Where do you think these subsidies for college and single payer money will come from? I'd rather have more money in my paycheck at the end of the month and let me spend it as I wish. I don't want the Government deciding for me. If someone can't afford college I'm sorry but I don't want to pay for it.
The countries that you claim have better health care don't have nearly the population that we do. You can't discount that.
I'm perfectly well aware of how public funding works. When we spend money collectively on certain things, it is spent more efficiently because we have greater bargaining power than we would have as individuals. The problem with your philosophy, is that nobody would ever want to pay taxes for anything. That's why they're mandatory. Because if they weren't we wouldn't never collect a dime.
You are already paying for people to go to college that can't afford it. But you're paying a lot more (it isn't really even close) to subsidize large multinational corporations like Walmart who won't pay their workers a living wage, and use loopholes to avoid paying taxes. Do you seriously believe these companies need the tax breaks? Do they need the federal government to give their workers food stamps because they just can't afford to pay them any more than 7 bucks an hour?
I find it hilarious that people will complain about paying for poor people going to college, while not saying a word about large corporations get BILLIONS of dollars in tax breaks. You don't say a word about the bloated defense contracts that result in shopping mall sized parking lots full of unused equipment that will never see battle. Why bother complaining about the federal government using our tax dollars to line the pockets of billionaires when there might be some poor kid somewhere getting help with his college tuition?...
Here again, I will advocate for my A La Carte tax plan - the individual gets to decide where his personal tax dollars go (by percentages). It would clearly illustrate what tax-paying Americans want to support and what they don't want to support. But that's obviously a pipe dream. So instead I'll beat the drum for the Fair Tax plan.
It's not just the population - as
@uncboy10 will probably come back with citizen/doctor ratio. But it's more about the diversity of our country versus the diversity of others. And I'm not talking about race/religion, etc. I'm talking about diversity in values and way of life.
And I'm the immature millennial? You seriously believe that the population at large is capable of making the right decisions as to how to our public money should be spent? Seriously? And you don't think people would choose to spend it on things that will directly benefit them... i.e health care or tuition free college? As opposed to military spending, or infrastructure investment?
What aspect of our diversity do you think would make it harder to implement single payer? Valuing healthcare is pretty common across cultures, I'm confused as to what you're getting at here. Unless you're saying that different ways of life in turn manifest different health problems, therefore certain segments of the population would disproportionately spend more on health care than the rest of the population. There are certainly specific examples, such as black men being on average more salt sensitive, but this stuff largely comes out in the wash as pretty much every ethnic group has something that disproportionately affects them.
I would be fine if this were the case, but it's not. My taxes would go to pay for the health services that the whole population would require. And the whole population's taxes would go to pay for the health services that I would require.
What's wrong with letting people pay for their own healthcare as they see fit - as opposed to making everyone pay for each other's healthcare? Should we all start paying a milk tax so that we can all start paying for each other's milk every week too? Seems like those who are lactose intolerant would get a raw deal there.
Because average people can't afford healthcare when private companies are allowed to gauge people. Private business will charge as much as the market will bear, and when someone's life is on the line, they don't have a damn choice even if an operation is going to bankrupt them. The market is artificially inflated because of the nature of the product. Some percentage of the population will pay any price they can afford, because the alternative is often death.
Sure, some people may pay less in taxes than you do, some people will also use less services than you. For example, I would be paying taxes into single payer, but I haven't been to a Dr. since the last time I got a physical for college.
This gets to the real problem. Some people are ideologically opposed to any amount of their money ever being spent on other people. Ultimately, if you're paying less than you were for health insurance, and you're getting better care, then why would you care about anything else? You pay your taxes, and in exchange you receive free healthcare when you need it.
