Who will win tomorrow?

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The Dems are going to be so pissed tomorrow especially as it is likely Clinton will win the popular vote.

i sure don't understand it, but i wonder... does anyone fully understand how healthcare works in the u.s.?... i don't know what the obama administration wanted to accomplish with it, but the whole thing does sound like a mess from almost all i've heard about it so far

and the last time it happened it also resulted in the election of a republican president who probably changed the course of history (for worse, in my opinion)

do you guys here think that there's a real chance that people will start to seriously push for a change in the system toward direct voting after this?

number one, it is designed first and foremost not to heal disease but to treat symptoms, and do so most expensively. it is designed to be maximally profitable, and to that end it is common practice for hospitals to pad bills by charging clueless patients up to $10 per aspirin tablet or cotton ball. also the number of doctors graduating from med schools is limited to control competition. fully 750 billion of our 3 trillion dollar health care system is this type of waste, fraud and abuse. it is the most expensive health care regime in the world but does not have superior outcomes compared to countries like japan and nations in Europe. it is IMHO a racket. in my neck of the woods, average damages for a single doc's office visit average $300. for a middle-aged person, health insurance premiums generally start at about $500 per month and up, with steep deductibles meaning even after paying those exorbitant premiums one still has to pay a portion of the doc's office visit, generally $50 or so- and if a person has a catastrophic health event requiring tertiary care, the patient must pay up to $20k before insurance kicks in. prior to ACA there were pre-existing conditions clauses that prevented coverage of any diseases a person had before enrolling in the insurance plan. furthermore, high-risk patients generally were denied regular health insurance and if they were lucky enough to live in a state with high-risk pools had to pay an amount many times their income and so most of these people had to go "bare" without insurance. ruinous medical costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy in this nation at least until 2014. a minority of middle class and upper class folk are enrolled in employer-provided plans that cover most of the premium but it still costs on average $200 per month for a single plan/$500 for a family plan. a tiny minority of upper middle-class folk have "Cadillac" plans that cover everything, this is called "regence blue cross/shield" and is a very pricey plan so expensive it is never offered to individuals, only to larger companies for their employees. it is not a system any sane country would want to emulate.

I kinda doubt it. it would take a revolution. a greek-style direct democracy ain't happenin' here anytime soon.

Sanders is a war monger and a spineless corporate puppet who has voted the same as Hilary Clinton 93% of the time, supported numerous wars and flew into a fit of rage at a Palestinian activist when they confronted him about Israel's massacre of Gaza in 2014.

Saying that, I think people would have been naive enough to vote him in. Jill Stein is the best for the left.

Trump just lost the popular vote.

sounds labyrinthine, but the end result seems to be the same no matter how you manage to exit the maze: unexpected costs

that's one of the reasons why i'm living with my parents right now. granted, not having to pay rent is the main reason, but healthcare is also a factor. even after i move out/abroad, maybe i'll keep using my healthcare plan here. i've been paying about 125 usd a month for it, and the only thing it doesn't cover is meds (lucky for me, the cost of the ones i take regularly is almost negligible). what i love about it is that it's just a straightforward monthly bill, and that's it. i don't need to worry about reimbursements, i just need to show my member card. and the same goes for emergencies or hospital stays (though for run-of-the-mill emergencies i think even the public system isn't that bad nowadays)

I wish American could have something as compassionate as that. but for various reasons, too many americans can't be persuaded that such compassion is a good thing.

there's the universal public system, which is 100% free (and sometimes good enough, oftentimes not good), but afaik my plan is actually not subsidized at all. it's just a regular private company

Last edited by anagram on 09 Nov 2016, 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

I am guessing your basic plan is at least as good as the bronze plan I have which is basically a glorified tertiary-only plan. but can you tell me how your universal public system differs from your private plan? and how expensive the premium per month is in dollars?

i'm hopeless when it comes to all that insurance terminology, so i don't know what a premium is. i just know that i pay those 125 us dollars a month, and it's the entirety of what i pay or will pay, apart from medication (for now, that is. it does get a lot more expensive as you get older, of course. but it still works the same way). it's not actually insurance, and it doesn't cover dental care (which here is normally seen as something completely separate). i checked it once, it doesn't cover massage therapy... . it does cover acupuncture though, which is not too shabby for a basic plan. i think technically/legally it's a cooperative, or something similar. there's a list of affiliated doctors, and there's a list of clinics and hospitals that also work with them

so whenever you want to use their services, you just need to say "i'm a member" when you book your appointment, and then you show your card when you show up. and that's it. for exams/procedures/therapy, you need a referral from an affiliated doctor. for nontrivial exams/procedures/therapy, you need approval, but in my experience so far it's just a formality to make sure you're not abusing their system, and you usually get it right away. they're subject to a bunch of federal regulations, and while they sure do try to take advantage of loopholes (mostly by increasing the monthly fee when they're not allowed to), i don't know of any horrifying nightmare stories

the same kind of plan that i have is also usually offered by some types of private employers as a non-optional benefit, and it includes children under 18 or in college. it's not mandatory by law, but it's either mandatory or sort-of-mandatory for some regulated fields/occupations according to requirements negotiated with professional associations. and if you're self-employed but you're a member of a professional association yourself (which i'm not), then it's cheaper

the public system is supposed to cover all essential healthcare needs at no cost (though i guess what "essential" means is highly subjective. they actually even do sex-change surgeries nowadays). it's free for everyone, but if you have a private healthcare plan, then you'll probably want to avoid it anyway. still, there are public clinics and hospitals that aren't bad or overcrowded, and i've actually used the public system myself a few times. the quality is very inconsistent, and it can vary wildly from one town/city/state to another, or even in the same town, from one year to the next (especially because sometimes it works in collaboration with non-profit institutions, usually affiliated with the church, and those agreements between them aren't always very stable or long-lasting)

so it's not so much that it's (necessarily) bad as it is unreliable. and of course, besides very long waiting times for consultations, most doctors you'll come across in the public system will be bad-tempered and unwilling to really listen to you. in other states, there are very serious problems with the public healthcare system in general, but in my state (which is the wealthiest one in the country) i think that's the biggest difference between public and private

FATALITY!!

Jesus Christ, America...

No you are not into facts. You are into cherry picking.

Hillary Clinton 59,626,695 votes (47.7%) Donald Trump 59,428,493 votes (47.5%)

Hillary Clinton lost the election but is winning the popular vote

They are idiots. My dad was like that his entire life. He took advantage of every single government social program he could. Starting with the G.I. Bill for his education. Then when his business funded with government small business loans, went broke, we went on welfare, food stamps, and a bunch of other social programs that no longer exist, because he voted for Ronald Reagan who defunded them all. Then he went on to vote for both the Bushtards, while they were cutting his SSDI benefits.

It's the idiots with no education and no healthcare, working at Walmart for minimum wage that keep voting for these Republictards. Half the US population are uneducated fools who are too dumb to vote, but keep voting anyway. So the cycle of ignorance just continues.

Your're echoing Clinton.

Anyone who disagrees with her is a "deplorable".