Covered California Rate Increase 12.5% for 2018 (attorney, unemployment, incomes)

[CaliRestoration]

Originally Posted by k81689

Proposition 168: Single payer medical system. Personal income tax and Corp income tax is 28% of Federal AGI(fit one postcard.)

For people can not decide whether to move or not. Prop 168 gives you a boost.

Wow.

[pgrdr]

Originally Posted by Elliott_CA

The increase is due to the Republican party as a whole. Ever since Obamacare became law all of the red state governors and Republicans in Congress have obstructed, voted against, and undermined the ACA every chance they could. They sabotaged Obamacare when Congress wouldn't fund the risk corridors (thanks Rubio).

That's been the Repub plan all along: create so much uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace that insurers would either leave or raise rates. It worked.

If the Repubs had cooperated, with exchanges in every state, every state accepting the Medicaid expansion, ACA premiums would be a lot lower.

Also, insurance companies worked to undermine the process by jacking up their rates before the ACA was even passed or implemented. Steady blaming the ACA as part of its propaganda campaign, before it even went into effect, has been part of the sabotage. Americans have been convinced to blame each other for needing healthcare instead of banding together to protect each other and ourselves over what should be a fundamental right in the 21st century.

Keep in mind that during this entire period, insurance companies have been and still are raking in billions in profits. That's "profits." You know, the fluffy frosting on the cake after meeting Every Single cost of doing business. Billions in profits.

Most of the rest of the world manages to provide access to quality healthcare for all of their citizens, yet the USA can't do it? What's wrong with this picture folks?

From the get-go, Republicans have been parroting insurance industry propaganda, protecting the rapcious pharmaceutical industry, and selling us down the river. They don't give a rat's-patootie whether we live or die. Their families matter, but ours don't.

Follow the money. Always follow the money, and there you will find the culprits.

[pgrdr]

Originally Posted by payutenyodagimas

isn't Obamacare (the exchange) only for those businesses employing less than 50? or self-employed? with pre existing condition?

ACA is not a healthcare plan. It is the Affordable Care Act, legislation, that applies regardless of what plan we have, from whom, or how much it costs us.

[pgrdr]

Originally Posted by Independentthinking

There's nothing loaded at all about my language. He erroneously used a term ("developed world") and I corrected him on the meaning. And if you can find any legitimate survey that specifically spells out the cost in taxes for Universal Healthcare, you might be on to something. Unfortunately, other than cherry picked examples, people will pay more. The UK, Germany, and France (all countries with higher population counts so we can do an apples-to-apples comparison to the U.S.), do indeed financially rape their Middle Class.

We have relatives and friends living in England, France, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Slavakia. None of them, not one, agree with your assessment that they are being "raped" by excessive taxation. Rather, they are astounded that Americans have allowed ourselves to be confused and duped to the point we are being bankrupted by medical costs. They are disconcerted by our ignorance regarding our own tax system and finances, which has made us fall hard for propaganda so that we vote against our own self-interests, enriching only the few at the expense of all the rest of us.

As friends in France told us, they pay a 50% tax rate but they don't care because they still make good incomes, live in a nice big home, drive nice cars, travel extensively, and they've never lost a night's sleep worrying about how they will pay for their or their children's healthcare, their children's college educations, or their own retirement incomes. They told us that in France people are shocked by the fact that we've allowed medical costs to bankrupt our middle-class, and in fact, the French consider it immoral. That's right, "immoral."

I agree with our family and friends living in less viciously selfish cultures.

[CaliRestoration]

Originally Posted by pgrdr

ourselves over what should be a fundamental right in the 21st century.

You don't have ANY right to someone else's labor/services/products. That's the problem with people who call "health care" a fundamental right. They don't distinguish between "right to access" vs "right to service/labor", and that's a very important nuance.

[pgrdr]

Originally Posted by SportyandMisty

Universal healthcare does not address the root cause of the problem which is that the underlying health care costs too much.

We consume on average $10,000 to $12,000 per person in healthcare costs, so to fund universal healthcare, every individual must pay an extra $10,000 to $12,000 per person in taxes -- plus administrative costs. If your tax bill goes up by $10,000 to $12,000, that really doesn't solve the problem.

Added to the $ going to insurance companies to take our $ and hand it to our medical providers, and the $$ going to rapacious pharmaceutical companies, are greedy medical providers who believe they have an inherent right to be multi-millionaires, for-profit companies running medical facilities merely as businesses rather than healthcare centers (thus delivering poorer care while raking in those insurance dollars), and the inefficiencies built into the system by insurance companies that they then in turn profit from.

We need to rein in all of those interests and design a system that puts patient care first and elminates the middle-man industries making billions in profit.

[CaliRestoration]

Originally Posted by pgrdr

We have relatives and friends living in England, France, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Slavakia. None of them, not one, agree with your assessment that they are being "raped" by excessive taxation.

Are you sure about that? France for instance just lost the 12,000 individuals with a net worth of $1,000,000 or more because of the increased tax burden being placed upon them. Most of those individuals came to the United States. It seems like all France accomplished by embracing socialism and making "healthcare a right" is to hollow out their economy.

The economy of France has been stagnant for decades. French growth has exceeded the 3 percent mark in only five of the past 37 years. So, from 1980 to 2016, real GDP growth averaged a meager 1.78 percent – about two-thirds the U.S. rate.

See, that's the problem with proponents of "single payer", they never ever propose a payment plan that doesn't involve completely stagnating the economy.

It's easy for poor people to vote someone's else's money to themselves, but they never think of the consequences of stagnant growth for 4 decades. No one ever discusses that.

[pgrdr]

Originally Posted by SportyandMisty

Actually, it would not.

Think of all the private sector insurance workers -- add them all up. That is the number of FTEs required to do the current workload, and that workload is growing faster than the rate of inflation.

So, with a universal healthcare system, the Federal Government would need to hire that same number of people to do the work. In fact, the easiest way would be for every private sector employee affected to just change employer to the Federal Government.

Then on top of that you'd need to add a healthy pad for government inefficiency. After all, federal employees have little incentive to be good stewards of other people's money. They are the same people who purchased $700 hammers and $400 screwdrivers.

You have no understanding of how federal contracting works. True it has its problems, but your example misreprents how it works.

There is no evidence at all that the private sector is any more efficient than the government. In fact, when it comes to healthcare coverage, it is quite inefficient by design because those private sector companies make more money off of the inefficiencies.

Even non-healthcare industries are inefficient. Essentially, once large, any organization/system becomes more ineffiicient than it was when it was small. Throw in the ability to make more profit from inefficiencies, and we've created a monster. Government does not have that profit incentive.

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by CaliRestoration

You don't have ANY right to someone else's labor/services/products.

Then maybe we should give up the right to public education. How about fire department and police protection as well? Why don't you throw safe roads in there, too?

Originally Posted by CaliRestoration

That's the problem with people who call "health care" a fundamental right. They don't distinguish between "right to access" vs "right to service/labor", and that's a very important nuance.

So why don't you distinguish that nuance for us?

[CaliRestoration]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

Then maybe we should give up the right to public education. How about fire department and police protection as well? Why don't you throw safe roads in there, too?

Agreed!

Public education has lead to LAUSD (2nd largest public education district in the U.S) having a student body where only 29% of the student body can pass the math CAASPP test at their grade level. Only 1 in 4 go to a 4 year college. Seems like a failure to me!

Originally Posted by CA4Now

So why don't you distinguish that nuance for us?

Sure.

A "fundamental right" to something means you are entitled to it, no ifs, ands, or buts. You work, you don't work, you contribute nothing at all of value to society, you get it no matter what. It's fundamental because you get it simply for existing.

The actual reality of how the real world works is that Healthcare is actually a service, something provided in EXCHANGE for compensation. For example, my sister-in-law is an Orthopedic Surgeon. She's been working as one for many years. If someone needs a hip replaced, they pay my sister-in-law major bucks (either through their insurance or their wallet) and she fixes their hip. A mutual market based exchange. If you're some bum who chooses not to work, and lay in an alley shooting up heroin, or if you illegally enter the country and have no job or money, you won't have any money or insurance to pay for healthcare.

Understand now?