Is it time for Universal Healthcare....and can it be done?

[Hutch Starskey]

20+ trillion in debt. 150+ trillion unfunded liabilities.

I think it's time to stop demanding free shit.

You need to look at what we already spend on healthcare and what universal care would cost.

You need to look at who "we" is.

We as in the US government.

 

[Cecilie1200]

It is way past time for Universal Health Care. Why are we the only developed country without Healthcare daycare paid parental leave living wage cheap College and training good vacations Fair taxes on the rich national ID card to stop illegal immigration Etc etc etc? Scumbag GOP and silly dupes Like Norman...

So you’re in favor of turning your entire paycheck over to the Government each week? Good for you. I sure as Hell am not interested in doing so.

Why do you assume Franco has a paycheck?

 

[Norman]

It is way past time for Universal Health Care. Why are we the only developed country without Healthcare daycare paid parental leave living wage cheap College and training good vacations Fair taxes on the rich national ID card to stop illegal immigration Etc etc etc? Scumbag GOP and silly dupes Like Norman...

So you’re in favor of turning your entire paycheck over to the Government each week? Good for you. I sure as Hell am not interested in doing so.

Why do you assume Franco has a paycheck?

Does allowance from the mother constitute a pay-check?

 

[g5000]

My alternative is health care at fair prices.

Oh, look. Another bumper sticker!

 

[Norman]

My alternative is health care at fair prices.

Oh, look. Another bumper sticker!

Your plan: "Make it "free"", on the other hand is such a well thought out idea.

 

[g5000]

While Trump continues to sabotage Obamacare, and thus drive health care costs to even higher record levels, the Democrats are going to pound the shit out of the inability of Trump or the GOP to solve the problem.

They are going to push and push and push for universal health care until there is such momentum for UHC that no one will be able to stop it.

 

[g5000]

My alternative is health care at fair prices.

Oh, look. Another bumper sticker!

Your plan: "Make it "free"", on the other hand is such a well thought out idea.

Nope. I am opposed to UHC, retard. I am opposed to Obamacare. I am opposed to more government involvement in health care.

I have posted my solutions to the health care problem hundreds of times on this forum.

Sadly for you, hack, you only see what you want to see which confirm your idiot confirmation biases.

 

[g5000]

The tards STILL have not woken up to the fact they have been massively hoaxed by the GOP and by Trump.

Trump and the GOP never intended, nor do they have the ability, to fix health care.

Ever.

 

[g5000]

It is simply astonishing to me that the tards have not realized the GOP and Trump control all the power now, and yet after promising to repeal and replace ObamaCare, they haven't.

Why the tards have not caught on that it was all a giant, massive hoax reveals just how gullible, stupid, and willfully blind they are.

 

[Avatar4321]

No. And no

 

[g5000]

Trump is a Democrat. He has no clue how to create a market solution to the health care problem.

He has zero ability. So all he can do is make ObamaCare even more broken that it already is. Trump's M.O. for everything is to break shit.

And YOU get to pay the price. Literally.

Wake up, rubes!

 

[g5000]

The only reason the tards hate me and call me a liberal is because I keep pointing out to them they are being hoaxed. No one likes to admit they have been a ******* idiot, so they lash out at the one who leads these retarded horses to water.

 

[Cecilie1200]

First off, for those that know me...I am a conservative.
I do ask the question in sincerity.
Last year with health premiums, and healthcare bills, my wife and I spent $7,040 for the two of us.
Then add in the employers portion of premium and that totals up to roughly $11,000.
Even with that, we are well below the average cost the average American pays.
So, would I pay out say... $600 a month in taxes, and my employer in lieu of paying premiums, pay another $400 a month? Instead of paying an insurer?
Yes, yes I would.
But only if the care was equally as good.
And would it be?
How would we, as a nation, pay for the bums and lazy asses who won't work?
Should a "health tax" be income specific? So someone who makes $250,000 a year would pay a great deal more than a $50,000 a year person? Would that work?

One thing is for certain. The current system is not working well. We are paying more and more and more to insurers who are raising deductibles and increasing premiums while covering less.
What fix is there?

Unfortunately, the socialist concept of universal health care adheres to the "from each, to each" concept. You say you and you wife have paid so much into the system? Obviously you are a "from-er". In reality, you are already footing the bill for many "to-ers".

I have received quotes from $1600-$1800 per month for a family plan. The best plan had a $2000 per year deductible. My wife stays at the job she has just for the insurance. Would our tax bill under the universal plan be $22,000 per year? We have an HMO plan right now, so wait times suck and we have limited choices. I sometimes wonder if it could get any worse?

And that is the point.
Premiums every single year continue to rise...despite the fact that the ACTUAL cost to treat most illnesses ARE LESS than before.
Kind of hard to explain that.

I like how you just assert that "actual cost to treat illnesses are [sic] less than before" as if it's a known fact that everyone agrees with and will accept as a debate parameter.

As it happens, it's quite easy to explain the increase in health insurance premiums . . . if you bother to look and find out some real facts, rather than making ignorant assumptions and then wondering why the world doesn't seem to fit them.

The first thing you have to consider is how insurance companies set their premiums. And no, they don't just say, "Gosh, we want to take in THIS much money, so let's do it!"

Insurance underwriters have profiles of different types of patients, and how much they are likely to cost in a given year, in terms of what services they are likely to need. Little kids are likely to be taken in for regular checkups, vaccinations, a couple of random injuries of minor-to-moderate severity . . . A middle-aged woman, on the other hand, is going to require regular diagnostic exams, such as mammograms, colonoscopies, bone density scans, like that.

Then they figure out how many of each type of patient they have. From there, they can figure out what that comes to in monthly premiums, averaged out across the appropriate patient pool. It is important to note that they ARE factoring in how much the estimated likely services cost.

Something else to keep in mind is that the population of the US is aging, which means that while some things are becoming less expensive, MORE healthcare services are being consumed. And new ones are being invented all the time to cater to that aging population. There are also increasing incidences of long-term problems like autistic children, people with severe food allergies, all manner of health weirdness that adds to the costs of an insurance pool.

There's also the fact that cost of living is rising, which means that the cost of the services of healthcare workers is also going up to cover cost-of-living adjustments. You can rant and rail against "rich doctors" all you like, but the fact is, the best and brightest are not going to put in the time, effort, and expense to train in the medical field if they're going to get paid like McDonald's workers.

 

[Cecilie1200]

20+ trillion in debt. 150+ trillion unfunded liabilities.

I think it's time to stop demanding free shit.

Add $32.6 trillion to that if we want universal healthcare. Bernie Sanders and a bunch of Democrats want to push through a "Medicare for all" plan.

Except they forgot to do a cost-analysis and don't have a clue where the money would come from...

Bernie Sanders' 'Medicare for all' bill estimated to cost $32.6T, new study says

Add $32.6 trillion to that if we want universal healthcare.

Of course that in not true at all. This isn't a theoretical exercise. There are places where this type of system already exists.

And they all suck, or are shifting to be more like us to stave off sucking.

But hey, if you like those place, GO LIVE THERE. Stop trying to force millions of people to live with a system they don't want just so YOU can have it, you selfish prick.

 

[Norman]

20+ trillion in debt. 150+ trillion unfunded liabilities.

I think it's time to stop demanding free shit.

Add $32.6 trillion to that if we want universal healthcare. Bernie Sanders and a bunch of Democrats want to push through a "Medicare for all" plan.

Except they forgot to do a cost-analysis and don't have a clue where the money would come from...

Bernie Sanders' 'Medicare for all' bill estimated to cost $32.6T, new study says

Add $32.6 trillion to that if we want universal healthcare.

Of course that in not true at all. This isn't a theoretical exercise. There are places where this type of system already exists.

And they all suck, or are shifting to be more like us to stave off sucking.

But hey, if you like those place, GO LIVE THERE. Stop trying to force millions of people to live with a system they don't want just so YOU can have it, you selfish prick.

He is so anti-American. Why can't he just leave, to the utopia!

 

[dblack]

The only reason the tards hate me and call me a liberal is because I keep pointing out to them they are being hoaxed. No one likes to admit they have been a ******* idiot, so they lash out at the one who leads these retarded horses to water.

It's easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.

 

[g5000]

The only reason the tards hate me and call me a liberal is because I keep pointing out to them they are being hoaxed. No one likes to admit they have been a ******* idiot, so they lash out at the one who leads these retarded horses to water.

It's easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.

Amen!

 

[Cecilie1200]

Universal health care if applied now would be the anchor that drags the US economy into a never ending downward spiral. Prior to Obamacare, the health care system was basically working but too expensive. After Obamacare, the health care system is working less well (more complicated longer wait times etc) and is considerably more expensive. It is clear that the "Affordable Care Act" had nothing to do with making health care affordable and was instead a massive expansion of healthcare to the poor and elderly who incidentally are the greatest consumers of health services.

We need to address COSTS, drug costs, treatment costs, billing simplification, new more efficient health centers, as well as meaningful tort reform and penalties for frivolous malpractice law suits. Lawyers and their class action lawsuits have become fabulously wealthy suing drug and equipment manufacturers and as a result contributed to the rising costs.

Meh...you pay too much attention to the drum beaters.
The average American pays over $9,000+ a year in costs. Add in employer contributions...and you are over $12,000.
We are already paying $trillions.

Who is this "we" you people keep yammering about?

A big part of the problem here is people who want to look at the whole thing as some sort of collective. There's a large difference between me paying $2000 a year on my family's healthcare and my neighbor paying $10,000 a year on his, and each of us paying $6000 a year for that healthcare while still using the same amounts. It might come out to the same yearly total all together, but I assure you, that does not make it the same.

All too many people want to look at the grand totals of what's spent by individuals in the US on healthcare every year, and ONLY look at it as a total "we" are spending, which "we" could therefore lower OVERALL (assuming you actually believe that) by having the government just take money from all of us and then hand out the healthcare as needed. The obvious problem, to anyone with sense, is that a lot of people end up paying far more that way than they would if they just paid for themselves, in order to lower costs for people who consume far more.

That $2000 a year I cited up above for my family's healthcare? That actually is how much my family paid last year for healthcare services, not including premiums. We had a catastrophic insurance plan, which did not once kick in and pay for a damned thing because the deductible wasn't met, and an HSA which we use to cover everything the insurance doesn't cover. The only reason we spent even that much was because my youngest son hurt his neck and needed an MRI.

So when you talk about "the average American spends . . ." and want the government to base what they take from those "average Americans" on that number, what you're basically saying to ME is, "Cecilie, I want you to pay $7000 a year more than you do now, for absolutely no increased benefit to YOUR family whatsoever, so that I can get healthcare on your dime."

And my answer is, "Piss off."

 

[Papageorgio]

If medications are expensive, try to find more affordable ways to obtain your medicines.

So many brainwashed GOP doops... Vote for Democrats, not giveaway to the rich brainwashing greedy idiot GOP..

When the Dems had a chance to fix health care, they gave us a disaster in Obamacare and really fixed nothing.

 

[Cecilie1200]

What fix is there?

We expand the current Medicare - Medicare Advantage - Medicare Supplement system to all. An excellent, already-functioning blend of public money and free market competition and innovation.

The Supplements and MA plans are optional, and people can just buy up. We'd catch and fix problems much earlier, before they become larger and more costly problems. We take a MASSIVE cost monkey off the backs of American employers. We streamline the delivery/billing process. We no longer have Americans paying higher premiums and fees to make up for those who don't and get "free" care.

When we're younger and healthier, the plan would cover less and ladder up over time. The Supplements and MA plans would take care of the rest.

It's right there, waiting for us, but we have our heads too far up our ass to see it.
.

Are you aware that the people on Medicare paid into the system for 20-30 years before they ever drew a nickels worth of care?

And a lot of other people paid in for decades and now don't qualify to get Medicare.