Candace Owens got a week long ban for saying that liberal policies create the disparity in poverty rates between blacks and whites in the United States, as well as the high absent-father rate in the black community. Then after an outcry they said "Oops, that was an accident". Maybe it was, but I doubt it.
In the short term, I agree. If Roe is overturned and replaced with a more conservative but crappy decision, I'll consider that a net positive, but it fixes a symptom, not a cause. However, when I hear idiots like Don Willett hint at reviving the Lochner Doctrine, it nauseates me. Laissez faire-driven judicial activism is still judicial activism, and it's still bad. Very liberal states can do that now, and as nauseating as it is, they have that right. Yes, we would see some ugly battles in the state capitols if Roe got overturned. However, I will take that over the polarization and ugliness we have now, because policy battles can be worked out, compromised, etc. What we have now can't be resolved, because instead of people in each state working out their differences among each other, they're being busybodies and trying to force their will on others through the judiciary. It's a terrible cycle no matter the issue.
FYI (and I found this by accident) Abby Johnson's Facebook profile is back up, so glitch or no glitch, that's apparently been addressed.
Nearly every gay couple I know has kids and from the outside appear to be good parents. In the vein that people have greater appreciation for things they sacrifice for, gay couples go through a lot to get legal rights to children. A coworker of mine paid $75k for their son.
Hearing that makes me a bit ashamed of myself. I've made sacrifices for Deez, Jr. like any other parent, but my contribution to his creation and my becoming a father was really pretty pathetic. I obviously started by doing something pleasurable, spent no money, and went through no significant physical burden or pain. I put that "significant" qualifier there, because I did have to tolerate and accommodate some pretty screwed up cravings from Mrs. Deez at times. Just out of nowhere one night, she demanded Sloppy Joes, which I detest. She had terrible nausea throughout the pregnancy, and I cautioned her against it, but she was completely unyielding. I was expected to make Sloppy Joes happen, or there was going to be trouble. So I made them, and she loved them for about 30 minutes. And then she vomited like I've never seen anyone vomit before and I had to clean it up. It was rough, but that was the extent of my suffering.
My wife and I often joked that it was "so easy" for us to have 3 sons in comparison. Heck, 2 were while I worked for MSFT and cost me $0 in medical costs because the insurance was so good. That $75k boy borders on genius. Donor mother was a 6'1" Scandinavian woman who was earning her Master's in Chemical Engineering @Stanford. The kid started private school at age 4 and will graduate HS @16 and I expect will get into an Ivy league school. The parents are both successful Tech executives.
I can top that. We made money on Deez, Jr.'s birth. Here's how. He was born in a German hospital that claimed it would direct bill our insurance, and I completed a claim form for them, gave an assignment of benefits, etc. Well, they did submit the bill, but our insurance carrier sent the check to me. It was for about $4,200.00 (on a 3,200 Euro bill). I deposited the check and just waited on the hospital to bill me. That took several months, and by the time it did, the Euro had dropped about .16, so I made about $500 on the transaction. By the way, Deez, Jr. was born by C-section, and the wife was in the hospital for 8 days. If he had been born in the US with a similar length of hospitalization, it sure as hell wouldn't have cost only $4,200.00.
I don't pay German taxes, and the German government did not pay any part of my bill. I paid it and was reimbursed by Blue Cross Blue Shield.
"The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld part of an unusual Indiana abortion law that requires clinics to bury or cremate the remains of a fetus. The justices in a short opinion said the law did not violate a woman's right to choose abortion. But in doing so, the court sidestepped a much larger issue: They decided not to consider Indiana’s effort to revive a law that could have made it illegal for women to end a pregnancy because of the race or gender of the fetus or if they received a diagnosis of Down syndrome." Supreme Court’s Indiana abortion law ruling reflects conservative reluctance to tackle Roe
I did not realize that you personally do not pay German taxes (how does that work?) but is it fair to say the overall cost of the procedure(s) was borne by German taxpayers and that is why the cost was lower than it would be in the US?
I'm a US citizen, and I'm in Germany under the NATO Status of Forces Agreement. Therefore, I get to pay US taxes instead of German taxes. In the case of income and social insurance taxes, I automatically avoid the taxes. The VAT and the fuel taxes require some effort to avoid. I have to use a VAT form to avoid the VAT, and not all retailers accept them (though most big ones do). To avoid the fuel tax, I have to buy gas on a US military facility or at an Esso station in Germany. Either way, I'm limited to 400 liters per month tax free. If I go over that, I have to pay taxes, which are very onerous (close to $3 per gallon). No, that's not really fair to say. Germany's system isn't as socialist as people assume. They do have a government insurance program that Germans pay for through their tax system. It's basically like the original Obamacare public option on steroids. However, if you make enough money, you can opt into a private health plan, so private insurance does exist here. Also, the healthcare services are entirely private. The hospital Deez, Jr. was born in is private (actually Catholic), and the doctors are all private practitioners. So do they get money from the government? Yes, but only as an insurer. There's no subsidy to them, and we're not covered by the government plan. So no, the German taxpayer did not cover any of my costs.
So Netflix is threatening to leave the State of Georgia for passing the abortion bill. Good chance to see how serious these progressives are about putting their money where their mouth is.
mchammer, they want to get rid of that pesky thing. Then they rule the continent from one large mega city capital.
You are literally asking the trillion dollar question, and there's obviously great debate about what the real causes are. A left-winger would argue that because they have a big, nonprofit purchaser who has the power to effectively dictate pricing, they can keep costs down. There's no insurance industry scoring a profit, and medical providers aren't able to make obscene amounts of money. Of course, I see it differently. Regardless of what the causes are, if you're a conservative, you're not going to want to want to model Germany's system in the US. It's a much bigger government role. Furthermore, established business communities would go to war to stop it. Obviously, the insurance industry would completely freak out. For them, there'd be no tomorrow if it passed into law, so they'd literally spend tens of billions to stop it - both in PR and campaign contributions. Medical providers (especially specialists and hospitals) would dig in pretty hard as well. Though German specialists make a pretty comfortable living, they're not getting rich, so they'd fight it hard as well. Having said that, if I was going to adopt a government system, Germany's system is a good one to emulate. Though they greatly reduce the private insurance role, they don't do completely away with it. If you want to buy private health insurance and make enough to afford it, you can. Furthermore, they don't socialize the actual practice of medicine. Doctors still have to compete for patients to make money. It's not ideal, but it's definitely possible to do worse.
In the end, then, I guess I don't understand how "a much bigger government role" (in the healthcare industry) and lower cost go together.
Not sure about other governments, but in the US cost is one of the last things considered in the decision making process just before quality.
Nice explanation MrD makes it frustrating to realize how much of medical costs have little to do with actual treatment but to pay layers and layers of blocks to receiving actual treatment.
