A serious question for liberals/progressives/socialists/leftists

[KrazyHorse]

OK, he should have said "The longer one stays in post secondary education the more likely to vote Dem."

Even this is untrue. "Some College" = more Dem than "Bachelor's degree".

Would you like to try again?

Ben's original assertion was about the whole of the electorate.

I demonstrated that it was completely untrue, AND IS IN FACT PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT HAPPENS OVER MOST OF THE ELECTORATE (those with a bachelor's degree or less comprise ~85% of people who vote).

Just so I can get through to those of you who have difficulty with this concept, allow me to provide a graphic.

[Theben]

I find the graph confusing.

[chequita guevara]

The font sux

[Dinner]

The graph seems straight forward.

[Asher]

There's no graph title. -5 for not following standard procedures.

[/science teacher]

[chequita guevara]

The graph seems straight forward.

Why do you hate gays?

[Theben]

He seems to imply that gays go backwards.

[KrazyHorse]

The font sux

On a windows machine. Was too lazy to ssh and make gnuplot plots. Used paint instead.

[Zkribbler]

I'd challenge whether the latter two can be tied to private health insurance. The last is very firmly correlated to lack of education and poverty. We know how well the 40 year "war on poverty" has succeeded; let's not do the same for health care.

As for the first, the US has the highest health care cost because we don't ration it based on government budget constraints. It's easy to keep costs down when the payer can simply decide not to pay. In the US we don't have people waiting in line for ages because the Health Ministry allows only 423 operations of this type per month.

People who think single-payer is going to solve problems forget that single-payer will create as many problems as it solves, but worse, there will be fewer alternative avenues for treatment. In Europe the one saving factor was that some people could travel cheaply to other countries for treatments unavailable in their home country. In Canada they come to the US. If the US goes single-payer the only alternative affordable to the middle class in North America will be Mexico.

America's having the shortest lifespan and highest infant-mortality rates can certainly be tied to our reliance upon health insurance. Millions of Americans cannot afford health insurance, and so have to go without health care and without neo-natal care.

American's don't have to wait in line for ages because: (a) millions have no health care, and (b) because insurance companies are infamous for denying health care to those that do have insurance.

You're also overlooking how much we waste every year on needless bureaucracies -- both within the insurance industries and within the medical providers who have to deal with the insurance industries. Our VA spends 3% on administration; most European countries spend 5-10% on administration; but when dealing with insurance companies, about 33% of healthcare dollars go to administration.

Folks like to point to the long lines in England and Canada for why single-payor doesn't work. However, these two countries are infamous for underfunding healthcare. (And remember, their citizens live longer under their underfunder systems than we do in our overfunder system.) Look instead at a place like Germany, and then tell me why it doesn't work.

[chequita guevara]

American's don't have to wait in line for ages because:

As Michael Moore's movie, Sicko showed, this just isn't true. Americans DO have to wait in lines, even if you can pay cash.

[Krill]

As Michael Moore's movie, Sicko showed, this just isn't true. Americans DO have to wait in lines, even if you can pay cash.

They still don;t have the fetish for queueing that the Brits have [/US Jerk]

[Q Classic]

I love the word 'queue'.

[Fake Boris]

Have a cocktail.

[Dinner]

Where did the DL go?

[Felch]

Where did the DL go?

He did his job and then he left. Like a good DL should.