undefined | Better HN

0 pointsdragonwriter8mo ago0 comments

> Provide numbers. Sanders, for instance, funded his proposed system by (among other things) taxing capital gains at the level of ordinary income.

Not tax penalizing non-capital income is sort of an essential reform in the era of increasing automation anyway; I'm not sure what point you are trying to make there. The average middle income family isn't making a substantial share of their income in forms taxed as long-term capital gains, so that seems...unrelated to the focus of your argument.

> I'm critical of the US system, but I have exactly the opposite diagnosis you do: my concern with the system is that, by the numbers, it appears to function by driving way too much spending on "actual" care.

It does both (particularly, in the “actual care” angle, as regards low-benefit, high-cost measures near the end of life.) We have a system based on denying and economically incentivizing younger people to avoid and defer care, but then doing much less of that with (most of) the elderly.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

tptacek8mo ago· 2 in thread

You're contradicting yourself. You took me to task earlier for factoring in the wage penalty for working in the UK market --- fair enough, though really I'm making the simple descriptive point that people in the US are accepting of a dysfunctional status quo in part because they would be worse off in Europe.

But taxing capital gains at the level of ordinary income would be an immense change our tax code. All sorts of things the broader economy would change as a result. If you accept Sanders plan, you're not holding to your original constraint of changing only the health financing system.

I want to be clear that I'm not stipulating that families would be better off under M4A if you didn't do this: I still think your argument has the fuzzy end of this lollipop. I think it's unlikely that you will come up with a set of numbers for any proposed single-payer health system that leaves the median family with private health insurance better off on a take-home basis. I'm making a strong claim, so you should be able to knock it down straightforwardly if I'm wrong, and I'm interested to see if you can.

TheOtherHobbes8mo ago

The counterargument is simple - it works in other countries.

Other countries have healthcare systems that don't generate medical bankruptcies, and don't put a slaver's chain around the necks of employees who risk financial destruction if they have to give up an employer-funded plan.

You're essentially arguing that 500k medical bankruptcies every single year, out of a population of 340 million, is a small price to pay for an imaginary financial benefit that you're convinced exists, for some loosely defined demographic, but which you've failed to quantify.

This is, very specifically, the problem that destroys your argument.

Some people in the US are better off until they aren't.

One serious medical crisis - like an extended bout with cancer - is enough to wipe out the benefits, and leave people who used to be prosperous out on the streets.

Literally. Not as an exaggeration, not as rhetoric, but as a cold, hard reality that affects half a million people every year.

tptacek8mo ago

You're responding persuasively to somebody's argument, but it isn't mine. I'm talking about the large cohort of American voters who would be worse off under a single-payer system.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse