Category: Politics

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Healthcare

 
“I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject . . . No one knew that healthcare could be so complicated,” explained President Donald Trump to Republican governors attending the 2017 National Governors Winter Conference. Many consider the President’s comment the understatement of the year due to the uneven, often unintentional evolution of health care in America.
 
While there are still things you can do personally to reduce the cost of healthcare, the latest political effort to fix one of the more inefficient and most expensive health care systems in the industrialized world. After promising for seven years and voting more than fifty times in the last four years to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Republican majority in the House of Representatives could not agree on a replacement plan. As a consequence, the ACA – with all of its strengths and weaknesses – will continue.
 
If you’re wondering how we got here, you’re in the right place. In the following sections, we’ll cover the history of healthcare in the U.S., previous reform efforts, common debates, future solutions, and more.

Our Existing Health Care System

Today, the country spends $3 trillion annually on healthcare or $9,523 per person. According to consulting firm Deloitte, America spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world – more than 2.5 times than the U.K., 1.8 times the rate of Germany, and 1.6 times the amount Canada spends.
 
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Can Social Security Be Saved?

More than one-half of Millennials believe there will be no money in the Social Security system by the time they are ready to retire, according to a 2014 Pew Research report. “I don’t think anyone honestly expects to Collect a single penny they pay into social security. I think everyone acknowledges that it’s going to go bankrupt or kaput,” says Doug Coupland, author of “Generation X.”
 
What went wrong? Will Social Security go bankrupt?

A Brief History of Social Security

In 1935, few of the program’s creators could have anticipated the condition of the Social Security program today. The country was in the midst of the Great Depression with a quarter of its labor force – 15 million workers – idle, and those with jobs struggled to make ends meet as their hourly wages dropped more than 50% from 1929 to 1935. Families lost their homes, unable to pay the mortgage or rent. Older workers bore the brunt of the job losses, and few had the means to be self-supporting. One despairing Chicago resident in 1934 claimed, “A man over 40 might as well go out and shoot himself.”
 
Hundreds of banks failed, erasing years of savings of many Americans in a half-decade. People lived in shanty towns (“Hoovervilles”) or slept outside under “Hoover blankets” (discarded newspapers). Breadlines emerged in cities and towns to feed the hungry. Thousands of young American men hopped passing trains, sneaking into open boxcars in a desperate attempt to find work.
 
Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), promising a New Deal, defeated former President Herbert Hoover in 1932 with more than 57% of the popular vote and 472 of 531 Electoral College votes. Three years later, FDR signed a bill that would “give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.”
 
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Understanding Political Correctness (PC) – What It Means & How It’s Evolved


 
 “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This old English rhyme is often heard during one’s childhood, typically as comfort to a victim of ridicule by other children. Implicit in the advice is the unspoken admonition to the child to grow up and ignore the pain of verbal abuse – after all, it’s only words.
 
Many believe that the avoidance of words that may offend, marginalize, or insult a group of people – political correctness (PC) – has gone too far. According to PC critics, PC promotes a society of victimhood and endangers the public at large by limiting discussion about controversial subjects. Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, wrote in a USA Today op-ed about the Orlando mass shootings that the “administration’s political correctness prevented anything from being done about it.”
 
Conservatives claim that PC is a threat to the first amendment and our right to free speech. Columnists liken modern-day America to Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” or George Orwell’s future society in “1984“. In “1984”, Big Brother’s thought police relentlessly pursue anyone foolish enough to say anything that might be offensive to someone. Surprisingly, liberals – often blamed for the expansion of PC – have their own misgivings about verbal censorship. Ralph Nader, a former third-party candidate for president, says, “You can’t say this about that, and you can’t say that about this. And the employer tells you to hush. And perhaps your wife tells you to hush, and your kids tell you to hush. It’s gotten absurd.”
 
Does one’s choice of words matter? Have efforts to avoid offense stifled free speech as many claim? Is political correctness an expression of politeness, evasion of hard truths, or extreme sensitivity? Or is an expression of anti-PC sentiment simply incivility, indecency, or vulgarity, as Mark Hanna writes in TIME?
 
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1 Way to Fix the U.S. Federal Debt No One is Talking About

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Public lotteries have a long history. From Caesar Augustus (where tickets had prizes of slaves, real estate, and ships) to European governments during the Middle Ages (which relied heavily on lotteries for revenue), state-run lotteries have continually proven lucrative, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
 
Not surprisingly, the United States of America also has a long history of lotteries. Considered “voluntary taxes,” early lotteries were used to fund new colleges such as Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown. In 1745, the General Court of Massachusetts passed an act allowing a lottery to pay off costs defending the colony’s frontier and seacoasts. By 1831, eight states held 420 lotteries.
 
Today, lotteries are the most popular form of gambling in the United States, with two times as many annual participants as those who visit a casino. A Gallup Research Poll indicates that nearly 50% of Americans buy state lottery tickets each year. The majority of participants have a technical, college or post-graduate degree, earning more than $36,000 a year.
 
The popularity of gambling has also been global, with numerous governments taking a cut. One of the longest-running lotteries was the Irish Sweepstakes from 1930 to 1987, the revenues of which benefited Ireland’s public hospitals. A state-run lottery managed by the country’s postal system replaced the Sweepstakes, providing more than £30 million for government-sponsored projects each week. According to the United Kingdom’s official National Lottery website, more than £1,901 million ($2.37 billion in U.S. dollars) has funded 500,000 projects since its origination in 1994.
 
According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries (NAASPL), more than $110 billion of lottery tickets were sold in the United States in 2015. Roughly $33 billion of that was redirected to state and local governments. According to figures compiled by the U.S. Treasury Department, that represents approximately one-tenth of the Federal Government’s annual revenues from corporate taxes ($344 billion) and slightly more than 2% of the $1.5 trillion received from individual income taxes.
 
With huge participation rates and billions in revenue, redirecting lottery funds can make a significant impact. As the national debt continues to rise, many have called for a national lottery, with proceeds spent paying down debt.
 
Is it time to offer a national lottery in the United States to retire the National Debt?

The Growing National Debt

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the total U.S. national debt will be $20 trillion by the end of 2016, a 347% increase since 2000. Many economists consider only the debt held by the public in their calculations, discounting the effect of intra-government holdings (an estimated $5.5 trillion at the end of the year). The majority of the intra-governmental holdings are in the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds, as well as the Federal Financing Bank securities.
 
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