CDZ Single-Payer Trumpcare?

Fishlore

Silver Member
Aug 25, 2011
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New Hampshire USA
“As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland,” he said in August, 2015, during the first Republican debate. A month later, he told “60 Minutes,” “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Is this where we are heading?
 
“As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland,” he said in August, 2015, during the first Republican debate. A month later, he told “60 Minutes,” “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Is this where we are heading?
I WISH. This country has a long way to go before it will let go of its current belief in unbridled free market capitalism, but we're getting there.
 
The OP is a good insight into what the AHCA is failing in Congress and even more greatly among the American people.
 
“As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland,” he said in August, 2015, during the first Republican debate. A month later, he told “60 Minutes,” “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Is this where we are heading?
trump-lies.jpg
 
“As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland,” he said in August, 2015, during the first Republican debate. A month later, he told “60 Minutes,” “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Is this where we are heading?

That may be where he's heading and with a lot of company too, but it isn't likely to happen in this country until the Dems control the WH and both houses of Congress. SP was tried and failed in Vermont I think it was, and there were good reasons why.
 
“As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland,” he said in August, 2015, during the first Republican debate. A month later, he told “60 Minutes,” “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Is this where we are heading?

That may be where he's heading and with a lot of company too, but it isn't likely to happen in this country until the Dems control the WH and both houses of Congress. SP was tried and failed in Vermont I think it was, and there were good reasons why.
The Vermont problem was integrating a state-based single-payer programs with existing federal programs and requirements such as Medicare, Medicaid, workmen's comp etc etc. A nation-wide single-payer such as Sanders' Medicare for All plan would work just fine and save billions in administrative overhead, money that could be used to pay care providers. As President Trump just found out, ACA is complicated because it is woven into a dozen different entitlement and tax programs. We need a fresh start.
 
“As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland,” he said in August, 2015, during the first Republican debate. A month later, he told “60 Minutes,” “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Is this where we are heading?

That may be where he's heading and with a lot of company too, but it isn't likely to happen in this country until the Dems control the WH and both houses of Congress. SP was tried and failed in Vermont I think it was, and there were good reasons why.
The Vermont problem was integrating a state-based single-payer programs with existing federal programs and requirements such as Medicare, Medicaid, workmen's comp etc etc. A nation-wide single-payer such as Sanders' Medicare for All plan would work just fine and save billions in administrative overhead, money that could be used to pay care providers. As President Trump just found out, ACA is complicated because it is woven into a dozen different entitlement and tax programs. We need a fresh start.

Sanders plan underestimated the taxes needed to pay for it and overestimated the benefits, to the tune of a trillion dollars a year or more. There is no way on God's green earth America can or should try a single payer HC system. What's next, free food, free car, free housing, free education, free everything? Here's the awful truth for any and all of that: we don't have the money to pay for all that stuff.
 
“As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland,” he said in August, 2015, during the first Republican debate. A month later, he told “60 Minutes,” “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Is this where we are heading?

That may be where he's heading and with a lot of company too, but it isn't likely to happen in this country until the Dems control the WH and both houses of Congress. SP was tried and failed in Vermont I think it was, and there were good reasons why.
The Vermont problem was integrating a state-based single-payer programs with existing federal programs and requirements such as Medicare, Medicaid, workmen's comp etc etc. A nation-wide single-payer such as Sanders' Medicare for All plan would work just fine and save billions in administrative overhead, money that could be used to pay care providers. As President Trump just found out, ACA is complicated because it is woven into a dozen different entitlement and tax programs. We need a fresh start.

Sanders plan underestimated the taxes needed to pay for it and overestimated the benefits, to the tune of a trillion dollars a year or more. There is no way on God's green earth America can or should try a single payer HC system. What's next, free food, free car, free housing, free education, free everything? Here's the awful truth for any and all of that: we don't have the money to pay for all that stuff.
Your economic analysis is a bit sketch. Single payer is, as the name applies, a mechanism for paying. How much it pays and for whom is a separate issue. Medicare is, for practical purposes, a single-payer program. Its overhead costs are significantly lower than those of for-profit insurance because it doesn't advertise and doesn't pay million dollar salaries or dividends to stockholders. Single payer reduces administrative overhead.

As for having the money, we are currently spending twice as much as our sister countries. Single-payer would be a big step forward in reducing those extra costs. No million dollar salaries, negotiated drugs and fees, and reduced overhead would save billions, not to mention saving hundreds of thousands of American lives.
 
Your economic analysis is a bit sketch. Single payer is, as the name applies, a mechanism for paying. How much it pays and for whom is a separate issue. Medicare is, for practical purposes, a single-payer program. Its overhead costs are significantly lower than those of for-profit insurance because it doesn't advertise and doesn't pay million dollar salaries or dividends to stockholders. Single payer reduces administrative overhead.

As for having the money, we are currently spending twice as much as our sister countries. Single-payer would be a big step forward in reducing those extra costs. No million dollar salaries, negotiated drugs and fees, and reduced overhead would save billions, not to mention saving hundreds of thousands of American lives.

I can save us more - quicker. Get the Federal Government out of health care entirely.....

No ACA. No Medicare. No Medicaid. No forcing hospitals to care for people who can't pay. Very simple.
 
“As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland,” he said in August, 2015, during the first Republican debate. A month later, he told “60 Minutes,” “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Is this where we are heading?

That may be where he's heading and with a lot of company too, but it isn't likely to happen in this country until the Dems control the WH and both houses of Congress. SP was tried and failed in Vermont I think it was, and there were good reasons why.
The Vermont problem was integrating a state-based single-payer programs with existing federal programs and requirements such as Medicare, Medicaid, workmen's comp etc etc. A nation-wide single-payer such as Sanders' Medicare for All plan would work just fine and save billions in administrative overhead, money that could be used to pay care providers. As President Trump just found out, ACA is complicated because it is woven into a dozen different entitlement and tax programs. We need a fresh start.

Sanders plan underestimated the taxes needed to pay for it and overestimated the benefits, to the tune of a trillion dollars a year or more. There is no way on God's green earth America can or should try a single payer HC system. What's next, free food, free car, free housing, free education, free everything? Here's the awful truth for any and all of that: we don't have the money to pay for all that stuff.
Your economic analysis is a bit sketch. Single payer is, as the name applies, a mechanism for paying. How much it pays and for whom is a separate issue. Medicare is, for practical purposes, a single-payer program. Its overhead costs are significantly lower than those of for-profit insurance because it doesn't advertise and doesn't pay million dollar salaries or dividends to stockholders. Single payer reduces administrative overhead.

As for having the money, we are currently spending twice as much as our sister countries. Single-payer would be a big step forward in reducing those extra costs. No million dollar salaries, negotiated drugs and fees, and reduced overhead would save billions, not to mention saving hundreds of thousands of American lives.

I know we already spend a lot more on HC than other countries, but that doesn't mean we should spend even more money on the failed concept of single payer. It failed in Vermont, the VA totally sucks as an example of gov't run HC, and Medicare is already costing us hundreds of billions as it is now. And I think anyone who thinks billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved is sadly mistaken. The average Canadian family spends upwards of $12k/yr as of 2015 for HCI in taxes, try selling that to the American public. Many of those other countries you speak of have long waiting times to see specialists, innovation is almost non-existent, and HC is rationed. Not everyone actually gets the HC they need.
 
I don't have the energy to respond to the several ^^^ misstatements about research, costs, waiting times etc. in the party line condemnation of national health insurance in other countries. I've done my research.

We can start with three undeniable facts: (1) the US spends twice as much per-capita on medical care than the other advanced democracies. (2) Every other advanced democracy has government run or government regulated medical care for all its citizens. (3) The US ranks 18th in national medical outcomes.

These three facts taken together explode the myth that the US has good healthcare, spends it medical dollars wisely, or has anything to teach other countries about how to address the medical needs of citizens.

There is no point in trying to debate "alternative facts" with real facts. The closed-mind opposition of right wingers to any government program other than tax cuts and Pentagon spending makes such discussion impossible.
 
Your idea is indeed very simple; alas, it is very foolish as well. There is no evidence that getting the federal government out of health care entirely would save money. It would dump costs onto poor states -- which are mostly red states -- that would entirely swamp their state economies. Even if states struggled to keep the services now provided, the chaos of the change-over would cause the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

I happen to live in well-to-do state with the lowest unemployment in the nation. Your idea would save me money, yet I still oppose it. Go figure.

While Bible believing Republicans in states like TN or MO would be willing to watch thousands of their fellow citizens die in the streets in order to save on their own taxes, the economic collapse caused by such a catastrophe would devastate their comfortable middle class lives beyond anything they have imagined.

Every advanced democracy has a healthcare entitlement for all its citizens. The USA is the last country to catch up with all the others. The significance of this fact escapes those who do no research and have never lived abroad. You know, guys like Donald Trump.
 
I don't have the energy to respond to the several ^^^ misstatements about research, costs, waiting times etc. in the party line condemnation of national health insurance in other countries. I've done my research.

We can start with three undeniable facts: (1) the US spends twice as much per-capita on medical care than the other advanced democracies. (2) Every other advanced democracy has government run or government regulated medical care for all its citizens. (3) The US ranks 18th in national medical outcomes.

These three facts taken together explode the myth that the US has good healthcare, spends it medical dollars wisely, or has anything to teach other countries about how to address the medical needs of citizens.

There is no point in trying to debate "alternative facts" with real facts. The closed-mind opposition of right wingers to any government program other than tax cuts and Pentagon spending makes such discussion impossible.

Except you don't have facts, you have statistics which can be manipulated to support or challenge pretty much any position on a given issue. I do not deny that the US outspends every other advanced country when it comes to HC, and likewise there's not much doubt in my mind that we do not spend that money wisely at all. However, there are many who say that those other advanced societies that do have gov't run or gov't regulated HC for it's citizens pay a high price for it in terms of taxes, and not just for the upper half of their income earners either. Many are facing serious fiscal difficulties in these times of rising senior citizens and fewer young people to pay the bills. Plus in many places HC is rationed or you have to wait for a long time for specialized treatments and tests, kinda like the VA here. And innovation is expensive, you gotta pay for all the failures along with the successes.
 
I don't have the energy to respond to the several ^^^ misstatements about research, costs, waiting times etc. in the party line condemnation of national health insurance in other countries. I've done my research.

We can start with three undeniable facts: (1) the US spends twice as much per-capita on medical care than the other advanced democracies. (2) Every other advanced democracy has government run or government regulated medical care for all its citizens. (3) The US ranks 18th in national medical outcomes.

These three facts taken together explode the myth that the US has good healthcare, spends it medical dollars wisely, or has anything to teach other countries about how to address the medical needs of citizens.

There is no point in trying to debate "alternative facts" with real facts. The closed-mind opposition of right wingers to any government program other than tax cuts and Pentagon spending makes such discussion impossible.

Except you don't have facts, you have statistics which can be manipulated to support or challenge pretty much any position on a given issue. I do not deny that the US outspends every other advanced country when it comes to HC, and likewise there's not much doubt in my mind that we do not spend that money wisely at all. However, there are many who say that those other advanced societies that do have gov't run or gov't regulated HC for it's citizens pay a high price for it in terms of taxes, and not just for the upper half of their income earners either. Many are facing serious fiscal difficulties in these times of rising senior citizens and fewer young people to pay the bills. Plus in many places HC is rationed or you have to wait for a long time for specialized treatments and tests, kinda like the VA here. And innovation is expensive, you gotta pay for all the failures along with the successes.
Your make valid points about the shortcomings of single-payer. There is no perfect system and SP has its costs and its drawbacks. I agree. The question before us is which system is least bad and most good. When we say "system" we are really talking about two systems: the delivery of medical services (including research) and paying for the medical delivery system. We have serious problems with both of those systems.

Fixing the systems is tricky because the complexity and lack of transparency make it hard for most of us to get a clear idea of what is happening now. For that reason, simplicity and transparency are important heuristics for any healthcare plan being discussed. We know that billions of dollars and thousands of lives are being lost slipping through the cracks in our current system. There has got to be a better way.

Single payer has the immense advantage that it allows clear discussion of what we want in the coverage that is available equally to every citizen. State what bennies you want in that policy and the number crunchers can tell you with good actuarial accuracy how much we are going to have to spend to get it.

At the other end, tying that cost to the income tax and making the necessary adjustments in the tax rates to raise the dough is something the people and the congress can understand. Let the people decide, that's what our system is set up to do.
 
I don't have the energy to respond to the several ^^^ misstatements about research, costs, waiting times etc. in the party line condemnation of national health insurance in other countries. I've done my research.

We can start with three undeniable facts: (1) the US spends twice as much per-capita on medical care than the other advanced democracies. (2) Every other advanced democracy has government run or government regulated medical care for all its citizens. (3) The US ranks 18th in national medical outcomes.

These three facts taken together explode the myth that the US has good healthcare, spends it medical dollars wisely, or has anything to teach other countries about how to address the medical needs of citizens.

There is no point in trying to debate "alternative facts" with real facts. The closed-mind opposition of right wingers to any government program other than tax cuts and Pentagon spending makes such discussion impossible.

Except you don't have facts, you have statistics which can be manipulated to support or challenge pretty much any position on a given issue. I do not deny that the US outspends every other advanced country when it comes to HC, and likewise there's not much doubt in my mind that we do not spend that money wisely at all. However, there are many who say that those other advanced societies that do have gov't run or gov't regulated HC for it's citizens pay a high price for it in terms of taxes, and not just for the upper half of their income earners either. Many are facing serious fiscal difficulties in these times of rising senior citizens and fewer young people to pay the bills. Plus in many places HC is rationed or you have to wait for a long time for specialized treatments and tests, kinda like the VA here. And innovation is expensive, you gotta pay for all the failures along with the successes.
Your make valid points about the shortcomings of single-payer. There is no perfect system and SP has its costs and its drawbacks. I agree. The question before us is which system is least bad and most good. When we say "system" we are really talking about two systems: the delivery of medical services (including research) and paying for the medical delivery system. We have serious problems with both of those systems.

Fixing the systems is tricky because the complexity and lack of transparency make it hard for most of us to get a clear idea of what is happening now. For that reason, simplicity and transparency are important heuristics for any healthcare plan being discussed. We know that billions of dollars and thousands of lives are being lost slipping through the cracks in our current system. There has got to be a better way.

Single payer has the immense advantage that it allows clear discussion of what we want in the coverage that is available equally to every citizen. State what bennies you want in that policy and the number crunchers can tell you with good actuarial accuracy how much we are going to have to spend to get it.

At the other end, tying that cost to the income tax and making the necessary adjustments in the tax rates to raise the dough is something the people and the congress can understand. Let the people decide, that's what our system is set up to do.

I am perfectly fine with letting the people decide, the problem lies in telling them the truth about the costs and the benefits. Tell them the truth about how much every worker in those countries have to pay in taxes to support such a system and how long they might have to wait to see a cardiologist or get an MRI. Not just the best or worst cases but the most likely case. Tell them about the possibility of rationing care, do we spend tens of thousands of dollars on an 85 year old who drinks and smokes and likely won't live more than a year or two? Who will make that call, a doctor or a bureaucrat? What about innovation for new treatments and drugs? One of the cons for gov't run HC is the negative impact on medical advances.

Every gov't-run social program has always ended up costing us a lot more than we were told it would. A LOT MORE, every one of them. Liberal number crunchers are going to paint the rosiest picture they can and the conservative crunchers the opposite. So far the conservative crunchers have a better record than the liberal ones do when it comes to being closer to reality. And it isn't like we're talking about something small here, the consequences of a bad program could be pretty severe and it's our kids and grandkids who will have to pay the price.
 
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Your economic analysis is a bit sketch. Single payer is, as the name applies, a mechanism for paying. How much it pays and for whom is a separate issue. Medicare is, for practical purposes, a single-payer program. Its overhead costs are significantly lower than those of for-profit insurance because it doesn't advertise and doesn't pay million dollar salaries or dividends to stockholders. Single payer reduces administrative overhead.

As for having the money, we are currently spending twice as much as our sister countries. Single-payer would be a big step forward in reducing those extra costs. No million dollar salaries, negotiated drugs and fees, and reduced overhead would save billions, not to mention saving hundreds of thousands of American lives.

I can save us more - quicker. Get the Federal Government out of health care entirely.....

No ACA. No Medicare. No Medicaid. No forcing hospitals to care for people who can't pay. Very simple.

No, no, the best way to cut costs is for the government to take health care over completely, like they do in the VA. That way the very sick can be put on secret death lists to die without all the costs
 
Like it or not, The USA will go to a single payer health care system. It might take 100 years (I think it will be much sooner, like 12 years) but it's going to happen.
 
The cost to individual taxpayers of single-payer is, in other countries, much less than what Americans pay for health insurance. This is of course, because we spend twice as much as they do, despite our much worse outcomes. That goes to fraud, waste and abuse by providers and to dividends and fancy salaries in for-profit insurance companies.

The total tax burden for working Americans is actually higher than it seems looking at the IRS because there are very significant state taxes as well as sales taxes, property taxes etc.

When you consider that the taxes paid in a place like Europe cover not only healthcare but retirement and college for the kids, they have a lot better deal -- that is if you make less than $500,000 a year. Our millionaires ride free, or at least they pay a helluva lot less than European millionaires.

The big difference between what taxpayers get here is in the military. We spend more on our military than Russia and China COMBINED. That's where your health, education and old-age pension go.
 

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