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.
So what you are saying is the U.S. system is built upon denying care to a number of people and hoping a large number of people don't seek treatment of any kind. If not, then you won't be providing care to anymore people than you do now - it isn't like the population of the U.S. is going to radically increase because universal health care is now available.
No, that's what YOU are saying.
If you examine recent history, the push to "license" medical caregivers was a deliberate plan to reduce the number of physicians, and thus drive up their wages. Licensing did nothing to reduce "bad care" - if malpractice suits are any indication. Likewise, the number of people who had to get multiple opinions before finding one capable physician who could diagnose their condition, shows no magnitude shift in competence.
Scarcity of trained medical personnel is not relieved by HCR nor more laws.
Frankly, by eliminating the licensing requirement and destroying the AMA's monopoly would do wonders for the goal of Universal Health Care at affordable prices.
Unliversal dies i Clinton because they could amrk the bill;basically could funded it leaglly.It was a dead idea when this healthcare bill came up.Even under this bill CBO says cost will be much mre and that by 2020 15 million will still not have coverage.
Employer-based healthcare insurance is a giant millstone hung on busiesses neck. American businesses have to scrape up hundreds of billions of dollars. French, Germans, and Japanese have no health costs unless they chose to privide a concierge medical team for their senior executives. Health care costs were the single largest factor that drove GM and Chrystler into banckruptcy. So the single best gift we could give busiess of all sizes is to take this off their hands.
Well, yes and no. Having your employees be dependent on you for healthcare is a great way to keep the peons in line.
And where exactly are you pulling $13,000 from? Last time I checked, average care was $8,000 per person, and you'd see that fall under UHC, not to mention not all of 313,000,000 people will be using that $8,000 a year.
$13,000 is what is spent on Medicare patients on average. That doesn't mean that every single person spend $13,000. What that means is that when you take the total and divide it by the number of people on Medicare $13,000 is spent per person.
Being the affluent and highly educated liberal that you I would have expected you to know what averaging means.
So let's take your number of $8,000 (another average) and multiply that by 313 million and you get a measly $2.5 trillion. Since you don't even have about $1.2 trillion a year to pay for what you're currently spending where do you think you're going to come up with another $2.5 trillion for a total of $3.7 trillion or 50% more than the federal government takes in total in taxes for its total combined operations.
I suppose now you're going to tell us $2.5 trillion a year in tax increases is "mild" or something...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Konraden
It'd be $2T on the high-end, and as costs continue to decrease, we'd be needing less and less. Medicare\Medicaid is already $1T, so you'd get rid of that all together, meaning we have to theoretically close a $1T gap (or less). The military would make up a large part of that--focus on saving lives instead of taking them--and higher taxes to cover the rest: five percent uncapped payroll tax.
It's easily doable, and the cost savings would be tremendous after a decade. We'd see a spike and possibly run a debt the first few years as people seek the care they need, but once we have healthy people running around not having to worry about getting sick or going bankrupt because of it, you'd see costs drop dramatically. It's pretty much what's predicted if we actually get a single-payer healthcare system.
But that's not going happen because "death panels" and "gub'mint gonna kill granny" and whatever other non-sense the Party of No can dream up.
The rest of what you wrote is not even worth responding to until you can tell everyone how you're going to close the $1.2 trillion deficit your man in the White House is running every year... At current the only way they've talked about closing it so far is a $500 billion a year tax increase or what you guys like to call "going back to those prosperous times of the Clinton era."
And that still leaves you $700 billion short every single year.
But that $13k is only for a few years. Most of the cost is in the last two years of life. The Medicare premiums are 1.45% of wages x 2. Insurance works when the cost is spread over a large pool over time - risk sharing and management.
If every American paid into a national plan over their entire lifetime we would be just fine if we managed it properly.
$13,000 is what is spent on Medicare patients on average. That doesn't mean that every single person spend $13,000. What that means is that when you take the total and divide it by the number of people on Medicare $13,000 is spent per person.
Medicare patients cost more, because they are old. Their bodies don't work as well any more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigJon3475
So let's take your number of $8,000 (another average) and multiply that by 313 million and you get a measly $2.5 trillion. Since you don't even have about $1.2 trillion a year to pay for what you're currently spending where do you think you're going to come up with another $2.5 trillion for a total of $3.7 trillion or 50% more than the federal government takes in total in taxes for its total combined operations.
I suppose now you're going to tell us $2.5 trillion a year in tax increases is "mild" or something...
See, 2,5 trilllion is todays health care spending. If you divide it by 313 million you get 8 000. Thats how the 8 000 number was arrived at in the first place.
Thing is, that includes all the bureaucracies run by medicare, medicaid, VHA, the insurance companies....actually swelling medicare with the 2/3rds of people who are healthy enough not to be on medicare and medicaid and providing treatment instead of more bureaucracy...thats a different kettle of fish.
Why do you think all the other developed nations are that much cheaper, with better results?
That's how it would play out every year time and time again, for about two years when your entire economy collapsed and you take a real quick trip on a "teleporter" straight to 4th world status.
In case you don't know what 4th world status is it's a status that makes 1980's Somalia look desirable.
Well, at least you didn't resort to hysterical hyperbole in order to make your feelings known; that would have been embarrassing.
But that $13k is only for a few years. Most of the cost is in the last two years of life. The Medicare premiums are 1.45% of wages x 2. Insurance works when the cost is spread over a large pool over time - risk sharing and management.
If every American paid into a national plan over their entire lifetime we would be just fine if we managed it properly.
Social Security could've worked great but congress over decades mishandled it. I can understand why conservatives may not support ObamaCare (I dont support it myself) because most of us would get no benefit from it and just have a tax-increase but Universal Health Care would eliminate what you guys hate most (besides welfare) and that's Medicare. If the cost of prescriptions fall, so will the cost of UHS.
$13,000 is what is spent on Medicare patients on average. That doesn't mean that every single person spend $13,000. What that means is that when you take the total and divide it by the number of people on Medicare $13,000 is spent per person.
Being the affluent and highly educated liberal that you I would have expected you to know what averaging means.
There aren't 313 million people on Medicare. Those programs are essentially for people who are much worse off health-wise than the average American. A little disingenuous to use 13k per person.
Quote:
So let's take your number of $8,000 (another average) and multiply that by 313 million and you get a measly $2.5 trillion. Since you don't even have about $1.2 trillion a year to pay for what you're currently spending where do you think you're going to come up with another $2.5 trillion for a total of $3.7 trillion or 50% more than the federal government takes in total in taxes for its total combined operations.
Try again, champ. 2.5 trillion would be the pessimistic total. A single-payer would get rid of medicaid\medicare, which means you free up the $1 trillion dollar cost of that already.
Quote:
I suppose now you're going to tell us $2.5 trillion a year in tax increases is "mild" or something...
We're looking more at a about 1 trillion dollar deficit, and a large chunk of that would also be accounted for by businesses and local\state governments not having health-programs anymore either. Estimates in 2006 expected about an additional $1,000-$1,500 in tax-increases per-person to pay for health-care. Progressive taxation on that would obviously hit higher-income earners more, but that also doesn't factor in the need to cut back on our military spending anyway.
Quote:
The rest of what you wrote is not even worth responding to until you can tell everyone how you're going to close the $1.2 trillion deficit your man in the White House is running every year... At current the only way they've talked about closing it so far is a $500 billion a year tax increase or what you guys like to call "going back to those prosperous times of the Clinton era."
And that still leaves you $700 billion short every single year.
Your math isn't even in the same ballpark.
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.
