The U.S. Health Care Debate

[ICantSpellDawg]

Since you pay for the non-contributing citizens already your arguement falls apart.
If other countries can pay for full universal healthcare and get far better medical care results for less than half the money the US pays for its jumbled part universal healthcare, then why woud America not be able to get the same results in full universal healthcare for the same level of funding as other countries do?


That sounds like rationing , I thought that was what the protesters were complaining about.

When you shop for insurance or a car (for example), are they rationing that policy or product because there is a price tag and legitimate reason to shop around? No. I don't fully understand your insinuation.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

When you shop for insurance or a car (for example), are they rationing that policy or product because there is a price tag and legitimate reason to shop around? No. I don't fully understand your insinuation.

In every other Westernised country in the world there is a principle that healthcare should be available to 100% of the citizenry, if not the population. Most do this be providing a tax-funded Health Service which is free, or near-free, at the point of source. Or, they supplement the system with legally mandated "National Insurance", essentially more tax.

As a result, the State controls costs by refusing to finance things which are inflated in price. It is the multiplicity of choice, and the poor state of coverage that have driven up costs in the US. If all funding came through the State then it would not matter what a procedure cost, because you have already paid for the right to have access to healthcare. You don't then have to pay again when you go to the hospital.

Americans pay twice for a third-rate system; if they can afford it. That's just crazy

In Britain we pay once, and if we lose our jobs we still get our broken legs fixed, our jabs, our new Kidneys, or our brain-surgery.

Hell, we even have prescription charges on the way out in the not too distant future.

Sure it might not be perfect, but I'd rather be ill here than America, and so would a lot of the Americans here.

[ICantSpellDawg]

In every other Westernised country in the world there is a principle that healthcare should be available to 100% of the citizenry, if not the population. Most do this be providing a tax-funded Health Service which is free, or near-free, at the point of source. Or, they supplement the system with legally mandated "National Insurance", essentially more tax.

As a result, the State controls costs by refusing to finance things which are inflated in price. It is the multiplicity of choice, and the poor state of coverage that have driven up costs in the US. If all funding came through the State then it would not matter what a procedure cost, because you have already paid for the right to have access to healthcare. You don't then have to pay again when you go to the hospital.

Americans pay twice for a third-rate system; if they can afford it. That's just crazy

In Britain we pay once, and if we lose our jobs we still get our broken legs fixed, our jabs, our new Kidneys, or our brain-surgery.

Hell, we even have prescription charges on the way out in the not too distant future.

Sure it might not be perfect, but I'd rather be ill here than America, and so would a lot of the Americans here.

Cost of Healthcare and "Free Access" to the uninsured are two seperate issues. The United States has a vibrant society, but we do not believe that people who work hard "owe" those who do not. Health care should be affordable and sensibly priced, that will increase ease of access. The government should create the pool and regulate insurance practices to increase transparency. This should not result in a tax increase or univerasal coverage to those who refuse to pay for it, those people must rely on charity or learn to work for what they need.

New entitlements will not reduce cost, nor will they contribute to the kind of society that we are trying to build - one with citizens who are self-sufficient and attain for themselves their needs and desires without a parasitic relationship.

The majority of US citizens have health care. Our governemnt should help us keep it and make it more affordable, not write in new promises of money that they have no right to.

[Tribesman]

The United States has a vibrant society, but we do not believe that people who work hard "owe" those who do not.

Which is why you pay so much in taxes for so little result. You pay a fortune for Medicare and again for Medicaid.
You pay federal taxes and state taxes for programs that are in serious need of reform and object to reform because you claim they are going to make you pay tax....which you already pay to a system badly in need of reform.
Its why your arguement makes no sense whatsoever .
Who in their right mind would object to reforms of a system where you pay much more tax money than anywhere else and get inferior results by claiming that it would mean they are going to end paying more and getting less.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Cost of Healthcare and "Free Access" to the uninsured are two seperate issues.

No, they aren't; and it's "Free at-point of access", that's different. You have a State healthcare system, tax-funded, which you also pay for. Most people try to manage the cost through insurance, many don't bother. Universal insurance would require (nearly) all Americans to pay, so there would be fewer uninsured.

Almost all people have "uninsured" dependants, parrents, children, nephews, nieces.

The United States has a vibrant society, but we do not believe that people who work hard "owe" those who do not.

1. UnChristian. The original objection to biological Darwinism was the natural leap to social Darwinism. Shame the one got dropped and the other picked up.

2. I hope neither you nor your friends lose their job when their company goes bust, or God forbid, their insurance company go bust.

Health care should be affordable and sensibly priced, that will increase ease of access.

Hasn't worked yet, and that's never going to include the poor, who probably still pay taxes.

The government should create the pool and regulate insurance practices to increase transparency. This should not result in a tax increase or univerasal coverage to those who refuse to pay for it, those people must rely on charity or learn to work for what they need.

Not everyone can get a job. University graduates in a recession, for example.

I'm not just talking about tax increases, I'm talking about not needing private insurance.

Try to grasp that concept.

The majority of US citizens have health care. Our governemnt should help us keep it and make it more affordable, not write in new promises of money that they have no right to.

18% of the population under 65 don't. That doesn't include the pensioners.

[Husar]

Well, who cares about those 18% as long as they belong to the other 82%.
That's ignoring the point that had been made that even those with insurance cannot be sure their treatment will actually be covered.
When I had some minor "problem" with my nose the doctor said he could fix it but my insurance wouldn't cover it and that it would cost 90EUR per side, that was preferable over him doing it first, then telling me I'd owe him 180EUR because the insurance refused to pay.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well, who cares about those 18% as long as they belong to the other 82%.
That's ignoring the point that had been made that even those with insurance cannot be sure their treatment will actually be covered.
When I had some minor "problem" with my nose the doctor said he could fix it but my insurance wouldn't cover it and that it would cost 90EUR per side, that was preferable over him doing it first, then telling me I'd owe him 180EUR because the insurance refused to pay.

Right, so you can probably theoretically double that.

Can we ask what the "problem" was? You don't have to say, but it's a bit hard to judge your anecdote without the context.

[Lemur]

Here's a must-read article about how we arrived at the current system.

But health insurance is different from every other type of insurance. Health insurance is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are unexpected and large, but for nearly all health-care expenses. We’ve become so used to health insurance that we don’t realize how absurd that is. We can’t imagine paying for gas with our auto-insurance policy, or for our electric bills with our homeowners insurance, but we all assume that our regular checkups and dental cleanings will be covered at least partially by insurance. Most pregnancies are planned, and deliveries are predictable many months in advance, yet they’re financed the same way we finance fixing a car after a wreck—through an insurance claim.

Comprehensive health insurance is such an ingrained element of our thinking, we forget that its rise to dominance is relatively recent. Modern group health insurance was introduced in 1929, and employer-based insurance began to blossom during World War II, when wage freezes prompted employers to expand other benefits as a way of attracting workers. Still, as late as 1954, only a minority of Americans had health insurance. That’s when Congress passed a law making employer contributions to employee health plans tax-deductible without making the resulting benefits taxable to employees. This seemingly minor tax benefit not only encouraged the spread of catastrophic insurance, but had the accidental effect of making employer-funded health insurance the most affordable option (after taxes) for financing pretty much any type of health care. There was nothing natural or inevitable about the way our system developed: employer-based, comprehensive insurance crowded out alternative methods of paying for health-care expenses only because of a poorly considered tax benefit passed half a century ago.

In designing Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, the government essentially adopted this comprehensive-insurance model for its own spending, and by the next year had enrolled nearly 12 percent of the population. And it is no coinci#dence that the great inflation in health-care costs began soon after. We all believe we need comprehensive health insurance because the cost of care—even routine care—appears too high to bear on our own. But the use of insurance to fund virtually all care is itself a major cause of health care’s high expense.

Insurance is probably the most complex, costly, and distortional method of financing any activity; that’s why it is otherwise used to fund only rare, unexpected, and large costs. Imagine sending your weekly grocery bill to an insurance clerk for review, and having the grocer reimbursed by the insurer to whom you’ve paid your share. An expensive and wasteful absurdity, no?

Is this really a big problem for our health-care system? Well, for every two doctors in the U.S., there is now one health-insurance employee—more than 470,000 in total. In 2006, it cost almost $500 per person just to administer health insurance. Much of this enormous cost would simply disappear if we paid routine and predictable health-care expenditures the way we pay for everything else—by ourselves.

[Husar]

Right, so you can probably theoretically double that.

Can we ask what the "problem" was? You don't have to say, but it's a bit hard to judge your anecdote without the context.

Oh, something up there is a bit thick and he said he could thin it out, whether that will cure anything he could not say 100%(I went there for several small problems, my nose isn't straight, it's often full etc.). Nothing serious, but yeah, I go to doctors for nothing serious sometimes.