Shut 'em Down!

No, they're requiring a specific medical loss ratio, that means a % of the money they receive in premiums must be spent on actual healthcare costs. That's not capping profits, that's requiring the services they sell have a specific relationship to the services they actually provide.

Capping profits requires an actual cap, there's no reason they can't streamline their operations and improve efficiency. Ditch the departments whose job is specifically to find ways to deny coverage. Heck, the government is doing their marketing for them now, so they can cut that cost right out of the equation...

the government can tax the money it prints all it wants, you won't hear a complaint out of me until they bring back the gold standard.

Short of that they need to tax the bulk of the money, not the bulk of the people.

still need single payer.

I still think it's funny that people think that there will be a nuclear war anytime in the near future...

But let people be ridiculous.

I'm glad you noticed that. However, even if all other costs are negated, you are still capping net income at 15%.

While this is not a bad thing for the consumer, this is a very bad thing for everyone at whole because giving the government power to cap income for one industry is giving them the ability to cap income for any other industry they want. What will keep them from doing that? Not allow the government to cap income in the first place.

Just wait until the government says that you cannot have X% of income because they say so. I will be there saying "well, I told you so!"

All it takes is one radical with nukes. North Korea is the closing thing we have to a radical at the moment, but all it would take is one radical leader...

Taxes are not gained income from a transaction. Taxes are not business transactions between you and the government. Taxes are an owed amount of money for your use of services provided by the government of which you then receive the benefits of (such as paved roads, utilities [if you've paid for them],the use of public facilities, and the various public defense forces, etc.). Now compare it to Profit, its not the same thing. You receive a product from Walmart, but Walmart sold you that product at an expense to you and a gain for Walmart. Walmart gains profit, but loses a portion of it from Taxes: which allows them to be kept running because people are able to drive on the streets to get to them, walmart has power to run its money machines, water to power its fire sprinklers/restrooms/other water using things, and proper public defense response if theres ever a burglary,fire, terrorist attack, etc.

There is a DEFINITE difference between profit and taxation, but profit can be negative when the corporation supplying a service, gains more than they are supplying in services rendered.

Im not asking for anything to be handed to me for free (besides, if its a government provided service: it comes out in taxes anyway...so its not "free"). Im saying that companies should not be gaining massive amounts of profit for knowingly giving out faulty products, "risky" products, or giving product but then reneging on the product you are paying for because they just dont want to give it to you anymore.

In short, YOU need more time to read and comprehend what im saying before knee-jerk posting that im a commieliberalfreeloader wanting free ***...

lol you're really silly

Well, i also meant to put "Government is not a person, it is a system run by persons. Just as a corporation is not a person, but an entity run by persons. "For the people,by the people" is an ideology meaning "made for the people, to service as the people need from the people themselves" not "made by a person to serve the same person at a loss to other people".

So the laws against selling babies for profit or the ones making it illegal to sell organs are probably bad as well? They are not capping profit, they are requiring the company to provide the service it actually sells. It doesn't allow them to maintain the absurd profit margins it has enjoyed for decades at the expense of sick people. I bet you'd feel awful bad if one of your family members had been paying out the *** for years for coverage only to be denied for one of those "elective" surgeries that cut into profits, like a kidney transplant.

actually, ive been saying that the US government needs to apply caps to services for a while now (before bush >_>) cause like...5 dollars for gas is completely unnecessary and in some cases is profiteering off a needed resource.

also the "inflation" nonsense when minimum wage goes up is ridiculous...if you are making a mass profit (like some claim) the product shouldnt increase 2 dollars because paying your workers 1 more dollar cuts into your extra cash flow.

I don't know of any actual recorded inflation in regards to the increase of the minimum wage.

apparently prices go up when minimum wage goes up? I thought that was a talking point when someone told me that :<

The majority of gas prices are set by the global markets, based off of the price of crude oil. The profit per transaction is very low but many transactions = large profits.

Also gas sales are not a service.


Anyways, I hate it when people bring up gas prices or any commodity price in an argument centered around only the US or other things. Commodity prices are set by the markets and unless there is a drastic change in economics throughout the world this will not change anytime soon.

Sorry to interrupt. Back to your debate/discussion on...whatever it has moved onto now.

That said, it doesn't prevent politicians from making promises from the stump about gas prices or keep people from blaming high prices on the president.

Kara stop lying you know it is all controlled by Aliens! :D

i didnt mean to use it as an argument, just simply as one of the things i think needs to be capped in the US market >_>'

It doesn't take much; just a financial collapse and charismatic leaders to rile everyone up into a frenzy? You don't think that can happen in America?

I recall when prices were lower, the profit margin was less than 10 cents per gallon, when I worked for a few different companies (granted in the same area) they were making 30+ cents per gallon when it was already over $3.

That's just at the store level, after cost to that store.

It makes it worse when there's a lot of rural areas in this nation where people commute by private vehicle to work on a daily basis. Granted the price of oil is pretty much controlled by OPEC and is sold on the value of the US dollar, which obviously if the American economy improves, improves.

Nobody with any expertise believes in the slippery slope. It could happen, but outlawing corrupt business practices is so far up that theoretical slope, you could mudslide through 15 fascist regimes before it even got close to your hypothetical 1930's Germany.

It's already happened.

Why do people forget what the maximum income tax rate in the US during the 1950's was 84.357%(400k+/yr) that in 1960 it was 91%(400k+/yr), or that in 1970 it was 71.75%(200k+/yr), and at 70% in 1980(215.4k+/yr)? Source

and that would also require an actual financial apocalypse too...Hitler didnt gain power in a recession.

Clearly we need to simply nationalize our gas resources and America's problems are solved. We can call it, Obamaco: Petroleum you can believe in.

Drill baby drill.

And you could take anything and everything as a deduction too.

So, at the end of the day, your actual income tax rate was around 20-25%.

What's your point? Nobody paid 70+% tax.

And if you want to place your entire life and decision making ability to the government, that is your prerogative.

Just don't ask me to do the same thing. I trust the government as much as I can throw it.

What's your point?

Deductibles do not invalidate the tax rate in relation to the post it's referring to. The rates in the source also indicate much lower tax rates for the average citizen.

If you wanted to post something relevant to defeating the context of my post you could have said yeah but nobody was really making 400k+ a year in 1950-1960. And you would be right since there was a running joke that John D. Rockefeller was the only person paying those tax rates.