The key appears: share. If there are 10 people and ten loafs, each get’s according to one’s needs one’s share.
If there are two loafs, people share once again.
But plutos have been using force for 10-15K yrs to get a larger share of everything; includes also heatlh care. Tnx .

“Incrementalist” is like “I’m a middle of the roader” as an all purpose solution to all problems.

Some problems are best resolved gradually, incrementally, but even than with no little controversy. But there are definitely problems which demand holistic solutions, incrementalism actually exaserbates the problem.

It is fair to say, after some significant analysis of the current USA health care system, that it is not just about coverage. The system is broken in terms of the very care provided, and in terms of total cost of such below comparative outcomes. This is not an incremental problem, Obstreperous.

I would suggest that looking at any system, one applies a holistic systemic view. “Correcting” one part of the system generally worsens the overall problem. So, making sure more people are filling the inadequate system with “better coverage” just makes matters worse.

The political domain in the USA is incapable of solving the entire problem so that it in fact has the greatest positive outcome. Gradual, or incremental change is simply not the remedy.

“Failure in the past has come from trying to give unlimited care to everyone, which is not economically realistic.”

The problem with is claim is that you have bought into moral hazard, which is a contortion of the basis of health. If we have empirical evidence, as we seem to, that “unlimited care” is NOT uneconomical. That health “care” starts with prevention (again, any systems view will consistently show that it is considerably less expensive to stay fit than to fix). But in places throughout the world, where universal health care is provided, it is not uneconomical. The cost of poor care is EXTREMELY expensive, which is one of the major problems the USA confronts – it is a significant portion of the GDP.

But you must know this. How can you argue about the economics of health care when what we have by all accounts is unsustainable. Incrementalism does not change that. You can’t be half pregnant.

But, the will, the moral fortitude is not there to tackle this problem, because, I would argue, and have, that the very nation that engages in endless war is incapable of thinking this problem through to its moral core.

So right now your societal options are the state, which is at the very least nominally answerable to public pressure, or we can have our society entirely in the hands of the profit makers – the Walmarts and Boeings and Microsofts of America, which are answerable only to shareholders.

Those are our options. If you’ve got a third way, show it to me quck, because the water treatment plants malfunction if not attended.

Appreciate your raising questions (some just say, it’s all about Zionism and turnover and go back to sleep).

Ok, so how does one get “universal health care” at the “local level” and how does that figure with cheap oil?

First, like Santa Claus doesn’t and won’t exist, USA Universal (meaning everyone gets health care, no exceptions and fully covered) isn’t going to exist. Now, when I say USA, I’m not talking about a future configuration or reconstitution of what we know as the United States of America; I’m talking about what we’ve known and see in front of us. That USA is not going to implement an authentic universal health care. So, let’s stop pretending.

The depletion of cheap oil creates massive contraction in nations dependent on cheap oil. That contraction will be at every level, socially, culturally, population, and governance. It will happen..but as it happens it can spin off to a fascistic state – perhaps relatively short-lived – or we can avoid a stretch of ultra-fascism (we see it now).

Nature will take its course. Oil has created, at least in the human collective mind, a sense that it is above nature, or can control it. Oil has allowed for this temporary delusion or insanity. Our life times have only known this delusion and so many of us keep thinking that “god” intended for this to be as it is. But that’s insanity…understandable…but insane just the same.

We know what oil is, what it does, and have a good sense that its running out, and the US empire is running on it, and with it so goes the empire. Alternatives to cheap oil are totally inadequate in providing what fossil has provided for the last hundred and fifty years or so. Remember what we’ve collectively built with our high-tech, our industrialization, our machinery, our skyscrapers, our food system, or transportation, medical technologies…all and much much more depends on cheap fossil…but I’m repeating myself.

We have to re-adjust our world view to reflect reality. Look at the nation-states that have such universal health care. They are a tiny fraction of what the USA is in land mass and population. Additionally we have a culture of denial when it comes to having our cake and eating it.

Only an utter collapse will provide correction to this meandering empire. Just think about the millions of lives this USA kills in meaningless endless wars – insanity without question, war criminality, absolutely.

So, you want to have Universal Health Care? As your President gives the orders to escalate two war fronts…for no fucking reason except he “can”, you want Universal Health Coverage.

Americans have the health care they deserve. The warmachine that kills babies has given you the health care you deserve, I’m afraid.

Only the natural collapse and working to create an utterly new and different landscape in this stolen piece of once gorgeous earth, while be preserve some, we have done much to destroy the planet’s fragile life force, as we scrape the earth to extract energy of one sort of another.

Universal health care will come when the USA that you and I have known is no more. Smaller, perhaps, regional localities will emerge and provide, in a much more contracted form, a world significantly different than the one you woke up to this morning…

BTW, I don’t get the choose fascism part…I think the governmnet should work for us and not us for the government. That means smaller and less powerful government…the antithesis of fascism which seeks only control of its population.

What I’m suggesting is NOT utopian “thinking”. There is a premise – there always needs to be a premise in these matters – otherwise we’re just blowing smoke up our arses – don’t you think?

So, here’s the premise: this is a nation which is built on CHEAP fossil fuel which provides (now pay attention to this) high mobility and low accessibility. Remember all this is based on CHEAP fossil fuel. All civilizations exist through leveraging energy forms – ours is fossil (coal, natural gas, and oil). Rome had wood and some coal. Oil is like VITAL. Food, electricity, buildings, heat/airconditioning, water access…essentially all of our necessities, as we enjoy them, are provided at the pleasure of CHEAP oil. Now, you say, but we didn’t always have oil…right? Correct, oil came on the scene around the mid-19th C. But at that time there were only about 1.6 billion human souls on the planet. After that, and largely due to it (the leveraged use of cheap oil) the population exploded to almost 7 billion (in just over 1 Century whereas the 1.6 took tens of thousands of years; medical technology is all CHEAP fossil based…)!!!

Ok? Now, in the case of the US (unlike Europe, for instance, where cities are dense and where most people live) we created a world built like no other – utterly dependent on CHEAP oil and it provided the mobility you mentioned to zigzag all over the earth on tarmac roads…willynilly. And suburban sprawl became the NEW AMERICAN DREAM. This is a life and a life style which cannot exist, as it does without….you got it…CHEAP OIL.

Let’s assume, as I must, that you got the picture…so far. (You can disagree…anyone can disagree…doesn’t take too much thought to disagree…shit GW Bush disagreed all the time with reality…and he got away with it for 8 years, and Obama is locked and loaded for the same.

Ok, let’s play a game. Let’s assume the CHEAP oil is no longer CHEAP. Let’s assume, just for kicks…the world’s reserves start to dry up. Let’s assume that there is evidence all over the place that, as it happened here in the US (once the world’s largest exporter of OIL) that it will happen in all the other places…and has begun.

What then, Obstreperous? The utopia isn’t a utopia. You can choose fascism…or you can work toward healthy alternative. I choose the latter.

B99, Taxes. There should be no income taxes, only consumption taxes. If you are rich and consume more, then you pay more…no loopholes.

Obviously no contributor to this site believes in the current health ‘plan’ nor any currently offered up by mainstream parties. This is for all intents and purposes a pro-universal-health care site. So tell us your plan Obno to provide for public health if not thru taxes? Magic? Barter?

Proper medical attention is a basic human necessity, it is criminal to force a class of people to suffer because they are poor.

All this talk about human equality and democracy, human rights, freedom and liberty, yet people are refused medical care because they can’t afford insurance?

Why on earth, in this day and age with medical technologies advanced as they are, should -anyone- be excluded from medical attention. Why should any one person suffer, even die, as a result of not receiving medical help simply because they are poor, when taxes are spent on missiles and cluster bombs? How is this not a miscarriage of human rights?

What is right about that? Isn’t the preservation of life more important than the preservation of capital?

You touch on (even if indirectly) an important point: what is the role of government, and particularly one scaled as it is in the USA? There are those among us who think a decentralized, local/regional scale is the appropriate means for governance. That democracy is achievable within a much smaller scale and most human problems can best be handled at the “grass-roots”/local level with some consideration for regional and broader solidarity/trade and the like.

I don’t think the political system in the US is capable of dealing squarely with the problems we face. And I’m not convinced that polity is the domain that many of these problems should even fall within. Health care is an example. While single-payer is an excellent idea, it is nearly impossible to consider given the scale of the USA. The health care system, such as it is, reflects the nation. “Fixing” it is not even the answer. Replacing it is unfathomable given the multitude of interests and lack of focus on whether it is a right for all or not.

Most of these “insolvable” problems, are really quite solvable on a smaller scale. That’s why the “best” solutions have been achieved by relatively smaller nation-states (where war and expansionism and empire maintenance are not their preoccupations).

I do agree that regardless of size, some form of revenue is required. I have been a strong supporter of land rent (rent applied to the commons for use by one and all). This would readily pay for our needs, particularly on a human-scale basis. It would also address the inequities of class and wealth we see today.

I don’t think smaller scoped entities are perfect. There are issues, but the issues of a large (and growing) empire state makes these problems pale in comparison. To be human is to err, and live in a state of perpetual dilemmas. But that doesn’t mean we cannot create a sustainable world that makes meaningful work something we do with a kind of joy rather than the unsustainability and anguishing focus on material gains that depletes the spirit and denudes a society of meaningful culture.

You think that you are a Christian but you are not a Christian. You are only a follower of Joshua (aka Jesus) of Nazareth. Joshua of Nazareth was a very wicked person who seriously pissed off the authorities and the good people of his day and as a result he was very rightly given the death penalty. Joshua of Nazareth hung out with all the wrong people. If he were around to day he would not be consorting with billionaires and senators but with niggers , ex felons and drug addicts that is if he were not already in prison on a long sentence for donating to a charity connected to Palestinian terrorism.

But Joshua of Nazareth after being punished by the righteous of Rome was then punished by Almighty God. God transmogrified him into Jesus Christ. While Jesus of Nazareth was an evil person, a dark skinned Jew Jesus Christ is a pure blood Aryan the son of God himself, a figure of impeccable respectability who would be welcome in the Nazi Party, at dinner parties in the White house and in the drawing rooms of right-wing Latin American dictators.

Decent Christians concern themselves with ensuring the foetuses of poor parents are born to grow up in squalor and poverty and to become criminal killers so that they can receive the death penalty after they whack the wrong victim. Decent Christians concern themselves with maintaining in society the correct privilege structure with the good things God put in the world reserved for the righteous rich such as major company CEOs and wealthy shareholders in Exon Mobil and maximizing the misery of the undeserving poor .

In addition, quran, bible, torah/talmud, constitutions are interpretative writs; solely or largely interpreted by clergy and the plutos.
Healthcare, clean food and air, right to be informed, free higher education appear as our inheritance.
it is not about giving nor receiving; it is about us getting back what belongs to us. tnx