You might note that insurance is incredibly bad at paying for emergency room bills, even in one's they contract with (in network), because there's no incentive/requirement for the doctors to be under contract, so their bills are rarely covered at all, just like all the other departments in the hospital the emergency room doctors might use to treat you. That means you can't be an informed consumer of insurance, the hospital won't tell you what's covered and what's not until after they bill you.

A simple google search shows that lawsuits and insurance against them make up 2-2.5% of healthcare costs, health insurance, at least 20% . You don't even break even with tort reform (it's not free) but you make it FAR more dangerous by removing any incentives for doctors to follow good practices instead of the fastest most profitable treatments that make more money with no worry if it kills or mains you through malpractice, but you save >20% removing the insurance industry and only lose red tape and roadblocks against any expensive treatments one might need to live.

Um, deductibles are way up from 100%? The uninsured had a 100% deductible, the insured had a steadily rising deductible before the ACA. It's true, cost and deductible have gone up....just as they have since the insurance industry began.
The true fix is single payer, where you remove the useless insurance industry that does nothing but raise cost and get in the way of treatment (all the talk of death panels back in the day, what do you think insurance adjusters that deny treatment are?). Without the insurance industry we instantly save 10-20% on healthcare, remove numerous roadblocks to treatment, and offer everyone good healthcare, saving more by keeping people healthier. Yes, some people's taxes would rise, others not, but overall it would be a HUGE savings that only costs us red tape.

Isn't all this just one aspect of the healthcare problem in the US?

The flip side (from my understanding) is that healthcare costs in the US are ridiculously high, and this is at least partially due to expensive malpractice suits (and insurance from that).

I'm not sure why (or even if) this is the case in the US compared to other countries, but surely it's something worth looking at?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Would be crazy if Trump plan is single payer healthcare ala expansion of Medicare. But nah, probably not - will be savings accounts ... and awful.

Poor bastards are going to get screwed.
Everyone in this video will die as a result of their Trump vote.
Clinton, for all her faults, desperately tried to put through real healthcare reform in the 90's. Bill told her to stop because it was haemmoraging them votes.
Why didn't she run on that, at least in these places?

Over 50% of docs in Canada are primary care. In the USA, it's around 30%. The problem is too many specialists in the USA doing too many procedures and not enough docs doing basic care. Why? Thank Medicare, which continues to reimburse very highly specialists, especially when doing procedures, and not so much pediatricians, family practice, etc. Who can blame medical students for being specialists when the average USA debt after med school is $300k. Oh, but the USA welcomes foreign trained docs, who were trained at no expense to them because other countries' governments pay for their medical training (mostly). This "shortage" problem can be easily fixed: Cut reimbursements for procedures INCLUDING those done in hospitals (seen the incomes of hospital CEO's lately?), raise those for primary care visits. Is that what Obama and buddies are doing? Hell, no. MACRA, the biggest looming disaster for the poor, old and sick is coming. Here, low paid primary care docs (what few there are) will no longer be paid per visit but by how well their patients do. What will happen? In order to be paid, docs will only see (you can see this, right?) the healthy, the young, and the rich (who can pay for their medications) . . . and the mentally competent, because crazy/stupid people won't follow instructions and will just have bad outcomes (means no money). Yup, Medicare and Obamarama have created the biggest healthcare tar pit in the world, and your all heading toward it full speed.

I'm sorry, but there are some things that just aren't up for discussion.

If you want to discuss healthcare or taxes or foreign policy or corruption or infrastructure or any one of a hundred different issues... that's fine. We had those debates in the last few elections and sometimes there were outcomes I agreed with, sometimes not.

But on topics like racism, sexism and homophobia, liberals HAVE won the culture war AND WE SHOULD STOP FUCKING APOLOGISING FOR IT.

And that's the problem with Trump. You can't have a discussion with him or his supporters because you can't get past the fundamental problems outlined above. There is a minimum level of decency and knowledge required for a discussion, and Trump fails to meet that.

"Not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist or a sexist"... so fucking what? Who gives a shit if they are or aren't? They put one in the goddamn Whitehouse.

I don't like Trump. Yet with all that's known about Hillary's corruption, there is no way I could vote for her in good conscience. The democratic party had the opportunity to push forward a fantastic candidate with a spotless record in his public service. Instead, they used backroom deals and underhanded means to thwart democracy. I see no reason to reward such behavior.

As president, Hillary would likely get one or two bills passed improving some kind of social service-improved access to healthcare, or healthy foods or something like that. And the rest of her time will be devoted to enhancing the corporatist agendas of her owners. She is a puppet to those donors.

If I lived the the US (and I don't) I would be deciding between Stein and Johnson.

I see no reason to reward Hillary's corruption with a mandate.

I love Bill, but I will be happy when this election is over and I don't have to listen to any more of this sanctimonious crap about how not voting for Hillary is a vote for Trump.
Sometimes evil is loud and in your face like Trump, both publicly and in private I suspect Trump is pretty evil, or at least an Olympic class asshole.
Hillary on the other hand is I suspect basically good and is sincere in her desire to help others, but she is still bound by our corrupt political system. She still accepts money from Wall Street and big business and they will expect something in return for those millions. Namely watered down regulation and legislation, and a tax code with more holes than a sieve.
They're paying to continue the status quo, and the status quo for the rest of us means stagnant wages and housing, healthcare and education costs at a rate that would leave the Voyager 1 probe in the dust.

I can't really disagree with that, but it has to be said that the issues that are not brought up are distinctly non-partisan--that is, the issues that are not brought up are the ones that are disadvantageous to both parties.

For instance, no one talks about gerrymandering anymore. It clearly benefits both parties, but it is destroying our political system by creating disincentives to working across the aisle with the other party.

In my view, there are three major structural reforms in the US government that need to be addressed: 1) Gerrymandering 2) Campaign finance and 3) regulatory capture. Of these three, only the second one is addressed by either candidate, but not in a satisfying way.

We need major reforms in healthcare and economic wealth distribution, and we need to prepare ourselves for certain worldwide economic changes due to technological innovation and globalization, but until we deal with those three major issues, we won't be able to make any headway.

And that's why religion and healthcare don't mix.
Or at least shouldn't.
Call me insane but when it comers to matters of female healthcare, you know, the pussy stuff, men shouldn't be allowed to be involved unless they are medical doctors. If there's any legislative decision involving reproductive organs that aren't male to be made, only women should be allowed to make any decision.

As a Canadian, every point, from both candidates, feels strange to me. It was as if the discussion was more about money (and taxes) than healthcare.

@MilkmanDan, good points.

I do think there's a difference between "this plan is politically unfeasible" (healthcare, free public university) and "this plan is not actually possible under the rules of government" (forgiving student debt through quantitative easing).

And ultimately, that's why I think Hillary is the lesser of 4 evils. She might be a political insider, but she's at least vaguely realistic.

Basically, you can choose from
- idiot, evil and frankly repugnant (guess who?)
- dopey with a side of some pretty terrible policies (Johnson)
- well meaning, but without a clue of how government works (Stein)
or...
Frank Underwood

I say, "Make America Work!"
-

As great as John Oliver is, he spent more time there mocking them over petty things as opposed to really concentrating on the (admittedly real) flaws in their platforms.

OK, Stein's "music" is cringeworthy. And Johnson's "skirt" comment is creepy and ill advised, but clearly meant in a metaphorical way.

It kinda bothers me when people (not just Oliver) do it to Trump and Clinton also. Like Trump having "tiny hands", or bringing up cankles or pantsuits for Clinton.

All of those things can be funny, a few times. But bringing them up constantly makes it seem like we have nothing of actual substance to criticize them for -- which is clearly not the case.


He did bring up legitimate concerns for some of Stein and Johnson's signature platforms. In both cases, that criticism boiled down to "you can't actually do that", as in the president doesn't actually have the power to implement the policy that they want. That's fair ... BUT, pretty much every single politician ever makes campaign promises that they don't actually have the power to implement. You pretty much have to if you want to get elected.

That doesn't mean that setting those policies as goals can't have value. Obama wanted a much more thorough overhaul of healthcare and insurance, but he didn't have the power to make it happen unilaterally. So we ended up with a watered-down version of Obamacare after the Republicans in the legislature did everything they could to obstruct it. But still, even though it isn't exactly what Obama originally had in mind, there are plenty of people now with some health coverage who had none before. That's a tangible positive result.

Trump will never build his wall, even if he ends up in the White House (not likely). I offer no defense for this idiotic idea, but it is at least possible for massive public works projects to be used to create jobs, improve infrastructure, and have other tangible positive effects; like FDR's New Deal.

Hillary would face lots of obstruction if she attempts to implement her plan to let people attend public universities for free. Probably more than Obama did on Obamacare. But trying to do something to make post-secondary education more available to everyone is a good goal. Even if the cynic in me thinks she only produced this "plan" as a way to try to win support of Sanders voters.

Johnson couldn't eliminate income tax, or abolish all those departments he mentioned. But he could rein in a lot of spending that the Executive branch does have power over. That could be a good thing in many cases (I'd be happy to see the TSA eliminated and military spending drastically reduced), but there are also a lot of potential problems. See Kansas transformation to "Brownbackistan" as a result of Sam Brownback's drastic tax cuts.

And Stein couldn't forgive student loan debt for this "entire generation". But just like Clinton's proposal to make public universities free, there is potential value to be found in just trying to do something about the insane problems with our university system. Hillary is a savvy enough politician to know not to say too much about her plan, which would open it up to scrutiny and criticism. Stein stepped into that by revealing her political inexperience, but I tend to trust that she does actually want to do something as opposed to Hillary just saying what she needs to say to get more votes.

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