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When a tax is hidden like this it doesn’t appear like a tax and people can’t effectively object to it but the dissatisfaction with the program speaks to the fact that just concealing a problem like this doesn’t get rid of it.

Costs

However, the far larger problem is that the United States ranks toward the top in terms of per-capita medical expenses but near the bottom in terms of quality of coverage.  It is very much like we are paying for brand new Rolls Royce quality service but actually getting used Yugo, which isn’t sustainable.  If you have a cost vs. service problem you need to address this first but instead both parties are largely focused with moving these unaffordable costs around to different groups of people who understandably don’t want to pay them.  If either party truly wanted this to work and assure they would be reelected a focus on eliminating these extreme costs would seem to be the more intelligent path but, instead, both groups seem to be focused on sticking these costs to the demographic that typically votes for the rival group. At the heart of this problem is the seeming belief that Universal Healthcare is a weapon to be used against rival politicians rather than a necessary benefit to assure the health of the nation.

Wrapping Up:

The United States is the world leader in technology and certainly in the lead with regard to analytics and artificial intelligence.  These tools can be incredibly effective at helping critical decision makers make ever more intelligent decisions.  However, they don’t protect against stupid mistakes like intentionally leaving out critical information like psychiatric needs of young people, or avoiding the core problem that needs fixing like the fact healthcare costs in the US are unusually unaffordable. This is partially why a lot of us are concerned that the coming Artificial Intelligence wave may wipe us out.  Because people are training this first generation of AIs which will be able to think and act far more quickly than and if they are equally flawed that means the mistakes that are coming will come faster in the future.  A lot of us aren’t sure we can survive a massive increase in the number of mistakes coming out of the government.   It’d would be really bad if the Terminator, rather than being a worst-case scenario, turned out to be a better alternative than what we actually end up with.