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Weird, people seem quite happy to pay for 'other' peoples kids to get educated, they seem quite happy to pay for 'other' people to be protected by the fire brigade, they even seem happy to pay for 'other' people to get their roads repaired yet when it comes to actually saving 'other' peoples lives they don't want to know!?
I see it as a moral issue than a political one.
How do we walk around knowing that we have millions of our fellow Americans that are either under-insured or without any healthcare coverage at all?
We can find billions for the military but we can't fund Universal healthcare? I refuse to believe that.
Where there is a will there is a way.
Because there's more to it than that.
Health insurance isn't health care
In order to truly be able to afford single payer, there would have to be a lot of changes.
The cost of health care would have to come down drastically in order for Americans to not be giving up more than half their paychecks to fund single payer.
Are you going to be the one to tell Americans they have to give up their lifestyles to fund single payer?
Are you going to tell doctors, "sorry, but no more six figure salaries for you" ?
Nurses, medical technicians and lab personal?
All have to take a pay cut.
Hospitals?
Medical device and equipment companies?
Pharmaceutical companies?
In order to be able to bring the costs of healthcare down to affordable levels, all facets of provision would have to be non profit.
Or, you could just do away with health insurance altogether and force prices down by competition and true costing.
In order to truly be able to afford single payer, there would have to be a lot of changes.
The cost of health care would have to come down drastically in order for Americans to not be giving up more than half their paychecks to fund single payer.
Are you going to be the one to tell Americans they have to give up their lifestyles to fund single payer?
Are you going to tell doctors, "sorry, but no more six figure salaries for you" ?
Nurses, medical technicians and lab personal?
All have to take a pay cut.
Hospitals?
Medical device and equipment companies?
Pharmaceutical companies?
In order to be able to bring the costs of healthcare down to affordable levels, all facets of provision would have to be non profit.
Or, you could just do away with health insurance altogether and force prices down by competition and true costing.
GREAT POST. The liberals (I refuse to use the word progressives)…..either dont' think about the details, or they know the details, and they ignore them.
In order to truly be able to afford single payer, there would have to be a lot of changes.
The cost of health care would have to come down drastically in order for Americans to not be giving up more than half their paychecks to fund single payer.
Are you going to be the one to tell Americans they have to give up their lifestyles to fund single payer?
Are you going to tell doctors, "sorry, but no more six figure salaries for you" ?
Nurses, medical technicians and lab personal?
All have to take a pay cut.
Hospitals?
Medical device and equipment companies?
Pharmaceutical companies?
In order to be able to bring the costs of healthcare down to affordable levels, all facets of provision would have to be non profit.
Or, you could just do away with health insurance altogether and force prices down by competition and true costing.
That's the problem with liberals. They still don't get that "free stuff" means someone else has to pay for it.
Somebody said last evening that the cost of health care is $11,000 a year per person, on average. (Maybe it was you.) Adding in the cost of the govt to oversee it, it would be more than $1,000 per person per month.
Then what? You'd have liberals screaming that low-income (which they would classify as under $50,000, or more than half the country) can't afford that - so, for them, the cost will be subsidized. That would mean that the other half, in addition to the taxes they already pay to provide other benefits, would have to pay $2,000 a month, per person.
So, nobody in the middle class could afford to participate in the "universal" health care scheme because they can't afford the buy-in, and the poor would get it all for free. (Sort of like we are now with Obamacare.)
GREAT POST. The liberals (I refuse to use the word progressives)…..either dont' think about the details, or they know the details, and they ignore them.
Interesting how the "progressives" chose a name for themselves that reflects their wrong and arrogant thinking that they are so ahead the rest of the country.
I was told by a head neurologist that my wife was gone as she lay in a vegetative state six days after her heart stopped while undergoing a medical procedure. Two days later she began communicating. Today she remains severely disabled but has learned to walk and talk again. Her executive functions will always be poor but memory is intact.
I immediately got a second opinion the next day. That neurologist stated there was little hope but if it was his loved one he would continue life support for four weeks.
I realize them neurologists are busy but I knew something was still there because when I told her to blink her eyes eight times out of ten she would and when I, in the same tone of voice, gave some nonsensical command she would do it two or three times out of ten. Believe me I did it enough times for it to be statistically significant. The one minute yelling and clapping loudly an inch from their nose and checking the response and determining they are down to simple brain stem functions seems a poor substitute for spending a little more time with the patient. Of course they won’t get less busy with more patients.
Age has to be a factor. If my wife had been 87 instead of 57 I don't think ity would have been worth it to put her through everything she has been through. Of course the neurologist said the fact she was young and healthy before the pneumonia and sepsis is why she is still alive.
Well that sucks- hope she is doing better now.
I was talking particularly about the elderly when there is essentially no chance of survival. I don't know of anyone that would like to die that way, yet relatives (for a variety of reasons) make unrealistic "demands", which results in billions of dollars being wasted in the US for hopeless cases. In these instances, just palliative care should be administered.
We would not treat animals in terminal conditions in this fashion, yet we do so routinely for humans.
Do you consider healthcare as a right for every citizen a far left position?
That's a really narrow set of choices, asking the person taking the poll to go to extremes. I consider myself an independent that leans towards the right on several issues. I am actually for a universal health care system under the following conditions: 1) we take the money from other social programs like Medicare to pay for it. 2) We still allow for private companies to compete with the government system to ensure that there are checks and balances 3) We consider a flat tax to help pay for it based on consumption, so that everyone in America helps pay for the program, not just the middle class or wealthy.
I answered far-left because it's a more left leaning program, but the answers were limited.
I don't think it is a "right", but I am a physician who supports a single payer system. I am also a conservative.
I really think that the fee for service system is a little too corrupting and I have seen many physicians driven by profit, rather than ethics, guiding their decisions. I would bet that if we were all on a salary, you would see a substantial drop in procedures and surgeries.
The problem with single payer is reimbursement.
1. Currently students are incurring about $300K in education- Education would have to be an additional burden borne by the feds to prevent docs from going broke.
2. Time in education- No one is going to spend 13 years after highschool in education/training with little or no pay. There would have to be payment for med students and higher pay for residents.
3. There would have to be a parallel private system that allowed patients who choose to do so purchase private insurance. This would allow patients to get things such as total joints quicker if they can afford it. In a single payer, there would be longer waits (as there is in the UK) for "luxury" surgeries and treatment. Transplants would fall into that category.
4. Allow physicians to stop care when the mortality is 99%. Most of medicare payments occur in patients in their last three months of life. These heroics are a misallocation of resources and make no difference in the end. Unless families want to pony up to keep a corpse around, allow physicians the right to terminate care when there is no hope.
5. Be prepared for waits. Patients now are relatively spoiled, as they have rapid access on demand. That would have to change with a single payer, but patients will take it out on the physicians, not the system.
6. Overhead would have to be covered by the Feds. Patients don't understand that overhead is very expensive and such expenses could no longer be sustained by providers in a single payer system. You would go broke otherwise
Right now doctors and hospitals carry malpractice insurance for, well, you know.
Under your system what is a patients recourse for, well, you know?
Have you ever tied to sue Uncle Sam?
I am being serious here, so please do not dismiss my question.
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