Sad that people can’t see past their ideological bubbles. Tech spaces used to be dominated by people who saw free speech as an imperative. Now their own political biases have them supporting censorship.
I feel like hackernews has been getting astroturfed by the same people that ruined reddit. Over the past few months, there have been increasingly one sided political stories and comments. It's a shame.
5. This has been brought up so many times by in the past few years and is very unlikely to pass scrutiny.
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The federal government has the ability to tax "income." Unrealized gains are not income as gains have not been clearly realized.
The closest legal definition for "income" comes from:
The Glenshaw Glass case
In Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co., 348 U.S. 426 (1955), the Supreme Court laid out what has become the modern understanding of what constitutes "gross income" to which the Sixteenth Amendment applies, declaring that income taxes could be levied on "accessions to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete dominion". Under this definition, any increase in wealth—whether through wages, benefits, bonuses, sale of stock or other property at a profit, bets won, lucky finds, awards of punitive damages in a lawsuit, qui tam actions—are all within the definition of income, unless the Congress makes a specific exemption, as it has for items such as life insurance proceeds received by reason of the death of the insured party, gifts, bequests, devises and inheritances, and certain scholarships.
It's not just choice but access. The access to see a specialist without waiting months. The access to see a different provider if you don't like your care. The access to pay cash for services. Choice is also underrated.
Those same people you say can't afford healthcare are the ones that are heavily subsidized by others through ACA, free community health plans, or Medicaid.
Healthcare is not a commodity despite your claim. It requires labor.
It seems most people are generally satisfied with their health insurance in the USA as opposed to the UK (see links below). In fact, the satisfaction from employer provided healthcare was much higher pre-ACA than it is currently. The middle class got shafted with increased premiums and deductibles to help subsidize those with low income. This has led to lower healthcare utilization rates in the middle class. The rich don't care since it's a marginal cost relative to their income/wealth. And, the biggest spenders (elderly) don't care since they are mostly on Medicare.
Most of the countries that report high satisfaction with their socialized medicine are both rich and have a low population count.
I am a physician, and I am also entitled to my own opinions. You can take a moral highground if your want. But, I feel I know more about healthcare than most people on this public forum. I tend to deal in practicality.
And where do you see me praising mass death?
Further edit:
I would go far enough to say you lack any understanding of our current healthcare system besides meaningless feelings on how it should be in a utopian society. Resources are not limitless. There is a continual shortage of healthcare providers which there are no good solutions for currently. If you don't want to address this reality, there is really nothing to address at all.
Look at how many times NHS is referenced and how it is viewed by those utilizing the system. In my opinion, socialized medicine tends to fail as the overall demand for healthcare will usually exceed the available supply in most societies.
I'm sure there are counterexamples to be provided; however, I think the benefits of a capitalist healthcare system are underappreciated.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...