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The US would have plenty of money to afford a single payer system with no tax increases if we quit wasting trillions of dollars on military spending. Other countries spend money to keep their citizens healthy, the US spends a lot of money trying to kill the citizens of other countries. It is all about the priorities and in the US they are mucked up beyond belief.
We already spend more money on social programs than we do on the military. We certainly have areas of waste in the military but no where near the amount that would be required to fund socialized medicine.
The US would have plenty of money to afford a single payer system with no tax increases if we quit wasting trillions of dollars on military spending. Other countries spend money to keep their citizens healthy, the US spends a lot of money trying to kill the citizens of other countries. It is all about the priorities and in the US they are mucked up beyond belief.
So it will trade wasting trillions on maintaining the empire to wasting trillions on health care? Both are wrong.
Government operates without the neccesary profit and loss signals required for efficiency, not to mention it decides what services consumers get rather than consumers determining with their own dollars what they actually want.
Waste is what government does, no matter the sector.
So it will trade wasting trillions on maintaining the empire to wasting trillions on health care? Both are wrong.
Government operates without the neccesary profit and loss signals required for efficiency, not to mention it decides what services consumers get rather than consumers determining with their own dollars what they actually want.
Waste is what government does, no matter the sector.
Sorry but there are models of effectiveness that are much cheaper than our system. We spend the most per person by far in the world and we don't get the best results. It's time we took a close look at our system and overhauled it. Obamacare never addressed the primary problem of cost. Spain and France have very effective systems and even our northern neighbor has a more effective system.
Considering Congress would not give Medicare the authority to negotiate the price of prescription meds, it should come at no surprise that Obamacare has no authority to impact the costs of healthcare.
This must have pleased the Big Pharma lobby and encouraged them to continue to donate to reelection of congressmen and senators who tow the line for them.
Government is substantially more involved in the cost of healthcare in the rest of the developed world.
In some countries most or all hospitals are owed and/ or operated by government. In Japan, every third MD owns his own 4-12 bed neighborhood hospital.
The people with means overseas come here for medical treatment because of the higher level of care. I have no problem paying for a higher level of care, I do not care for average when it comes to my health care and I have made my life choices around that preference.
The U.S. doesn't make the short list of top medical tourism destinations.
It's estimated that 60-85K persons come to the US for medical care each year, while up to 750K- 1.2 million U.S. citizens go abroad for medical care.
Every time I hear arguments about health care, there's always this imaginary single-payer-health-system-thingie out there somewhere that all countries do and is utterly superior to the US model.
In 2011 (per .gov website), Medicare cost $549.1B for 48.7 million people, roughly $11500 per person.
You could knock me over with a feather if the average recipient put enough money into the Medicare fund to receive what is basically a lifetime annuity of close to $12k/yr at age 65. I'll bet that it's mostly subsidized by other sources.
And dont forget, many who have medicare, also have medicaid.. So the costs are even higher.
Every time I hear arguments about health care, there's always this imaginary single-payer-health-system-thingie out there somewhere that all countries do and is utterly superior to the US model.
Actually, practically everyone's health care model is superior to ours
"The U.S. underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance"
I'm not going to argue that, but people will get in heartfelt debates pushing the benefits of systems in foreign countries that they know absolutely nothing about. It's very peculiar.
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