[999900000999]

We could easily do this and it would actually be significantly cheaper.

But I can’t imagine it happening nationwide. Maybe cities can create their own public options, say a flat 3% income tax and you get health insurance.

So much progress isn’t made in the US due to the welfare queen myth. Heavily intertwined with racism, many imagine “lazy” people getting something they didn’t absolutely earn.

[Taikonerd]

> But I can’t imagine it happening nationwide. Maybe cities can create their own public options, say a flat 3% income tax and you get health insurance.

It's interesting: 3 states (Vermont, Colorado, and Massachusetts) did recently try to make state-level single-payer systems. https://www.thirdway.org/report/single-payer-health-care-a-t...

[AlexandrB]

The reason the "myth" persists is because there are some folks who take advantage of the system like this. In fact, many people personally know someone who's doing this. We can debate what percentage of recipients it is and whether we should worry about it or not, but it's a non-zero number. Framing it like some kind of racist trope is disingenuous and only works because of America's existing racial tensions. In Canada, for example, folks I've known doing this kind of thing are all white.

At the most basic level, this shows up as folks avoiding working more than a certain amount to avoid losing some government benefits. This is a result of "benefit cliffs"[1] that actually reduce net income as you work harder. It's "lazy" in the sense that you're maximizing your earnings at others' expense by working less than you otherwise could, but it's also a perfectly rational decision given the incentives.

My preferred solution is to have all benefits taper off gradually with income instead of having hard "cut offs". Done right this ensures there's never a financial penalty for working more. It does make the tax system more complicated though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_marginal_tax_rate

[999900000999]

With a military budget of 1.5 trillion I don’t care if a few people get some crumbs.

Not everyone can start a defense contractor and get no bid contracts.

I’d say flat tax rate + UBI + single payer. The tax code should be a sentence. 25% of income or capital gains.

Social security and all other income transfers would be phased out.

[SlightlyLeftPad]

That “lazy people” getting something they didn’t absolutely earn is a core right wing narrative that has been very successfully propagandized for decades. People are still going to need work to pay for everything else. No one is going to stop working once the crushing weight of medical debt is lifted. It’s easy to debunk but I don’t see much effort going into this right now.

[TitaRusell]

Doctors take an oath to treat everyone. Conservatives may say that poor people deserve to die in a ditch no doctor is going to let that happen. I don't know about you but I don't want my GP to be a Mengele!

[SlightlyLeftPad]

I think it’s well known that the problems we have with healthcare in the US are not caused by the doctors.