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Any HC program has to have limits (like a dental plan paying for checkups and fillings, only 50% for crowns and root canals and nothing for dentures or partials). A single payer public plan with the entire US population as a pool with regulated costs and payments might be bad news for Hospitals, Insurance companies and drug companies but it would be an enormous benefit to the average American. A huge national pool and regulated costs guarantees low prices. - much like the power grid. Basic quality of care might decline (like in some nationalized countries) but mediocre care is better than none at all - especially if your are sick or injured and uninsured. I have experienced HC in many nationalized places and the quality was fine for my basic issues.
The wealthy would simply buy supplemental insurance to cover additional procedures and/or private care. This is already the way it works in much of the rest of the world.
There's the rub. The Health Care Industry spends billions lobbying "our" representatives and in contributions to political campaigns. Very few politicians are willing to disappoint those huge profit/re-election machines.
To remain competitive as a country we need some form of Universal Coverage. Health insurance costs have devastated many small businesses and even in large corpoartions it's more difficult to keep jobs in the US due to excessive health care costs. No other first world country has to deal with this nonsense. Citizens having proper access to health care is a necessity for a healthy country. Republicans need to stop fighting against health care for anyone who is not wealthy or fortunate enough to work for a company that can afford health insurance. Most companies are pushing more and more of the cost onto employees.
I don't believe it necessarily has to single payer. We can look around the world at every other 1st world nation at the many examples of how best to impliment a comprehensive plan that covers everyone.
All of those things you cited though are planned and produced through communal choices, not individual choices.
If each person could individually choose how much tax money was spent on the roads they drive on, the electricity they can use, the speed of their internet, the quality of their personal education, then each of these projects would quickly become unaffordable.
And these are relatively cheap compared to the cost of individual healthcare. That is the biggest obstacle with public healthcare systems in the US. In order to implement them, just like roads, electricity, internet access, and education, people have to inherently lose some level of individual control of their own healthcare choices.
Except in electricity and Internet one can choose to partake in them or not there by avoiding the cost associated with them. This is not allowed with public education other than one finding a remote area that has no schools and therefore no taxes to afford them.
Fact is, if everyone had to pay, costs would be cheaper. We pay enormous costs in these government programs because we are a captive audience and because of this, government can be inefficient in its service as we can not choose to discontinue them.
If everyone had to pay to use the roads, then most certainly it would be cheaper for some, more costly for others. That is, some do not pay any taxes, in fact... they receive tax credits each year (tax welfare) even though they have paid in no taxes. These people in such a situation would end up paying for their use of the road. Those who use heavily would also pay more as they use more. This would give the individual the options to choose how much or little they need to use the roads and even allow them means to invest in roads or routes themselves. One could as time went on choose to not use the roads at all, reducing their individual cost to their benefit. This would also give group transportation a more valid advantage rather than being a drain as it is in government programs.
At the end of the day, private services allows the individual to choose while government subjugates the individual for the cause of the few.
Right now, this year, the maximum out of pocket is $7150 which includes the deductible. Most people have a lower out of pocket and deductible. There is no longer an annual/ lifetime limit on claims.
It's $14k. And while there is no annual/lifetime cap...
The one huge problem people are encountering is the lookback clause. If your hours drop below 30 hours /week (like, say, because you are sick) they can execute a 12 months lookback and retroactively drop your insurance for being part-time.
(For marketplace plans, which are individual plans and not group plans, there are even more options. Insurers can restrict you to generic drugs only, even if there is no generic option for the drug you use. They can restrict your access to certain facilities and completely bar access to specialists, a huge problem if you have cancer or heart disease. While out of pocket expenses are capped, premiums are not capped and can be increased after you are sick.)
And now comes a study that finds there will be $1 trillion in uncompensated costs to hospitals, doctors, and other providers from people who were covered under Obamacare but will now do what they used to do - show up for treatment they can no longer pay for. Those costs will be passed on to employer plans, of course. You own this now GOP.
Any HC program has to have limits (like a dental plan paying for checkups and fillings, only 50% for crowns and root canals and nothing for dentures or partials). A single payer public plan with the entire US population as a pool with regulated costs and payments might be bad news for Hospitals, Insurance companies and drug companies but it would be an enormous benefit to the average American. A huge national pool and regulated costs guarantees low prices. - much like the power grid. Basic quality of care might decline (like in some nationalized countries) but mediocre care is better than none at all - especially if your are sick or injured and uninsured. I have experienced HC in many nationalized places and the quality was fine for my basic issues.
The wealthy would simply buy supplemental insurance to cover additional procedures and/or private care. This is already the way it works in much of the rest of the world.
Yeah, the wealthy and the poor would not be the ones losing personal agency in their healthcare choices.
It would be the people who could previously afford quality insurance coverage but could not afford supplemental insurance now.
There's the rub. The Health Care Industry spends billions lobbying "our" representatives and in contributions to political campaigns. Very few politicians are willing to disappoint those huge profit/re-election machines.
To remain competitive as a country we need some form of Universal Coverage. Health insurance costs have devastated many small businesses and even in large corpoartions it's more difficult to keep jobs in the US due to excessive health care costs. No other first world country has to deal with this nonsense. Citizens having proper access to health care is a necessity for a healthy country. Republicans need to stop fighting against health care for anyone who is not wealthy or fortunate enough to work for a company that can afford health insurance. Most companies are pushing more and more of the cost onto employees.
Health insurance needs to be completely divorced from employers. I don't believe it necessarily has to single payer. We can look around the world at every other 1st world nation for the many examples of how best to impliment a comprehensive plan that covers everyone.
The problem the we have with all of the "_____is a right" plans is that we, the middle class, are always stuck paying for most of it while there is a "money is no object" mentality.
"Of course illegals should be entitled to______, they live here to."
"Of course people on welfare should be able to withdraw cash from an EBT card at a liquor store, casino or strip club."
"Of course poor people should get free cell phones."
"Of course children should get free lunches at school when school is out even though the parents receive food assistance for those kids."
"Of course the drug addict who has been arrested twelve times for burglary should receive the exact same medical coverage as the guy paying for it out of his taxes."
Except in electricity and Internet one can choose to partake in them or not there by avoiding the cost associated with them. This is not allowed with public education other than one finding a remote area that has no schools and therefore no taxes to afford them.
...
At the end of the day, private services allows the individual to choose while government subjugates the individual for the cause of the few.
You cannot in the current form of those services in the US (for the publicly planned parts).
You can choose not to use the services and take on the direct cost of the services, but you cannot choose not to pay for the much larger public infrastructure costs of those services which are not paid through excise taxes.
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