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[smjjames]

Cancelling at the last minute also can't be good for ICE expenses or something. Not that I actually care about their expenses, just that last minute stuff like this tends to wreak havoc for no good reason.

Now Trump is saying that the military gave him odd numbers on the strikes death toll, whatever that means or he thinks the number is inflated.

[nenjin]

He wants an exact answer on how many human lives a soulless drone is worth.

[Folly]

He wants an exact answer on how many human lives a soulless drone is worth.

Well the drone was worth $220m. The average American is estimated to earn $1.4m over their lifetime, so the drone was worth just a little over 157 lives.
Clearly Trump made the wrong decision canceling the strike.

[Egan_BW]

Well, that's 157 American lives. I'd bet that average Iranians have a lower expected economic value, so we'd need to kill more than 157 to really make it even.
Though that's not accounting for the amount of equipment damage we would inevitably end up doing, and the cost of the munitions we would expand to kill that many people. Maybe it ends up about even if we shoot for ~150?

Uh, /s, just in case.

[Dunamisdeos]

Nyehhh I can't believe you'd say that and mean it without sarcasm nyehhh

[hector13]

Would we be in this situation had Trump not withdrawn from the nuclear deal?

[Reelya]

Uhh... single payer healthcare doesn't really work.  It just hides the problems in a different way compared to the US system.  Both systems are kind of terrible.

Uh what? I live in a nation with universal health cover, and they take care of you. If I got so much as remotely injured in the USA there would be thousands of dollars in bills. Here, you get treated without so much as a cent in costs, and the total average cost to taxpayers here is actually lower than what the US government spends per-person anyway. Sure, any health system is going to have issues, but there's no way they can be objectively called "terrible" to the same degree. That's like comparing losing a fingernail to losing an eye, and claiming they're equivalent because they're both "disfiguring injuries".

If you look at the graph here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita



You can see that the USA is a total outlier in terms of total expenditure on health, while all the single-payer countries are clustered around the same point. And what does that get you? The USA is an outlier not just on how costly it is, but on how terrible the service is compare to all nations with public health services. See graph of infant mortality



Australia, my nation, has infant mortality of 3.6 / 1000 vs America's 5.96 / 1000. We also spend less than 50% of the per-capita money on health expenditure. Your system is objectively terrible, in a relative sense, and when you say "hiding the problem in different ways" well we're "hiding the problem" by not letting so many babies die apparently. The main "problem" cited about places like Australia is that people have to sometimes wait for the free treatment. You know, people who couldn't afford to pay for it anyway if they were Americans. You can pay for treatment here if you want - private hospitals exists. The waiting-list is for people who don't want to or can't pay. That list would be of infinity duration in the USA.

That's like the #1 complaint: that the free stuff has a waiting list. America solves the waiting-list problem by pricing the treatment high enough to ensure most people can never afford it. Here, we prioritize on need, not cash. What you wait for in the Australian system is what's called elective surgery. i.e. things that aren't going to actually kill you instantly if they're not treated right away. So you might be waiting for some free treatments because the government prioritized those doctors to save lives instead of treating whoever is willing to pay the most money. But, unlike what the media suggests, people in Australia can still go and pay some private hospital if they don't want to wait, it's just not the only option.

America's system is far more expensive and doesn't deliver the same level of service, in terms of letting babies die. End of story.

[Il Palazzo]

You topsy-turvy people are just hiding the fact that babies are a scourge upon this world.

[Cheesy Honkers]

I have an idea, a modest proposal, to solve overpopulation and world hunger in one move...

[wierd]

I've heard that one before, but I am rather partial to eating the rich.

[McTraveller]

If you all will let me correct my statement:  I realize I was incomplete.  When I said that single payer isn't really better than the US system - what I have come to realize is that my specific belief is that it is not the single-payer nature of those systems that makes it better than the US system, but other aspects.

For instance, focus on preventive care, reduction of high-risk health behavior, etc. These are not tied to insurance directly, but are related to other cultural and social programs.

Or put another way:  You could get a single-payer system in the US and our health statistics would still be expensive and "terrible".

[Dorsidwarf]

What's the reasoning behind that claim?

[Grim Portent]

You would see a decrease in costs with single payer because of how it alters the market for pharmaceuticals and medical professionals. With one major buyer for medications across the nation there's more collective power to ignore large companies attempts to jack up prices or bribe individual doctors in roundabout ways to prescribe one medicine over another for one thing.

And a big issue is that private health insurance companies try to avoid paying out, so stuff gets dragged out over months or years financially and hospitals in the US are priced partially on the idea that some people won't be able to pay their full bill, so it gets inflated elsewhere to catch others who can pay.



The biggest bonus of free health care though is that it enables and promotes preventative treatment on a national scale. In the US right now people leave various problems untreated because they're worried they can't afford to get it dealt with, so they just sit and let it get worse until they physically have to get it seen to at greater expense than it would have been. With the single payer in my country I can just pop down to the GP a week or so after making an appointment and get anything I'm concerned about seen and be referred on to a specialist at no cost other than transport, so I have no reason not to get things checked. That would rapidly become the norm in the US as well with single payer, clinics offering free care would make it so much more practical to get medical issues checked out early that it would cause a culture shift with only mild prompting.

[Frumple]

Would we be in this situation had Trump not withdrawn from the nuclear deal?

It wouldn't be surprising if we were. This is your daily reminder trump is an inconsistent chickenhawk piece of shit, being advised by the likes of fucking bolton, who would see us all explode into fountains of blood and die. Screwing with iran almost certainly would have continued, as would have parts of it screwing back in their small ways.

[Reelya]

If you all will let me correct my statement:  I realize I was incomplete.  When I said that single payer isn't really better than the US system - what I have come to realize is that my specific belief is that it is not the single-payer nature of those systems that makes it better than the US system, but other aspects.

For instance, focus on preventive care, reduction of high-risk health behavior, etc. These are not tied to insurance directly, but are related to other cultural and social programs.

Or put another way:  You could get a single-payer system in the US and our health statistics would still be expensive and "terrible".

No seriously, it's the billing that's the big issue.

https://www.vox.com/2018/5/1/17261488/er-expensive-medical-bill

On October 19, 2016, Jessica Pell fainted and hit her head on a nearby table, cutting her ear. She went to the emergency room at Hoboken University Medical Center, where she was given an ice pack. She received no other treatment. She never received any diagnosis. But a bill arrived in the mail for $5,751.

Stuff like that just wouldn't happen here. People don't have to mortgage their houses or sell their cars for basic treatment, here. The culture isn't that different. People smoke, they drive cars fast, the eat shitty food here the same as in America. The difference is that it's not so economically devastating here if you get hurt or sick.