"Crazy Bernie" to introduce socialized medicine bill

[Shadows]

For those saying it's Un-American Socialism... they said the same thing about Social Security.

Do you dispute that this is socialism?

If you (Non-Swing Voter) seriously think that Social Security is socialism................

Social Security has no interference with the free market. We work hard for 30 or 40 years in the free market, we pay some of what we earn to a "nationwide savings account", and then when we grow old, we get back the money we paid into the system to finance the closing chapters of our lives. It's not any more complicated than that.

Also, while completely tuition-free college is not good (Mitt Romney and Donald Trump's kids have too excellent of a life already, and it could incenvitize slacking early on since you wouldn't need to think about the costs of a fifth or sixth or seventh year of (undergraduate) college, which is not a value we should want to instill in students), I definitely think expanding federal college grants to the point where student loans would be nonexistent at less prestigious colleges and, at most, $60K/student (for a full 4 years) for Ivy League or similar, is a clearly beneficial idea that doesn't have any drawbacks. This doesn't interfere with the free market (unlike single-payer), and therefore is not socialism. Also, I believe we can pay for this without increasing the deficit - something like this should do it:

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But isn't public schools hindering the free market for education which would be best if there were block grants & people could chose between a public & a charter school? You want to keep that & military out of the free market for strategic reasons I presume ? I respect your views which are shaped not by "My taxes will rise" but because you logically believe that it affects an entire industry & will possibly drive the Insurance industry out.

Do you also hold similar views for Medicare because it drove the entire insurance industry out of the market for people above 65 & created a monopoly! I am also interested about your views about patents because by that logic patents too created a monopoly for many years & is fundamentally against the free market (but then they also help foster innovations) ?

how exactly are patents "against the free market" - patent holders routinely license patented technology out to other companies.  additionally antitrust suits can be brought for unfair monopoly rights to an innovation.  

You can choose to license or not license to a particular person X - It is within your power. You can charge any rates you wish or can negotiate.

Let us take an example - You (Non Swing Voter) create a new tool to help Atlas promote itself or something, a unique product/technology. You have full monopoly to sell/license etc that item for a period of let's say 10 years. I can come up with that product on my own after 15 days (after your patent) & i can't sell that product to Atlas or other such groups.

And you will in most case charge a price much MUCH higher than what is your cost of discovery with huge profits. The free market allows unlimited competition with no/low barriers of entry to drive price down. In economics, in an ideal free market with perfect competition, you will actually 0 profits.

If you have a patent & a monopoly for say 10 years, that is completely against the free market. In the free market, supply & demand determine the prices of goods. In a patent, you have a monopoly & can charge high prices (to supposedly recover your costs) which could be much MUCH higher than what the prices would be in a free market !

This is actually generally completely false because the majority of technologically important patents are standard essential and must be licensed under FRAND (Fair Reasonable and Non Discrminatory) terms.

Furthermore, in the real world, few people effectively hold a monopoly on any technology because their is vast cross licensing.  Even little known inventors aggregate their patents to non practicing entities that "patent troll" them.

So yeah, that whole thing you mentioned, doesn't actually happen in the real world.

You are insanely uninformed about this. If you talk about technology, the reason it is licensed freely & priced cheaply because technology keeps changing & becomes quickly out-dated plus it is easy for someone to come with a similar technology with same working benefits. That is just a bad example.

Let us look at real world examples of Patents - Drugs. If you create a new medicine tomorrow for let's say Diabetes, you will have patent for more than a decade right? Look at the price of drugs which are under patent & what happens when the patent expires? They crash & become a small fraction of the price when everyone competes.

And you can check the balance sheets of Pharma companies to see the profits obtained from a drug under Patent vs the cost & R&D of creating that product & apply time value of money & see the returns !

The Pharma/drug sector is the biggest example of a monopoly created by a patent which charges absurd prices but you could argue it fosters innovation & creation of new medicines/drugs.

And I could go on about many different products other than drugs !

Dude you don't even know how long exactly a patent lasts...

Nothing I said was incorrect... the majority of patents are not related to Pharma.

Look at telecom patents... the phone companies and electronics companies all cross license.  a huge swath of patents are considered standard essential and must be licensed on fair terms.  

Pharma - Wasn't it 20 years ?(Used to 17 odd I remember during Clinton if I am not wrong) but that is not the point - I was trying to explain to you the logic with an example not argue about a duration.

Telecoms cross license due to externalities, you get positive externalities & many of the items are related & you each can gain out of it. Plus it is a large market of non-essential products for which the end consumer is not ready to pay absurd money (an elastic product).

While drugs are essential, life-saving products some of which have no substitutes (largely inelastic product) which is why you have these products charged abnormally high.

But look if they cross-sell it, license it cheaply or whether they charge huge prices are irrelevant. It is what they chose to do - Depending on the industry, type of product, consumers willingness to play, availability of substitutes.

In a free market, Supply & Demand determines prices of all items, in a patent system, they don't. This is fundamental Rule 101 if you read economics - I don't even know why I have to argue this. I am not arguing is patents or good or bad - You could argue it protects innovation & intellectual property !

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Anyways, it feels so good that socialism is going to win on this issue in the US but I still feel bad for the losers who are trapped in the year 1997.

Yeah except socialism is not going to win on this issue, thankfully.

Bernie Sanders it the most popular politician in the country because regular people want free things from the government: how does that make you feel?

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

If we eliminate the private sector for one industry, it's not like the bernie left is going to stop there. They'll push for another industry to be destroyed by the government, and so on, until "the free market" looks like China's - a few private businesses are allowed so they can look capitalist, but everyone knows they're not actually capitalist (And it would not matter if we still elected our leaders - Socialism is an economic idea). The only reason the bernie left doesn't say this is because if they did so, the entire democratic party would suffer losses far worse than they did in 2010. We have to take a stand here, while capitalists have the advantage, to prevent the erosion of the capitalist values under which this country was founded and must keep to remain the greatest country in the world.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

If we eliminate the private sector for one industry, it's not like the bernie left is going to stop there. They'll push for another industry to be destroyed by the government, and so on, until "the free market" looks like China's - a few private businesses are allowed so they can look capitalist, but everyone knows they're not actually capitalist (And it would not matter if we still elected our leaders - Socialism is an economic idea). The only reason the bernie left doesn't say this is because if they did so, the entire democratic party would suffer losses far worse than they did in 2010. We have to take a stand here, while capitalists have the advantage, to prevent the erosion of the capitalist values under which this country was founded and must keep to remain the greatest country in the world.

Nah, that's not accurate. These days socialists support the idea of worker-controlled industry in the form of cooperatives (think: market socialism) and these people are on the fringes.

Anyways, considering how strong China's economic performance is, that isn't much of a boogey-man these days, is it?

[Shadows]

If we eliminate the private sector for one industry, it's not like the bernie left is going to stop there. They'll push for another industry to be destroyed by the government, and so on, until "the free market" looks like China's - a few private businesses are allowed so they can look capitalist, but everyone knows they're not actually capitalist (And it would not matter if we still elected our leaders - Socialism is an economic idea). The only reason the bernie left doesn't say this is because if they did so, the entire democratic party would suffer losses far worse than they did in 2010. We have to take a stand here, while capitalists have the advantage, to prevent the erosion of the capitalist values under which this country was founded and must keep to remain the greatest country in the world.

You seriously believe that Bernie & his supporters want a system like China or even Cuba with a government controlled economy rather than parts of Europe? Given Bernie's close to 40 year old record where he has supported many small businesses (including in VT this month where he was there to help a small private Solar company). Jeff Weaver, campaign manager of Bernie runs a comic store & is a small business owner. Bernie Sanders is actually arguing for free drug imports from large multi-national corporations from other countries, the ultimate free market idea

Considering the Insurance industry price gouges people, spends billions in campaign finance/lobbying & no European country/Canada/Japan having Universal Healthcare has become fully socialist, the fear could be unjust. Bernie is 79 anyways, he doesn't have 40 or 50 years to live. But atleast that is better reasoning rather than "My taxes will rise, so I hate it".

[Shadows]

Anyways, it feels so good that socialism is going to win on this issue in the US but I still feel bad for the losers who are trapped in the year 1997.

Yeah except socialism is not going to win on this issue, thankfully.

Bernie Sanders it the most popular politician in the country because regular people want free things from the government: how does that make you feel?

Bernie Sanders is a loser who couldn't even win a primary against a boring candidate.  How does it make you feel that you're not going to get the free stuff you so crave?  That you might actually have to work to pay for your health insurance?

You may not like something but why do you have to bait people & ridicule them? It seems you like this game of banter, insulting people with a superiority complex.

How do you know he supports Bernie for some free stuff? Can he no other reasons? "Why don't you work for it, you won't get the free stuff now, you candidate is a loser " -  This is just a sad & condescending statement

[Mr. Smith]

Anyways, it feels so good that socialism is going to win on this issue in the US but I still feel bad for the losers who are trapped in the year 1997.

Win like your last brilliant prediction (you are an intellectual powerhouse btw!):

The (accurate) narrative of this entire primary hasn't changed: "Sanders continues to overperform and Clinton continues to underperform". Don't give me any of that "OMG 3 days before the election everything looked tied in one poll!" crap; the vast majority of the time in the run-up to the vote in all 3 states that have already voted, Sanders was down by more percentage points than he had in support. He just got 47% in a state that he was supposed to lose by 20 just a few weeks ago, 30 or more a few months ago, and where the caucus electorate was quite comparable in racial terms to the 2012 Democratic GE voting bloc. Six months ago, analysts weren't even making a distinction between African-Americans and Latinos in terms of likely Clinton support.

Whether the media decides to acknowledge this narrative or not remains to be seen. After tonight, there is mixed messaging depending on the specific pundit and network. With regards to SC and for this narrative to remain relevant, Sanders needs 35% of the vote. If he gets 40% of the vote, Clinton is in more trouble than people might think.

Uh, we've already known for ages now that Bernie was going to do better than the ~25-30% he polled in the fall or the ~5% he polled in 2014. Why exactly is he deserving of endless fellatio from the media any time election results confirm what we've already known for months?

Bernie broke the "joke candidate" threshold a long while ago. He should now be judged on his actual ability to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States, not with participation trophies for outperforming Kucinich or Paul.

Nevada 2008 Caucus Results
Hillary Clinton 51.47%
Barack Obama 45.09%
John Edwards 3.71%

Bernie's result in Nevada is in line with "winning the nomination". It does not suggest that he's weak or anything of the sort; he did as well as Obama. Of course, he faces difficulties that Obama did not face but he also has advantages in large swathes of the country. Bernie will perform much better than Barack in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Appalachia, Arkansas, Oklahoma etc.

The fact that Bernie, more likely than not, ran even with Latinos is a terrible sign for the Clinton campaign. In 2008, she was reliant on Latinos, which is why her campaign was able to score crucial wins in the Southwest, and if that support shifts, this race may very well drag on and on.

Except he ended up being right for the most part, give or take a few minor things.

Try again.

[Shadows]

Anyways, it feels so good that socialism is going to win on this issue in the US but I still feel bad for the losers who are trapped in the year 1997.

Yeah except socialism is not going to win on this issue, thankfully.

Bernie Sanders it the most popular politician in the country because regular people want free things from the government: how does that make you feel?

Bernie Sanders is a loser who couldn't even win a primary against a boring candidate.  How does it make you feel that you're not going to get the free stuff you so crave?  That you might actually have to work to pay for your health insurance?

You may not like something but why do you have to bait people & ridicule them? It seems you like this game of banter, insulting people with a superiority complex.

How do you know he supports Bernie for some free stuff? Can he no other reasons? "Why don't you work for it, you won't get the free stuff now, you candidate is a loser " -  This is just a sad & condescending statement

can you stop with your one sided nonsense, you know very well that he called me intellectually inferior a few posts prior.  Which is laughable considering what I do and what he does.

"What I do & what he does" - How polite !

Can we stop this You vs supposed "Socialist" fight in every thread? You are now digging old posts & doing everything to slight people & bait them rather than posting about issues. What are you trying to prove by laughing at people & mocking them?

Unless you ALSO agree to back off, this derailing of every thread will continue !

[Chief Justice Keef]

Single-Payer involves loss of an entire industry of the free market - the health insurance industry, through all health care being paid for by government - and therefore I see it as socialism. While it is hardly the only thing that openly socialist states do to live up to their label, it definitely and unavoidably opens the door to becoming a socialist state, which should not be tolerated in this country.

What need do we have for a health insurance industry? All it does is profit off of sickness, and somehow challenging the notion that these companies provide any value or purpose, besides designed to be a mechanism where vast sums of wealth to the people at the top of insurance companies, is socialist. The American healthcare system is one of the prime drivers of inequality, and I'd be happier if it was done away with altogether.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

How has Medicare has killed the free market of insurance for seniors? I work for a private company that handles Medicare plans.