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The rates are real high for people. I know a lady that brings in $1800 a month on SSi ( or something) and then her healthcare on Obamacare, is $300 ( something) a month. So, if her mortgage is $1000 a month and utilities, that doesn't leave anything for food. A monthly, thousand dollar mortgage is not high.
The repubs are correct with the rip-off rates.
$300 per month is not really expensive. Employer insurance plans are around those prices for family. But we do not know plan details.
Sooooooo paying 300 a month for 5k worth of services seems like a bad deal? Health care is for profit. I have seen how much a single doctor visit costs and it ain't pretty. The costs pile up if you get sick or have a condition. Not to mention meds. If I fall and break my leg my meager 300 a month payment is NOTHING compared to what the insurance company will pay out.
"It's an extremely high deductible ... I can't even tell you what it is because I purposely do not go to the doctor because I can't afford it," said Deborah of Columbus, Ohio. "I have insurance and I don't use it."
Obamacare participants also chafed at the high cost of prescription drugs, with some having to choose between taking their medication or paying their rent. While they blamed drug companies for the high prices, they felt their insurance should protect them better. For some, their medications were not covered by their plans, while others had yet to hit their deductibles. One man from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, described flying to Poland to get his insulin. It's so much cheaper there that he saves $8,000 a year doing this.
Enrollees were also frustrated by their plan choices on the exchanges, noting they didn't have enough information to choose a plan that meets their needs. And they were irked by surprise medical bills, not realizing they hadn't hit their deductibles or had seen a provider outside their network.
Other countries with single-payer health care have a VAT tax, with most at 20%-25%. Let's take a look at what that VAT (national sales) tax would have to be in the US to cover the US's $3+ trillion per year spending on health care.
US consumer spending is $11.6 trillion/year (latest published data). That means we need to implement about a 30% VAT on everything, paid by everyone, to fund single-payer health care for all.
Implement adjustments up or down in the VAT rate, as health care spending requires.
A 30% VAT tax is pretty close to many European countries' 25% VAT tax. So, would Americans agree to implement a 30% VAT tax to fund single-payer health care for all?
+1. I don't disagree, but this solves only part of the problem.
ACA included the individual mandate sorta, premiums or a fairly sizable penalty. And health care is still way more expensive than any other country in the world, within ACA or covered private and public sector employees. I ran a medium sized business until a few years ago, and healthcare costs us almost $20K/year per employee (many w families) - and our employees paid about 15-17% themselves, so another $3-3.5K themselves (payroll contributions and out of pocket). That's a bargain compared to many corporate HC plans. In a country with an average wage of $48K, so about half making less than that, a mandate alone doesn't solve the affordability issue.
It's not uncommon for people to direct their HC wrath at insurance providers, but I've yet to see anyone make the case that's the sole issue, or even a big part of it.
Since you're in health care, what do we do about the very high costs of health care itself? Even if every American had health insurance today, we'd pay much more than any other country, and twice as much as the average of all (30+) OECD countries. I have my thoughts from outside your industry, but do you have any insights there?
The vast majority of peope are completely ignorant of what health insurance and health care cost. Their employer gives them a plan and they don't even think about it unless some unexpected bill comes up. That ignorance allows the many different types of companies which profit from human illness/injury to operate without scrutiny and achieve massive profit.
It would never happen but I believe the only way to truly bring down the cost of health care is to make people completely aware of the costs of their insurance premiums and the cost of any care provided. We could do this by completely eliminating employer based coverage, the amount spent would instead be payed to the employee as regular wages and people would be required to purchase their own health plan. Everyone would be responsible for and know exactly how much their insurance costs and have to decide for themselves what sort of deductible and coverages they would prefer. Many would likely chose lower premiums and higher deductibles. This would lead to people demanding transparecy in the costs of health care services so they could shop around. When the true costs were exposed it would likely lead to outrage and people would demand these profit machines known as insurance, pharmaceutical, hospital and medical device companies change dramatically and reign in their costs.
This will never happen because there is too much money being pumped into our political system and profits depend on an ignorant populace that won't bother to look too closely. Obamacare is an easy scapegoat but it's nonsense, individual policies are only a tiny fraction of the market. In reality costs have been rising by truly astounding rates for decades, and they show no signs of slowing down. The costs are devastating to small business, more and more of the costs are being put on employees. We will reach a breaking point where even the stauchest conservatives who arent wealthy will likely demand change but I have no idea what will actually happen.
At some point we will probably get some form of universal coverage involving insurance, higher taxes and the goverment and middle class will end up supporting these industries but it will be hidden from view. The wealthy will be able to afford the best plans but the system will suck for most average people, and politicans will just blame all the "moochers" while taking in those massive donations from insurance and medical companies. That's the American way these days.
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One important answer would be to spend a bit more money. Obamacare has turned out to be remarkably cheap; the Congressional Budget Office now projects its cost to be about a third lower than it originally expected, around 0.7 percent of G.D.P. In fact, it’s probably too cheap. A report from the nonpartisan Urban Institute argues that the A.C.A. is “essentially underfunded,” and would work much better — in particular, it could offer policies with much lower deductibles — if it provided somewhat more generous subsidies. The report’s recommendations would cost around 0.2 percent of G.D.P.; or to put it another way, would be around half as expensive as the tax cuts for the wealthy Republicans just tried and failed to ram through as part of Trumpcare.
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"In the 1950s and 60s, federal transfers were conditional cost-sharing grants that encouraged the establishment of national programs and ensured comparable quality across provinces. As these programs became more established, there was less necessity for the rigorous and comprehensive reporting and auditing required on the part of the federal government. Federal support for national priorities began to shift to block funding based on acceptance of broad principles and shared objectives. The block funding structure gives provinces and territories greater flexibility in designing and administering programs.
As a result of this evolution, today governments focus on accountability to the public, rather than to other levels of governments. This recognizes that governments are accountable directly to their residents for their spending in their areas of responsibility."
I keep hearing people saying that Obamacare needs to be fixed. But I haven't heard much about how to actually fix it. So how should it be fixed?
Repeal it in its entirety.
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Good care.. let's make it a $150 .. 47 billion, eight hundred and thirty five million.
