choclosteve

Sure sounds hair brained to me. Anybody out there think it would work any better than the mess we have now?

Future Leader

Do you even know what his plan is? If you're are going to make a comment like this it would help your case if you backed up what you said with some facts, or at least some common sense reasoning.

I actually like his plan, not only does it stimulate compotishion in the health insurance market, it's also nice to have a tax break. With the democrats plan they would have federally controled monopoly of the heath care business, and we all know how fast and effcient the government is when it comes to the people .

choclosteve

OK, how does a tax break help those who are not making enough to pay much in taxes? Without mandates, a lot of folks will decide not to buy insurance and will end up getting their health care in the emergency rooms, which costs all of us. With fewer of us getting employer provided health insurance, more of us will have the option to go without, and many will, further driving up the cost for the rest of us. I do not think that I have more negotiating leverage with the insurance companies than employers, so prices are likely to rise. 36 countries get better health for a much smaller percentage of their GDP than US, and they all have universal health care and no health care caused bankruptcies. Eliminating the insurance companies would save both money and paperwork

LiveUninhibited

In terms of administrative overhead, individual health plans are the least efficient and the most expensive. Not to mention the fact that some people, like diabetics, are basically uninsurable.

Health savings plans don't really work because it is impossible to predict how much one will need to save. For those who lead a life relatively free of morbidity, that money is sitting there doing nothing, basically removed from the economy. For those who suddenly and unexpectedly need hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions in catastrophic care, most people will never save enough to cover that in their entire lives. The principle of pooled risk suggests that a single-payer system would be a fair and efficient way to pay for health care. This is not only because of administrative overhead, but also because we could shift the emphasis from catastrophic to preventive care. This does not happen with private carriers because people change insurance so often. There is no incentive for them to invest in preventive care when the next company will reap the benefit.

Future Leader

It puts $2500 - $5000 into your pocket, the average health insurance I would guess costs about $2000 - $2500. So if you are not making enough money to pay insurence right now, you can use the money you get from the tax break to but insurance.

That's a big speculation, sure maybe young people may option to not buy health insurance because they feel 'invincible', but families that can't afford health care right now wouldn't waste the money gained from the tax cut.

You won't need employer provided health care if you can afford it your self. Besides, what if the company begins to go bankrupt? health insurance might even send little businesses down. What is the first thing that companies will do? cut costs, and if employer healthcare is mandatory then workers would have to be laid off, I'd rather have a job then health insurance. Since there will be a boom in the health insurance industry compitition will cause a lower in prices. Because smart people who need this extra cash arn't going to sign up with some insurance company that nickel and dimes them. You do in fact have leverage when dealing with insurance companies, your money, if you don't like that company go to a different one, these people want your business and they know you are looking to buy, so they all will lower thier prices to get you to sign up.

That is true, we americans arn't getting the bang for our buck, but we have better medical technology then the rest of the world, and also shorter waiting lines. Here is an example of government health care in america
Healthcare cost increases dominate Mass. budget debate - The Boston Globe
it basicly shows that Masschusets is in debt because of its health care plan. French citizens have to pay extremely high taxes to keep thier health insurance, and according to this report they arn't getting what the want either.
BBC NEWS | Europe | French healthcare is 'badly run'

Now lets be practical, were is all this money going to come from? We are in a recesion, and asking china for extra money isn't the answer (their pharmasutical drugs are tasty though, but eat them fast because they give you cancer). Higher taxes arn't the answer because as you said, if people can't afford to even buy health insurance now, how are they suppose to pay higher taxes?

Now lets spice up the issue with some good ol' capitalism, every one knows that in order for industries to make advances in their feild they need to spend money to hire scientists and what not, if the health care system is government owned are they really going to waste money on a system that isnt broken? If the government is non-profit then that means all the money will go into the health care and not into making it better. I mean the government can't even spend real money on alternative fuels let alone health care advancement. It has always been the guy trying to become a billionare that advanced technology and profited off the invention.

LiveUninhibited

Lest we forget, the Massachussets Plan was a bipartisan plan pushed by Romney (republican) and Kennedy (democrat). It was not a liberal solution, and does not resemble a single payer system at all. It is not government run, it is government subsidized and does nothing to address the problems of for-profit healthcare, individual health insurance inefficiency, etc. It is an attempt at applying a quasi-market solution to a problem that the market itself exacerbates.

In terms of the French, don't make me laugh. They pay less per capita on health insurance than America, like all industrialized nations, and their quality of care is among the highest in the world, according to your article (America's is not). The French article is mostly an illustration that universal healthcare is not some magic bullet, it is merely a better system. There are many things that have to come together for the best healthcare system possible, and a single-payer system is only one element. It is true that all countries have some problems with healthcare, and as your article suggests, part of this is due to the success of healthcare as this contributes to a larger proportion of old and retired persons in the population who do not work and yet require more healthcare. The more technology we have, the more healthcare we can give to extend life. The more we extend life, the more expensive it gets. What we can say is that all the other industrialized nations are doing a better job than America, except maybe South Africa, and that the problems are much worse in America. America and South Africa are the only industrialized nations without nearly universal, government-sponsored, basic health insurance.

Because income taxes are progressive, the burden will fall more upon the rich. However, because a single-payer system is so much more efficient, the rich will likely spend little more on health insurance than they do now, ceteris paribus. The young, however, will be putting more into it than they get out for now, but when they are old, the new young will be supporting their health.

We pay for health either way, because we live in a society that doesn't generally allow people to die without trying to save them. If we focus upon preventive care, we can avoid catastrophic costs, and save money that way. If we use a single payer system, we save on administrative costs at the very least. The rich will pay either way, either to enrich the private health insurance companies or to help the poor through taxes. But remember that we all pay when the young fail to get preventive care and then can't pay the ER when they have their first heart attack. The money has to come from somewhere, and it comes from those who can pay either way. The free market solution is merely less efficient and effective in this case.

The government already does most of the research end of R&D for medical technology through NIH et al. There is no reason why the government wouldn't want to invest in healthcare technology, though I advocate public funding with private delivery, which means there would still be market incentives to develop new drugs for the government formulary, or new procedures/technologies that the government will pay for once they are shown to be clinically effective. This is comparable to the energy crisis, but not for the reasons you imply, as we should all know that oil companies control the lifeblood of our economy and will do whatever political manipulation it takes to delay alternative energy. Similarly, groups like big Pharma will do whatever it takes to delay or prevent universal healthcare. But note that neither big oil nor big pharmaceutical companies are primarily concerned with research. Big Pharma spends more on marketing and reaps more in profit than they spend on research. They'd rather develop another me-too drug and buy politicians than go through the risky venture of actually researching and developing a new drug. Normally, they latch on to a university scientist's idea, whose research was initially funded by the government. Truly new and innovative drugs have been few and far between in the last few decades. Oh great, another anti-depressant that sucks... oh great, another statin, and another ED drug. They'll only research like one drug a year and they'll make sure it's a drug people will need to take for the rest of their lives, otherwise they will contribute nothing. If the free market has failed anywhere, it's in healthcare.

Future Leader

You make some good points, but I have to ask again, universal health care is expensive, so where is all this money going to come from?

If you've already answered this question in your previous post just copy and paste.

choclosteve

Universal health care is less expensive than what we have. The French pay about half as much as we do for health care as a percentage of GDP. No country comes close to paying as much as US as a percent of GDP- and no health care caused bankruptcies, our leading cause of bankruptcies.

LiveUninhibited

Taxes would go up, but this would in turn by offset by individuals and employers not needing to purchase private health plans. Yes, France has high taxes and health care is one reason for this, but France still spends much less per capita on healthcare than America does. The money has to come from somewhere either way, it's just that private health plans are more expensive for several reasons:

1. They need to make a profit, so in order for their company to be solvent, they must take more money from people than they give out. Unfortunately, it's sometimes cheaper to hire a small army of lawyers to deny people coverage than pay for catastrophic care. The government as a payer would only need to cover services, not fight to deny people services in order to turn a profit.

2. People change private health insurance plans almost every year on average. Thus, as I mentioned above, there is no incentive for private health insurance to bother with preventive care. In order to save money, a good government program would cover preventive care in order to save money in the long run. Therefore, even though more people will be covered, each of them will need less expensive intervention-based healthcare due to preventive care. Lets face it: Under the current system, even people who refuse to buy health insurance can end up costing the rest of us money because it is considered unethical to just let them die when they need life-saving care. This catastrophic care might not have been needed if they had seen a doctor in years prior to spot the problem before it became severe. They would have been more likely to have made that visit if it were covered by universal, government health insurance.

3. There are thousands of different health insurance companies out there, each with their own convoluted policy on coverage. This in itself is confusing and wasteful, so much so that clinics find it necessary to have positions dedicated to dealing with insurance. At most pharmacies, dozens of irate people walk out without their medicine due to not knowing how their deductible works, or their doctor prescribing something their insurance company won't cover, or some other annoyance. I wouldn't say a government payment program would be extremely efficient, but it would be hard to do worse than the private sector does here.

Bartholomew Roberts

Health care costs a fortune because we live in such a litigious society. Doctors have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in Malpractice insurance because if one little thing goes wrong while they are working, they can get sued for millions. What we need to do is first make healthcare affordable by passing laws that protect doctors from outrageous lawsuits. Once healthcare is affordable, health insurance premiums will drop and more people will be able to afford it.
And as for the people that choose not to buy insurance when they have the choice: we shouldn't treat them. It sounds cruel and inhumane, but, if they can afford health insurance, they should take responsibility and do what is logical or else we simply should not treat them. When government pays for uninsured people, it just adds burden to those of us that make better decisions. I do not want to be paying higher taxes because of someone else's poor decision.
As for people who actually cannot afford health insurance, a system should be set up like Connecticut's "Husky Plan" which is a state run, low premium, health insurance policy that lower class people can opt to pay into so that their medical expenses are covered.

__________________
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