show me some textbooks written by conservatives, that are used in public schools.
well here is one study relevant to my point above:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w14970
Affordable Care?
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show me some textbooks written by conservatives, that are used in public schools.
well here is one study relevant to my point above:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w14970
Not at all. First, I was discussing poverty, not medicare specifically. Second, with regard to either, it was that not only were fewer resources going to the elderly, but also that they were very unevenly distributed. Government programs filled in many of the potholes.
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
Before The Great Depression the care of the poor of all ages was a responsibility assumed by the private sector, generally through the extended family, friends and neighbors, and organized private charity. (Public Assistance: American Principles and Policies)
As late as 1927, when welfare expenditures by all levels of government amounted to less than $200 million, private philanthropy was estimated to exceed a billion dollars. (Bureau of Census 1975 pp. 1120-28)
By and large, the elderly who were poor tended to have been poor or to have had low incomes as younger people; workers who had sufficient resources to save for retirement had outlets for their savings in a well-developed market for life insurance, a developing market for private pensions, and a variety of other financial arrangements. The available evidence suggests that private financial institutions, in combination with public and private assistance for the poor accommodated the retirement income needs of the elderly. As those needs changed private institutions were responding and the basis for compulsory insurance was weakening. (Support of the Elderly Before the Depression: Individual and Collective Arrangements)
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I found the first book on Google books. The word "billion" doesn't appear in a search of it.
The second is CATO institute denialism. I noticed a heavy focus on average amounts, but little on distribution, quartiles, etc. For example, you won't find in that article what percentage of the elderly had no retirement income at all, before or after the depression started.
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
The article explains why, "Because of the very limited role played by the Federal Government in providing poverty relief prior to the depression (and the absence of the Federal Income Tax prior to 1913) there are no extensive national statistics on the income and assets of the Elderly in the 1920s." Also, from the references "Beginning in 1902 the bureau of census was prohibited from enumerating or investigating the poor other than those in almshouses."
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
Yeah, my gramps was still working in his mid 80s.
The lack of federal numbers is not evidence that the federal numbers were an improvement over numbers seen in various states. It certainly is not an argument regarding distribution of pension sizes and other known retirement incomes.
candrew
Well-Known Member
I guess this is one controversy that has flown under your radar
Most of the textbooks in the country are edited by a small group bible thumping ultra conservatives from Texas
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/21/how-texas-inflicts-bad-textbooks-on-us/?pagination=false
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I gave a link to a study that compared the resources and accessibility of care for the elderly before, and after, the New Deal. Of course you want to ignore it.
Government programs have shifted demand for care more to people who don't really need it, but who say "hey, I don't have to pay for it, so why not", such as the illegal folks who show up at emergency rooms with colds because they know the system, and they won't need to pay. . . . and women who prior to giving birth show up at women's centers with frivolous concerns, knowing they won't pay anything. And who pays for these? The costs are passed on by hospitals to the paying customers. Or to the government, meaning the taxpayers.
People have always gotten the care that was available in terms of access to the tools and personnel available, when they really needed it. . . .. except for possibly the independent people like me who make decisions to do without what I just don't want to pay for. Government, and insurance, and company benefits have driven the demand up, but mostly for the non-critical things. When people are in a serious condition, they have gone to the doctors and hospitals. . . . well, maybe some alcoholics and homeless people haven't been able to make it to the hospital in time. . . . but that will still happen under Obamacare or any other government program.
It's not the government that will solve our healthcare problems, but people who are willing to get out there and be involved. . . . who will make the decisions to go into those professions. . . . and with all the government involvement, there are a hell of lot of people who just don't want to be in that bureaucratic web, and fewer people are wanting to do that work. . .. so costs will go up, and people under Obamacare will begin to realize they just can't get care, because the government can't really do that efficiently.
We are going to pay more for what services and care we get, and we are going to get less care. And death rates will increase under this system. And innovation will dry up, meaning untold millions will not get the care that would have saved their lives, which hasn't been approved yet, or invented yet.
The ACA means less care and we will not be able to afford it.
hah hah hah. I know something about these folks, but their little fingers poked in the traditional dike to stop the flood of liberal indoctrination haven't prevented the production of millions upon millions of folks like yourself. The books produced by the major textbooks houses have been pimping socialism for a hundred years now, since the time of John Dewey.
Not that I think these bible thumpers really have a very smart way of countering secular humanism and all the associated "feel good" ideals of godless man, nor that I think bible thumpers should be writing textbooks for public indoctrination, either.
An educated and unbiased treatment of subjects like evolution and social values would not take the authoritarian indoctrination model at all, but would lay out various theories and line them up with a fair-minded selection of evidences that would simply refuse to do the thinking and make the conclusions for the student.
But you missed my point, entirely. . . . there is no major textbook production company with any large placements in public schools except for the secular humanist religionists. I double dare you to try to deny that that is not, essentially, an imposition of a belief system on the populace with government. . .. taxpayer. . . . dollars. An establishment of "Secular Humanism" as the State Doctrine.
I haven't gone through the thread as I bet it's the typical liberal vs conservative ideological nonsense, and not an honest discussion of the deeply broken healthcare system, or how to fix.
Consequently, I do not know whether this article has already been posted, but if not, it's well worth checking out.
https://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/
It is incredibly long and in depth. Which is surprising for such a mainstream publication. I hope it adds something to the discussion.
Consequently, I do not know whether this article has already been posted, but if not, it's well worth checking out.
https://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/
It is incredibly long and in depth. Which is surprising for such a mainstream publication. I hope it adds something to the discussion.
I read the article.
I saw nothing in it that appeared to be unfactual.
I have known some people who have been bankrupted by situations like this in their medical care.
This thread was started as my little project to explore why anyone would think the ACA is going to fix anything. I don't think so.
The ACA was written by major health care cartelists and insurance companies, and in my opinion functions primarily to cement their cartel power in the market, and empowers the government as the bill collector/care payer which will decide what can be done for us as individuals while enlarging the profit margins of the cartelists, while compressing the compensation to actual caregivers. . . . the little worker bees who will do what they're told. . . . and not do what they're told not to do. . . . .
Edited is a little strong. However, it's hard to make a textbook profitable if you can't sell it in Texas.
I'm sorry, I missed the link. Which post was it in? Will it actually say that medical resources were relatively evenly distributed? Will it say anything at all about elderly poverty?
I recently read that came about because of legislation in the middle of the last century. Before that, hospitals were free to turn away anyone who could not pay (although only a few did so).
The history of medicine in the developed world in the 20th century says that government does it more efficiently.
Innovation is a product of basic research, which is mostly government-funded.
How many textbook publishers representatives have you had discussions with? Textbook publishers are capitalists, through and through, whose primary motivation is to make money. Why do you hate capitalism?
"capitalism" is not my belief system. Individual freedom, liberty, and human rights for all mankind is my belief system.
I also hate the Republican National Party, and the Democrat National Party because both are wholly-owned and operated by cartelists.
While I do see the fact of efficiencies achievable by larger-scale operations, if I could influence our legislation I would protect the right of workers to form unions to represent themselves , and I would make it criminal for union officers to cut private inside deals with corporations for their own benefit, such as I have seen in the unionized workplace, where even though I was "management", my compensation package was tied to the union contract, and I saw a secession of union leaders over the years cut deals which were rewarded with cushy management-side jobs for the former union chiefs.
I do not like "capitalists" whose idea of "deregulation" means they can defraud their investors and customers as has happened since Billary Clinton cut the deal to deregulate banking in the nineties. I want to restore the Glass-Steagall provisions of the FDR-era attempt to curb big-time Wall Street thieves in therir strategies to fleece both investors in their own corporations and investors who banked with them.
I could go on. . . . . and on. . . . . .
Our textbook publishers have been owned and operated by the "right people", who have served the designs of the fascist puppeteers who create the language and context of the public play they call "history" and "news". Which I do not believe.
maybe another day.
And this is what's wrong with it. The money is collected from the taxpayers, and used to promote things deemed "beneficial" by bureaucrats, whose jobs are on the line not in any sense of duty to the public, but to corporate cartelists with their influence on the direction of "progress". Which, somehow, has made the cartelist prosperous and the people unable to afford to live without them. . . . sorta like the "company store" mentality.
Do you think if people had their own money to spend on their own care, that scientists and care providers would not do anything to meet their needs or expectations?
We can argue about the superiority of "managers" of the present system over the managers of a fundamentally different system that was more focused on the patients til the cows come home. We haven't really had a pure system run by the researchers or caregivers because since university research programs began to develop, it was with public funds, which the corporates such as Pharmaceuticals have managed to direct both by donations to university research programs, creating "chairs" dependent on them, and by hiring lobbyists to influence public spending, and by being the 500# gorillas financing election campaigns for "our" representatives".
Just like the way we were cut out of the deal in the ACA, it's never been "our" game at all.
It concludes that the OAA programs of the New Deal did not improve care, or provide more care. It was looking at specifically the elderly folks who had been, as I have been saying for quite a while, been getting assistance from private charities and community-owned hospitals which already had some taxpayer support, with local management.
The link was in post #141 (assuming nobody deletes a prior post), and for your convenience I'll give a quote here:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w14970
I went looking for something specifically because of our exchanges, and in my opinion this organization is not "conservative", but is a first-flight organization of professionals, headed by someone at M.I.T. It might be very much to your taste for an information resource on a lot of public issues.
The NBER appears to be a gold mine of relevant information, research done by some of our leading institutional economic researchers, including some things that are directly relevant to this thread. I will give the link to the specific topic this thread is about, and I'll spend some time reading what I can get out of this site, and see you all later. . . .
https://www.nber.org/programs/hc/hc.html
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