andlarry
Joined 13 years ago
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Comment · 1 month ago
Here is the State Department's rationale: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
Comment · 3 years ago
We do not have universal single-payer but we have a few very large government-run single-payer systems.
If you have an example of a country with a single program that has more effective outcomes for a population of similar makeup and size, that would be a useful comparison.
Comment · 3 years ago
Medicare: 65,748,297 people enrolled [0]
Medicaid and CHIP: 85,614,581 people enrolled [1]
Military: 9.5 million people covered [2]
The US has not one but two of the largest single payer health insurance programs in the world.
Medicare alone has more people enrolled than any European country's single payer programs other than Germany (pop 83,294,633) and the UK (pop 67,736,802).
[0] https://medicareadvocacy.org/medicare-enrollment-numbers/ [1] https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medica... [2] https://www.health.mil/Military-Health-Topics/MHS-Toolkits/M...
Comment · 3 years ago
> Before that we also had various moral panics, like the one about roleplaying games pushing "the devil".
Ahh, ok. So the moral panic of the early 80s, about 40 years ago.
The "video games cause real violence" argument was personified by Tipper Gore in the 90s, more than 30 years ago.
I don't recall anything from 15-20 years ago particular to conservatives. It has been mainstream since the 90s.
Comment · 3 years ago
> For example, 15-20 years ago we had conservatives yelling video games are the devil and they need to be censored and some topics not even touched.
My memory of the 2003 to 2008 time frame is different.
I recall mainstream complaints about GTA 3, released 2001. Famously, Senator Clinton asked the FTC to investigate GTA 3 over the "hot coffee" mod in 2005.
There was also the 2005 California Law [0] that banned the sale of violent video games to minors.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchan...
Comment · 3 years ago
Ahh, ok. I was under the impression that the vaccines were to prevent a severe reaction in those at risk due to age or comorbidities, which is why some areas gave priority to the elderly.
Are there places where herd immunity was achieved due to vaccination?
Comment · 3 years ago
Why would avoiding the covid vaccine mean someone doesn't care about the safety of others?
Comment · 4 years ago
There are cultural and legal reasons.
One legal reason is fuel economy regulations (CAFE standards) encourage car makers to make their cars large enough to be classified as "light trucks", leading to less stringent fuel economy standards.
A larger footprint also reduces the fuel economy standard, incentivizing larger vehicles.
See: https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-ar...
Comment · 4 years ago
> I don't think the other 22 states would be wild about that admission standard.
We have a well established process for asking states about this sort of thing, the US Congress. They don't seem to be wild about the minimum populous state standard, we should ask about the median populous state standard.
Comment · 4 years ago
Why choose the least populous state as the standard for admission instead of, say, the median?
Comment · 4 years ago
Indeed. 436 states, here we come!
Comment · 4 years ago
> DC statehood has been a hugely locally popular movement for quite some time.
I'm sure many locales with 670k residents would love to become states, that'd be a pretty sweet deal.