Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It would be better to create a labor shortage by shutting down illegal immigration and deporting 10 million of the 15 million plus illegals. Then eliminate most work visas H1B Visas etc....the business community will be bending over backwards to raise wages and provide medical insurance.
Is that like POGO, "We have met the enemy, and he is us"?
As for universal health care, I think we need to find out whether the European systems actually work. I've heard from people in several European countries who say the system doesn't work, the doctors in the system don't really do anything. We need in-depth research to find out which country's system works best and why.
Location: Born in L.A. - NYC is Second Home - Rustbelt is Home Base
1,607 posts, read 1,087,137 times
Reputation: 1372
Don't hold your breath for socialized healthcare. The Dems gave us Obamacre and it has the stamp of approval of SCOTUS, so that is how it stands.
Even if the Reps get in the most they will do is to repeal Obamacare and replace it with...nothing. (Or, maybe you will get tax credits for buying unusable insurance.) As the robots take the jobs and the gig economy replaces trad jobs, people will be scrambling to pay the ever-increasing fines for not being able to afford overpriced, unusable Obamacare. The Reps don't have much hope to get back in power for the foreseeable future, but maybe 'the Obamacare repeal' will work for them in 10 years as the fines are too much for people to pay for 'just breathing.'
Obamacare did me more harm than anything else. I used to be able to cover doctor office visits out of pocket, but can't afford it any more. In Jan I called a dermatologist to ask about a wart removal and it is $490 for 5 minutes of work. The doctor does not even do it...his assistant does it. Last year it was $175 for a wart removal, but they raised the rates if your uninsured. They said it is illegal for me to not have med insurance and it is insurance fraud for them to charge a different rate than what they get under Obamacare when they bill insurance companies...$490.
Medicine prices started to skyrocket once the greedy learned they can hike up medicine costs by astounding percentages. They can hold the chronically ill by ransom...it is pay up or die. There is nothing wrong with that is there? This is textbook material on how a good capitalist should work. Get the highest price the market will bear for the product. If a pill cost .35 cents to make, why not mark it up to $1000 a pill? If an insurance company will pay for it why not $5,000 a pill? There is no law against making profits...this is not the 1960's Mayberry.
It is not even a question of being able to afford Obamcare med plans. They are useless, at least for me. Thousands of $ in deductibles and copay. I think the goal of insurance companies is to sell you insurance you can not use unless your dying or very sick.
Most of these are short term plans 6 - 12 months plans. No long term plan offered for someone 62 yo at this broker. Monthly premium rates are bold. Coinsurance is...you pay that % of all healthcare costs.
HCC Life Short Term Medical
Policy Max: $2 Million
6 months
50% Coinsurance
$7,500 DED $355.82
Really, socialized med is hard to promote in the US. We are a capitalist country. The greedy special interests and rich will tear it down as communism. The only way it would work is to have a 2 tier system. The rich can pay for the best if they don't want socialized med. The average person can use the socialized plan.
Location: Born in L.A. - NYC is Second Home - Rustbelt is Home Base
1,607 posts, read 1,087,137 times
Reputation: 1372
Quote:
Originally Posted by totsuka
It would be better to create a labor shortage by shutting down illegal immigration and deporting 10 million of the 15 million plus illegals. Then eliminate most work visas H1B Visas etc....the business community will be bending over backwards to raise wages and provide medical insurance.
Yes, but who will feed us? The lazy American's wont pick the food.
Really, socialized med is hard to promote in the US. We are a capitalist country. The greedy special interests and rich will tear it down as communism. The only way it would work is to have a 2 tier system. The rich can pay for the best if they don't want socialized med. The average person can use the socialized plan.
Obamacare is not socialized medicine. Socialized medicine is the situation in which the government outright owns the hospitals and the medical staffs. Military and VA hospitals are examples of socialized medicine. Absolutely nobody except maybe the card-carrying Communist Party is advocating socialized medicine.
Obamacare is capitalism, what the Big Health and Big Insurance industries can profit heartily on. Don't forget that it is essentially the same plan invented by Republicans.
The other concept is "single payer"--with Medicare and Medicaid being the examples. Sanders is advocating expanding Medicare/Medicaid to include everyone for basic care. In that case, specialized, elective, and high-end private facilities would still exist, and as well, insurance for catastrophic coverage would exist (and be a lot more affordable).
In reality, people are already paying for the coverage of others. Consider that when someone without coverage begins to develop a medical condition, they're unlikely to go for early treatment. Eventually that condition worsens, and they go to the ER and undergo extremely expensive procedures. Hospitals aren't permitted to turn people away, and will not be reimbursed for these costs, so they charge more to insurance companies. Those insurance companies, in turn, charge more for premiums for those with coverage.
It would be far cheaper to cover everyone and encourage early intervention rather than put it all on the back end.
When the private health insurance companies stop donating millions to the politicians who would be responsible for creating such a system. Plus additional millions spend on advertising convincing the uneducated masses that universal healthcare is an overly expensive example of government overreach.
So.... probably never.
And when the masses stop believing that "we can't afford UH." Again, never.
Funny how people get suckered into believing that we CAN afford ENDLESS war -- which costs trillions, and is about killing and dying. Yep, no problem there. But, NO! We CANNOT afford a social benefit like UH that is far more cost efficient, AND, that study after study proves to result in better health outcomes.
-- "The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades with some costs, such as the financial costs of US veterans’ care, not peaking until mid-century."
-- "US government funding of reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has totaled over $170 billion. Most of those funds have gone towards arming security forces in both countries. Much of the money allocated to humanitarian relief and rebuilding civil society has been lost to fraud, waste, and abuse."
-- "The cost for both the Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan wars totals about $4.4 trillion. This does not include future interest costs on borrowing for the wars, which will add an estimated $8 trillion through 2054."
That does happen. My cousin's husband changed jobs while she was pregnant with her second child. They figured it would be fine, because they expected a healthy baby and he would be getting a huge income increase by changing jobs. But the baby was born with very severe Down's Syndrome. The insurance through his new company would not provide coverage for the child, because they considered it a preexisting condition, because he was born before the father's insurance kicked in. The father had to quit his job so they could get government assistance, because the boy's medical bills would have been too much for them.
Gosh. That's awful. My heart goes out to them, and anyone else who faces that kind of thing.
And, unfortunately, something similar could happen to any one of us. I've heard a number of experts say that most INSURED, middle class Americans, who (understandably) believe their healthcare coverage is adequate and secure, are, in fact, only one healthcare crisis away from complete financial ruin.
As long as the middle class is willing to pay 50%+ in income taxes, I see no problem with it. The money has to come from somewhere, and there are not enough "rich people" to pay. Check out the tax rates of the above countries
The poor will get it free, so the middle class will end up paying the bill.
What always surprises me whenever Americans discuss healthcare is they seem to be more concerned with the healthcare systems of other countries than their own healthcare system.
The truth being the vast majority of people in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada etc fully support their Universal Systems of Healthcare and even defend the right to free healthcare.
It's the same with firearms, many countries around the world are very happy with their firearms laws, yet Americans seem more concerned with their laws than their own.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned America is free to do as it pleases in relation to such issues as healthcare, firearms and a host of other issues and the rest of the world does not want to tell the US how to run their own country just as Europeans and others don't want to be told their healthcare systems or firearms laws are wrong.
I also noted the usual we defend Europe rhetoric in this thread, which again is a bit over the top given the fact there are only 30,000 US Troops in Europe and most European Nations withe exception of Germany and Italy have very few or even no American bases. The new emphasis of American power projection despite recent events in Ukraine and Putin is the Far East and China, but you very rarely hear this mentioned, it's always Europe that's mentioned. The truth being most European nations spend around the same GDP per Capita on Defence as other western countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan etc etc.
Last edited by Brave New World; 04-06-2016 at 07:47 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
