The Glade 4.0

Pharmaceuticals are mostly irrelevant to this. (1) the rest of the world does it's fair share of pharmaceutical development (If any country subsidizes the world, it's Switzerland)*, and any subsidy of pharmaceutical development costs are not included in health care costs. (2) Pharmaceuticals are not the primary reason for health care costs being too high in the USA - malpractice insurance is.

As a reference, Canada's public health insurance systems do not even cover pharmaceuticals for people under 65 years old. Prescription costs are carried by the user, although over 90% of people have coverage through employer provided benefits.

* - the world's largest pharmaceutical companies: Pfizer (USA), Novartis (Switzerland), Sanofi (France), Hoffman-LaRoche (Switzerland), Merck & Co (USA), GlaxoSmithKline (UK)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Interestingly, Trump has been generally in favor of greater socialization of medicine though like all his other positions without any specifics whatsoever.

It's entertaining how his followers completely ignore that - and so do the Democrats losing their **** at everything he says. His tax plan is also exceedingly "progressive" with 0 taxes for families below $50K a year - leftists should be falling all over themselves for socialized medicine and that aspect of his tax plan.

The problem we have right now is that polls themselves are losing reliability as an indicator. Gallup recognized this, and that's why they are not conducting opinion polls for this election. The problem basically is one of the sample being "Among likely voters who are willing to answer an unrecognized phone call and then answer this poll..."

Lots of people just won't pick up the phone any more.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think what could happen is a recession will start in the next several months (lots of indicators are pointing to it), and that will make Trump even more viable as a candidate. It'll be really interesting to see how this plays out.

If you're 50 years old today, and retire at 65, your 20% share (Medicare pays 80%) of your expected healthcare costs will be more than you get from Social Security throughout the rest of your life. People say we can't afford Social Security. Well, the social insurance program we can't afford isn't enough money to even cover a fifth of your expected healthcare expenses, and we're expecting the government to pay for the other 80%.

Medicare and Medicaid spending will be over $1 trillion in 2016 while the payroll tax, premiums, and fees won't even collect $400 billion.

This obviously cant go on forever. I'm really, really worried what's going to happen to the first world once this implodes. Every first world country has this problem. Europe has more efficient healthcare, but they're just as screwed because they've been having so few kids that they're going to have an absolutely tiny workforce supporting tons of retirees. Also, no first world country can really address the problem because, well, do you want to be the guy that tells people they better retire with $1 million in the bank if they want to live to 75 and $5 million if they want to live to 85?

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe healthcare costs are so high because such vast pots of money are available to pay for them?

Why do you think a single alcohol sab costs $10 or more in a hospital?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is true in every country on Earth, without exception.

Government funding is set up to provide kickbacks to people who supported election campaigns. Any source of government funding has laws and regulations written so that new companies can't enter into business with the government, and the companies that the program was set up for have a captive market. We call this government corruption.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I've thought about this topic a lot over the last month, and I think I'm switching to the "government should always keep to its budget" camp, even if loans and increased spending can help in the short or medium term.

On a pragmatic level, I think loans and overspending gives better results in some situations if done correctly. For example, if the Nazis are going to invade, the government might need to issue lots of bonds in order to raise a larger army. However, I would rather live in a world where governments are much more limited in scope. Modern liberals, I think, are more on the side of pragmatism.

Perhaps it's a pointless cause though because in the long run, the fittest society will succeed and dominate others, and having a powerful, large, and effective enough government probably leads to the most geopolitical domination. Like a survival of the fittest of cultures. But large governments always become incompetent eventually, and it always seems to turn into a "fall of Rome" situation. So perhaps the world geopolitical situation will always be in flux. Probably the longer a government lasts, the more cancerous it becomes internally, and it eventually destroys itself as a result of its incompetence and bloat.

I think the way the United States was originally founded was a balance between idealism (the Constitution limiting powers) and pragmatism (the President has a lot of power to quickly fix situations). I think in recent times, perhaps since FDR, we've shifted too far towards the pragmatic side.