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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

> I don't blame you if you think this way. You're canadian. You don't know wtf you're talking about. ;)

Australian, actually. I just live in Canada. I spent 1.5 years living and working in America too.

Those problems or "issues" you present are not unique to America. Every country in the world has unemployment, income inequality and entitlements.

It's simply a question of where you want your government to spend the tax dollars it collects. Currently, they spend it blowing things up while tens of millions of it's citizens are without basic healthcare.

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>It's simply a question of where you want your government to spend the tax dollars it collects. Currently, they spend it blowing things up while tens of millions of it's citizens are without basic healthcare.

62% of the US federal budget goes to entitlements (Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security). That's ONLY $2 Trillion. 18.7% goes to the defense spending. [1]

Implementing Obamacare will cost $4-$6 Trillion. WHERE DO YOU SUGGEST WE GET $4-6 TRILLION? Even if you cut 100% of the defense budget it won't be not enough to pay for Obamacare.

[1]http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/10/federal-spe...

>62% of the US federal budget goes to entitlements

In other words, 62% of your revenue goes back to the taxpayers that provided that revenue. If anything, I'd be complaining about the other 48% if I were you.

>Implementing Obamacare

The argument that Medicare costs x and support y people, and Obamacare costs 2x and supports 2y people, therefore full universal care would cost 100x and support 100y people is flawed.

Clearly, if the US went universal, the massive administration costs associated with HMOs and such would no longer be an expense to be paid. Instead of being a large employer within your currently broken system, you replace the system.

There is a reason your health spending is almost double per capita to the next highest nation, and it has nothing to do with your population.

I happen to be married to an American and have discussed this topic at length with many of my American relatives.

The big problem is that Obamacare is nothing like a universal system or even the Canadian system, and it does not address the colossal spending costs.

Also, I think Canada happens to have built its medical system at a bit of a sweet spot time. We have enough people paying enough taxes to give a pretty decent average quality of care (assuming you don't live in the boonies). Too many more people or too little taxes and the system will fall apart.

As run4yourlives said, > There is a reason your health spending is almost double per capita to the next highest nation, and it has nothing to do with your population.

Ditto. Canada and other countries aren't doing that. So in the mean time our skilled workers will keep going to the USA to get salaries 3-5x higher than what they would make and keep on taking the money out of the USA.

> The big problem is that Obamacare is nothing like a universal system or even the Canadian system, and it does not address the colossal spending costs.

Exactly

>In other words, 62% of your revenue goes back to the taxpayers that provided that revenue.

Except that the middle class, rich and younger people are paying for majority of the taxes that are spent for entitlements. And you're asking them to pay for another unfunded mandate. Your socialist views have no place in America.

Australia have universal healthcare but your taxes are sky high, zero innovation, zero growth, no jobs, etc. horay for socialism. Give me one innovation that came out of australia? ZERO. (ok i love ac/dc but they dont count) :)

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