Question for proponents of the Public Option Plan/Single Payer Plan.

[Immanuel]

Immie

But you aren't taking capital out of the system and it is capital that creates jobs. This is the same argument the left used against free trade and it was a fallacy then and a fallacy now.

But, if you eliminate the company, you eliminate the capital. Those companies will disappear.



The competition is in the fact that if I (employer generally) don't like the services/costs offered by United Healthcare I can take my business to AETNA. Two years ago my employer had United Healthcare as its provider. Last year, AETNA offered us a better deal with rates and deductibles so we switched to AETNA. This year, United came back with competitive rates and now I am back with United. Next year? Will my employer have such a choice?




Not sure what you mean here. It is always, no matter what industry we are speaking of, the provider that determines the price. It is the purchaser that decides whether or not he/she is willing to pay that price. When I go to the store tomorrow for bread, the price is already set. I can pay that price or I can go down the street and see if the next store has a better price. I can't go into the first store and say, "Your bread is over priced and sliced to thick. I'll give you $0.50 for a loaf." I have to pay the price the store is asking or go without.

So, I'm not sure what you mean here.

Immie

True, if that is indeed what HR3200 does. Where does it say that though? Do you have a page number?

No page number and I have not read it in a while, but I think... think mind you, can't swear to it, that it was section 102.

Although, Plymco_Pilgrim was keeping a good watch on that bill. Betcha he can tell you exactly how many sentences down from the first page it is. Okay, maybe not sentences, but lines?

Immie

The question should be why would employers want to deal with this year after year? How did healthcare get so tied up with employment? I would think the employers would welcome the opportunity to be able to get out of healthcare problems and run their companies. It would be a boon to them and they could put more of their money into their business, rather than employee healthcare.

Except that they are not being given a way out. In fact, those who have now either chosen or been forced to drop their employee's coverage will be forced to either pick it up again or pay a fine aka tax, for not providing coverage.

I stated earlier that my employer cannot afford it, yet, he continues to insist that his company provides it to the employees. Many companies simply cannot afford it and have been forced out of the market to the detriment of the employees and every year more and more companies or being forced out.

Now, companies are going to be required to cover their employees or be taxed 8% of their payroll? Ouch! Small business is going to get creamed.

Immie

 

[Ravi]

You wouldn't need to penalize businesses with a single payer plan. It would work like medicare...a portion of your income goes toward the program. Businesses can't opt out of medicare, if they would they'd be penalized.

And again, if no one has to worry about insurance, all kinds of creative stuff could happen. IMO it would be a boon for anyone with a business plan that was afraid to make a move because they'd be without insurance (as it often happens now).

 

[Care4all]

many insurance companies will convert to the supplemental health insurance business and elective surgery health insurance....

also, most of these insurance companies diversify their investments.

 

[rdean]

Democrats have been saying that they are all for the elimination of private health insurance. Don't believe me, watch the videos in this thread:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/healt...lead-to-single-payer-government-run-care.html

How many jobs will that costs? I am not just talking about the CEOs and upper management jobs but how many jobs of people like you and me who work hard every day just to put dinner on the table will be lost. From the Janitor to middle management and don't forget the little guys, the independent agents who work for you to get you coverage. Those CEO's employ you; your brothers, sisters, parents, children, friends.

Where are those people going to go when the private health insurer disappears?

How many hundreds of thousands of jobs (Democrat jobs) are going to be lost? What industry do you work in?

Is your job safe?

edit: Oh and let me ask you this, aren't you glad Barney Frank and Barack Obama are working so hard to eliminate those jobs?

Immie

Well, a government run plan would have to hire people, too, so it's not clear to me how many jobs net would be lost or gained. What we do know is that if private insurance were replaced by government run insurance similar to Canada's system, massive amounts of capital that insurance companies now invest in our private sector economy would be diverted to buy Treasuries, as Medicare and SS do with their reserve funds, and to pay for the federal government's deficits. I've got to think that withdrawing this much capital from private investment would have a negative effect on economic growth and job creation.

Providing a government option would put Health Care out of business EXACTLY the same way the Post Office put Fed Ex and UPS out of business. It would be EXACTLY the same. No difference at all.

 

[Bfgrn]

I would have called for the Nazis closing their death camps, if it weren't for the secretaries, janitors and people that were employed sweeping the ashes out of the ovens...

Hey pea brain...ACORN employs people...WHERE'S the outrage???


"Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats that don't know what's going on"
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Sure you would have BFGRN, sure you would have? Just kidding!

So now you are comparing US citizens who happen to work for legal corporations doing the business of keeping you alive with NAZIs that ran concentration camps?

I don't see anyone putting ACORN out of business do you? I think the President just signed a stimulus package earlier this year, that rewarded them for their service quite well. In much the same manner as George Bush rewarded Halliburton for its services.

Immie

Insurance cartels have NOTHING to do with keeping anyone alive... they are literally the DEATH panels you pea brains have angst over...

And they are eugenics labs too!!!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN2jcAf45_c&feature=related]YouTube - Peggy Robertson on ABC Nightly News[/ame]

 

[Care4all]

but, i must say....these companies WILL NOT ROLLOVER AND DIE, if the public option were instituted either....they will tighten their belts to be more competititve...if the ceo does not get his $300 million a year as his salary, then so be it....the company and shareholders come first....they will find a way to compete.

 

[Immanuel]

You wouldn't need to penalize businesses with a single payer plan. It would work like medicare...a portion of your income goes toward the program. Businesses can't opt out of medicare, if they would they'd be penalized.

And again, if no one has to worry about insurance, all kinds of creative stuff could happen. IMO it would be a boon for anyone with a business plan that was afraid to make a move because they'd be without insurance (as it often happens now).

How large of a payroll tax?

Remember, Social Security started out at almost nothing and has creeped up to 6.2% and actually 12.4% when you add the employers portion and it will probably go higher. What percentage (1, 5, 10, 25, 40%) would need to be deducted from every payroll check to cover the cost of a single payer system like the one you have just described and can you and I afford that? Remember, you still have to pay income taxes as well.

As it is now, most employers still cover at least a portion of employee health insurance. That would end the day the single payer plan you just described went into law. Most likely your employer would be charged a percentage of your payroll as well, (1, 5, 10, 25, 40%), but you are still going to be charged.

This is not going to be free. Is it?

The start-ups that you are championing here would have to pay that percentage as well. A 25% tax on payroll would put a damper on someone's entrepreneurial designs as well.

Immie

 

[Immanuel]

I would have called for the Nazis closing their death camps, if it weren't for the secretaries, janitors and people that were employed sweeping the ashes out of the ovens...

Hey pea brain...ACORN employs people...WHERE'S the outrage???


"Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats that don't know what's going on"
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Sure you would have BFGRN, sure you would have? Just kidding!

So now you are comparing US citizens who happen to work for legal corporations doing the business of keeping you alive with NAZIs that ran concentration camps?

I don't see anyone putting ACORN out of business do you? I think the President just signed a stimulus package earlier this year, that rewarded them for their service quite well. In much the same manner as George Bush rewarded Halliburton for its services.

Immie

Insurance cartels have NOTHING to do with keeping anyone alive... they are literally the DEATH panels you pea brains have angst over...

And they are eugenics labs too!!!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN2jcAf45_c&feature=related]YouTube - Peggy Robertson on ABC Nightly News[/ame]

Finally something I agree with Senator Mikulski about.

Nobody is defending the health insurance companies. Rather we are trying to prevent the government from becoming the next one and maybe the only one.

The government won't be any different than "Golden Rule".

Immie

 

[Ravi]

You wouldn't need to penalize businesses with a single payer plan. It would work like medicare...a portion of your income goes toward the program. Businesses can't opt out of medicare, if they would they'd be penalized.

And again, if no one has to worry about insurance, all kinds of creative stuff could happen. IMO it would be a boon for anyone with a business plan that was afraid to make a move because they'd be without insurance (as it often happens now).

How large of a payroll tax?

Remember, Social Security started out at almost nothing and has creeped up to 6.2% and actually 12.4% when you add the employers portion and it will probably go higher. What percentage (1, 5, 10, 25, 40%) would need to be deducted from every payroll check to cover the cost of a single payer system like the one you have just described and can you and I afford that? Remember, you still have to pay income taxes as well.

As it is now, most employers still cover at least a portion of employee health insurance. That would end the day the single payer plan you just described went into law. Most likely your employer would be charged a percentage of your payroll as well, (1, 5, 10, 25, 40%), but you are still going to be charged.

This is not going to be free. Is it?

The start-ups that you are championing here would have to pay that percentage as well. A 25% tax on payroll would put a damper on someone's entrepreneurial designs as well.

Immie

I don't know that I'm championing anything. I don't know what would be better, a public option or single payer.

According to this chart (page 2), "we" already pay 46% of health care costs of Americans through taxes. So if you double what we pay now, we'd be able to pay for 92% of health care costs. I don't know the rates of local and state costs, but Medicare/Medicaid is 2.9% per employee.

And the rate could be held down if we taxed ALL forms of income, not just payroll.

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/PieChartSourcesExpenditures2007.pdf

 

[obama2ndterm]

Private insurance companies have raped the tax payer for many years. So if they refuse to compete, nobody cares if they fold!Anti trust laws will be repealed.

 

[Care4all]

You wouldn't need to penalize businesses with a single payer plan. It would work like medicare...a portion of your income goes toward the program. Businesses can't opt out of medicare, if they would they'd be penalized.

And again, if no one has to worry about insurance, all kinds of creative stuff could happen. IMO it would be a boon for anyone with a business plan that was afraid to make a move because they'd be without insurance (as it often happens now).

How large of a payroll tax?

Remember, Social Security started out at almost nothing and has creeped up to 6.2% and actually 12.4% when you add the employers portion and it will probably go higher. What percentage (1, 5, 10, 25, 40%) would need to be deducted from every payroll check to cover the cost of a single payer system like the one you have just described and can you and I afford that? Remember, you still have to pay income taxes as well.

As it is now, most employers still cover at least a portion of employee health insurance. That would end the day the single payer plan you just described went into law. Most likely your employer would be charged a percentage of your payroll as well, (1, 5, 10, 25, 40%), but you are still going to be charged.

This is not going to be free. Is it?

The start-ups that you are championing here would have to pay that percentage as well. A 25% tax on payroll would put a damper on someone's entrepreneurial designs as well.

Immie

I don't know that I'm championing anything. I don't know what would be better, a public option or single payer.

According to this chart (page 2), "we" already pay 46% of health care costs of Americans through taxes. So if you double what we pay now, we'd be able to pay for 92% of health care costs. I don't know the rates of local and state costs, but Medicare/Medicaid is 2.9% per employee.

And the rate could be held down if we taxed ALL forms of income, not just payroll.

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/PieChartSourcesExpenditures2007.pdf

this is a tough question but it could easily be figured out by the people that would have all the numbers...some actuary somewhere could do it.

The 2.9% paid in medicare is 45 years of working, in general, BEFORE anyone draws on the insurance at 65...of course there is the exception of someone maybe working 20 years instead of the 45 or 50 years...

Basically, I am saying the 2.9% would be low....

Any low wage earner...say a family making about 25-30k a year pays now out of his pocket for his and his wife's insurance including dental about 10-20% of his/her salary a year....and the employer might pay double that for his employee as his part on their health insurance....i dunno? But on higher paid employees it could come to a lesser percentage....and the big guns, like the CEO on the health insurance company probably pays less than 1/2 of 1% of his salary toward's his health insurance and his family's....

i would guess that something like 6% in taxes for everybody and every business matches for each employee, should more than cover it....but ones health insurance monthly premium bill is now virtually gone....

Again, this is a wild guess....there are alot of figures to be taken in to consideration that we are not privy to and things like the gvt already paying 46% of the health care bill....so we only need to calculate insurance costs for those under 65 not receiving any gvt assistance on their health care costs which in general ARE MUCH LESS than the health care costs of seniors or the disabled that the gvt is paying.

again, I dunno....

 

[Cecilie1200]

I dont think the insurance companies are making enough money. Look, you have to understand, they make money when people pay, then get denied and dropped when they get sick.

Leave them alone!

That might well be how Medicare tries to hold costs down since, according to the AMA, Medicare denies more claims than any private insurance company.

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/368/reportcard.pdf

Scroll down to metric 12.

Is this how the public plan Obama and Pelosi want would try to hold down costs, too? By denying more claims than any private insurance company?

Not to mention that private insurance, whatever horror stories people like to tell, are contractually obligated to cover certain things. Generally, when someone gets denied, it's for something that wasn't in the contract, or could be construed as not there.

Medicare, on the other hand, isn't contractually obligated to cover jack. Insurance billers are taught in their training for certification that any work done under Medicare is, technically speaking, done on spec. They will PROBABLY pay for a procedure that they've paid for many times before, but they are very clear that nothing is guaranteed, and they reserve the right to refuse any claim at any time.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Interesting arguments, the one I like the most is what will happen to all the people employed by insurance companies. I wonder, is this a concern for those who want to shrink government? Do they ask what will the cop, fireman, clerk, prosecutor, child welfare worker, teacher, social worker, etc. do?
By the way, we know what each of these government workers does, and they do not answer their phone and seek to find away to deny you their services.

Yes, actually, they do. Did you really think Medicare and Medicaid was staffed by Ghandi and Mother Theresa clones, just existing to find a way to pay your medical bills and be helpful? Please. There is no bigger pain-in-the-ass stickler for the rules than a pissant civil servant with a taste of power over you.

 

[Cecilie1200]

So you go into HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of $$$s in debt or you DIE!!! Those are the options you are left with.

Oh, horseshit. Spare us the scary children's stories, because I don't see us sitting around a campfire, roasting marshmallows.

 

[Cold Fusion38]

You wouldn't need to penalize businesses with a single payer plan. It would work like medicare...a portion of your income goes toward the program. Businesses can't opt out of medicare, if they would they'd be penalized.

And again, if no one has to worry about insurance, all kinds of creative stuff could happen. IMO it would be a boon for anyone with a business plan that was afraid to make a move because they'd be without insurance (as it often happens now).

How large of a payroll tax?

Remember, Social Security started out at almost nothing and has creeped up to 6.2% and actually 12.4% when you add the employers portion and it will probably go higher. What percentage (1, 5, 10, 25, 40%) would need to be deducted from every payroll check to cover the cost of a single payer system like the one you have just described and can you and I afford that? Remember, you still have to pay income taxes as well.

As it is now, most employers still cover at least a portion of employee health insurance. That would end the day the single payer plan you just described went into law. Most likely your employer would be charged a percentage of your payroll as well, (1, 5, 10, 25, 40%), but you are still going to be charged.

This is not going to be free. Is it?

The start-ups that you are championing here would have to pay that percentage as well. A 25% tax on payroll would put a damper on someone's entrepreneurial designs as well.

Immie

Between PREMIUMS,CO-PAYS and DENIED COVERAGE I am paying about 40% of my earnings RIGHT NOW and more often than not they DENY COVERAGE.

So how about YOU tell me how great our ins cos are?

 

[Cold Fusion38]

Gosh I just LOVE my ins co!

 

[Cold Fusion38]

I am financially STRESSED to the point of RAGING at my health provider. They blame the Ins Cos which is EXACTELY where the blame lies.

 

[Cold Fusion38]

If the choice is a face less name less politician or a name less face less INSURANCE EXEC that gets paid MILLIONS for denying EVERY procedure he can I will take a gov't worker. ANY FUCKING TIME!

 

[Intense]

Town Hall type meeting with Health Care Professionals going on right now on FOX. Glenn Beck is hosting. It's worth seeing.

 

[MajikMyst]

Interesting arguments, the one I like the most is what will happen to all the people employed by insurance companies. I wonder, is this a concern for those who want to shrink government? Do they ask what will the cop, fireman, clerk, prosecutor, child welfare worker, teacher, social worker, etc. do?
By the way, we know what each of these government workers does, and they do not answer their phone and seek to find away to deny you their services.

According to the AMA, the government workers at Medicare pick up their phones to deny your claims more often than workers at private insurance companies do.


http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/368/reportcard.pdf

Since proponents of a public option argue it would be just like Medicare, does that mean that the public plan would also deny more claims than private insurance plans do?

Well.. You better go read your little website again.. Cause as usual.. Another noetard can't read english and doesn't understand the topic..

First, Medicare doesn't deny claims.. However it's payments are governed by contract or law. The doctor can bill, but he may not get paid or paid what he bills for. Depends on the terms or the laws in that state and also what medicaid does.. Which doesn't seem to be covered in your little chart.. If Medicaid pays then medicare pays 0.. In most states like mine, medicare pays it's contracted portion and medicaid picks up the rest. Or whatever other supplemental insurance a person might have will pay what is left..

Medicare has never denied for any reason other than fraud.. They have denied payment but for the reasons stated above.. Situations very, but someone has not gone without medical care because of medicare.. The law prohibits it and I don't see tons of seniors complaining about..

Please find something more credebile than the American Medical Association, which is a lobbying group for insurance.. To back up your claims..