What is the issue with Federal funding states? Would you rather ONLY pay state tax, and have no Federal tax at all? I understand wanting to strip it down so the Federal gov't has less say in people's day to day lives... but what is the cost?
I pay an assinine amount of taxes so the Federal government can provide funding for states. Federal funding allows states like Illinois and California to run their states into the ground with zero incentive to implement common sense policies cause they'll always have the taxes of the rest of the country to bail them out.
There has to be federal taxes to cover the cost of national defense and salaries for the 3 branches. I'd even be okay with extending it to NASA. I'm not at all okay subsidizing corporations, services like social security, medicare, state bailouts, federal grants, or any of the hundreds of worthless federal agencies(DEA, ATF, etc.). It's all unnecessary waste.
State and county tax dollars should only be for more local issues like roads, police, and firefighters.
Canada is exactly like this. We pay Federal tax to fund our healthcare system, that is national and everyone gets equal access to treatment. People with lots of money can travel to other countries and pay for better / different treatments, but they will get the same treatment for a heart attack that a homeless guy would, or at least that's what is supposed to happen. I'm not going to pretend it works utopian like this, but it works IMO.
The largest downside to federally funded healthcare is that there is a lack of competition obviously. Competition drives innovation... but I wonder if compassion / empathy drives innovation in a similar way for some people, which is what makes our system work.
But yeah, I guess I can question it like this: If the US implemented a health care system like Canada has now, what would be the largest issues you would have to deal with and would it be worth having equal access to healthcare for the entire country?
I understand the want for universal healthcare. It's not necessary though. Private healthcare can be cheaper and more lucrative in the long run. Like you said, competition drives prices and innovation. Hospitals could end up like fast food restaurants and be on every corner providing services for low costs. Give people their money and options and let them decide. Same goes for education. 8%ish of my tax dollars go towards education...how about not take that money from me and let me decide where my children go?
Also, competition has lead to all the serious breakthrough's in the history of mankind. Large advances like the internet, reaching the moon, satelites, and medical advances have all happened because of competition(usually war). Then you have smaller innovations like PC's, cell phones, wireless technology, and medical devices all created and/or advanced through industry competition.
Compassion and empathy drives nothing but waste. Welfare, Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, basically all the social services were created from compassion and empathy. They're all wasteful money pits. There are a few problems with creating policy based on compassion and empathy.
1. The policies always lead to the opposite goal. Abuse of welfare systems, envious people, straight up miserable assholes, all lead to a society of unempathetic citizens.
2. The people put in charge of managing the policies can't be trusted. Every single one of these welfare programs will either crash or require 100% tax rates to run because of how they've been managed/corrupted.