Not if you want the economy to keep functioning. A lot of people doing real work (e.g. engineers flying out to fix medical devices) rely on air travel.
More people will die if the democrats capitulate, than those from malfunctioning medicals devices (or other reasons). I think you should do more research to understand the true cause and effect of the decisions in the current situation the U.S. finds itself in.
Capitulate? That sounds like rhetoric that somehow blames democrats for the state of this mess, but the truth is that there aren't enough democrats in congress for them to matter.
There's enough republicans in the House of Representatives for a vote amongst party lines to pass a budget there. That's not a problem for them
There's also enough republicans in the Senate to make it happen with a simple majority, which they posess. They surely know this.
Republicans can end the debate and vote on a bill -- including one that can temporarily get things moving -- any time they want to. They've got the numbers to do that.
It's not a theory. There's precedent. They've made that shift previously[1] in the not-so-distant past.
I’m not arguing they should capitulate - I’m arguing that we should fund ATC (and some other things) like we do Congress’s salaries. Or just authorize current spending levels by default if Congress shits the bed and simply not have this insane brinksmanship.
I happen to agree on the object level issue of maintaining the Medicaid funding. Thanks for talking down to me, though.
If an organ transplant means I have to live on the street, I’ll still take the transplant. It may not be nearly as accessible as it should be, but that doesn’t really mean we can blow it off as unnecessary.
I'm an American, and I'm absolutely certain at this point in my life that I will never be able to afford to pay for an organ transplant to benefit myself or anyone that I know, regardless of any compatibile combination of need and availability that may arise.
Therefore, it will never happen.
So yes: I'd like to suggest that organ transplants may be in fact be luxuries.
(If the question were instead worded as "Should organ transplants be considered luxuries?" then my answer would be written very differently.)
You may never be able to afford it, and your private insurance may not pay for it, but Medicare will without much fanfare. So if you’re planning on living past 65 it could happen.
There's a completely non-zero chance that I won't be able to afford to live to reach 65 and will be therefore will never gain the availability of the possibility of receiving an organ transplant.
For now, it remains a luxurious and unattainable concept to me.