Your thoughts on Colorado Care (Aguilar: calculating, vs., health care)

[freewest]

Health care, education, take your pick. When the central planners in D.C. or state capitals take over these large, complex endeavors, these institutions always get destroyed. The quality goes down, the costs go up, fewer people have access. It is almost as if there is a connection there.

This notion that we can have top notch health care at a cheap cost if only we'd let the central planners (CP) run things is just unrealistic. And let's be clear, a single payer system is a CP system. You would think with over a century of data and a hundred permutations of CP that have all failed to deliver a good standard of living to the people, that this notion of CP health care would just be dismissed outright. But no. We believe ourselves to be so intellectually superior to our predecessors that we can make it work. What arrogance.

And for those of you who continue to hold up Europe as a glowing example of how this can actually be accomplished, I give you some reality. The per capita debt in Europe is much higher than the US. Their national debt to GDP ratio is significantly higher than the US. Please don't ask, just look it up. Our debt is high enough without CP health care. Imagine it with CP health care. And they do not have the insane litagation we have. Between 10% - 20% of overall health care costs are related to litigation. 40% of pharmaceutical costs are legal costs. Health care litigation in Europe is very different, and contributes very little to their health care costs.

Imagine cheap, high-quality health care, while not adding to the national debt, and still allowing multi-million dollar jury awards against health care providers. Welcome to fantasyland.

[freewest]

Originally Posted by David Aguilar

They could do a real estate tax, consumption tax, or otherwise regressive tax for all I care. I wouldn't want it to come from state income, federal income, or employer taxes. I don't know how Irene Aguilar thinks it's fair to balance this on the backs of employers, as if they have something to do with every CO resident's health care.

A large part of our health care premiums are already paid by employers as part of the compensation for our labor. I also do not think they should have to pay more. Especially for people that do not work for them.

[Count David]

Originally Posted by freewest

A large part of our health care premiums are already paid by employers as part of the compensation for our labor. I also do not think they should have to pay more. Especially for people that do not work for them.

Exactly.

[asusual]

"but IMO you can't do it at the state level only, especially just one state in the entire nation. It has to be done at the federal level for everyone at the same time in order to be successful."

If it were possible, that would be the way to do it. Yet, with health insurance and big pharma owning our government like they do, how long do you think it will be before they would allow universal care in this country? To do it, the states are the ones that have to do it first and it should start with ColoradoCare.

"I'm a bit suspicious of Medicare's low admin. rate. They're part of the federal government, they can hide stuff all over the budget."

Even if they tried it, someone would find it at some point. Yet, Medicare's low admin rate is not unusual for universal care systems. It just is for the chaos because admin for private insurance is so much higher.

[asusual]

"A large part of our health care premiums are already paid by employers as part of the compensation for our labor. I also do not think they should have to pay more. Especially for people that do not work for them."

Two things here:

1 Just think of how much higher your wages would be if employers were not also afflicted with buying policies for their employees, and having to constantly shop for new policies because the one they just bought went up, so they have to take more out of your wages to cover that rising cost.

2 When you say pay for people that do not work for them, remember that you and your employer are already doing that. Whenever a person who is uninsured or underinsured goes to a hospital, it's us that pay the bill through the cost shift. How much are Colorado insurance premiums rising this year? Anthem is going up by 25% this year; Kaiser is going up some 14%, and so on. How much of this is due to you and I paying for the underinsured and uninsured? That's one reason why single-payer systems are less expensive than the bs that we have now.

[asusual]

"I don't know how Irene Aguilar thinks it's fair to balance this on the backs of employers, as if they have something to do with every CO resident's health care."

They do, as we do them.

[asusual]

"Health care, education, take your pick. When the central planners in D.C. or state capitals take over these large, complex endeavors, these institutions always get destroyed. The quality goes down, the costs go up, fewer people have access. It is almost as if there is a connection there."

Do you have examples of this? And remember, if you use Obamacare, Obamacare is private insurance.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by asusual

"but IMO you can't do it at the state level only, especially just one state in the entire nation. It has to be done at the federal level for everyone at the same time in order to be successful."

If it were possible, that would be the way to do it. Yet, with health insurance and big pharma owning our government like they do, how long do you think it will be before they would allow universal care in this country? To do it, the states are the ones that have to do it first and it should start with ColoradoCare.

"I'm a bit suspicious of Medicare's low admin. rate. They're part of the federal government, they can hide stuff all over the budget."

Even if they tried it, someone would find it at some point. Yet, Medicare's low admin rate is not unusual for universal care systems. It just is for the chaos because admin for private insurance is so much higher.

You are aware, I'm certain, that Medicare currently contracts out its admin to private insurance companies who know how to do it. https://www.cms.gov/medicare/medicar...ntractors.html
I don't know how all this appears in the federal budget.

You're also well aware, I'm sure, of how numbers can be juggled around to show anything you want.

UHC systems in other countries have a lot of indirect administration, e.g. tax collecting and distributing, etc. It may not be in the health care budget, but it's there. I'm reminded of these old commercials for long distance phone plans (pre-cell phone era, so some of you may not get it) where someone says, "It was supposed to be so much cheaper per call. Then why is my bill the same?" They can tack on all sorts of fees, just not call them "admin".

It's ironic, I'm in favor of UHC, but I don't think for a moment that it will necessarily be cheaper. The one thing government agencies don't do is pay huge salaries like that of the CEO of these private companies, so there would be those savings. However, that's a drop in the bucket. These guys are promising the stars and the moon. They're not going to be able to provide all these benefits, more than many insurances provide now, and save all this money!

[Coloradomom22]

One thing about a single-payer system no one wants to realize is that there would be rationed care. England recently banned all elective surgeries (like knee or hip replacements) for anyone who smokes or is obese. Can you imagine the uproar if that happened here? I thought about it and everyone I know who had one of those surgeries either smokes or is obese or both. The fact is you can't give everyone the best health care at all times, it is just too cost prohibitive.

[sammy87]

Originally Posted by Coloradomom22

One thing about a single-payer system no one wants to realize is that there would be rationed care. England recently banned all elective surgeries (like knee or hip replacements) for anyone who smokes or is obese. Can you imagine the uproar if that happened here? I thought about it and everyone I know who had one of those surgeries either smokes or is obese or both. The fact is you can't give everyone the best health care at all times, it is just too cost prohibitive.

Yeah and the govt would go by BMI to determine if you're obese or not.