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Lower the income tax or do away with it. Create a national sales tax and excess tax on imports. Continue to keep social security tax. Add a catastrophic health care tax of .5%. A .5% tax for tax paid trearment of cancer, HIV, and AIDS. Add a 2% tax on tax payers and 4% tax on businesses: That pays for universal healthcare for those in the military, veterans care at the VA, the Disabled, and individuals 70 and older. Legalize marijuana and decriminalize various drugs. Add a national excess tax to marijuanna, cigarettes, and alcohol. The excess tax, fines, and money saved from not putting individuals in prison due to drug use goes to universal mental and substance abuse care.
End pharmaceutical and various patents in the medical world. Government subsidiaries to small pharmaceutical research companies. Bust up pharmaceutical monopolies. Allow States the option to buy generic medication and distribute it to area hospitals/facilities at an inexpensive cost. Less regulation on medication that is allowed to be prescribed in the U.S.
Give Doctors and Health care facilities more power. Allow them to determine their own cost of care.
Create various levels of affordable public health insurances. These insurances can be all inclusive or bare minimum. Also allow individuals to build their own insurances. Percentage of care and what is covered is transparent. Insurance is able to be used nation wide. Have the ability with insurance to see any Doctor or facility with no referrals needed. Can supplement with private Insurance. Public insurance goal is to hope to be competitive against private insurances in lieu of them lowering cost.
Do away with Medicare. Replace Medicaid where States look at average liveable incomes bssed off househild size and offer State insurance to those living below that income level. Your deductible is adjusted based off your income. Various tiers of insurances that cover from 95% of care to 50% of care.
Emergency Hardship Medicaid for 36 month's that covers 100% care with no deductibles.
Those in the National Guard, Reserves, or Inactive Duty receive 50% tax rebates of their yearly insurance cost.
Do away with mandates on employers having to provide insurance. Do away with mandates on individuals having to have insurance.
Tax rebates for individuals who haven't smoked or used drugs in 6 month's. Tax rebates on those who had physicals done in a year, joined a gym, participated in 4 or more exercise event's, and so forth.
Allow more organizations to create health savings accounts; that these organizations can choose to make public or private.
Government pays 50% of child care cost at Government approved daycare centers or employer daycare programs for those making $50,000 or less. If making $100,000 or less the Government covers 25% of cost at these daycare facilities.
The problem with regulating profits in any sector is that doing so harms those who depend on corporate profits, which most are surprised to learn are overwhelmingly America's workers and retirees. In aggregate, they have $27 trillion invested in equities, etc., in their pension plans and retirement accounts.
And the US's biggest investor? Not some rich 0.0001%-er. It's CalPERS, the California Public Employees' Retirement System. They need corporate profits to fund California's public employee retirees' pensions. The same is true in every city, state, and even the Fed Gov. We're talking police, fire department, teachers, etc., etc. They're all public employees and their pensions could not be paid if corporate profits were regulated, limited, or even completely eliminated.
Good point but before single payer has a chance of working the stock market in regard to the healthcare system need a serious overhaul.
The other stocks that are not directly related to the healthcare system are not the problem in this context, the healthcare ones are. Critical thinking is necessary here.
Investing is not the problem. Having a healthcare system that has Wall St. as its Sugar Daddy is. What you are talking about may be an issue but not so much in relation to healthcare which is the most important issue the country has to face at this point.
Going to national single payer without addressing this diligently would be putting the cart before the horse to say the least.
Last edited by Objective Detective; 05-06-2017 at 06:21 AM..
You can almost say the Federal Employees Health Benefits are like a single payer.
There are a couple of dozen policies to choose from(some are restricted due to union membership etc--letter carriers as an example. These may also be a couple of HMO styles, not certain without going to look on OPM site.
The bulk of the policies available are national in the coverage for the same rate whether Maine-Michigan-Montana.
"You can almost say the Federal Employees Health Benefits are like a single payer."
Not even CLOSE.
In a single payer system you only have ONE choice. That which the gov't provides.
"Single payer is just like Medicare. Each person covered has to have their OWN policy.
EACH person has their OWN policy which THEY pay for, hence the name "SINGLE" payer.
FEHB is no different then what most companies provide.
You can get "single", if you do not have spouse. You plus 1, if you have only a spouse and you plus family if you have family.
Maybe you should explain why it would not be, when it is in many other countries.
Someone needs to do the math. How much would it cost? How much are we spending already from tax money (a lot), and how much more would have to be collected in new taxes (income, or VAT). Would people end up paying more in new taxes than they pay now in premiums and deductibles? This has been discussed here many times before, and it always comes down to how much new taxes would have to be collected and in what form. Some say VAT, some say income taxes, and some say a combination of both. I think combination of both would do it, and I believe we would end up paying less than what we pay now, and employers would not be burdened with that expense, which is the conservative argument for single payer.
In Sweden, as many libs like to use as a health care comparisons,
" Example of salary taxation through PAYE
Assumptions: income tax (direct, 32%), employer social fee (indirect, 31.42%)
For a pay of 100, the employee first pays 32 in income tax (direct, 32%)"
^^^ That blows my ****ing mind. I'm sorry to hear about those you lost.
Mags; it goes on down there continuously and they bury their heads in the sand. Even those with some kind of insurance plan go through stress causing angst when dealing with cancer diagnosis.
An old gent (80's) living on our street in Florida was suddenly wearing a cowboy hat and the joking started up with a flourish, but we were informed he had been diagnosed with a cancerous lesion right dead center of his scalp. His doctor prescribed a course of treatments program but none of it could get started until his insurance company signed off and they were balking or at least delaying everything by continually contacting both them and their doctors for more information.
This went on for the better part of a month before they were able to commence his treatments. A month's delay as we all know, can be the difference between life and death as it applies to cancer.
The old gent is still with us but that period of time they went through shear hell waiting and wondering if they were going to finally be told "sorry, no dice." they were getting set to sell off everything they owned to start the treatment plan before they got the O.K.
Everyone were asking them on a daily basis "did you hear anything from them yet?" to the point we had to stop because it was just adding to their stress by having to repeat all the details.
Anyone having dealt with automotive or house insurance can readily understand how your healthcare should not be anywhere near that type of exchange of information made necessary between you and your doctors and some cubicle denizen on the end of a phone line that has no interest in your well being beyond your monthly premium continuing.
It's a gawd awful system that relies upon some faceless entity between you and your medical professionals acting as a gatekeeper. How some of them can continue to laud that is beyond me.
They're gradually coming to their senses though as these conversations on here would not have happened just 8 years ago.
After all. It was Mitt Romney, not my hero by any means but obviously a smart guy and a religious conservative who brought Romneycare through the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, , much of which helped build the ACA showing it can possibly work on a state level.
It would be difficult for you to find a Massachusetts liberal to credit him with anything however. Ignorance and denial of facts are common in liberalville.
Whether Romneycare is sustainable or not has yet to be proven however.
"After all. It was Mitt Romney, not my hero by any means but obviously a smart guy and a religious conservative who brought Romneycare through the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority"
Which was amended MANY time by the dem controled state legislature AGAINST Romney's objections.
"much of which helped build the ACA showing it can possibly work on a state level."
A myth from the liberal left, which has been debunked MANY times.
Virtually every single argument against single payer in this thread (some hilariously placed by public service workers in New York whose salaries and benefits plans are solely funded by over-stressed taxpayers) are easily dismissed with a simple answer....how are these arguments any different when placed against private health insurance?
Rationing, limited access to doctors, cost...all are excessive under the private health insurance most people have (if you are a Long Island cop or teacher you don't think so because you aren't paying for it, everyone else is..you know who you are. You are making arguments with your net compensation well of 200k all in..all from tax payers pockets)
The "bazillions trillions" numbers mentioned ...again, how much do you think employers+employees pay in premiums CURRENTLY?
All red herrings. Bottom line, it's an anti-government ideology that opposes single payer. There are very few rational arguments against it in comparison to the current system. Just think about how many people of retirement age are working solely for benefits until they hit medicare age? Think of the net benefit of all of those people giving up their jobs.
A realistic scenario where a single payer Medicare-for-all system in America costs about 60% more than in other developed countries (instead of 300% more!) would mean a 5% federal sales tax + a 5% employer payroll tax and 1% employee payroll tax to generate about $850 billion in needed revenue.
"as hogwash here"
The Urban Institute is a VERY LIBERAL org which makes ANYTHING they say biased "Hogwash"
Why do you think the ultra-libreral Huff Post printed it?
My mother is a walking ( well, rolling since she is wheelchair bound ) miracle. She has gone through multiple health issues from brain tumours to breast cancer, cataract surgery, hip replacements and recently kidney cancer. . I have taken her to dozens upon dozens of doctor appointments, specialists, Neurosurgeons, labs for tests, CT and MRI scans. So I can claim to have SOME experience with our system.
Nothing but praise. Costs? Not much. Her wheelchair was 90 percent covered by private insurance she has with her pension from when she worked, a few handles and poles in her home to assist her getting into bed , and her meals on wheels.
The other cost is her home care workers. This is also under our universal care. She has 3 workers a day. One to get her up, dress, wash and make her breakfast. One in the afternoon for toilet help, and one in the evening to dress her and put her to bed. The cost should be $1,344 per month, but they have capped her at $300 per month. Honestly I'm not sure why, could be income, but she does earn with pensions and investments in the low $30,000's.
She was also given free to use, a Phillips pill dispenser, which is hooked up to Lifeline. So if she doesn't take her pills, I get a call. She is declining slightly and she doesn't like the machine, so we are in the process of having the care workers give her her medication. This will increase the care worker visits to 4, at NO EXTRA COST.
I had a meeting today with her Lead Case Worker about this. The conversation drifted over to what is happening in the US. We both agreed we just don't get it.
It's frustrating to read on CD the lies, and exaggerations of Canadian Healthcare. Is it perfect? Of course not, but we don't want a US type system. Most actually shudder at the suggestion.
Well the reason you see people in here trashing the Canadian healthcare system is because they are afraid of it becoming the law here. So they lie and try to make it seem like Canadians are dying in the streets because of "wait times". Even when that's proven blatantly false they usually counter with; "socialism", "freedom", "murica". Not sure what any of that has to do with why they don't want a single payer here. The propaganda is becoming laughable.
There was a guy on here, Mircea I believe his name is, that is convinced or more likely trying to convince others that Canadians are dying in the street and they hate their healthcare system. I kid you not he used the exact phrase "dying in the streets". I linked this site with his posts to my Canadian friends in Edmonton and they had a nice hardy laugh at his expense and couldn't believe the outright lies he was telling. I would have laughed too if the situation here weren't so critical. It's ridiculous. Our healthcare fiasco is now on the world stage for everyone to see. I think that's good though. Let people see how the US REALLY treats its citizens. It's nowhere near the image that they portray and would like for you to believe.
The good news is that people are finally, FINALLY waking up to the truth here and beginning to support the idea of a universal healthcare system for the US. At some point we are going to stop asking for it and start demanding it. And I believe with the recent vote by our house of representatives, that time is going to come a lot sooner than they think.
"After all. It was Mitt Romney, not my hero by any means but obviously a smart guy and a religious conservative who brought Romneycare through the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority"
Which was amended MANY time by the dem controled state legislature AGAINST Romney's objections.
"much of which helped build the ACA showing it can possibly work on a state level."
A myth from the liberal left, which has been debunked MANY times.
What is the actual point of your post? Not sure what you are even trying to say.
The people here comparing the U.S. to Sweden, Canada and other countries with healthcare closer to sindgle payer are very delusional.
The population demographics in the U.S. are much more diverse than those countries as much as the economy is. They don't have Wall St as their sugar daddy in regard to healthcare.
That is pointlessness and of no bearing whatsoever. The system needs to be overhauled according to the U.S. population demographic and economy and in no way modeled after any other.
Last edited by Objective Detective; 05-06-2017 at 06:58 AM..
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