Well The Big Day Has Arrived

Dan Kone said:

The administrative costs associated with medicare about about 2-4% compared to private insurance which is over 20%, so to say private insurance is automatically more efficient just because it is run by private companies is a false assumption. And the idea medicare isn't popular is false. The vast majority of Americans prefer medicare over private medicare advantage plans.

And you're right on one point, we have problems with cost that aren't being addressed at all by either party. It's not just insurance but hospital costs are higher here than anywhere else. While forcing medicine to go non-profit would probably take care of that problem I do understand the necessity for private medical practices. I have no idea how to solve that problem.

One thing is for sure, free market theory doesn't seem to work when it comes to medicine. It's not cheaper and it's not more efficient. Just because in theory private companies should provide services cheaper than the government, that doesn't mean it works that way in reality. Health insurance is proof. They don't provide a cheap efficient product compared to government run plans here or anywhere else in the world. We pay double what most countries pay for insurance. There is nothing that can be said that changes that.

Click to expand...

I don't know where you are getting your facts but it is highly unlikely that there is such administrative cost disparity. Forgive me for not taking you at your word. I was unable to find any reliable numbers to back up your claim so I'm not sure where you are getting your "facts".

You are wasting your time, Doc.

He obviously swallowed the blue pill a long time ago.



Who else would assert that Democrats have not controlled Congress over the last four years?

Or that a statist redistributive model results in a general improvement in the everyday lives of the citizenry.

Johnnyorganic said:

You are wasting your time, Doc.

He obviously swallowed the blue pill a long time ago.

Who else would assert that Democrats have not controlled Congress over the last four years?

Or that a statist redistributive model results in a general improvement in the everyday lives of the citizenry.

Click to expand...

Your'e probably right Johnny. I did, however, find this article which has some interesting facts. I fully expect the liberals to discredit it because it comes from a conservative website but I'm going to post it anyways.

Busting Medicare's "Low Administrative Cost" Myth:



One of the favorite arguments of the government health care crowd is the supposed Medicare low overhead argument - i.e. Medicare is more efficient than private insurance because its overhead is so much lower than private administrative costs.

It goes like this:
Right now, the Medicare average is 3% and private insurance averages 12%. But Tom Bevan points out, some of that difference is an apples and oranges comparison:
However, when you make an apples to apples comparison, Medicare comes out much worse than private insurance:
Make sure you click through and check out the real Medicare administrative costs as compared to private industry.
Then there's waste fraud and abuse. Did you happen to catch that little hand wave at "fraud and abuse" in the first quote touting Medicare's efficiency? What, pray tell, is one of the primary jobs of an administive system? Would you imagine it to be the elimination of fraud and abuse - or said another way, to ensure that the company pays legitimate claims and avoids fraudulent and unnecessary payments?
How efficient is a system which is awash in both fraud and abuse? And, without profit, what incentive do they have to eliminate it?

John Stossel takes that part of the "Medicare efficiency" myth apart:
That's, on average, 68 billion every year. Imagine a private insurance company surviving with loss figures like that. But as Stossel points out, without an incentive to eliminate fraud and abuse, it continues year after year after year, with politicians and Medicare administrators tut-tutting but never really doing anything about it.
That is the reality of Medicare's efficiency. It is also the probable model any future health care insurance run by the government. Efficiency is an illusion brought about by a statistical sleight of hand and ignoring the systemic waste, fraud and abuse of Medicare. Don't buy the claim that Medicare has "low administrative costs" and is "more efficient."
[Crossposted at QandO]




http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/07/busting_medicares_low_administ.php

Reddit

doc111 said:

Your'e probably right Johnny. I did, however, find this article which has some interesting facts. I fully expect the liberals to discredit it because it comes from a conservative website but I'm going to post it anyways.

Click to expand...

Notice the article that you quoted from a far right wing source started out by admitting that medicare's administrative costs were lower than private insurance's costs. So right off the bat, even the far right admits that is true.

They go on to explain the reason you can't compare the two is because medicare specifically insures the elderly instead of the general population so you can't compare the two. That is actually a fair point. So lets compare medicare to other insurances that insure the same population.

Medicare advantage is private insurance that exclusively is available to the same population that qualify for medicare. By limiting comparisons of medicare to medicare advantage plans we can remove that variable from the equation. Now we have an apples to apples comparison of private insurance vs public insurance.

Guess what? The administrative costs of private medicare advantage plans are still 12% proving the explanations given in that article false.

http://www.aishealth.com/ManagedCare/Medicare/MAN_MA_Administrative_Costs.html

And as I said before, we pay more than any country in the world with a socialized system, double what many countries pay. Not everyone needs to be for profit. Profiting off of whether people live or die has produced many serious financial and ethical problems.

Dan Kone said:

Notice the article that you quoted from a far right wing source started out by admitting that medicare's administrative costs were lower than private insurance's costs. So right off the bat, even the far right admits that is true.

They go on to explain the reason you can't compare the two is because medicare specifically insures the elderly instead of the general population so you can't compare the two. That is actually a fair point. So lets compare medicare to other insurances that insure the same population.

Medicare advantage is private insurance that exclusively is available to the same population that qualify for medicare. By limiting comparisons of medicare to medicare advantage plans we can remove that variable from the equation. Now we have an apples to apples comparison of private insurance vs public insurance.

Guess what? The administrative costs of private medicare advantage plans are still 12% proving the explanations given in that article false.

http://www.aishealth.com/ManagedCare/Medicare/MAN_MA_Administrative_Costs.html

And as I said before, we pay more than any country in the world with a socialized system, double what many countries pay. Not everyone needs to be for profit. Profiting off of whether people live or die has produced many serious financial and ethical problems.

Click to expand...

I knew you would try to discredit the source. What is that called again? Here is another article which I pulled from the Heritage Foundation, another conservative organization. Proceed with another ad hominem attack. I've linked to the website from which this article came. I think part of the problems with numbers is that they are easy to manipulate. Both sides are claiming one is more efficient and both put up interesting arguments. In my experience government does nothing more efficiently than the private sector. I'm not bashing government, there is simply no incentive for them to be really efficient. I mean, they are only spending taxpayer dollars anyway, right?


http://blog.heritage.org/2009/07/06/medicare-administrative-costs-and-paul-krugman’s-propaganda-shop/




In his blog, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman launches an unsubstantiated attack on The Heritage Foundation for our June 25 report showing that Medicare administrative costs are higher than those private health plans, not lower, as Krugman has frequently claimed. We find it somewhat encouraging that his only “refutation” to our basic point consists of (a) an ad-hominem-like attack, and (b) an old quote that is doesn’t refute the point of our report — and is incorrect anyway.
The point of our paper is that expressing health administrative costs as a percentage of total program costs is silly, since the bulk of program costs are health care claims, and administrative costs are mostly unrelated to the level of health care claims. (Medicare claims processing is only about 4% of administrative costs; the other 96% is unrelated to the level of claims). This is clear from a moment’s thought — if you insure a healthy 25-year-old who never goes to the doctor (or at least, not enough to exceed the deductible), a health plan’s cost for that person is 100%, no matter how efficient the administration is. Private insurance has a lot more people like that than Medicare does.
The appropriate measure is administrative cost per person, and by that standard Medicare is more expensive than private health plans. This point stands unrefuted, even with the additional quote from Jacob Hacker.
Hacker refers to a GAO report that says administrative costs (including profit) for Medicare Advantage plans (privately-run managed care plans for Medicare beneficiaries) total 16.7% of total program costs. Hacker claims that “[t]his is a near perfect ‘apples to apples’ comparison of administrative costs, because the public Medicare plan and Medicare Advantage plans are operating under similar rules and treating the same population.”
This is simply not true. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) reports (page 62) that Medicare beneficiaries who report their health status as “excellent” or “very good” are twice as likely to enroll in Medicare Advantage as those who report their health status as “poor.” Any Medicare beneficiary can enroll in Medicare Advantage, but those who choose to do so are, on average, healthier than those who remain in the “traditional” Medicare program. In short, Medicare Advantage plans are not “treating the same population.” They are not “operating under similar rules” either; the Medicare Advantage plans have an entire set of regulations of their own, quite different from the rules of the traditional Medicare fee-for-service system.
Putting aside the factual errors and the fact that expressing administrative costs as a percentage of total costs is misleading, the GAO report doesn’t say what Hacker says it says. The administrative costs shown in the GAO report include major administrative functions not included in the figures, which are not comparable to those for reported by Hacker for traditional Medicare. Since the bulk of Medicare Advantage plans are HMO plans, the 16.7% figure includes both functions of operating a health plan and functions that occur in doctors’ offices and health plans. In traditional Medicare, the fees paid to physicians and hospitals include an amount attributable to their internal administrative costs. For physicians, that amount averages 17.3% of their fees — this is administrative costs in addition to costs incurred at the Medicare program level. Hacker says this comes up to 2%, but is actually 3% or 6%, depending on whether you count just the cost of the Medicare bureaucracy, or include with that cost the costs other government agencies incur in support of Medicare.
So even if we believe Hacker’s comparisons between Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare, a true “apples-to-apples” comparison shows that traditional Medicare’s administrative cost are higher — even using a “percentage-of-costs” approach weighted in its favor.
In other words, Krugman’s criticism of out report consists of an ad hominem attack, and a quote that doesn’t refute our point based on a report that doesn’t say what he says it says.
Krugman’s resort to name-calling (he calls Heritage a “propaganda shop&#8221 is welcome, in a way, since it demonstrates that he can’t refute our point based on the plain facts. Regardless, the facts stand, even if Krugman doesn’t like the employer of the person who brought them to light.


Edit: I also am including a link to the article that this article is talking about. Fair is fair, right?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/administrative-costs/

doc111 said:

I knew you would try to discredit the source.

Click to expand...

I wasn't discrediting the source at all. I was discrediting the logic they used. I brought up the fact that it was from a far right wing source to show you even they agree that medicare administrative costs were far lower than private insurance administrative costs which is what you were disputing.

Past that I didn't even mention the source, I instead pointed out that their logic didn't hold up. They were claiming that you couldn't compare the two because medicare exclusively dealt with older people who are more likely to become sick. Which is a fair point, but the logic breaks down when you compare public and private plans specifically for people 55+. Medicare has far lower admin costs there too.

You heritage foundation article then claims that medicare has lower admin costs because seniors who actually end up needing health care on a regular basis switch to medicare so medicare advantage primarily sells policies to people in excellent heath. If that's true then you have to wonder why people who actually use their health insurance prefer the public insurance over the private.

There is no necessity to have for profit health insurance. It's not cheaper. It doesn't provide a service. Insurance is simply the money middle man between you and your doctor. It's profiting at the expense of people's quality of life.

We have the most capitalistic medical system in the world. And guess what? It's also the most expensive with across the board increase in quality. People in countries with socialized heath care aren't going into bankruptcy because of medical bills. No one there is having to let their illnesses go untreated because they can't afford insurance. They aren't being dropped from their insurance because it isn't profitable to cover them. That all happens here more than other places.

Dan Kone said:

I wasn't discrediting the source at all. I was discrediting the logic they used. I brought up the fact that it was from a far right wing source to show you even they agree that medicare administrative costs were far lower than private insurance administrative costs which is what you were disputing.

Past that I didn't even mention the source, I instead pointed out that their logic didn't hold up. They were claiming that you couldn't compare the two because medicare exclusively dealt with older people who are more likely to become sick. Which is a fair point, but the logic breaks down when you compare public and private plans specifically for people 55+. Medicare has far lower admin costs there too.

You heritage foundation article then claims that medicare has lower admin costs because seniors who actually end up needing health care on a regular basis switch to medicare so medicare advantage primarily sells policies to people in excellent heath. If that's true then you have to wonder why people who actually use their health insurance prefer the public insurance over the private.

There is no necessity to have for profit health insurance. It's not cheaper. It doesn't provide a service. Insurance is simply the money middle man between you and your doctor. It's profiting at the expense of people's quality of life.

We have the most capitalistic medical system in the world. And guess what? It's also the most expensive with across the board increase in quality. People in countries with socialized heath care aren't going into bankruptcy because of medical bills. No one there is having to let their illnesses go untreated because they can't afford insurance. They aren't being dropped from their insurance because it isn't profitable to cover them. That all happens here more than other places.

Click to expand...

The part I highlighted is the one thing you said that I agree with..............but their countries are going broke! I've worked in the VA hospital and seen what goes on there. I also have many friends who use the VA, not by choice but because they are self employed and cannot afford private insurance, or the company they work for doesn't offer it. Look, I agree there are many flaws with private healthcare. I personally believe the problems with socialized healthcare outweigh the problems with private healthcare. Many doctors will not deal with medicare because of what they will pay and the enormous headache involved with dealing with them. My grandmother has had to switch doctors twice in the last 2 years simply because they quit accepting medicare. What does that say about medicare???????? This is an extremely complicated issue with no easy fix and a lot of unknowns at this point. We are in uncharted territory here and there WILL be some blowback from obamacare. There already has been. Everyone I know, and I literally mean everyone, is paying a significant amount more for their health insurance premiums. Why is that? Because they are scared to death what obamacare will do to their bottom lines. Cost is what needs to be addressed, not all this other bullshit. I'm dating myself here but when I was born my parents didn't have health insurance. They paid around $300 total for my birth. In less than half a century we are bankrupting people who actually have insurance! Cost my friend, cost is what needs to be focused on.

doc111 said:

The part I highlighted is the one thing you said that I agree with..............but their countries are going broke!

Click to expand...

So you think these countries are going broke because they have affordable public health care and if they switched to a more expensive privatized health insurance program like we have here they would stop going broke?

We pay twice as much per person for health care as most of those countries. Affordable public health insurance isn't why they are going broke.

Look, I agree there are many flaws with private healthcare. I personally believe the problems with socialized healthcare outweigh the problems with private healthcare.

Click to expand...

What problems? So far all I can tell is that you think it's bad because it's socialism. Not sure why that's bad. If private insurance were cheaper than public insurance I'd see the advantage. But I've yet to see any good reason ever for not having the option of getting public insurance. We aren't even talking about banning private insurance here, just giving people a choice that would significantly reduce costs all around.

Everyone I know, and I literally mean everyone, is paying a significant amount more for their health insurance premiums. Why is that?

Click to expand...

That would be the fault of blue dog democrats and republicans for blocking the public options. It's conservatives that are to blame for blocking a more cost effective option.

Cost my friend, cost is what needs to be focused on.

Click to expand...

Obama and Pelosi pushed very hard for cheaper health insurance. Conservatives blocked it and are now complaining that it's expensive. They are just playing politics at the expense of the rest of us.

Dan Kone said:

So you think these countries are going broke because they have affordable public health care and if they switched to a more expensive privatized health insurance program like we have here they would stop going broke?

We pay twice as much per person for health care as most of those countries. Affordable public health insurance isn't why they are going broke.



What problems? So far all I can tell is that you think it's bad because it's socialism. Not sure why that's bad. If private insurance were cheaper than public insurance I'd see the advantage. But I've yet to see any good reason ever for not having the option of getting public insurance. We aren't even talking about banning private insurance here, just giving people a choice that would significantly reduce costs all around.



That would be the fault of blue dog democrats and republicans for blocking the public options. It's conservatives that are to blame for blocking a more cost effective option.



Obama and Pelosi pushed very hard for cheaper health insurance. Conservatives blocked it and are now complaining that it's expensive. They are just playing politics at the expense of the rest of us.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if you're being obtuse now or what. What problems with socialized medicine? There are too many to list here but I'll give you a few for starters.

1. Quality of care will suffer.

2. Care rationing.

3. Rampant fraud.

4. Our federal govt. was never meant to have so much power. I personally believe this is the biggest problem.

5. Instead of listing even more problems I am linking a site which explains these problems in more detail and lists many, many more problems with socialized medicine.
http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/issues/healthcare/socialized.html


I don't understand how the conservatives really blocked anything. Blue dog democrats? They are the ones to blame for the shortcomings on obamacare. This flies in the face of what the republicans and conservatives in general stand for. Remember, the dems had a super majority and controlled 2 of the 3 branches of govt. How did the republicans screw any of this up again?

I do have a problem with socialism just because it is socialism and I'm not ashamed to admit that. I'm an independent/libertarian so it goes against every fiber of my being. Affordable healthcare insurance is contingent upon affordable medical care, not the other way around. Pelosi and co. pushed for something that could in no way ever happen without the high cost of healthcare itself being addressed. Come on! You guys have to be smart enough to realize this.

Here is another article from the Cato institute. All I had to do was google "problems with socialized medicine" and came up with more stuff than I could ever link.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6293

Dan Kone so far I have agreed with everything you write..The fact that you bring answers with facts ( and not from some blogger site ) is very helpful in getting your point across clearly. +rep

londonfog said:

Dan Kone so far I have agreed with everything you write..The fact that you bring answers with facts ( and not from some blogger site ) is very nelpful in getting your point across clearly. +rep

Click to expand...

Nice jab.

doc111 said:

Nice jab.

Click to expand...

oh doc, you are nuts. the proof is in the pudding. there are thousands of rich americans catching flights, every day, to get the benefits of socialized medicine all over the world.

further, we all know nobody ever comes to america for treatment.....

just remember this, the medical profession is about the only profession (save lawyers) where you can still get good jobs in this country. and the govt wants to take it over. that speaks volumes

jeff f said:

oh doc, you are nuts. the proof is in the pudding. there are thousands of rich americans catching flights, every day, to get the benefits of socialized medicine all over the world.

further, we all know nobody ever comes to america for treatment.....

just remember this, the medical profession is about the only profession (save lawyers) where you can still get good jobs in this country. and the govt wants to take it over. that speaks volumes

Click to expand...

Where did I ever say I thought socialized medicine was a better system? No one has proposed socializing medicine here as far as I can tell.

I agree with the conservative position of allowing for profit medicine. The profit motivation seems to work in this case. The money does appear to allow for greater innovation. I still am very concerned at the costs involved with for profit medicine, but since I have no alternative solution that would lower costs while allowing the level of medical innovation we currently have, I defer to what works. In this case I believe the conservative position works better than anything else so I'm just fine going along with that.

What I was advocating is the original proposal for health care reform including the public option. Optional socialized insurance is not the same thing as socializing all doctors and medical research.

People come to American doctors because we have access to some elite medical treatments. No one comes to American doctors because of our medical insurance. For profit medical insurance is parasitic industry making profits at the expense of Americans lives. It provides no value to our society. I have serious moral objections to this. It should not be profitable to deny people medical treatment.

londonfog said:

Dan Kone so far I have agreed with everything you write..The fact that you bring answers with facts ( and not from some blogger site ) is very helpful in getting your point across clearly. +rep

Click to expand...

Thank you very much

doc111 said:

I'm not sure if you're being obtuse now or what. What problems with socialized medicine? There are too many to list here but I'll give you a few for starters.

1. Quality of care will suffer.

Click to expand...

Optional socialized health insurance doesn't reduce quality. If anything it would increase quality. With our current system there is a profit motivation for denying sick people access to treatment. Because of the current system we have very little access to preventative care.

America has a terrible infant mortality rate and a lower life expectancy than most countries with socialized insurance. A pregnant mother in a country with socialized medicine doesn't have to consider cost before deciding to get a check up.

2. Care rationing.

Click to expand...

We have that now. Currently we ration based off of cost. Instead of giving priority to people who need immediate treatment, we give priority to those who can afford it. I think giving treatment to those in immediate need instead of those who can afford it is a good idea.

3. Rampant fraud.

Click to expand...

Medicare spends two tenths of a penny for every dollar spent on fraud. I'd rather focus on the other 99.98% of the problem rather than the 0.02%.

4. Our federal govt. was never meant to have so much power. I personally believe this is the biggest problem.

Click to expand...

Your personal philosophy on government is more important than people dying because they can't afford to see a doctor? I don't think we can afford to be that decadent. We should be focusing on practical realities rather than government theory.

I

don't understand how the conservatives really blocked anything. Blue dog democrats? They are the ones to blame for the shortcomings on obamacare.

Click to expand...

Blue dog democrats weren't the only ones who blocked it. Republicans gave near unanimous opposition. It was the blue dog democrats who are as conservative as your average republican in combination with republicans.

Basically the democrats had a solution that would reduce health care costs. Conservatives with no plan that would produce the same result all apposed affordable health care because it contradicted with their decadent political philosophy. Conservatives told America that their crusade to fight socialism was more important than the lives and futures of Americans.

I do have a problem with socialism just because it is socialism and I'm not ashamed to admit that.

Click to expand...

You should be. That is ridiculous logic. You drive on socialist roads, if there is a fire the socialist fire department puts it out. If we are attacked our socialized armed forces defend us.

Should we get rid of fire departments and roads because they are socialism? This random fear of socialism is absurd.

Dan Kone said:

America has a terrible infant mortality rate and a lower life expectancy than most countries with socialized insurance. A pregnant mother in a country with socialized medicine doesn't have to consider cost before deciding to get a check up.
.

Click to expand...

i am gonna call bullshit on this one. our infant mortality stems mainly from inner city crack babies and such. while all coutries have inner city problems i dont believe they have the level of hard drug use. i read data on this before and the numbers for this are totally scewed. if i have time i might look for the study so i can give more accurate information.

Dan Kone said:

You should be. That is ridiculous logic. You drive on socialist roads, if there is a fire the socialist fire department puts it out. If we are attacked our socialized armed forces defend us.

Should we get rid of fire departments and roads because they are socialism? This random fear of socialism is absurd.

Click to expand...

and this is a total kinard. roads and bridges arent breaking the system. giving away money to bums who dont want to work or fake injury, or lie to the system is whats breaking us. its simple, social security, period, end of discussion.

welfare, medicaid, and disability all fall under social security. thats what needs to be dealt with, freeloaders. not only do we house them, feed them, give them cars, cellphones, send them to college, buy their diapers, we also fix their houses for free when something breaks, like a light bulb, or a dishwasher and mow their lawn. we pay for all utilities including oil for heat, and ss pays the salaries for the guys that work at the housing authority to do those things. its a fucking boondoggle.

but libs will tell you we are always after grandma. nobody is after grandma. we are after the 15 year olds who keep pumping out iligitimate kids for money. and the fucking 22 year old male bums that live with them and dont work. and they collect ss becausse they have "social anxiety disorder".

thats where the money is going

jeff f said:

and this is a total kinard. roads and bridges arent breaking the system. giving away money to bums who dont want to work or fake injury, or lie to the system is whats breaking us. its simple, social security, period, end of discussion.

welfare, medicaid, and disability all fall under social security. thats what needs to be dealt with, freeloaders. not only do we house them, feed them, give them cars, cellphones, send them to college, buy their diapers, we also fix their houses for free when something breaks, like a light bulb, or a dishwasher and mow their lawn. we pay for all utilities including oil for heat, and ss pays the salaries for the guys that work at the housing authority to do those things. its a fucking boondoggle.

but libs will tell you we are always after grandma. nobody is after grandma. we are after the 15 year olds who keep pumping out iligitimate kids for money. and the fucking 22 year old male bums that live with them and dont work. and they collect ss becausse they have "social anxiety disorder".

thats where the money is going

Click to expand...

No, no, Jeff.

He has a point. We do tolerate a significant amount of Socialism in this country.

Roads are Constitutional. That Socialism is tolerated.

But the fire department is local; community level. The Federal government has no say there. If it were to start dictating firefighting standards the Socialism would be nationalized.

The military is Constitutional. Again, that Socialism is tolerated.

But when the Federal government nationalizes programs that were never intended to be Federal issues according to the Constitution; like education, Social Security, and health care....

Who here is familiar with the term National Socialism, also known as Proggie paradise? Because that's where we are headed if we don't put a stop to this.

Centralized power is a dangerous thing.

Oh, and Mexico has Universal Health Care, but the hospitals in Juarez are not full of Americans looking for quality care.

But the hospitals in El Paso? Full of illegal aliens downloading anchor babies.

And the trauma cases from the open war between the drug cartels and law enforcement cross the border to access the American hospitals.

Kind of makes you wonder why they would choose our shitty health care system over their own.

jeff f said:

and this is a total kinard. roads and bridges arent breaking the system. giving away money to bums who dont want to work or fake injury, or lie to the system is whats breaking us. its simple, social security, period, end of discussion.

Click to expand...

Actually it's our socialized armed forces. We spend more on our military then the rest of the world combined. Want to oppose big government and socialism? Stop military spending!

welfare, medicaid, and disability all fall under social security.

Click to expand...

Ok, well those are separate things, but if we are going to arbitrarily reclassify things then I get to do that as well. Police, jails, and prisons fall under the category of armed forces. The armed forces are more expensive than social security. We should get rid of them. They are all socialism. If your house gets robbed you should just pick yourself up by the bootstraps. If China invades the US and your neighborhood gets taken over, hire mercenaries. Socialism is evil right?

This is a fun game

thats what needs to be dealt with, freeloaders.

Click to expand...

So someone paying into social security their whole life and gets something back for it is a "free loader"? Interesting.

not only do we house them, feed them, give them cars, cellphones, send them to college, buy their diapers, we also fix their houses for free when something breaks, like a light bulb, or a dishwasher and mow their lawn.

Click to expand...

These things don't even come close to our military spending.