Free Health Care & Free College

Had a friend who posted something that went like ‘when the Democrats talk about free college and free health care, they mean you will be paying for someone else’s college and health care’.

The fact is we are already in most cases ‘paying for someone else’s health care’. What do you think health insurance is? Insurance companies charge everyone, then pay for health services for those who use them. The thing is, the insurance companies are also paying large salaries and bonuses to executives. They are paying for advertising for their insurance plans. They are paying commissions to the sales people selling the plans. Then they are paying dividends to the stockholders of that company.

The salaries, bonuses, commissions, advertising, dividends, etc. are part of the “overhead” costs of the insurance plan. For American health insurance companies, overhead costs amount to roughly 20% of your insurance premium. So essentially 80% of what you pay for health insurance actually goes to the health care of the policy holders. With Medicare, the overhead is roughly 3% of the total costs, so 97% goes to health care.

Critics of the single payer plans have said they would cost trillions of dollars. True, but we are already paying those trillions of dollars. The difference is that one sixth of those trillions would not be going to unnecessary overhead. I could be wrong, but I suspect that if you knock out one sixth of the cost, you could cover millions more people for the same amount of money.

As to college and such, we already are paying taxes that support public education through high school, and you pay them whether you have a child in school or not. We are already paying taxes that support public universities, whether you are attending them or not. Similarly, you pay taxes that build roads whether you drive on those roads or not, and pay for fire departments, whether you have a fire or not.

Some services benefit the community as a whole, and as a society, most industrial countries spread those costs among all taxpayers, without regard to actual usage. We do the same with national defense, police departments, and many other services. How much of that is used by any one individual will vary, just as which specific services are used will vary by individual. It is more economical to provide those by shared costs than by specific charges.

Seriously, do you want to pay tolls for every mile of road you drive down? Do you want to pay cash on demand before you have your house fire put out? Do you want to pay cash before the police help you? We are always paying for a basket of services that the whole community uses. As a society we have felt it was more fair and efficient to do that.

College education is something which in truth will pay society back over the long run. More educated people make higher salaries and end up paying higher taxes over their working lives. We are making an investment in our children, just as we do with elementary and high school education. We will have some upfront costs, but frankly we have some wasteful things that could be eliminated to pay for this. We have weapons programs that do not work. We have weapons programs that even the Pentagon says we don’t need. We have subsidies to oil companies which are already enormously profitable. We have subsidies to agricultural conglomerates that are also enormously profitable.

If we have the political will, we can pay for “free” college education, by cutting the waste and cutting subsidies to companies that truly don’t need them. We also have asset give aways, like selling mineral rights on public lands for a small fraction of what would be paid for those rights on private land. We have the means to pay for those things. The question is what our priorities are.

Ideological Purity

I find myself thinking of the words of Cardinal Richelieu, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

I was a member of one group, from which I now seem to have been ejected, because something I wrote a year and a half ago was not wholly in sympathy with the feelings of some group members. That's not the first time that has happened.

I question things, and will explore ideas that may not always be welcomed by some folks. The idea of civil disagreement seems to have disappeared. I was not being rude, nor was I adamant in my views, but asked if anyone had peer evaluated studies which contradicted what I questioned.

I do not cleave to anyone's orthodoxy - not even necessarily my own. I am not the font of all knowledge or wisdom, and understand that there will be conflicts even between different groups of oppressed people. I will hear things out and explore ideas, in a civil manner.

I'm not interested in name-calling or personal accusations, nor am I interested in excoriating someone for their views. I will try as best I can to educate those whose views I believe are based on misinformation or ignorance or bias. In so far as possible, I try to eliminate misinformation and bias from the process by which I form opinions - again understanding that I do not and cannot have full and complete information.

If there is a G-d, why is there unhappiness?

This world is not utopia, it is not perfect, and the people in it are not perfect, and it was never meant to be that way. The only way it could be that way is if all people were mindless robots. Since we aren't, and since we have at least some freedom of choice, we have choices as to how to live our lives.

Some of those choices will work out, and some won't - again, life isn't perfect. People also have the choice whether to be kind or cruel to others. Those choices will affect both themselves and the others. Even many of the wealthiest people are unhappy, because money cannot prevent unhappiness.

In a Buddhist sense, we are attached to life, and as such are filled with desire. That desire is the source of our pain. Why should anyone expect that the existence of a deity, if indeed there is one, would result in the end to unhappiness? I don't pretend to have ultimate knowledge. I suspect there may be some sort of higher power or higher state of existence, but there is no way to prove that, and it is ultimately irrelevant.

I live the best life I can, showing the greatest amount of humaneness that I can both towards myself and towards others. I do so, not out of fear of a deity, nor out of desire for a heaven, but because that is to me the greatest way to live.

I have no problems with what anyone else chooses to believe or disbelieve, so long as they do not try to impose their beliefs on me. I will not denigrate the beliefs of others, so long as those are not hurtful towards other people.

If others choose to denigrate my beliefs, as so many anti-theists seem to do, then my opinion of them and their beliefs is lowered. I also feel no need to justify or defend my beliefs from others.

Why I Support Bernie

I have frequently said that I am a supporter of Bernie Sanders, but that if he does not get the nomination, that I will vote for Hillary in the general election with no hesitation. I think Bernie is the superior candidate, but also know that Hillary is far better than any of the Republican alternatives.
I prefer Bernie because he is pushing for a higher minimum wage than Hillary is willing to push for. Bernie also wants to take on the major Wall Street banks, which Hillary seems loath to do. Bernie wants decriminalization of marijuana, which Hillary does not seem to support. Hillary has a more hawkish foreign policy approach than Sanders.

Hillary supporters push her support for feminist issues, which she has indeed been at the forefront of, though Bernie has supported all or most of the same issues. Hillary supporters claim that voters will refuse to elect a "socialist", though polls seem to indicate that for many voters that does not have the negative connotations it once did. Hillary supporters say there is no way Sanders could get his policies through Congress.

Interestingly, I note that prominent Republicans still excoriate Hillary for her e-mails, and for Benghazi, both unfairly, in my view. I also remember the demonization of the Clintons during Bill's administrations in the 1990s. I find myself wondering how Hillary's supporters think that the same people who conducted multiple Benghazi investigations and such will so readily work with her to pass her agenda. I think they are fooling themselves.

I look at polls that say Hillary is one of the least trusted candidates in the current race, on either side, while Sanders is one of the most trusted, and wonder how they think she will have an easier road to the White House. The Republican candidate, whoever he may be, will certainly run a very nasty campaign this fall, and I don't see Hillary better suited to that than Bernie.

I am concerned that given Hillary's ties to big corporations and big banks, that she will be reluctant to rein them in. Certainly the Republicans will fight any Democratic proposals to change things, but Hillary, much like Obama, is more likely to give way and try to make deals. Bernie is far more likely to use the "bully pulpit" to put pressure on Congress to make changes. He certainly will end up having to make deals, but if there is enough public pressure, he might get better deals.

In the final analysis moving backward will not only gain us nothing but actually hurt us, and that is what the Republicans seem to want. The status quo is also ultimately unacceptable, and I'm afraid Hillary is a candidate of the status quo. Only a real change can make the kind of difference we need, and that is why I support Sanders.