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I don't get why any American not in the a1% would be against Universal Healthcare...
You are not alone. Many people who have not studied the issue in depth or who do not understand economics think the same way.
Let's be clear: Our health insurance system is screwed up beyond belief. Everyone agrees about that. Our health care delivery system is also screwed up beyond belief; everyone also agrees with that.
However, a single-payer Universal Insurance system does not solve the problem. It doesn't un-screw our screwed up system.
That's about $10,739 per person in 2017. It is well over $11,000 per person today in 2019.
THUS, if we were to merely implement national single-payer, each of us would pay premiums of approximately $11,000 per person to the national health insurance system just to pay for the medical bills (hospitals, doctors, physical therapy, imaging centers, etc etc etc etc) -- plus more to cover the salaries & benefits & computer systems & infrastructure of a hypothetical government health insurance system.
That's $11,000 per person for every man, woman and child alive in the USA. A family of 4 would see premiums of $44,000 to cover their share.
That's not reasonable.
THUS Single Payer does not solve the problem that medical care costs too damn much in this country.
The above bears repeating:
Single Payer doesn't solve the problem that medical care costs too damn much in this country.
Single Payer doesn't rip costs out of the system. It doesn't unscrew the screwed up system.
Single Payer doesn't reduce the total expenditures on health care (in 2017 that number was $3.5 Trillion).
What is needed first is a method to rip costs out of the system - we need to drop that $3.5 Trillion number down to $2 Trillion and then $1 Trillion and then $500 Billion or less. The only way to do that is to eliminate headcount in the health care system. There are far too many people who work in the health care system who do not provide health care - that's a good place to start.
Last edited by RationalExpectations; 10-29-2019 at 11:47 AM..
Wikipedia. That's honestly hilarious. I assume you used that as a source to be ironic. Getting facts there works for anti-vaxers too so why not, right?
Wikipedia isn't the source.
It lists a synopsis of the study and links to the scientific study itself.
It's there for you to read, if you dare.
I realize it isn't The Limbaugh Letter, so feel free to pretend it isn't real.
It lists a synopsis of the study and links to the scientific study itself.
It's there for you to read, if you dare.
I realize it isn't The Limbaugh Letter, so feel free to pretend it isn't real.
You mean something like this?
"Authoritarians thus generally favor the established ways and oppose social and political change, hence even politics usually labeled as right or left-wing is not descriptive. While communism in the Soviet Union is seen as leftist, it still inspired the same responses. Furthermore, recent research indicates that political progressives can exhibit the qualities of authoritarianism when they are asked about conservative Christians. This leaves questions over what makes various ideologies left or right open to interpretation. A 2017 study found evidence that was suggestive of the existence of left-wing authoritarians and a 2015 study suggested that support for political correctness (defined as censoring views that offend or disadvantage a particular group in society) is be a manifestation of left-wing authoritarianism."
Although I applaud how you only chose to focus only on the "right" side of the studies. NYT and CNN teach you that?
Sorry dude, not a Trump supporter sooo there goes your neat and tidy box you fit everyone into in such an "authoritative" manner.
When you can't attack the argument you attack the source.
Like when Turmptards can't defend Trump they attack the process and create a circus.
Let's see... blindly labeling an entire group of people with a broad brush based on a manufactured preconception has a name... let's see, what is it again... (It's what you're doing).
I have posted facts throughout this thread.
- You have been shown that the president's party really makes no difference in economic growth since Kennedy.
- You have been shown that leadership among the Democratic party have enriched themselves by snuggling and preforming like monkeys for Wall Street.
- That no politician leaves office poor.
- That politicians move freely between boardrooms of Wall Street to government office showing there is no difference between them... because they are the same people.
...yet you rebut each without any stats of your own and instead parroted talking points from the DNC as messaged from the Post, NYT, CNN and MSNBC.
What's the point of any of this if no one holds "their guy" accountable. Politicians are not looking out for you. They will not save you. They are not any different then their brothers on Wall Street who feed them the money. Your previous DNC chosen one continues to take money from Wall Street. Tens of millions of $$$. And some how the Dem's want to pretend they are different some how? Not seeing any difference between Hannity and Hillary. One just admits what they are.
The thread OP has pointed to Universal Healthcare several times in his/her posts.
Leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for president support a Single Payer/Universal Healthcare/Medicare-for-All System, but none of them have dared be honest with the public about how much money the Federal government needs to raise to pay for it.
Single-payer advocates claim such a system could reduce health-care costs by removing insurance-company profits and administrative inefficiencies. However, insurance-company profits are already regulated and are not a significant driver of the escalation of health insurance costs. Moreover, there is scant evidence to support the idea that non-profits are more efficient than for-profits.
Some people mistakenly believe NON-PROFIT insurance companies are somehow LOW-COST. They are not. Take, for example, the non-profit Kaiser Permanente. http://www.kp.org. Kaiser Permanente is a consortium of both for-profit and not-for-profit integrated health care & health insurance entities with over 21,000 physicians and nearly 210,000 total employees.
Looking solely at the non-profit side of the business, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals reported a combined $3.8 billion in net income on $72.7 billion in operating revenues.
The following images contain data from its most recent IRS Form 990 for the 2016 calendar year (again, this is for the NON-PROFIT). The data are public information. I'm showing just top employee compensation as reported by the non-profit entity. I'm just including TITLE, NAME, HOURS PER WEEK WORKED, COMPENSATION and OTHER COMPENSATION.
Sooo.... does the following non-profit compensation look low to you? Does it look efficient to you? Does it demonstrate that non-profit entities are somehow better than for-profit entities?
Proponents of Universal Healthcare/Single Payer/Medicare-for-All routinely ignore the increase in total expenditures generated by covering more people and encouraging the use of free services that currently cost money. Any national Universal Healthcare/Single Payer/Medicare-for-All system, staffed by Federal Government employees, would have all the attendant inefficiencies that plague every large Federal Bureaucracy such as the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Department of Defense. We can expect a national Universal Healthcare/Medicare-for-All to aspire to be as well run as your typical Department of Motor Vehicles.
The dollars involved are staggering. It is more than the oft-heard complaint about the Federal Government that "a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money."
How much more?
Current models at economic think-tanks say the most generous single-payer plan would require between $29 Trillion and $34.8 Trillion in additional federal revenue over a decade for a fully featured system. Personally, I think that number is far too low; currently, we spend north of $3.5 Trillion. Hence, if there were no inflation nor incremental health care consumption, 10 years * 3.5 Trillion equals $35 Trillion. Rational people expect inflation in health care prices and increased consumption, so the $29 Trillion to $34.8 Trillion just seems way too low. But let's say they are right: its about $30-ish Trillion.
Everyone agrees you cannot raise $30-ish Trillion by "soaking the rich." There just are not enough of them and they don’t have enough money to pay for Medicare for All even if you confiscated every last penny. You need more money - much more.
Step 1: you'll need to implement an integrated suite of tax hikes on estates, wealth, income and financial transactions, which might generate $11 trillion over a decade, according to several non-partisan research organizations that crunch the numbers. Elizabeth Warren's $2.75 trillion wealth tax cannot be used for Universal Healthcare; she has already allocated that revenue to other hand-outs to buy votes.
********
Step 2: in addition to the tax hikes above, you'll need a whole host of new taxes such as a broad-based 5% value-added tax on consumption (basically, a national sales tax) which would raise $3 trillion over a decade. Bernie Sanders and other Democratic candidates have talked about creating new incremental payroll taxes like the ones deducted from your paycheck for Social Security and Medicare. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-All plan includes a 4% income-based premium on employees and a 7.5% tax on employers. Everyone understands that employees ultimately bare the burden of payroll taxes, even if employers write the checks, so that's an 11.5% reduction in total after-tax worker compensation. From the point of view of the employer, today’s group healthcare premium payments turn into tomorrow’s Medicare-for-All taxes, so it is kind of a wash. However, each percentage point of payroll taxes generates somewhat less than $1 Trillion over 10 years, so even Bernie's 11.5% payroll tax is insufficient. It generates a mere $11 Trillion.
The federal government is currently projected to collect about $46 Trillion and spend about $58 Trillion over the next decade. Imagine increasing those by another $30-ish Trillion. What could go wrong?
Last edited by RationalExpectations; 10-29-2019 at 05:18 PM..
I don't get why any American not in the a1% would be against Universal Healthcare since every other first world nation has it and so do some third world nations.
Why do you like a system where a private ambulance can refuse to transport you to the hospital unless you pay first.
Why do you think it's fine for insulin which costs $5 to make to be sold for $500?
Why do you think it's fair for a person to have an illness and need treatment and you go from being charged $1000 a month with a $200 copay to a surprise $20K charge and a $4K copay and then next month calling and being told that they can't tell you how much it will cost ahead of time
And why do you fight so hard and protect billionaires to keep getting richer while many are one paycheck away or one fire or tornado away from being homeless? or going bankrupt from a medical bill or not being able to pay for treatment and end up dead.
Many Americans only make it thru High School. Many Americans are not well educated. The wealthiest Americans know how to manipulate these people with disinformation and emotional appeal, and it works. They continue to carry water for billionaires and attack their fellow Americans for reminding them of this.
The singular achievement of our current President is a huge tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. These people support this move 100%, no questions asked.
It is the Dumbing Down of America + propaganda = our current mess.
After living in several countries that have socialized medicine, I prefer the American one. However, I can afford to pay for my medical treatments. I can understand that people want to be covered medically, but it’s hard to do fiscally as a country all at once. We just have too many people that live in the USA. Canada and European countries don’t have the vast numbers of people that we do. I would like to see a gradual change to socialized medicine instead of leaping in head first.
The system the OP promotes is but another step toward socialism. If socialism is good enough for Canada and the Eurozone, why isn't it good enough for America, s/he wonders.
Meanwhile, at our southern border, migrants of all stripes - many from socialist countries - clamor to get into the US. Why? Because they want a chance to live in the best non-socialist country the world has ever known. The poor migrants fail to realize that the party they most vote for, Democrats, want to socialize the US into the same type of hellhole they just came from.
I agree that you proved your point in regard to yourself with the following statement:
Quote:
The singular achievement of our current President is a huge tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. These people support this move 100%, no questions asked.
Bravo.
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