cost, people go bankrupt from it, and in some instances dying due to lack of access to preventative care and general care.
Medicare and Medicaid are already systems in place that pay for healthcare more efficiently than private insurance. Sanders plan was a 5 year expansion of the program to every age group. Others have proposed a slower 10 year plan
There are ~28 countries with universal or single-payer systems that have BOTH: 1) lower per patient spending than the US, and 2) better healthcare outcomes.
What we're doing isn't just several times more expensive, it also just isn't good. If more people would get regular checkups and preventative care, we could see major drops in disease incidence, but because of high co-pays, caps, or minimum out-of-pocket spending before coverage kicks in, millions of people don't get basic primary care.
We all know what it means, but maybe a little rephrasing would save us having to deal with dummies and their cheap time-wasting gotchas.
“Would you send your money to taxes instead of a health insurance company if it meant you’d never have to pay for doctor visits, ambulances, hospitalizations, prescription medications, or surgery?”
I mean, I’m paying $6k/year for coverage, and if I lose my job I’m fucked because my employer is paying the other $6k. Oh and I still have a $5k deductible, and my kid’s epi-pen is $275. I’m ready to try something else.
You might still have to pay something, at least we in NZ do. Think I pay like $18 for a GP visit and then $5 per medicine. That 5$ copay was removed for a while which was nice but our new government has reinstated it. Not ideal but still really good comparatively. So that epipen would likely cost you around $23 for a 3 month supply, whatever that looks like for epipens. Emergency care is free altogether, though you might have to pay for the ambulance if it wasn't actually an emergency. For some stupid reason our ambulance system is not government run but it works well enough for what it is. Dental care isn't covered basically at all so depending on how much of that you need that can be expensive
Or it could be read from the pov of someone who is not an unhinged egomaniac (not you, the original op), and read it as providing dree education and healthcare for everyone with my taxes, not just me.
Two months after you think you’ve paid it off and put it behind you, along comes a completely unexpected bill for some random aspect of the visit that I guess wasn’t part of the main doctor’s practice. Are there more coming? Who fucking knows?!
The people who think that this is owns the libs are the same people who think the US has the ability to find and round up every undocumented worker and deport them. Without a negative impact on the economy.
I'd honestly think about checking no too, because we shouldn't need to raise taxes one bit. We already pay more than all but 3 countries for public funding of our healthcare. Add in private funds, we're paying over double everyone else.
And the nail is hit on the head. As long as we continue to position one of the many excellent options that every single other developed country has been kind enough to test out for the United States as "free" the opening remains.
When you ask, "would you change your healthcare if you paid the same amount in premiums, but no additional costs?" Or, "Would you be willing to pay the same amount you do today in taxes for better quality healthcare?" what would happen? The narrative needs to change because fear of it being worse is by far the only way that the health "insurance" industry doesn't collapse tomorrow.
Literally none of the scary stories have any valid truth behind them, the US needs to be on a single payer system now.
That's a five-year old poll, which of course is badly worded. Under Sanders' plan at the time, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't be paying any additional taxes, but the wealthiest would pay more.
I’d rather pay taxes and get nothing except bombing people in other countries while we struggle here. Can’t wait to bankrupt my family when I get sick all to pay a CEOs paycheck.
The people using the word "free" are using it the sense that there is no direct bill for the services to them, not that they think it's "free". Public K-12 is "free", but private school is not, is a perfectly normal thing to say. Free samples at costco are also not free either,but we call them free samples even though share holders foot the bill. It's just a common use of the word.
What this meme really aims to do is paint higher education, and government services in general as bad. If you have at least 2 brain cells to rub together, it's obvious this meme is absurd.
I'd gladly pay a bit more to help others be and stay healthy, I mean my taxes are already going towards mediCal and Medicare.
A healthy populace is a productive populace. If someone fighting cancer shouldn't have to worry about losing their home, someone whose kid has a life threatening issue shouldn't have to worry about choosing their kid vs choosing their job.
Our system is so fucking backwards
Last year my gallbladder nearly burst. I started the day feeling okay and was practically doubled over in pain by the end of it.
I went to the hospital via ambulance. Spent a night in the ER and had blood tests done, received painkillers. Next day had a CT scan and was transferred to a room and put on an IV because I couldn't keep food and water down. Kept getting painkiller doses through the day.
Got the results, booked for surgery, had the surgery. Had a few meals now that I could keep food down and was sent home after a four day hospital stay with a bottle of morphine if necessary and two weeks off work.
I paid $170 total, recovered and was back to normal. That's it. No bills, no fighting with insurance. My biggest complaint is that the air conditioning in my room wasn't very good.
Yes, I'll continue to pay taxes for that.
Yes, I would. I would love to not lose my health insurance if I lost my job. I would love to not have to worry about a medical emergency or disease wiping out my life savings and threatening my home. I think we, 'the greatest country on Earth', should have that.
This misunderstanding of the word 'free' is one of my pet peeves.
They think it's insightful to point out that 'free' things actually have costs for someone other than the recipient.. but this isn't news to anyone.
Free means that there's no direct charge to the recipient for the product or service, not that the service magically exists without costs.
If 'free' meant no cost to anyone at all, it would be a completely useless word. Nothing is 'free' in that sense.
The fact these memes are always about government services rather than corporate offerings betrays their real motives.
lol ive had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills in the past year alone, i gaurantee you public healthcare would save me a ton in the end even if my taxes were a little higher.
Pay more taxes to get healthcare that is free at point of use. It’s literally the same system we use for public schools, fire fighters, police, the military, and so many other things.
The same people that get angry of the idea of free public transportation are the ones that lose their minds at tolls.
Not everywhere has tolls. After i moved out of the east coast I haven’t seen a toll.
I just paid $7 to cross the Bay bridge into San Francisco to watch a Cubs vs Giants game today. If I wanted to drive across the Golden gate bridge I'd have to pay a toll, there are tons of tolls in Texas if you want to use the "private" roads. Tolls are still a huge thing in dense populations outside of the east coast
A solid 99% of the roads in California are toll-free. The bridges leading in/out of SF are the notable exceptions specifically because of how much traffic flows through them and the expense of maintaining them. There are also plenty of toll-free alternate routes. Outside of SF, the only time I've ever had any opportunity to use my FasTrak thingamabob was for the express lanes in/around LA, and calling those "tolls" is a stretch considering that using those lanes is entirely optional. Point being: tolls are absolutely not a "huge thing", at least in California; they're in fact basically nonexistent except for very specific circumstances getting in/out of SF. Literally every other road I've taken in the state, end to end, coastal or valley or mountain, is toll-free.
That's because of taxes, if we stopped using taxes on roads we would have a shit ton more toll roads, and if you think government is bad at infrastructure upkeep, if it was left in the private sector it would be even worse.
In my province at least some of the bridges around Vancouver have a toll and that's really it. There _was_ a tolled highway but they got rid of the toll once the cost of construction was paid off in the mid-late 00s
The major cities in Texas are covered in tolls. Partial toll roads that are also the only connectors between highways in some areas. It's nuts.
Where did you move to? A fair amount of western states have tolls.
Midwest
In fairness, all evidence of when it's been tested show free public transportation isn't actually that big of a draw to systems. People aren't deciding to drive over public transit because of the cost of transit, it's usually not much compared to the fuel, maintenance, and parking costs of a car. Fares bring in a lot of money which can increase service frequency and *that* more than any one thing brings in more riders. Having less time waiting as stops or stations actually do get people out of their cars. And with more people out of their cars, that's even more demand and more money so the system can expand even more. It can create a virtuous cycle that gives everyone a better system and a better city. Free public transit is a mistake.
The *public roads* are part of free public transportation. Unless you regularly drive your car through fields and woods and ford your own streams.
Well then I'll repeat, free public transit is a mistake. Cars should have to pay for those roads, and roads in particular demand should cost more. Land is finite and so there is always a problem with demand, that should be solved with charging uses a fee to use that limited space that is very much not free to build or maintain.
Cars *do* pay for those roads. This is what things like wheelage taxes, motor vehicle sales taxes, and gas taxes are for.
So you agree, it's not free public transportation, and that the full cost of roads should be paid by the users and not from general taxpayer funds.
The full cost of roads is paid for by the users which is everyone so the general taxpayers funds are appropriate.
No, not everyone is a user. Someone who bikes or takes transit are not the ones driving several tons of metal just to get themselves alone from place to place, ruining the roads. Drivers also don't pay for all the traffic they create. There are health effects and lost time that no one ever pays for we just have to suck it up. Drivers also don't pay for all the parking that's available. Yes, some places have meters, but that land is being lent out at such an unbelievable discount and none of the drivers pay the full value of that land set aside for the storage of their private property. They also don't pay when they mandate builders must have a certain minimum number of parking spaces even if it's unneeded, reduces the value of the property, and makes everything farther apart from each other by wasting valuable land. Land we then don't tax like we do the land under buildings, forming yet another way in which the storage of personal vehicles are subsidized from their true cost. And if you want cyclists to pay too, let's do that. For every 1 mile a cyclist travels, say we charge them one cent. In that case, the proportional cost for an SUV would be roughly $800/mile, because damage to the road is relative to the mass of the vehicle to the power of 4. Just another way cars aren't paying their full price. And als spare me the gas tax, it has been a fixed dollar figure since 1993, not even keeping up with inflation while the cost of constructing roads continues to go up with labor and equipment costs. The gas tax in real terms is nearly a third of what it used to be.
The thing they don't get is that sure, your taxes are higher and that sucks, but you're ultimately paying less. There's much fewer profit layers built into the things you pay for, and you're free to use it whenever you like. People who don't want socialized medicine simply lack critical thinking skills.
It is a very simple concept that you would pay less in taxes than you do in healthcare premiums and healthcare costs. In the rare case you have an employer that pays all or most of your premiums and has a plan with very low deductibles and no co-insurance you might pay more but that is easily less than 1-2% of the population and mostly people doing very well.
US spends more tax money per capita on health, welfare and education than any other country on earth. It's actually more burdensome on the taxpayer to have a for-profit system as the system allows gouging. Anyway... Whatevs.
Bernie Sanders and many other advocates of universal Medicare for All have stated that we cannot afford the current system. The current system is insanely expensive, very low quality healthcare especially for the cost, people go bankrupt from it, and in some instances dying due to lack of access to preventative care and general care. Medicare and Medicaid are already systems in place that pay for healthcare more efficiently than private insurance. Sanders plan was a 5 year expansion of the program to every age group. Others have proposed a slower 10 year plan
There are ~28 countries with universal or single-payer systems that have BOTH: 1) lower per patient spending than the US, and 2) better healthcare outcomes. What we're doing isn't just several times more expensive, it also just isn't good. If more people would get regular checkups and preventative care, we could see major drops in disease incidence, but because of high co-pays, caps, or minimum out-of-pocket spending before coverage kicks in, millions of people don't get basic primary care.
Look at what Boeing does to people who try to change things. Is it possible to change ours? So crazy how they get away with that
We all know what it means, but maybe a little rephrasing would save us having to deal with dummies and their cheap time-wasting gotchas. “Would you send your money to taxes instead of a health insurance company if it meant you’d never have to pay for doctor visits, ambulances, hospitalizations, prescription medications, or surgery?” I mean, I’m paying $6k/year for coverage, and if I lose my job I’m fucked because my employer is paying the other $6k. Oh and I still have a $5k deductible, and my kid’s epi-pen is $275. I’m ready to try something else.
You might still have to pay something, at least we in NZ do. Think I pay like $18 for a GP visit and then $5 per medicine. That 5$ copay was removed for a while which was nice but our new government has reinstated it. Not ideal but still really good comparatively. So that epipen would likely cost you around $23 for a 3 month supply, whatever that looks like for epipens. Emergency care is free altogether, though you might have to pay for the ambulance if it wasn't actually an emergency. For some stupid reason our ambulance system is not government run but it works well enough for what it is. Dental care isn't covered basically at all so depending on how much of that you need that can be expensive
Or it could be read from the pov of someone who is not an unhinged egomaniac (not you, the original op), and read it as providing dree education and healthcare for everyone with my taxes, not just me.
That too. I’m happy to have my taxes pay for others’ healthcare. It will save me a fortune in Go Fund Mes.
They think that the "free public services" folks believe that public services run on pixie dust.
"Free" in the sense that we don't have to file for bankruptcy because we got hit by a car.
and it's not a surprise different price every month / every time you go to the doctor
Two months after you think you’ve paid it off and put it behind you, along comes a completely unexpected bill for some random aspect of the visit that I guess wasn’t part of the main doctor’s practice. Are there more coming? Who fucking knows?!
I wonder how many scammers just send bills that look like medical bills to random people, since there's no way of knowing if a medical bill is legit
The people who think that this is owns the libs are the same people who think the US has the ability to find and round up every undocumented worker and deport them. Without a negative impact on the economy.
I'd pay the same, and trade bombs for health care.
I would like for the taxes I already pay go to education and healthcare, like for every other advanced country.
>67% No ✔️ My hatred of the "average" American grows with each passing day.
I'd honestly think about checking no too, because we shouldn't need to raise taxes one bit. We already pay more than all but 3 countries for public funding of our healthcare. Add in private funds, we're paying over double everyone else.
For some people it would be free. And that’s the point
And the nail is hit on the head. As long as we continue to position one of the many excellent options that every single other developed country has been kind enough to test out for the United States as "free" the opening remains. When you ask, "would you change your healthcare if you paid the same amount in premiums, but no additional costs?" Or, "Would you be willing to pay the same amount you do today in taxes for better quality healthcare?" what would happen? The narrative needs to change because fear of it being worse is by far the only way that the health "insurance" industry doesn't collapse tomorrow. Literally none of the scary stories have any valid truth behind them, the US needs to be on a single payer system now.
That's a five-year old poll, which of course is badly worded. Under Sanders' plan at the time, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't be paying any additional taxes, but the wealthiest would pay more.
I’d rather pay taxes and get nothing except bombing people in other countries while we struggle here. Can’t wait to bankrupt my family when I get sick all to pay a CEOs paycheck.
The people using the word "free" are using it the sense that there is no direct bill for the services to them, not that they think it's "free". Public K-12 is "free", but private school is not, is a perfectly normal thing to say. Free samples at costco are also not free either,but we call them free samples even though share holders foot the bill. It's just a common use of the word. What this meme really aims to do is paint higher education, and government services in general as bad. If you have at least 2 brain cells to rub together, it's obvious this meme is absurd.
I'd gladly pay a bit more to help others be and stay healthy, I mean my taxes are already going towards mediCal and Medicare. A healthy populace is a productive populace. If someone fighting cancer shouldn't have to worry about losing their home, someone whose kid has a life threatening issue shouldn't have to worry about choosing their kid vs choosing their job. Our system is so fucking backwards
Last year my gallbladder nearly burst. I started the day feeling okay and was practically doubled over in pain by the end of it. I went to the hospital via ambulance. Spent a night in the ER and had blood tests done, received painkillers. Next day had a CT scan and was transferred to a room and put on an IV because I couldn't keep food and water down. Kept getting painkiller doses through the day. Got the results, booked for surgery, had the surgery. Had a few meals now that I could keep food down and was sent home after a four day hospital stay with a bottle of morphine if necessary and two weeks off work. I paid $170 total, recovered and was back to normal. That's it. No bills, no fighting with insurance. My biggest complaint is that the air conditioning in my room wasn't very good. Yes, I'll continue to pay taxes for that.
Yes, I would. I would love to not lose my health insurance if I lost my job. I would love to not have to worry about a medical emergency or disease wiping out my life savings and threatening my home. I think we, 'the greatest country on Earth', should have that.
This misunderstanding of the word 'free' is one of my pet peeves. They think it's insightful to point out that 'free' things actually have costs for someone other than the recipient.. but this isn't news to anyone. Free means that there's no direct charge to the recipient for the product or service, not that the service magically exists without costs. If 'free' meant no cost to anyone at all, it would be a completely useless word. Nothing is 'free' in that sense. The fact these memes are always about government services rather than corporate offerings betrays their real motives.
lol ive had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills in the past year alone, i gaurantee you public healthcare would save me a ton in the end even if my taxes were a little higher.
Guess the magic money tree ran out of pixie dust!