I do not want my tax money going to a private school that preaches rapture, for example, or druid-ism for that matter.
Some public schools do a very good job, some do a very bad job. IMO it's mostly the parents who aren't paying attention. IMO parents are also overwhelmed because the economy requires a two person income and, often, much more.
I'm sure there are many lousy teachers and lazy administrators but, ultimately, the parents cannot use a school to teach their children basic manners, good studying habits, respect for education, all about the birds and the bees, diet and nutrition and everything else. Schools are not parents.
If parents aren't going to take 100% responsibility for their children then they shouldn't be having them...now that's an idea. Yes, I agree, it's not always about the money.
"...And, assuming your measure of performance is the share of insurance spending that actually goes to medical care, Medicare is actually more efficient than the private sector. In traditional Medicare, just 2 percent of the money goes to overhead. Private sector plans, by contrast, spend an average of 15 percent on overhead. That might seem counter-intuitive if you assume, as many Americans do, that government is inherently inefficient. But it makes sense when you consider that the government doesn't have to spend money on advertising, among other things...."
cbsnews.com
-------------I think we have pretty decent healthcare already.
Gee, this is on top of some 100,000 - 200,000 people being killed or injured from medical malpractice. You have very low standards which is why you're a rightwinger. I expect a great deal more from our country and you should as well.
"...Instead, the United States has opted for a makeshift system of increasing complexity and dysfunction. Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193; the extra spending comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. What does that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries.
We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of industrialized nations. Doctors here perform more high-end medical procedures, such as coronary angioplasties, than in other countries, but most of the wealthier Western countries have more CT scanners than the United States does, and Switzerland, Japan, Austria, and Finland all have more MRI machines per capita. Nor is our system more efficient.
The United States spends more than a thousand dollars per capita per year—or close to four hundred billion dollars—on health-care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada, for example, spends only about three hundred dollars per capita. And, of course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its citizens; despite those extra hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year, we leave forty-five million people without any insurance.
A country that displays an almost ruthless commitment to efficiency and performance in every aspect of its economy—a country that switched to Japanese cars the moment they were more reliable, and to Chinese T-shirts the moment they were five cents cheaper—has loyally stuck with a health-care system that leaves its citizenry pulling out their teeth with pliers..."
newyorker.com
-------------But what about when that ratio is 3:1? Or 2.5:1?
We eliminate the SS cap on income (currently, I think, it's at $90K) and the problem goes away until the baby boomers keel over and the baby busters have the mini baby boomers pay for them.
This will not work with a 45% increase in the national debt everytime Republicans get their mitts on the checkbook though. |
