Ruler for a day

[Christopherson]

So let me preface this by saying that this isn't the first time I have made this thread. I created it, but then was unable to keep it going because my daughter was born a couple weeks later. Damn. That was almost 2 years ago. I haven't really been back since other than to check General Talk once every 3 months or so (and it has been VERY weak I might add) but I am bored right now. Seeing as how my career gives me summers off, I have some free time and figured I might post for a little while and this was a thread topic that has always interested me. At the time of it's first creation, it was destined for a debate between benji and myself which was great, other than that we agreed on lots.

So anyways, the topic of the thread: If you were the ruler of your _________ (city, state, country, planet, etc.) for a day and had the opportunity to make policy decisions, what policies would you make/change and why? (I know, stupid me thinks that by bolding the "why" people will actually explain themselves) Would you legalize marijuana? Criminalize abortion? Eliminate income tax?

I have a ton of ideas which I will unfold slowly, in hopes that each will get its own debate. Much of my inspiration comes from books I have read, but for the most part, I will not just rehash the ideas of others. I may incorporate their ideas, but I promise they have my own twist on them. Here is my first, and it is a relevant one given the current debate on nationalizing health care.

I would change the way health insurance operates in this country today. I think it is a miserable system, but think that the under the direction of the government it would be more miserable. Here is my solution: First of all, lets start by doing away with the current health insurance we all have. I have always thought it was silly that it was something that was provided by an employer. Why? I just don't get that. It seems inefficient for them to do that as opposed to just giving me more damn money and letting me do what I want with it.

Now, $1500 per year is held out of everyone's paycheck and put into a high interest savings account. For the low income the government will chip in on this. The money is there to spend on whatever health procedures you decide to have. Since we start putting this money into the account at say age 18-22, we are highly unlikely to have any medical costs at all. By the time we are getting older and have more medical problems, this account will have matured to a nice amount allowing us to deal worth more costly medical expenses. Anyone who has run numbers dealing with compound interest will understand how fast this can grow.

The second part of this plan is that everyone must have catastrophic health insurance (extremely high deductible) because accidents do happen and everyone has the right to medical care in these circumstances. I am thinking that the government again picks up the tab for the low income (poor and old) and everyone else has to pay for their own.

The money in these savings accounts (much like the HSA's we have today) can be passed down when someone dies, and I think that there should be some amount, lets say $50,000, that once you have that much money in your account, you no longer have to contribute. (FYI, this would happen by about age 45 assuming you don't use a ton of money a year) At that point, you have self insured against most major problems.

The beauty of this system, in my opinion, is the choice and freedom it gives to the individual. Personally, I am a very healthy person and don't go to the doctor for little stuff, so health insurance is a rip off for me. My job provides it for me, but at a cost of about $600 per month. I would rather have the money, and build up a savings account to self insure.

So what do you think. Would this work? Fail miserable? Got a better idea to fix health insurance? Think the government should run it all? Argue with me!

[benji]

I liked the old title better. "Dictator" makes me feel like I should care less about the people. My answer would be mostly the same as the old thread, strip the legal code back to 1790. Constitution can retain its current status, however, even though I doubt people would be enacting slavery of the old type.

Now to:

destined for a debate between benji and myself

First of all, lets start by doing away with the current health insurance we all have. I have always thought it was silly that it was something that was provided by an employer. Why?

Risk pools. If you were allowed to buy insurance across state lines combined with expanded HSA this would diversify the risk pool outside your employer, but that would hurt state bureaucrats and diminish the need for federal oversight.

Now, $1500 per year is held out of everyone's paycheck

Already is. It's called Medicare.

Since we start putting this money into the account at say age 18-22, we are highly unlikely to have any medical costs at all. By the time we are getting older and have more medical problems, this account will have matured to a nice amount allowing us to deal worth more costly medical expenses. Anyone who has run numbers dealing with compound interest will understand how fast this can grow.

Why not simply put them into a modified Roth IRA, or similar? And only allow withdrawals before a certain date for medical expenses?

The second part of this plan is that everyone must have catastrophic health insurance (extremely high deductible) because accidents do happen and everyone has the right to medical care in these circumstances. I am thinking that the government again picks up the tab for the low income (poor and old) and everyone else has to pay for their own.

We already do this. Hospitals are not legally allowed to turn away "catastrophic" cases. (Your state will determine the definition of this. Some states say "BLEEDING PROFUSELY" while others may say "want an abortion." If the person cannot pay, it's paid for by increased insurance premiums and taxes/fees on everyone else. The problem lies with people who do have insurance.)

The beauty of this system, in my opinion, is the choice and freedom it gives to the individual. Personally, I am a very healthy person and don't go to the doctor for little stuff, so health insurance is a rip off for me. My job provides it for me, but at a cost of about $600 per month. I would rather have the money, and build up a savings account to self insure.

Yeah, but then you'd be uninsured. And THAT'S A CRISIS. Also, if you were keeping all this money in some kind of crazy tax free shelter that accumulated in value overtime, then we couldn't get that money to fund "shovel ready" projects to save the economy from collapsing.

Says a lot that you'd destroy the economy and stand in the way of progress just to do what's best for you and your family.

The President and Congress has the best policy. The government decides if you are worth enough for the medical expenditure. No reason to spend money on someone who will die in the end anyway, especially if they don't have any buildings named after them. The older you get, the more you need to sacrifice for the children. Just like the richer you get, the more you need to sacrifice for the state.

It's the moral thing to do.

[J@3]

Cool thread, I'll post something more indepth later.

(and it has been VERY weak I might add)

That's my fault for locking all the good threads. Just ask Laxation.

[Andrew]

I'd eliminate the grandfathered laws that protect child molesters and the like who were convicted before the new laws were introduced, at the expense of the safety of the communities they move into. They may have "paid their debt to society" but I would suggest a lot of them have not been truly rehabilitated during their time in prison and still pose a threat upon being released. I see why it's done and anyone who is making a fresh start or was falsely imprisoned shouldn't be actively persecuted, but when there's a potential thread to the new community that they move into, it's a case of the needs of the few outweighing the needs of the many.

[Christopherson]

I'd eliminate the grandfathered laws that protect child molesters and the like who were convicted before the new laws were introduced, at the expense of the safety of the communities they move into. They may have "paid their debt to society" but I would suggest a lot of them have not been truly rehabilitated during their time in prison and still pose a threat upon being released. I see why it's done and anyone who is making a fresh start or was falsely imprisoned shouldn't be actively persecuted, but when there's a potential thread to the new community that they move into, it's a case of the needs of the few outweighing the needs of the many.

Hard to argue with that. Its a wonder our dumb politicians can't come up with this stuff on their own.

Risk pools. If you were allowed to buy insurance across state lines combined with expanded HSA this would diversify the risk pool outside your employer, but that would hurt state bureaucrats and diminish the need for federal oversight.

Yes, I know. It should be my duty to pay an exorbitant amount of of money for my health insurance to cover all of the unhealthy people. Its my fault they smoke and are fat asses and therefore need a freaking operation every month.

Already is. It's called Medicare.

Except Medicare is an efficiency nightmare. I would guarantee that each individual can handle their money better than the federal government can. Raise your hand if you aren't $10 trillion in debt. OK, those with the hands raised should be in charge of the money. Honestly though, it really would be far more efficient and cost effective to run things this way. We could do away with so much of that bureaucracy stuff.

Why not simply put them into a modified Roth IRA, or similar? And only allow withdrawals before a certain date for medical expenses?

This sounds like a decent idea, but I like the idea of a $$$ amount rather than a date. What happens when someone turns 60, drains their medical IRA to buy a friggen boat, and then realized that since they turned 60, they are going to have lots of health problems?

Says a lot that you'd destroy the economy and stand in the way of progress just to do what's best for you and your family. :shake

I know, I am a greedy bastard. I'd refute your last paragraph of how the government has the best plan, but I know you are joking, and my rebuttal is a very lengthy one, so I'd rather not bust it out unless someone seriously thinks nationalized health care is a good idea.

And damn you Jae. I was just about to dive into a great conversation about the puttincomputer Mormon guy's awesome avatar when you locked the thread! Quit squashing dialogue you fascist!

[benji]

I'd eliminate the grandfathered laws that protect child molesters and the like who were convicted before the new laws were introduced

There's a reason for this quirk in the legal system. It's so a law can't be made because you did something and then charge you under it even though it wasn't illegal at the time. Like if I right now suddenly drafted a law making it illegal to complain about old child molesters and charged you with committing a crime for your post.

Anyway, health insurances:

I think we need to remember that the current debate is not about coverage. For all intents and purposes 90-95% of Americans have health insurance, and 90-95% of those who don't are either eligible for Medicare, SCHIP, etc. and don't apply, can afford it but choose not to have it, or are undocumented citizens. There's a reason the Administration abandoned talking about "full coverage" as a reason to change the system, and that's because "full coverage" essentially already exists. No one is turned away from emergency rooms for life threatening illnesses and in many areas aren't turned away for any reason. Everyone above the poverty line already pays $1500+ a year for medical insurance. And those below it are still eligible for Medicare. "Coverage" isn't a crisis when you break down the uninsured and it certainly doesn't affect the insured. Bill Gates probably has health insurance, same with Kobe Bryant and Tom Cruise. These guys don't need it, they can pay out of pocket for all but the newest and most extreme medical treatments. (And Gates can probably pay for even those out of pocket.) Is it a crisis if they're uninsured?

So they changed the focus. It's now about "cost" and "quality." Apparently it's a problem and a crisis that spending on medical care is going up. Obama, as they tell us again and again so we can't criticize him for any out there, doesn't have a plan, but he promises his plan will improve the quality of health care while also reducing costs. The House plan doesn't do this, but that's unimportant.

If people stay in private plans, costs won't go down. People want to stay healthy, and want to get the best care they can afford. If this means some new wonder drug or treatment, they want it over that older cheaper but less effective one. But that new one is more expensive, thus a higher health care cost. Due to new treatments, and the lowering in cost for everything else, health care consumes a greater amount of money. Whereas you once spent 20% of your income on food, and another 30% on shelter, etc. Now those costs, for most people, are minuscule percentages of income. With all that money freed up, people do buy bigger TVs and cars and houses, but they also spend more to stay healthy.

Now, costs will go down overtime. Today's hot new drug will fall in cost as generics are made, and the next hot new drug replaces it. A drug that was a luxury for the wealthy in the 1970s, is now $4 at Wal-Mart. But if you want the best treatment and can't afford it, that doesn't help you now, it only helps those bastards in the future. Plus it helps the insurance companies, they'll gladly pay for a lot of little but effective costs to hopefully make sure they won't have to pay the large ones on you. And as those treatments come down in cost and democratized people who can pay them out of pocket (which gradually increases in number) want to adjust their insurance coverage to once again only pay for the stuff they can't immediately afford. You don't want your insurance to pay for NiteQyl so you can get drunk...er sleep better, because it's going to cost you way more to pay for an absolutely everything covered program than it will to spend the $3 when you need it.

And that's the problem apparently. Because as Obama keeps saying, maybe you could get that hip replacement or take the red pill, but the blue pill is cheaper. Why pay all that money for a medical procedure to fix your problem instead of just taking a cheap painkiller? That's part of their argument to lower costs.

Then there's also the leverage of the government. Either through setting price controls on things, or by demanding mandates in coverage. If you're an individual buying insurance, you can shop around but your leverage in demanding certain things be covered is only in your ability to buy a specific plan. If you're getting from your employer, their leverage increases on having the plan have what the employees want. The larger the company, the more employee complaints, the greater the bargaining chip with the insurance company. It'll cost the insurance company less to cover that one person with the weird condition than to lose the entire employer. The government however has absolute leverage. It can declare by law what an insurance company is required to cover. State governments already do this, which is why you can't take your plan across state lines. Federal government obviously will do this across the entire nation.

They can't set price controls without first killing the private market. Medicare currently pays less for things because everyone on private insurance picks up the cost. And since they can't immediately outlaw private insurance and go to a public-only plan, and they have to pretend to like free markets, they have to go the other way and mandate coverage.

So essentially what you have is a reform that lets you keep your private coverage for five years, but it will get more and more mandates that you will have to pay for. Making the public plan more attractive. Once everyone ditches their more and more expensive private plans which can't compete with the public plan (which will be "free") and all those people who would be fined if they didn't acquire insurance also jump on, then the public-only plan is accomplished. Now the government has absolute leverage to set and control costs. Drug companies and others will play ball to an extent as some money is better than none, but the quality and future advancements will go down. And because medical costs get expensive as people age, the government will have to start making decisions on what and who to pay for because it's impossible for the government to pay for any and all medical costs for everyone in the country.

Any reform that's not or doesn't lead to a public-only plan is dead in the water. There's no political benefits for freeing up the medical market. You can try to take credit for improving access and quality and lowering costs of health insurance, but you didn't really do anything but get out of the way. But once you get everyone a public-only plan, one that you've designed and created and everyone knows you did because it's called The Ted Kennedy Health Care Reform Bill, they're beholden to you. You are their medical provider, and if some guy comes along saying it sucks and he wants to make a change to some part to make it better, well, HE'S GOING TO TAKE AWAY YOUR HEALTH CARE. Are you going to vote for that asshole who wants you to die in the street? And if some other asshole wants to be able to pay for the best medical care money can buy for his wife or son, well fuck him, he just wants something to set himself apart from you and prove he's "better" than you. Not to mention how unfair it is that just because he's got more money he can get better medical care.

Right now, people with more money can get better stuff. And that's wrong. Everyone should get the same crap.

[Christopherson]

Um, yeah. I would love to add more fuel to the fire and talk about how terrible of an idea nationalized health care is, but I am going to wait for someone to come along and try and tout it as a great thing before I do so. So benji, do you have a plan which would improve our health care plan, or are you content with the fact that we spend as much in administrative costs for medical care as do most other nations on their entire medical care? Are you OK with the the fact that, as a percent of GDP, we spend twice as much as the rest of the world on medical care? Or are you just good at pointing out the flaws in the programs of others. Do you have any real ideas of your own?

[benji]

Eliminate market distortion by the government. That's always the plan.

Slash FICA by half and change both Social Security and Medicare into protected funds that provide assistance for catastrophic costs of the poor and retired. There's your safety net. (EDIT: Thinking about it, it'd be better and cheaper to simply manage this like WIC, etc. The government would subsidize their insurance payments until they could afford them. Then the government wouldn't be running a massive insurance company again. This would be on top of health insurance and care costs being fully tax deductible which I neglected to include earlier.)

Nobody's going to tout in favor of anything, people are afraid of debate on here. All you get is my sarcastic re-purposing of their terrible arguments.

Are you OK with the the fact that, as a percent of GDP, we spend twice as much as the rest of the world on medical care?

Hey, you can spend less on medical care if you want.

Let me know when you find another country of 300 million overweight people that spends less and has the same level of treatment.

are you content with the fact that we spend as much in administrative costs for medical care as do most other nations on their entire medical care?

Hey, I'm not the one who created the byzantine mandates and regulations.

[Christopherson]

Good point about our country's obesity problems. However, you say I could spend less on medical care if I want but it isn't true. Since my employer provides my health insurance, I don't have that option. I would much rather have the money in my pocket and buy insurance myself. Hell, let me spell out my situation with numbers to paint a picture for everyone.

I am a teacher. I am married with 2 kids. We are all super healthy, not because we are health freaks, but because we are rationale freaking people. We don't overeat or smoke or or screw people with communicable diseases, etc. My employer, the state government, pays for the first $900 a month for my families health insurance. To insure my whole family it is like $1450 per month. For just me, it is like $600 per month. Mind you this is kick ass insurance. It has a freaking $200 deductible and covers everything. It rocks. But I am young and healthy, as is my wife. Why is it so expensive? Well because I am in a pool with all of the other teachers, which are on average, much much older than I am. So my expensive insurance is mainly to subsidize them. Another teacher told me the other day that he hated when he was young and had to do it, but it seems like a good deal to him now. Why should I have to do this? Why shouldn't I be able to take the $900 a month my employer is willing to dole out, buy high deductible insurance for my entire family for $200 a month and stick the rest in a "medical" IRA? I'd $500,000 in the account by the time I was 60. To me, this is BULLSHIT. If I could do this, I wouldn't need someone to subsidize me when I get older.

I say we should do away with employer provided health insurance and give people the money and let them choose what insurance they want. Are you planning on being a chain-smoking McDonald's freak all you life, buy good insurance. If your me, save your money and buy high deductible stuff. So many people walk around and say, man I could get health insurance if only I could find a job that would provide it for me. Why is this the employer's responsibility? Why doesn't my employer buy my groceries? Why doesn't my mortgage company pay for my car insurance? Why doesn't the city I live in pay for my homeowner's insurance?

[benji]

I am a teacher.

Well, there's your problem.

I think getting rid of the closed shop in education is a bigger priority than outlawing employer-sponsored/provided health insurance.

Employer-provided is done because it does lower costs.And also makes people feel good because they aren't "paying" for insurance.

[Christopherson]

Wait, how does employer provided health care cut costs? By giving me something I don't want? I don't see how it would be drastically more expensive to have employers pay employees the extra money and then allow the individual to choose their own health insurance.

Yeah I know. Our education system needs some fine tuning as well. Two things I would do to make it work better:

1. Eliminate tenure. Terrible idea in my opinion. Some teacher teach for 3 years, get their tenure, and then just drop it into cruise control. Bad teachers are impossible to get rid of. Lets call the amount of material a student should learn in 1 year 1 YEG. Just made that up. A good teacher is worth about 1.5 YEG and a bad teacher probably less than .5 YEG. We should be able to replace the bad teachers. How would you like to run a company when you couldn't fire your piece of shit workers.

2. This stems from idea number 1. We need to figure out a way to make it worth while for this kick ass teachers to teach. I know I could make a helluva lot more money in a different field, but I LOVE my job. I know others who chose the money but would be great teachers. We get our asses kicked on international tests. We have to find a way to get good teachers working at our school. We need to either come up with some sort of pay for performance kind of plan ( which would be nightmarish to implement, and many of the performance standards thrown around I am in objection to) or we just need to pay the whole profession more to attract higher quality teachers to weed out the bad ones.

Your thoughts?

(Thats right, another idea less than 24 hrs after my first one! I'm going to blow my wad all in one month, then not post again for 2 years!)

[benji]

You have to eliminate the power of the Union. The rest of that will follow. They have a stranglehold control of the system as well as the politicians. They've spent many years successfully spinning any attack on the Union's empire as an attack on teachers and the entire concept of education.

I'm sure you've seen this thing on how to fire a NYC teacher.

Should open up education to markets all over the place. We don't pay a yearly fee to be "assigned" to a grocery store by our geography and if we want something they don't carry or a better store we have to pay yet again to use this other store. Yet we're just fine with this system in education.

If a schools failing? Well, make sure no private or charter schools can encroach, and then give those failed schools more money and everyone raises.

So what if they haven't really had a balanced budget in a decade and only graduate 25% of students, while being on the verge of bankruptcy, you're just against education if you want to change things and not just give them more money! And not wanting raises for bad administrators and teachers? Why do you hate the most important people in society?

[Christopherson]

So lets keep a running tab here, I want to ruin the nations economy and I hate the most important people in society. Yup, good day for me.

I agree that a possible solution would be to give people the freedom of more choices, just like I wanted to do with health care. (I don't know if you noticed, but I edited my post, you might want to double check in benji) Lets open up schools and let students go where they want. If a school wants a kick ass teacher, let them bid for their services just like I would pay more to hire a kick ass small forward than I would for a shitty one.

Competition amongst schools is a good thing, in my opinion. However, while this plan works great in urban areas, it falls flat on its face in rural ones. I live and teach in a area where schools are all 30 miles apart or more. What am I supposed to do, send my kid an hour away every day to school? Each rural school would essentially have a monopoly on the market and would have little incentive to hire the best teachers, of course this is what essentially happens everywhere now, so I guess it would be an improvement.

Oh and yes, I think getting rid of the unions is a great idea. I think they had there place once upon a time, but now they are just dumb. When I started teaching, they tried to get me to join the state union. Luckily, they give first year teachers a discount and it is only $600 per year for membership. $600!!! For what? So I, as a kick-ass teacher, get to work with incompetent souls who can't be fired? This is the same union that fought down a pay-for-performance measure in my state which would have allowed teachers to opt out of tenure to have the chance to receive pay increases for things like taking on leadership roles in the school and having good ratings on evaluations and tests. Thank goodness the union was there to save me from that. The extra 3-4 grand I had coming my way would have been terrible.

In my opinion, unions are a big part of why GM and other American automakers are in such financial trouble. Maybe if they didn't have to pay $40 an hour for unionized factory workers they could make cars for cheaper than the Japanese.

[Christopherson]

OK someone other than me or benji, here is your cue!! Join the conversation. Have an interesting thought! You seriously wouldn't change anything about the world you live in if you had the chance?

[Joe']

I would probably change the entire Italian constitution, but then I'd realize it's too late anyway, give up, and move some place where old leftist, totalitarian values aren't praised by everyone. Question: Do I have the power to go back in time?

[Christopherson]

So Joe. What is it you hate about the Italian constitution so much. Enlighten the rest of us who don't know its faults.

[Joe']

Well, for one, the 1948 constitution was entirely written and approved by the christian-democrats and the communists, both so bigoted and zealous, not to mention afraid of losing the upcoming elections, that they decided to base the entire constitution on the principles of their self-proclaimed anti-fascist, yet very authoritarian parties. The communists were actually so kind to contribute all of their magnificently wonderful views on labor, the school system and meritocracy (or lack thereof.)

As a result, we have the lowest GDP per capita in Western Europe (yes, as of recently, even the freaking Portuguese have better salaries than we do,) despite having one of the ten largest economies in the world, the school system is VERY left-wing oriented (not to mention one of the worst in all of Europe) and we have college dropouts running multi-million dollar companies just because their families are rich and empowered.

This is the "democracy" I live in. And I didn't even mention VAT and other taxation-related shit.

I'm sure you can understand why the 5-10% of Americans who don't have health insurance don't seem as big an issue to me, and why, even in a time in history when the United States isn't in its best shape, I still think of it as some kind of paradise land.

[Christopherson]

So what would you do to change it. It is easy to sit there and say I'd change everything because everything is so terrible. Remember, Italy isn't exactly the worst place on Earth so there must be some things that work. You have one of the 10 largest economies in the world. Something is going OK. So what would you change. What specific parts of the constitution need to be changed.

[el badman]

I'm sure you can understand why the 5-10% of Americans who don't have health insurance don't seem as big an issue to me, and why, even in a time in history when the United States isn't in its best shape, I still think of it as some kind of paradise land.

Almost 50 million people uninsured is slightly more than 5-10% Joe.
There are many things that sound ideal about this country when you don't actually live in it, but it's a different story when you have to pay a couple of grands for a few hours spent at the hospital, when you realize how mediocre the education actually is here, when you have no "real" existence until you finally managed to build some credit,... If you can manage to avoid all those hurdles, then yes, it's certainly good living here.

[Christopherson]

I'll take issue with your notion that you have to build credit to have real existence. That's crap. You don't need credit to survive in this country, contrary to what the freecreditreport.com jingles say.

[benji]

but it's a different story when you have to pay a couple of grands for a few hours spent at the hospital

I don't see how this is a criticism of the United States in particular.

[el badman]

You don't need credit to survive in this country

Then you better always have a co-signer with great credit when you start looking into getting a house, a car,...

I don't see how this is a criticism of the United States in particular.

This may come as news to you if you've never lived anywhere else, but something like this would be absolutely absurd in most other developed countries. You people must be so used to emptying your entire saving account for any type of minor healthcare, you don't even realize it doesn't make any sense. Well, except if you think that adding insult to injury is a good idea.

[benji]

It's considered absurd in other countries for things to have a cost? I didn't know they had some kind of anti-scarcity technology.

You people must be so used to emptying your entire saving account for any type of minor healthcare

Wait...what?

you don't even realize it doesn't make any sense

But giving the state authority over your health just so you can pretend you're getting medical care for free (while also feeling great that finally others aren't getting what you don't have) and destroy your country in the process does?

Well, except if you think that adding insult to injury is a good idea.

Or you could think that not just taking but demanding the property of others is immoral. Especially for something that will never work without great pain for everyone but the elite.

I'll add, this isn't support of the US system as it is. But the answer is not the House plan (which we have to assume is the Obama plan right now), and the answer isn't a public plan, both of which will not work in the United States for reasons outlined already in this thread. (Hint: It's unsustainable without the government regulating "lifestyles" and denying people over 65.) The answer is eliminating federal and state mandates, allowing flexibility in coverage and incentive (full tax-deductions) to invest in your health, combined with a small scale untouchable (yet joint-invested so it comes not just from taxes) catastrophic emergency fund for life threatening situations. (A tax-deduction for cost sharing on this program for insurance companies would encourage them to help fund this program.) I don't believe this to actually be legal or constitutional. (Same with Medicare, any other kind of "state-run health insurance" and so on.) But as I've said many times, I'm not a revolutionary, I'm an evolutionary.

[el badman]

It's considered absurd in other countries for things to have a cost?

It's considered absurd in other countries for healthcare to cost so much. You should not be penalized for being sick or injured.

But giving the state authority over your health just so you can pretend you're getting medical care for free

I'm not saying it's necessarily for free, but all things considered, when you look at what's been deducted from you at the end of the year, you do end up paying much much less than here for equivalent or better healthcare. I don't see what's wrong with that.
I don't care if the government is involved or not as long as the end result is the same for me, but obviously that's an unbearable moral issue for some people.
Anyway, this is kinda off topic I guess.

[J@3]

I'd increase taxes on various luxuries that have no real value or purpose other than to exist and fuel addictions. Cigarettes, alcohol (except the sort of beers I like), gambling and poker machine taxes all up. The excess can be pumped into the public hospital system which is sorely lacking and has been for some time. I personally have no sympathy or desire to pander to idiots who become overly attached or addicted to substances of any sort, thus I won't care when they all complain endlessly about my tax hikes. I would also increase taxes for people earning 2 million AUD+ a year. If you can't live off a million dollars a year you're a fucking idiot and you need a dose of reality. I would then lower taxes for people earning $30,000 and under ONLY if they are employed. I don't want Centrelink people benefiting from this, only those who actually deserve it.

I'd put a two year limit on Centrelink benefits. As it stands right now people can collect unemployment for as long as they want as long as they fulfill whatever set of demands Centrelink lays out. This usually comes in the form of attending meetings and actively seeking work, which no one does anyway. I would remove the work for the dole scheme as it is and only implement it once the two years are up. After two years if someone is still yet to find employment they can either leave Centrelink or participate in a WFTD scheme. There would be no inbetweens.

Aboriginal communities would be more heavily monitored. This may have been their country at one point but that doesn't mean the government should turn a blind eye to the child/spousal abuse plus all of the alcoholism and drug addiction. The older generation wouldn't appreciate this because they are the child molesting wife beating petrol sniffers in question but the younger ones would be much better off. I'm not suggesting another stolen generation, but if a kid is being molested then something should be done and the people living in these communities need to be educated/helped with the various addictions they seem to form.

I'd change the public transport ticketing system. At the moment it varies from state to state, i would make it uniformed and probably base it off the system they use in Melbourne. They are currently trying to change it to involve EFTPOS or something stupid, I would scrap this and keep it as is. I would also reduce the penalties for fare skipping. I don't think not buying a $1.60 train ticket is worth a $280 fine. Maybe $60 or something. At least then the inspectors wouldn't feel the need to be as lenient as they are sometimes, because really, who wants to fine someone nearly three hundred dollars for not buying the right train ticket? The money gained by raising taxes on people paying $16 for a packet of cancer can be used to do this.

I'd make English lessons mandatory (and free) for any migrants coming into the country that don't speak English well enough to get by. I would also flatly reject anyone with any sort of criminal record, anyone who has no prospects of employment (unless they are disabled and part of a family) and I would not allow anyone who isn't an Australian citizen to collect unemployment benefits. I would also not allow anyone who doesn't have sufficient funds to live here... that doesn't mean they need hundreds of thousands in the bank, but I'd say $5,000 is a good start. If they meet this criteria they can bring their children over however, regardless of their medical/mental conditions. They would also have to report to the council in which they live once a month to keep people informed on what they are actually doing here. I would also not allow anyone who has not been employed for at least 40% of the time they've been living here to become an Australian citizen.

"Boat people" would be turned away without question, and anyone trying to enter the country illegally would also be sent back to their home country. I don't care what their circumstances are, this is not a dumping ground for the less fortunate.

I'd also buy back enough shares of various Australian-grown companies that have been sold to overseas firms so that they remain Australian based as opposed to being sent overseas. I'd also put a cap on the amount of work businesses can divert to India or Malaysia or wherever else is cheap. I'd strengthen laws protecting casual/temp workers because I think they are in prime position to be screwed over, I'd also find a way to regulate the amount of dominance supermarket chains can have... as it stands now the Woolworths and Coles groups essentially have a dual monopoly going on, there is not enough competition for them to bother keeping their prices down so I'd find way around this. I don't know what however.

The country would be called Jaestralia.