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Oh, scary big number. We're paying $3.5 trillion right now for our health care expenses and the Urban Institute with its corporate donors hate single payer so will naturally exaggerate the price tag of it.
12% of GDP is a reasonable assumption of what single payer would cost. Every single developed country has 9% to 12% of GDP in health care costs. We're paying 18% of GDP now and tens of millions are not covered and many more are underinsured.
Look at the people in here. They are objecting to paying less, getting more and have every American covered. Thats the power of corporate propaganda. Only a handful of elected representatives in Congress do not take bribe money from the pharmaceutical lobby and health insurance corporations. That effect policies. As long as people keep believing the lies from "think tanks" and their puppets in Congress, nothing will change. Every single developed country has guaranteed health care as a right for their people and they spend FAR LESS per person than America does, usually about half. Administration costs are through the roof in America with huge numbers of people working as billing clerks trying to go through the maze of insurance and hospital bills. And price gouging will always be rampant when providers can charge whatever they feel like since the "consumers" are sick desperate people. And Congress is bought by big pharma and insurance. No wonder its expensive. Absolutely disgusting.
Free market health care is impossible in any civilized country. We simply cannot allow people to get sick/die for those who cannot afford treatment so there can be no free market.
Honestly I lived in the USA and Europe (with universal health care). The US system sucks on a number of levels, for starters it's confusing (the coordination between your insurance and hospitals) and then it always works out to be really really expensive. The US system is really expensive because you essentially have a middleman collecting obscene profits, and you coddle drug manufactures and allow them to charge whatever they want and at the same time keep generics from entering the market.
Regarding profits... You're forgetting that American workers' unions need their investments to earn enough profits to meet the unions' unrealistic pension and retirement benefits promises. See: CalPERS, etc. CalPERS (California Public Employees Retirement System) is the top institutional investor in the US. Among their top 10 stock holdings are big pharma and insurance companies. Gotta pay those public employee pensions and retirement benefits somehow, no?
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The American people have been brainwashed to reject universal health care for higher military spending. It's so laughable.
That doesn't even make sense.
1) Providing for a national defense is a Constitutional mandate. Providing health care for everyone isn't.
2) Military spending is significantly lower than health care spending.
I just wonder when there truly and indisputably will be formalized "death panels", similar to those panels that take place to decide whether or not someone will be eligible for an organ transplant -- if one can believe shows like Grey's Anatomy, that is. (I know some people say that they already exist, but I don't know if that is true or not.) And by death panels, I don't mean actually inflicting a lethal injection on someone, but to allow some people to die naturally without artificial measures except for making their natural death as painless as possible.
And although I am 99% sure that I am going to get blasted for this, I think that so-called "death panels" might actually be a good thing IF established standards are unilaterally followed. IMO, there should be (1) no major surgeries for anyone over the age of 85 or anyone in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's with no cure in sight, (2) no life-prolonging measures for anyone in unremitting horrible pain that cannot be alleviated with medication; (3) no life-prolonging measures for anyone in a PVS state; and (4) no life-prolonging measures for anyone in a coma for whom there is a less than a 1% chance that s/he will reawaken and/or for whom doctors agree that there is less than a week until s/he will die regardless of what measures are taken.
In short, I think that the humane standards that vets apply to animals should also apply to humans -- and so many people have said this besides me that I just don't understand why this policy has not been yet adopted. Why do we refuse to allow dogs to suffer when there is no hope of cure or relief but not humans? I am a dog lover, but I think that humans should be treated at least as well as dogs are.
Last edited by katharsis; 08-16-2018 at 12:52 PM..
Governor Shumlin (VT), probably the most progressive Governor in the nation said he was going to provide universal healthcare for every resident of Vermont when his term began..
A few years later, this is what he had to say.
"The biggest problem," Shumlin said of Vermont, "was we couldn't figure out cost containment."
The former Democratic governor made the comments in an interview with Harvard public health professor John McDonough about lessons from the failure of single-payer in Vermont. Their conversation was streamed live online.
"The lesson was: I was wrong," Shumlin said. "I don't think small states can go it alone, at least little states like Vermont, with an unstable federal partnership."
Vermont's single-payer plan, called Green Mountain Care, would have required an 11.5 percent payroll tax on businesses, plus an additional state income tax of up to 9.5 percent. The plan would have covered about 94 percent of Vermonters' health care costs, on average, not including adult vision or dental coverage.
After years of study, Shumlin pulled the plug in December 2014, calling it the greatest disappointment of his career.
Shumlin listed a number of factors that contributed to Vermont's failure in 2014. He said he would not have been able to guarantee that taxes to fund single-payer health care would not spike with the cost of health care. He also said Vermont would have needed to forego infrastructure projects for a decade to build up an adequate reserve fund for the program, and Vermont could not rely on a predictable partnership from the federal government.
I just wonder when there truly and indisputably will be formalized "death panels", similar to those panels that take place to decide whether or not someone will be eligible for an organ transplant -- if one can believe shows like Grey's Anatomy, that is. (I know some people say that they already exist, but I don't know if that is true or not.) And by death panels, I don't mean actually inflicting a lethal injection on someone, but to allow some people to die naturally without artificial measures except for making their natural death as painless as possible.
And although I am 99% sure that I am going to get blasted for this -- I think these might be a good thing IF there standards that are unilaterally followed. IMO, there should be (1) no major surgeries for anyone over the age of 85 or anyone in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's with no cure in sight, (2) no life-prolonging measures for anyone in unremitting horrible pain that cannot be alleviated with medication; (3) no life-prolonging measures for anyone in a PVS state; and (4) no life-prolonging measures for anyone in a coma for whom there is a less than a 1% chance that s/he will reawaken and/or for whom her doctors agree that there is less than a week until s/he will die regardless of what measures are taken.
In short, I think that the humane standards that vets apply to animals should also apply to humans -- and so many people have said this besides me that I just don't understand why this policy has not been yet adopted. Why do we refuse to allow dogs to suffer when there is no hope of cure or relief but not humans? I am a dog lover, but I think that humans should be treated at least as well as dogs are.
There are organ transplant recipient lists. And they're not ordered according to who has been waiting the longest. Just saying...
Assisted euthanasia is legal in some states. Should be legal in all.
Mike - do you work in the medical field - because I have for over 30 years. People not in the field do not know what goes on behind the scenes - every point I made is valid and is happening - but some like you just choose not to open your eyes to it.
Why do you think that you wait for weeks to get appt these days? Why has Emergency Care Units popped up everywhere and been a success? Why do almost all physicians have PAs and NPs - you're lucky if you see the specialist before the surgery.
You call it fear mongering - I call it reality. If we told Drs tomorrow - you're salaried at $100,000 a year - not only will more than 1/2 walk away from the profession - unless they were really dedicated to helping others - few would be enrolling in medical school.
Just talked to a friend in Greece - whose father is ill. He travels over an hour to get to a medical facility as the ones nearby closed down due to lack of drs. It took him 2 months to get an appt. He needs surgery but it will be another 2 month wait at least - this is your universal healthcare - and you know what - the people it will hurt are the poor - not the rich who can afford private physicians or to cross borders or fly to other countries and be treated.
You cant possibly be serious when you mention Greece, a deeply corrupt country in economic ruin with a massive informal economy as relevant to this discussion. Why not focus on serious countries?
Governor Shumlin (VT), probably the most progressive Governor in the nation said he was going to provide universal healthcare for every resident of Vermont when his term began..
No country in the world has a system with universal health care in parts of the country. Its national. Just like Medicare.
Regarding profits... You're forgetting that American workers' unions need their investments to earn enough profits to meet the unions' unrealistic pension and retirement benefits promises. See: CalPERS, etc. CalPERS (California Public Employees Retirement System) is the top institutional investor in the US. Among their top 10 stock holdings are big pharma and insurance companies. Gotta pay those public employee pensions and retirement benefits somehow, no?
That doesn't even make sense.
You said this before and I ignored it because it's not the heart of the issue (they can always rebalance their stock portfolios). It's just your obsession with unions.
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1) Providing for a national defense is a Constitutional mandate. Providing health care for everyone isn't.
2) Military spending is significantly lower than health care spending.
The USA does not need to spend at the levels it does, it can reduce its military budget to 20% of what its paying now and feed the rest to welfare services or infrastructure (another aspect the US is lacking). The USA is not at any threat of being invaded so it's basically throwing money out the window.
Also calculating US military spending is highly controversial since there are many buckets that are often included. Does budgets for the CIA count? It should. How about veterans health care? That should as well. But they're often excluded. The figure for true US military spending is at least 1 trillion dollars.
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