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The latest news out of Chicago is that the city braintrust has deduced that it's "racist" to build low income housing in low income areas, so the city is taking hundreds of millions of dollars from a federal grant and pledging it towards building upwards of 5,000 new low income housing units (i.e. projects) in affluent areas around the city.
That kind of neanderthal thinking can stay in Chicago.
At least the kids from those 5000 new low income housing will be getting a better education that they would not otherwise get in the low income areas. And when those kids grow up to become smart well educated high earners, they will help diversify the neighborhoods and make this country great. It almost sounds like busing but instead for schools, it's for the whole family and their well being that will be improved. Imagine that, most of those kids will probably never commit a crime and the cops in the low income areas will have less crime to fight. OMG we can't have crime leaving the low income areas, keep those families there. The cops need their job security.
I’d gladly pay the additional 12% for quality healthcare...
Me too - if it would merely cost an incremental 12%.
It would be difficult to find many people who do not think our healthcare system and our health insurance system are hopelessly screwed up. Healthcare costs to damn much in this country. But it is helpful to look at the numbers.
In Las Vegas -- and across America -- on average, we consume about $12,000 PER PERSON PER YEAR in health care goods & services, adding in everything. That's before the pandemic, of course.
Note this does not count health insurance premiums we collectively pay to insurance companies.
Note this isn't the "sticker price" of heath care -- the bill -- which, of course, is reduced substantially because of contracted compensation rates (we all know of examples where the hospital bill is, say, $100,000 but is reduced to, say, $15,000 because of negotiated rates with insurance companies, and of which the patient is responsible for a much smaller portion).
No, that $12,000 PER PERSON PER YEAR, on average, is the actual consumption of medical care (includes professional services, consumables including medicine, and durable equipment).
The arithmetic is ineluctable: that's how much, on average, we consume for each man, woman and child in America for the pre-pandemic year. This averages in high consumption people such as the elderly with age-related illnesses, low consumption patients such as teens and twenty-somethings, it includes newborns, cancer patients, orthopedic basket cases as a result of high speed motorcycle accidents, people who are exceptionally healthy and haven't seen a doctor in decades and take no prescription medicines, etc etc. On average, that's how much we consume: $12,000 per person for every man, woman and child who is alive in the USA.
THEREFORE, any "Single Payer" system of health insurance, including "Universal Healthcare" and so-called "Medicare-for-All" MUST charge insurance premiums, on average, of about $12,000 PER PERSON PER YEAR for every man, woman, and child who is alive in the USA. That's to pay for the underlying health care goods & services.
But wait - there's more. The "Single Payer" entity needs to administer the system. That's a lot of people, none of whom work for free. So in addition to the "Single Payer" insurance premium of $12,000, the governmental entity needs to charge more to pay for its administration. How much more? Well, ask yourself, how efficient are extremely large government entities?
Are you married? If so, that's $24K ($12K per person). Do you have kids? A family of 3 would owe $36K in premiums for "Medicare for All" ($12K per person). A family of 4 would owe $48K in premiums for "Medicare for All" ($12K per person). Actually, it is somewhat more than that - the extra would pay for government administration.
Clearly, "Universal Healthcare" aka "Medicare for All" aka "Single-Payer INSURANCE" does not solve the problem that health care costs too damn much in this country.
I don't have the solution, but I know just having the government pay for the same quantity of health care goods and services doesn't reduce the total or the average of $12K per person per year. What we need is a way to rip costs out of the system - and most of those costs are administrative. They are people who work in hospitals and clinics and medical offices who sit at desks and interact with computer screens -- they don't add value and they don't care for patients; they push paper (electrons) and they earn a salary. They are also breadwinners for their families.
The objective needs to be to reduce the average consumption from the pre-Covid $12K per person per year down to $11K and down to $10K and so on. The only way to do that is to take massive numbers of those administrative people who earn a living in the health care industry but don't actually deliver health care - and lay them off.
Since you appear to live in "Tucson/Nogales", why don't you instead focus your efforts there?
Wrong sentiment for a public forum. Debate the merits of the idea or argument.
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Since you appear to live in "Tucson/Nogales", why don't you instead focus your efforts there?
I lived in Sinless City for 22 years, one third of my life, I'm entitled to my opinions. If it hadn't been for the Great Recession, I would have been out of there 10 years sooner.
I grew up in a city that's equal to San Francisco with liberalism, Minneapolis, and I could never get used to the conservatism of Sinless City. It was a cultural shock to me!
At least the kids from those 5000 new low income housing will be getting a better education that they would not otherwise get in the low income areas. And when those kids grow up to become smart well educated high earners, they will help diversify the neighborhoods and make this country great. It almost sounds like busing but instead for schools, it's for the whole family and their well being that will be improved. Imagine that, most of those kids will probably never commit a crime and the cops in the low income areas will have less crime to fight. OMG we can't have crime leaving the low income areas, keep those families there. The cops need their job security.
Nice pipe dream. Unfortunately, what will actually happen is that the kids will move in and destroy what were once good schools for everyone else, and the adults will move in and destroy the rest of what was once a nice neighborhood. Exactly like the bussing you brought up, every one of these left-wing fantasy plans achieves nothing but bringing everything they touch down to the lowest common denominator.
Me too - if it would merely cost an incremental 12%.
It would be difficult to find many people who do not think our healthcare system and our health insurance system are hopelessly screwed up. Healthcare costs to damn much in this country. But it is helpful to look at the numbers.
In Las Vegas -- and across America -- on average, we consume about $12,000 PER PERSON PER YEAR in health care goods & services, adding in everything. That's before the pandemic, of course.
Note this does not count health insurance premiums we collectively pay to insurance companies.
Note this isn't the "sticker price" of heath care -- the bill -- which, of course, is reduced substantially because of contracted compensation rates (we all know of examples where the hospital bill is, say, $100,000 but is reduced to, say, $15,000 because of negotiated rates with insurance companies, and of which the patient is responsible for a much smaller portion).
No, that $12,000 PER PERSON PER YEAR, on average, is the actual consumption of medical care (includes professional services, consumables including medicine, and durable equipment).
The arithmetic is ineluctable: that's how much, on average, we consume for each man, woman and child in America for the pre-pandemic year. This averages in high consumption people such as the elderly with age-related illnesses, low consumption patients such as teens and twenty-somethings, it includes newborns, cancer patients, orthopedic basket cases as a result of high speed motorcycle accidents, people who are exceptionally healthy and haven't seen a doctor in decades and take no prescription medicines, etc etc. On average, that's how much we consume: $12,000 per person for every man, woman and child who is alive in the USA.
THEREFORE, any "Single Payer" system of health insurance, including "Universal Healthcare" and so-called "Medicare-for-All" MUST charge insurance premiums, on average, of about $12,000 PER PERSON PER YEAR for every man, woman, and child who is alive in the USA. That's to pay for the underlying health care goods & services.
But wait - there's more. The "Single Payer" entity needs to administer the system. That's a lot of people, none of whom work for free. So in addition to the "Single Payer" insurance premium of $12,000, the governmental entity needs to charge more to pay for its administration. How much more? Well, ask yourself, how efficient are extremely large government entities?
Are you married? If so, that's $24K ($12K per person). Do you have kids? A family of 3 would owe $36K in premiums for "Medicare for All" ($12K per person). A family of 4 would owe $48K in premiums for "Medicare for All" ($12K per person). Actually, it is somewhat more than that - the extra would pay for government administration.
Clearly, "Universal Healthcare" aka "Medicare for All" aka "Single-Payer INSURANCE" does not solve the problem that health care costs too damn much in this country.
I don't have the solution, but I know just having the government pay for the same quantity of health care goods and services doesn't reduce the total or the average of $12K per person per year. What we need is a way to rip costs out of the system - and most of those costs are administrative. They are people who work in hospitals and clinics and medical offices who sit at desks and interact with computer screens -- they don't add value and they don't care for patients; they push paper (electrons) and they earn a salary. They are also breadwinners for their families.
The objective needs to be to reduce the average consumption from the pre-Covid $12K per person per year down to $11K and down to $10K and so on. The only way to do that is to take massive numbers of those administrative people who earn a living in the health care industry but don't actually deliver health care - and lay them off.
Not likely to happen, of course.
Aside from that, I don't have a solution.
The main tenant of the argument is true, but the fundamental problem is hospital billing. They charge an obscene amount for care because insurance companies are paying the bills and passing the costs through the premiums and high deductibles. Your right, I’m paying a lot in premiums and not using the care and subsidizing everyone else.
However, imagine for a minute that hospitals would no longer be able to charge whatever they wanted, and a single payer system would pre negotiate the costs? Yeah, that 12k per person on average would drop significantly.
Some of the best care I have had was in Europe, and it cost me a tiny fraction of what it would have cost here in the states. All because the prices are not made up and the true costs are known. People just think, it’s fine, the insurance company is paying, who cares if they are charging 5k for a CT scan or 50 bucks for an asprin, when in reality we all are paying - and for that matter getting pretty crappy care overall.
So my brother worked for the Obama Administration to change the financial incentive of health care from being profit driven by keeping people sick to paying doctors to keep people healthy to prevent health care costs from rising similar to the European model. Doctors will get paid for preventative medicine instead. That's one step that wasn't factored into the mathematical model above. He no longer works for the government of course since Obama is gone. He's now CFO of some regional health care company in the PNW after getting his Masters is medical administration and became too busy to keep in contact for the most part.
Anyways, all the research shows that switching to Medicare for All would save us enormous amounts of money and people would be healthier. This study was actually funded by the Koch brothers in order to disprove that universal health care was beneficial. It turned out to be the opposite of course cuz dozens of countries have figured this out already and implemented it but not us. No, we're greedy bastards in America. We have over 600 Billionaires. The most in the world and twice as many as the next country has which is China and they have over a billion people compared to our 300 million population. Alas. There is no financial incentive for the American health care system to switch to this model since they make more money off of keeping us sick. Same with our food manufacturing and distribution but that's another topic for another day. I won't get into it all here.
We made history today and voted to abolish the death penalty. It moves to the Senate where it meets two democratic challengers apparently that were or are prosecutors seeking the death penalty. Then it goes to the Governor to be signed into law. If they don't pass this bill into law I will do everything in my power to see they never win again. Not only will it save us half a million per person but we can't afford the injection drugs, and testimony from families of victims reveals that the death penalty doesn't really bring them peace. So there goes the prosecutors main argument. It's a barbaric and racist practice that needs to end. If anyone dares suggest that bullets only cost $2 I have to tell you what you're suggesting is appalling.
Taxpayers don't realize how expensive putting someone on Death Row costs. $3 million at least, because once on a Death Row they're allowed 12 appeals which can stretch out for years. Of course, the lawyers handling those appeals will, obviously, be opposed to abolishing the Death Penalty.
As far as health care costs, those that live close to the Mexican Border, like myself, are less worried about it, particularly those living in El Paso or San Diego. My good Dr. in Nogales charges me $3.50 for a visit, and $3.50 for a prescription. Those in San Diego are eligible to go to the Int'l Red Cross Clinic in either Rosarito or Tijuana (Been there!) and see a Dr. for $5, a blessing to those in San Diego without adequate insurance.
When I lived in Sinless City, I'd fly down there for Dr./Dental visits, take the earliest flight down there, take the last flight back, the same day.
Taxpayers don't realize how expensive putting someone on Death Row costs. $3 million at least, because once on a Death Row they're allowed 12 appeals which can stretch out for years. Of course, the lawyers handling those appeals will, obviously, be opposed to abolishing the Death Penalty.
I used to know a guy who worked for a newspaper in Florida in the 80's. He did a story on the cost of the death penalty versus life in prison in Florida at the time. His investigation worked out that due to the court time and lawyers, most of whom were public defenders, it would cost over $1.5 million to put someone to death were it generally cost about $850k to keep them in prison for life. Given that there is room for the prisoners in the prison system, it's a no brainer.
Of course, that was almost 40 years ago. Now I suspect the costs are much higher.
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