LC 2.5 The Lincoln Single Payer Healthcare Act (General debate)

[Peanut]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

[Former President tack50]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

For what's worth, I haven't made any efforts so far to ping Councillors on Discord or send PMs to them. Maybe I should start doing that? Though ideally they should appear by themselves

[S019]

What exactly are the inactivity consequences

[AustralianSwingVoter]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

For what's worth, I haven't made any efforts so far to ping Councillors on Discord or send PMs to them. Maybe I should start doing that? Though ideally they should appear by themselves

Given how short the votes are, only 24 hours, you really should Discord DM or Atlas PM all members whenever a vote opens.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

What exactly are the inactivity consequences

Any Councillor who misses 4 final votes in a row is automatically recalled. And before that they may be recalled for inactivity if the people feel it necessary.

[Former President tack50]

What exactly are the inactivity consequences

Well, according to the Lincoln constitution, a Councillor who doesn't vote on 4 consecutive pieces of legislation automatically vacates his office. So far we have been interpreting that as 4 final votes though.

There's also of course the fact that if you are inactive it's very likely that you will eventually get recalled or expelled.

I will say that so far the only Councillor in risk of getting recalled is Dipper Josh though (who has only voted once, for Chancellor). Everyone else has been active enough.

[Former President tack50]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

For what's worth, I haven't made any efforts so far to ping Councillors on Discord or send PMs to them. Maybe I should start doing that? Though ideally they should appear by themselves

Given how short the votes are, only 24 hours, you really should Discord DM or Atlas PM all members whenever a vote opens.

Well, the thing is, with so many ammendments and the requirement that they be voted unless they are friendly, I would be pinging people almost daily. Though I guess if it comes to that I could just send messages to everyone

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

For what's worth, I haven't made any efforts so far to ping Councillors on Discord or send PMs to them. Maybe I should start doing that? Though ideally they should appear by themselves

Given how short the votes are, only 24 hours, you really should Discord DM or Atlas PM all members whenever a vote opens.

Well, the thing is, with so many ammendments and the requirement that they be voted unless they are friendly, I would be pinging people almost daily. Though I guess if it comes to that I could just send messages to everyone

Well, serving in any atlasian legislative position should be a daily commitment.

[Pyro]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

For what's worth, I haven't made any efforts so far to ping Councillors on Discord or send PMs to them. Maybe I should start doing that? Though ideally they should appear by themselves

Given how short the votes are, only 24 hours, you really should Discord DM or Atlas PM all members whenever a vote opens.

Tbh, it shouldn't be Speaker Tack's responsibility to ping every inactive/semi-active member.

These Councilors were elected with the expectation that they will be active legislators, and it doesn't take much effort to check in to vote (Which is, by the way, a bare minimum). They shouldn't need reminding.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

For what's worth, I haven't made any efforts so far to ping Councillors on Discord or send PMs to them. Maybe I should start doing that? Though ideally they should appear by themselves

Given how short the votes are, only 24 hours, you really should Discord DM or Atlas PM all members whenever a vote opens.

Tbh, it shouldn't be Speaker Tack's responsibility to ping every inactive/semi-active member.

These Councilors were elected with the expectation that they will be active legislators, and it doesn't take much effort to check in to vote (Which is, by the way, a bare minimum). They shouldn't need reminding.

Activity Tracker
Even you yourself have missed a vote. As has thr. As has Griffin and Ninja. Are you all inactive? No. It's just that Lincoln has very short votes. 24 hours is short enough that people can miss a vote. Plus, the sheer number of amendments mean people can miss one vote.
When the voting window is so short and the number of votes is so large people do need to be notified of votes because otherwise people will miss a vote or two despite their best intentions.

[Pyro]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

For what's worth, I haven't made any efforts so far to ping Councillors on Discord or send PMs to them. Maybe I should start doing that? Though ideally they should appear by themselves

Given how short the votes are, only 24 hours, you really should Discord DM or Atlas PM all members whenever a vote opens.

Tbh, it shouldn't be Speaker Tack's responsibility to ping every inactive/semi-active member.

These Councilors were elected with the expectation that they will be active legislators, and it doesn't take much effort to check in to vote (Which is, by the way, a bare minimum). They shouldn't need reminding.

Activity Tracker
Even you yourself have missed a vote. As has thr. As has Griffin and Ninja. Are you all inactive? No. It's just that Lincoln has very short votes. 24 hours is short enough that people can miss a vote. Plus, the sheer number of amendments mean people can miss one vote.
When the voting window is so short and the number of votes is so large people do need to be notified of votes because otherwise people will miss a vote or two despite their best intentions.

I have not yet missed a vote, your count is inaccurate.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

For what's worth, I haven't made any efforts so far to ping Councillors on Discord or send PMs to them. Maybe I should start doing that? Though ideally they should appear by themselves

Given how short the votes are, only 24 hours, you really should Discord DM or Atlas PM all members whenever a vote opens.

Tbh, it shouldn't be Speaker Tack's responsibility to ping every inactive/semi-active member.

These Councilors were elected with the expectation that they will be active legislators, and it doesn't take much effort to check in to vote (Which is, by the way, a bare minimum). They shouldn't need reminding.

Activity Tracker
Even you yourself have missed a vote. As has thr. As has Griffin and Ninja. Are you all inactive? No. It's just that Lincoln has very short votes. 24 hours is short enough that people can miss a vote. Plus, the sheer number of amendments mean people can miss one vote.
When the voting window is so short and the number of votes is so large people do need to be notified of votes because otherwise people will miss a vote or two despite their best intentions.

I have not yet missed a vote, your count is inaccurate.

Oh sorry about that, it turns out tack somehow failed to count the votes correctly.
Anyway, my point still stands.

[Pyro]

After careful consideration on the Amendment's effect on the bill, I vote Nay on this tiebreaker. Nay!

Also, Councillors, make sure to vote everytime you can. There will be consequences for inactivity.

For what's worth, I haven't made any efforts so far to ping Councillors on Discord or send PMs to them. Maybe I should start doing that? Though ideally they should appear by themselves

Given how short the votes are, only 24 hours, you really should Discord DM or Atlas PM all members whenever a vote opens.

Tbh, it shouldn't be Speaker Tack's responsibility to ping every inactive/semi-active member.

These Councilors were elected with the expectation that they will be active legislators, and it doesn't take much effort to check in to vote (Which is, by the way, a bare minimum). They shouldn't need reminding.

Activity Tracker
Even you yourself have missed a vote. As has thr. As has Griffin and Ninja. Are you all inactive? No. It's just that Lincoln has very short votes. 24 hours is short enough that people can miss a vote. Plus, the sheer number of amendments mean people can miss one vote.
When the voting window is so short and the number of votes is so large people do need to be notified of votes because otherwise people will miss a vote or two despite their best intentions.

I have not yet missed a vote, your count is inaccurate.

Oh sorry about that, it turns out tack somehow failed to count the votes correctly.
Anyway, my point still stands.

I hear what you're saying, but I disagree about the need to notify. Checking in on the Noticeboard thread once a day to review the status of the legislation isn't asking more than what one signs up for upon election. I do think, however, that the abundance of concurrent votes is exactly why expanding the # of bills up for debate is a bad idea: Per my opposition to LC 2.8.

[Former President tack50]

While I do think it's a good idea overall that ammendments are assumed unfriendly; it also doesn't help that we have had a lot of ammendments and that many of them have been deemed unfriendly by the sponsor.

In my entire tenure in the Senate for example we only had 1 unfriendly ammendment out of like 25 in the entire term. Meanwhile a good half of our ammendments have been unfriendly.

I do like the fact that we have had quite a bit of activity though, but I think we have had votes almost daily. Of course on the other hand that means that councillors can log in any time and there will probably be a vote they can vote on, but it also means, combined with the 24h vote times that missing a vote is very easy.

[Former President tack50]

Does anyone else have something to add to the bill. I would personally like to debate whether or not we should include the funding for the bill in the bill itself (which would require some sort of cost estimate) or later in the budget process (which might mean an unexpectedly large deficit later on)

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Does anyone else have something to add to the bill. I would personally like to debate whether or not we should include the funding for the bill in the bill itself (which would require some sort of cost estimate) or later in the budget process (which might mean an unexpectedly large deficit later on)

I'll point out that the balanced budget provision in the old Lincoln constitution was carried over with the Philly Plan, so running a deficit is actually unconstitutional. It would be prudent to figure out the budgetary situation before passing this bill, considering this may very well double spending (using RL state single-payer proposals and cost analyses as a guide). I will be working on a cost analysis soon, but it may take a while.

[Former President tack50]

Technically speaking, this bill wouldn't become enacted until FY 2020. Of course, it would still be a massive spending increase. And while calculations for the budget are at an extremely early stage, it does seem to me that Lincoln is very likely to have a big deficit.

I have introduced legislation to partially repeal the balanced budget section of the constitution (allowing budgets to be passed with a deficit through a 2/3 supermajority), but even if we don't pass that ammendment we will probably need huge tax increases to fund this as well as the budget.

[Former President tack50]

Decided to quickly look at funding. Similar proposals to this one are expected to cost 1.5 to 2.5 trillion $ for the entire US in RL.

Assuming the cost is divided by 3, this would cost somewhere between 500 billion to 800 billion $. Looking at 2016's budget, that would apparently double the size of the regional government? (from 565 billion $ to about 1.2 trillion $ taking the middle estimate). We could of course argue that single payer is more efficient (which I would argue as well) but still.

Are 2016's budget numbers artificially low or about right? Because 500 million in expenditures seems somewhat low for the regional government. Then again I guess it's a regional government we are talking about.

Honestly if this bill is going to fail it's going to be because it's a policy that can't be done regionally.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=252855.0

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Are 2016's budget numbers artificially low or about right? Because 500 million in expenditures seems somewhat low for the regional government. Then again I guess it's a regional government we are talking about.

This depends entirely on what is actually being funded. Lincoln seems to have taken a page out of the South's book by absorbing all state-only spending (presumably) and using the same broad categories (taken from the USGS site), excluding local spending. However, considering the lack of specificity, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the 2016 numbers were fudged. So basically we don't actually know what Lincoln is and isn't funding within each of these categories, because that conversation has never taken place.

If we assume that the 2016 spending numbers were derived by summing the USGS state-only column, then 550 billion in expenditures is roughly the expected value (although there may be some differences in specific categories). However, if one assumes that Lincoln is at least partially funding things like K-12 education, water supply, sewerage, waste management, etc., on top of things in the state-only column, then the 550 billion figure is too low.

If you take a look at the data from Fremont, which I outlined here, you'll see a basic breakdown of RL funding for FY2019. Lincoln's numbers will obviously be different (and I haven't gotten around to doing them yet), but the basic proportions will most likely be similar. One of the things that Lincoln should decide this year is which specific things they are and aren't funding.

[S019]

This is going to be the first bill that the majority passes, if the 10 day time limit on the filibuster is not blocked

[Former President tack50]

This is going to be the first bill that the majority passes, if the 10 day time limit on the filibuster is not blocked

Uh, there is still a lot of things to do before this gets passed. Most imporatantly, getting cost estimates and figuring out how to pay for this, as well as maybe a bit of revision. These are all linked to the budget process, which is advancing very slowly (but budgets are hard anyways)

If the majority had wanted to fast track this with no debate, wouldn't the Chancellor have called for cloture already? (which he hasn't done)

[Former President tack50]

Just to keep an update on this bill, after some discussion, an informal analysis of the cost of this bill seems to be anywhere between 600 billion dollars to a trillion dollars. Now, I think the cost will be on the lower end of the scale once you factor in the increased efficiency and other factors, but it's still something to keep in mind.

As for funding, I have decided I will not support getting a vote on this bill until we have passed a budget. After the budget passes, I'll include extra funding (most likely a new tax) as an amendment, that will make this bill overall revenue neutral.

Think of it as PayGo, but only for this bill. It's an expensive bill so this won't complicate the tax code much.

[Former President tack50]

This bill is not getting passed any time soon and I know that (we need to pay for the budget). Bumping this just to see if we get a bit more discussion and really just to remind people this exists.

I guess this bill itself is an example of the diuscussed negative consecuences of single payer, like waiting lists

[S019]

My opinion is that we should table this, there is no way, that we are going to find the money to pay for this, when we are in a massive deficit. If anything, we might need to cut healthcare spending, spending more on healthcare and having our region pay for the entire thing, is he definition of fiscal irresponsibility

[Former President tack50]

My opinion is that we should table this, there is no way, that we are going to find the money to pay for this, when we are in a massive deficit. If anything, we might need to cut healthcare spending, spending more on healthcare and having our region pay for the entire thing, is he definition of fiscal irresponsibility

Ironically, passing this would allow us to cut the healthcare budget by quite a bit (although overall healthcare expenses would increase of course).

There are also many things we could try to pay for this, most notably a sales tax / VAT.