223
Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna reveal bill to ‘cancel all medical debt’
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
223 points (96.7% liked)
politics
19145 readers
4637 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The bill doesn't really "cancel" any debt, it establishes a grant fund with tax money and allows people to apply for grants they then use to pay off their medical debts.
Rather than telling the debt holders to pound sand, the federal government will front you the cash to pay the debt holder.
Understood: the debts can get higher now, as the government will pay it...
I don't think this is the way to go. Not while getting into medical debt like that is still a possibility.
Yes, that's how demand works.
The way to drastically reduce medical expenses and thus debt is deregulating health.
From what I remember, you need to have quite a lot of things to become a doctor in the USA, even more to run a related business, and most of those are not about education. So the "supply" here is relatively low.
Also to make education (including medical education, which means - supply again) more affordable the government should just stop subsidizing student loans.
It may have some fixed sum per student allocated, which may be paid for a place, which can be awarded to students from poorer families or something. The "fixed" and "paid for a whole place" parts are important, otherwise this will work just like subsidizing loans - by inflating prices further.
Ah yes, just what the healthcare industry needs, LESS regulation. That’ll keep those for profit companies from gouging people for the life saving measures they need to not die.
Now they are using regulations so that you wouldn't have choice.
Yes, corporate lobbying is a huge problem here and is often used as a weapon to stifle competition and increase profits. At times it’s hard to remember what regulations are meant to do: Protect People from Corporations
We don’t need to remove regulations, we need to improve them.
Historically they were introduced to protect corporations from people. Well, sometimes some collective interests from other collective interests.
It's an arms race, and one side has more resources than the other.