A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Quote:Every advanced country mandates some form of paid leave for new mothers, typically three or four months — every country, that is, except America, which offers no maternity leave at all.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
But you're a loser in life, and you'll never be able to grasp what it means to be working from facts.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
Most advanced countries devote substantial sums to benefits for families with children; in Europe these benefits average between 2 and 3 percent of G.D.P. The corresponding number for the United States is 0.6 percent of G.D.P.
Even where the United States does help children, the quality of that help tends to be poor. There have been many comparisons between French and American school lunches: French schoolchildren are taught to eat healthy meals; American children are basically treated as a disposal site for farm surpluses.
What’s especially striking is the contrast between the way we treat our children and the way we treat our senior citizens. Social Security isn’t all that generous — there’s a good case for expanding it — but it doesn’t compare too badly with other countries’ retirement systems. Medicare actually spends lavishly compared with single-payer systems elsewhere.
So America’s refusal to help children isn’t part of a broad opposition to government programs; we single out children for especially harsh treatment. It’s probably too much to claim that helping children pays for itself. But it surely comes a lot closer to doing so than tax cuts for the rich.
So we should be talking a lot more about helping America’s children. Why aren’t we?
At least part of the blame rests with Bernie Sanders, who made Medicare for All both a progressive purity test and a bright shiny object chased by the news media at the expense of other policies that are far more likely to become law.
Whoever becomes the Democratic nominee, I hope he or she will give our nation’s shameful treatment of children the attention it deserves.
More at www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/opinion/children-america.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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THAT THE POOR have any rights at all in this country is largely due to the passage, in 1935, of the Social Security Act. At the time, all across America, state and local relief programs had gone bankrupt. New York City didn’t even have such a program. The 1897 City Charter forbade it.
Essentially, Roosevelt’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal created two primary entitlements. First, the Social Security Act gave states access to unlimited matching federal funds. And then, in 1950, the federal government granted individuals entitlement status, depriving states and cities of the power to deny the needy.
The Social Security Act contained deep flaws. It allowed localities to establish different benefit levels, which could never be standardized by the federal government. This crazy-quilt pattern kept the U.S. from mandating welfare as a national program, the way European nations do. And the provisions for unemployment compensation — at the urging of Southern congressmen — left out blacks by exempting maids and farm workers. But for all its defects, the Social Security Act did grant poor people entitlement status. Local governments can’t simply turn them away with the explanation, “That’s all folks, the money’s run out.” If that happens, officials are obligated to raise more.
More at www.villagevoice.com/2020/01/14/republican-nation-the-new-poor-laws/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The 2020s were pretty well predicted by Octavia E. Butler and other science fiction authors. The debate over climate change, the eroding of workers’ rights, the rise of the private prison industry, and the media’s increasing refusal to talk about all of these in favor of focusing on soundbite propaganda and celebrity news.
More at https://onezero.medium.com/how-science-fiction-imagined-the-2020s-f8e9
8a5bc729
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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“What is the Most Useful Idea in Economics?”
https://angrybearblog.com/2020/01/what-is-the-most-useful-idea-in-econ
omics.html
On January 18, 1933, Arthur Dahlberg appeared before a Senate subcommittee to give testimony on the thirty-hour work week bill. A small part of his testimony:
This capitalistic economy of ours is a bargaining economy. It is the same animal whether labor return is 90 per cent of the national income or 60, and the capital return 10 or 40 per cent. (43% in 2019 www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/employment-and-growth/a-new-look-at
-the-declining-labor-share-of-income-in-the-united-states )
The injection of machinery has diverted labor effort, has generated positions which undermine the bargaining power of workers in their dickering with employers.
During the course of the 1920s, for instance, when machinery came in very rapidly, they were unable to bargain to themselves a share of the national income commensurate with that going to the employer. The employers got most of the benefits from the injection of labor-saving machinery.
I also want to point out another effect generated, slow-moving effect, generated by this injection of labor-saving machinery. The very nature of the capitalistic process is this: that the recipients of claims to wealth must pour them back either in buying commodities or in investment in plant or stock. We got unemployment and a devitalized behavior.
If I was an employer and employed 100 men, and am spending, either for commodities, whatever they are, or for new plant, if I spend immediately the system clicks along without breakdown, but if I then inject, we will say, labor-saving machinery, which permits me to lay off 50 men, those men are unemployed until I utilize my increased profit derived from the injection of that machinery in buying other commodities for myself, or in building new plants, employing men to put up more brick.
More at https://angrybearblog.com/2020/01/what-is-the-most-useful-idea-in-econ
omics.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Immunotherapy — which expanded into the market in 2015 — had only limited effects on the drop in overall cancer mortality.
Much bigger drops in US cancer mortality would come from a fairer society. The American Cancer Society estimates that, in 2014, 59% of lung-cancer deaths observed in people aged 25–74 could have been averted by eliminating socio-economic disparities.
The data do make it clear that the majority of our most effective solutions will be found outside the cabinet of cutting-edge medicines.
That means we need to create strategies to treat hypertension, end the use of tobacco products, dismantle policies that promote obesity and use of environmental carcinogens, encourage physical activity and reduce levels of carcinogens in the environment. More effective drugs and sophisticated treatments that work would be nice. But what we really need is that the person being treated did not have cancer at all.
Our public policy is a series of self-inflicted wounds. The current US administration has allowed loopholes that let the known carcinogen asbestos remain in use. It has failed to improve standards for airborne particulate pollution, clearly linked to higher rates of diseases and death. It reversed a decision to ban a pesticide, chlorpyrifos, associated with impaired childhood brain development, and atrazine, linked to leukaemia.
We, as a society, are not doing what it takes to maximize our health. We are prioritizing medications that cost US$100,000 a year or more, and at the same time are loosening restrictions on environmental pollution. Both of these policies have one thing in common: they enhance corporate profits. It will take a realignment of public policy to make sure that we pursue systems that instead prioritize health.
More at www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00116-2
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Immunotherapy — which expanded into the market in 2015 — had only limited effects on the drop in overall cancer mortality.
Much bigger drops in US cancer mortality would come from a fairer society. The American Cancer Society estimates that, in 2014, 59% of lung-cancer deaths observed in people aged 25–74 could have been averted by eliminating socio-economic disparities.
The data do make it clear that the majority of our most effective solutions will be found outside the cabinet of cutting-edge medicines.
That means we need to create strategies to treat hypertension, end the use of tobacco products, dismantle policies that promote obesity and use of environmental carcinogens, encourage physical activity and reduce levels of carcinogens in the environment. More effective drugs and sophisticated treatments that work would be nice. But what we really need is that the person being treated did not have cancer at all.
Our public policy is a series of self-inflicted wounds. The current US administration has allowed loopholes that let the known carcinogen asbestos remain in use. It has failed to improve standards for airborne particulate pollution, clearly linked to higher rates of diseases and death. It reversed a decision to ban a pesticide, chlorpyrifos, associated with impaired childhood brain development, and atrazine, linked to leukaemia.
We, as a society, are not doing what it takes to maximize our health. We are prioritizing medications that cost US$100,000 a year or more, and at the same time are loosening restrictions on environmental pollution. Both of these policies have one thing in common: they enhance corporate profits. It will take a realignment of public policy to make sure that we pursue systems that instead prioritize health.
More at www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00116-2
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
It's a nice idea, but it's never going to happen.
This article only shows the negatives on one side of the equation. It gives all the blame to those making money off of the victims and zero blame to the victims themselves.
I smoke. I enjoy smoking. I've made a life for myself where I do a lot of self destructive things. As I've gotten older, I've been doing the best that I can to slowly remove those things from my life. I can't tell you what it would be like to be gluttonous to the point that you can barely get your ass out of bed, or how it feels to constantly be broke and to have run out of friends and family to bail you out because of your crippling gambling addiction, etc... but I can empathize with them because of my own vices, past and present.
The only way to do what this article states is to make things illegal and give fines that is going to piss a whole lot of people off (and we already know doesn't work with alcohol prohibition, taxing cigarettes to the point that poor people have to take payday loans to buy them individually, and all those shiny new pot shops opening up all around the country), or to become a tyrannical government that will harshly punish people with jail time or even death for doing things that it doesn't feel are appropriate.
Anything is possible with sufficient negative stimuli.
We all know about my vices here. What are yours? What do you enjoy doing to the point of compulsion that you try your best to hide from all of those Texas Republicans you've surrounded yourself with?
If the answer is nothing, you're lying.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Immunotherapy — which expanded into the market in 2015 — had only limited effects on the drop in overall cancer mortality.
Much bigger drops in US cancer mortality would come from a fairer society. The American Cancer Society estimates that, in 2014, 59% of lung-cancer deaths observed in people aged 25–74 could have been averted by eliminating socio-economic disparities.
The data do make it clear that the majority of our most effective solutions will be found outside the cabinet of cutting-edge medicines.
That means we need to create strategies to treat hypertension, end the use of tobacco products, dismantle policies that promote obesity and use of environmental carcinogens, encourage physical activity and reduce levels of carcinogens in the environment. More effective drugs and sophisticated treatments that work would be nice. But what we really need is that the person being treated did not have cancer at all.
Our public policy is a series of self-inflicted wounds. The current US administration has allowed loopholes that let the known carcinogen asbestos remain in use. It has failed to improve standards for airborne particulate pollution, clearly linked to higher rates of diseases and death. It reversed a decision to ban a pesticide, chlorpyrifos, associated with impaired childhood brain development, and atrazine, linked to leukaemia.
We, as a society, are not doing what it takes to maximize our health. We are prioritizing medications that cost US$100,000 a year or more, and at the same time are loosening restrictions on environmental pollution. Both of these policies have one thing in common: they enhance corporate profits. It will take a realignment of public policy to make sure that we pursue systems that instead prioritize health.
More at www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00116-2
Even with lower rates, all you have to do is drive around any large municipality and you'll see just how profitable the field is overall. Many of the new hospital wings or specialty HC buildings in my area are devoted to treating and researching cancer. I'm sure a fair portion of the vast amount money raised for fighting cancer goes toward Prevention and Elimination programs, but the real money is made with Treatment. And guess what? You can't treat the disease without patients. Just saying. Do hospitals really want to end cancer? It would be very interesting to see the numbers and listen to related conversations at after work cocktail parties. They couldn't just shutter new wings, could they? It's a twisted symbiotic relationship.
However... before it gets too dark... if Treatment is good enough it is perhaps the closest we can reasonably get to eliminating it by making it a single digit % threat.
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The Netherlands has universal health insurance — and it’s all private
Why the Dutch ended up with private health insurance for everybody
Democrats in the United States who support Medicare-for-all want to take a fractured and stratified health care system and make it more unified and equitable through nationalized health insurance.
The Netherlands saw the same problems in the mid-2000s, but they came up with a different fix.
Before then, the country had a two-tiered health care system: About two-thirds of the country was covered by a social health insurance program, and the remaining third was covered by private insurance. Disparities developed between the two tiers; wealthier people got better access to doctors with their private coverage.
By 2006, the two-tiered system teetered on the brink. Health care was becoming very expensive for the middle class, who faced high out-of-pocket costs. Yet private insurance was more attractive to doctors, because it paid better, than the public program that was covering people with lower incomes. And about 2 percent of the population still lacked insurance. (8.5% were uninsured in the US during 2018.
https://khn.org/news/number-of-americans-without-insurance-rises-in-20
18/ )
So the Dutch decided to overhaul their health insurance. The ruling center-right government compromised on a program to achieve universal coverage, which both sides agreed was essential, without abandoning the private market.
“There was a window of opportunity. The old system had really hit a wall,” Patrick Jeurissen, a health policy professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen, told me.
The average cost to a Dutch citizen for health insurance is about 1,400 euros, or $1,615, annually. The annual deductible is today capped at €385 ($429) . . . More precisely: In 2019, basic health insurance in the Netherlands would on average cost 1,453 euros per year per person.
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/17/21046874/netherlands-univers
al-health-insurance-private
=====================
I was not sure I believed those low, low costs. I looked it up. This is what I found:
Basic health insurance in the Netherlands (basisverzekering)
www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/insurances-netherlands/dutch-health-insuran
ce
Basic health insurance costs around 100 euros per month and covers:
Appointments with your doctor (huisarts)
Stays at the hospital, surgery and emergency treatment (ziekenhuis)
Ambulance services and patient transport (ambulancevervoer)
Medicine prescriptions (medicijnen)
Blood tests (bloedonderzoek)
Dental care for children under 18 years (tandarts)
Limited dental care for adults over 18, restricted to dental surgery, dental x-rays
Mental health care (geestelijke gezondheidszorg)
Appointments with medical specialists such as dermatologists, allergists or internal specialists (medisch specialist)
Pregnancy, birth care and midwifery services (zwangerschaps- en geboortezorg)
Maternity care (kraamzorg)
Handicapped care (gehandicaptenzorg)
Aged care (ouderenzorg)
Nursing on location (wijkverpleging)
Some therapeutic services such as speech therapy, occupational therapy and diet advice
Physiotherapy (fysiotherapie) for chronic disorders, covered from the 21st treatment onwards
More at www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/insurances-netherlands/dutch-health-insuran
ce
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Interestingly, one of those pop=up articles was about Australian health care, which is also a "mixed" system: There is universal government health care, but wealthier are encouraged to buy private insurance thru penalties. Like the Dutch system, tho, the private healthcare system is in a death-spiral: The private care, in private hospitals with private doctors, is more personalized and "nicer" but it is so much more expensive that younger healthier people are opting out, leaving older sicker people in privaye care which is becoming ever-more expensive.
In the Australian mileu, it looks as if the choice will be for public healthcare.
The article that you posted, SECOND, seems to confirm the general trend that private insurance ultimately becomes too expensive.
Quote:
Dutch patients face higher financial barriers to care than their peers in more socialized systems, and spending has accelerated in recent years, trends the critics blame on the privatized market.
Still, for now, the indicators seem undeniable...
The Dutch had to make several important adjustments in order to force the continued existence of private insurance.
The first is that everyone is absolutely mandated to buy, there's no such thing as opting out.
The second is that the public system had to disappear, since private healthcare was being outcompeted, cost-wise, by the public system. No more Medicare!
Aside from individual purchases (how would the USA force the indigent and working poor to pay for insurance premiums? Obviously the Dutch have far better safety net than we do) employers and the government also kick into the sytem.
INSURERS GENERALLY OPERATE AS NONPROFITS.
SO DO HOSPITALS (NONPROFIT).
There is according to their doctors a lot of red tape and administrative overhead. Services operate under price controls. So in reality, it's not as if "private healthcare" was saved en-masse, since both for-profit insurers and big hospital corporations would become a thing of the past. In reality, it's the doctors, specialists and nurses who're privatized.
They do one specific thing that saves money: They make housecalls.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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Quote:By design, the US Senate will not allow adjustments, neither important nor unimportant.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The Dutch had to make several important adjustments in order to force the continued existence of private insurance.
Imagine the US switched over to the Netherlands’ healthcare system, and expenditures going from 17.7% of GNP in America to 12.9% of GNP in the Netherlands. That is a $1 trillion change. EVER YEAR FOREVER. The people who are overcharging by $1 trillion per year will fight it and win in the Senate to keep it as it is. A trillion dollars, every year, is more than enough motivation to stop anything in the Senate. As luck would have it, the Netherlands has nothing comparable to the US Senate.
In 2018, the total health expenditure made up 12.9 percent of total GDP in the Netherlands.
www.statista.com/statistics/576000/total-health-expenditure-as-share-o
f-gdp-in-the-netherlands/
U.S. health care spending grew 4.6 percent in 2018, reaching $3.6 trillion or $11,172 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.7 percent.
www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and
-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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