Good thing the media is working to push conservative news sites off social media. Because we wouldn’t want the internet to be dominated by crazy nonsense and lies. Just serious journalism. Like this.
Every American family basically pays an $8,000 ‘poll tax’ under the U.S. health system, top economists say – Washington Post
This is the Washington Post. This is the Washington Post on crack.
Does anyone involved in this even know what a poll tax is? Or what a tax is? Or what words mean?
U.S. households pay an extra $8,000 per year, compared with what Swiss families pay. Case and Deaton view this extra cost as a “poll tax,” meaning it is levied on every individual regardless of their ability to pay. (Most Americans think of a poll tax as money people once had to pay to register to vote, but “polle” was an archaic German word for “head.” The idea behind a poll tax is that it falls on every head.)
Good thing the Washington Post has decided to use the archaic German meaning of words.
Also in German, “gift” is poison. So a headline titled, “Gifts will kill you” would be completely appropriate.
There are major differences between Switzerland and America that even top economists should be able to grasp. And X being more expensive does not mean that X is levied on every individual.
Taking an average for family health care costs, comparing it to the average family costs in a whole other country, and then claiming that the difference represents a tax on every individual is a determined disregard for basic definitions, statistics, and sanity.
Any economist who claims such a thing doesn’t understand statistics.
America’s sky-high health-care costs are so far above what people pay in other countries that they are the equivalent of a hefty tax, Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton say. They are surprised Americans aren’t revolting against these taxes.
A tax is money you are compelled to pay to the government. A commodity or service that is expensive is not a tax. Even if it’s vital.
Now there’s an argument for calling the price of health care a tax because of the role that government regulations play in raising the price and cost of it. But that’s not the argument being made here.
“A few people are getting very rich at the expense of the rest of us,” Case said at conference in San Diego on Saturday. The U.S. health-care system is “like a tribute to a foreign power, but we’re doing it to ourselves.”
Or it’s like ghosts. Or dinosaurs. Or some random thing.
You can just say that health care is too expensive without stupid claims that it’s a tax or tribute to a foreign power.
“We have half as many physicians per head as most European countries, yet they get paid two times as much, on average,” Deaton said in an interview on the sidelines of the AEA conference. “Physicians are a giant rent-seeking conspiracy that’s taking money away from the rest of us, and yet everybody loves physicians. You can’t touch them.”
Anyone who has contact with the health care industry has moments of violently loathing everyone involved. That said, this is bizarre nonsense.
Doctors are a rent-seeking conspiracy? But the brilliant economists don’t seem to know what terms like “rent-seeking” mean.
After looking at other health systems around the world that deliver better health outcomes, the academics say it’s clear that two things need to happen in the United States: Everyone needs to be in the health system (via insurance or a government-run system like Medicare-for-all), and there must be cost controls, including price caps on drugs and government decisions not to cover some procedures.
That’s awesome. Let’s let a bunch of people die. It’ll spite those rent-seeking doctors everyone loves collecting tribute for a foreign power in archaic German.
This the Washington Post. On crack.
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