Single Payer Health Care Already Works

[rayboyusmc]

We call it "TriCare". It is administered by Humana and funded by the government for both active duty and retired military.

As a retired Marine, I have it for myself and my wife for about $460.00 a year. It is an HMO and has covered all of my wife's heart problems. It is no different than when I worked for Humana and had a regular Humana HMO plan.

You could call it universal health care for military.

It's all bullshit, smoke and mirrors that the righties like Ginggrinch and Shelby are saying about socialized medicine. The government already reimburses healthcare providers for Medicare and Medicaid. They both work.

Oh, socialism, where is thy sting?

 

[WillowTree]

sigh! here we go once again..take what you get multiply it to 400 million people and 1/2 of Mexico.. how do you pay for it?


again,, check out countries with 30 or 40 million people on this system,, they have big problems.. ie no money, shortage of services,, long long long long waits



again,, check out Mass.. how is that working out



check out california,, how is that working out..



and lastly tell us how much it will cost and where the money comes from.. and why you feel satisfied that pelosi can do it right! TIA

 

[Oddball]

Yeah, we have "universal" medical services for veterans....It's called the VA.

If that's such a hot deal, who needs an HMO??

 

[sealybobo]

sigh! here we go once again..take what you get multiply it to 400 million people and 1/2 of Mexico.. how do you pay for it?


again,, check out countries with 30 or 40 million people on this system,, they have big problems.. ie no money, shortage of services,, long long long long waits



again,, check out Mass.. how is that working out



check out california,, how is that working out..



and lastly tell us how much it will cost and where the money comes from.. and why you feel satisfied that pelosi can do it right! TIA

Simple. The company you work for gives you a raise because healthcare will be taken off their plate.

And because right now we are overpaying, the companies will save money.

And we will save money too because the costs will go down.

And EVERYONE will be covered.

 

[sealybobo]

Yeah, we have "universal" medical services for veterans....It's called the VA.

If that's such a hot deal, who needs an HMO??

The VA is different. Get your facts straight.

I want what John McCain gets. He certainly doesn't go thru the VA.

 

[elvis]

We call it "TriCare". It is administered by Humana and funded by the government for both active duty and retired military.

As a retired Marine, I have it for myself and my wife for about $460.00 a year. It is an HMO and has covered all of my wife's heart problems. It is no different than when I worked for Humana and had a regular Humana HMO plan.

You could call it universal health care for military.

It's all bullshit, smoke and mirrors that the righties like Ginggrinch and Shelby are saying about socialized medicine. The government already reimburses healthcare providers for Medicare and Medicaid. They both work.

Oh, socialism, where is thy sting?

socialism's sting comes in the form of double-digit unemployment CONSISTENTLY over the last 15 years.

 

[elvis]

Yeah, we have "universal" medical services for veterans....It's called the VA.

If that's such a hot deal, who needs an HMO??

The VA is different. Get your facts straight.

I want what John McCain gets. He certainly doesn't go thru the VA.

How do you know?

 

[Oddball]

Yeah, we have "universal" medical services for veterans....It's called the VA.

If that's such a hot deal, who needs an HMO??

The VA is different. Get your facts straight.

I want what John McCain gets. He certainly doesn't go thru the VA.

I have my facts straight.

If the VA is such a hot deal, why doesn't Juan McQuisling go there??

 

[Oddball]

Simple. The company you work for gives you a raise because healthcare will be taken off their plate.

And because right now we are overpaying, the companies will save money.

And we will save money too because the costs will go down.

And EVERYONE will be covered.

Tell us all the last....no, the FIRST time gubmint took over something where the quality increased and the costs went down.

 

[elvis]

Simple. The company you work for gives you a raise because healthcare will be taken off their plate.

And because right now we are overpaying, the companies will save money.

And we will save money too because the costs will go down.

And EVERYONE will be covered.

Tell us all the last....no, the FIRST time gubmint took over something where the quality increased and the costs went down.

question for the ages.

 

[STAND4LIBERTY]

Simple. The company you work for gives you a raise because healthcare will be taken off their plate.

And you are 100% sure this is what's going to happen? what's your theory based on.. besides wishful thinking I mean? For cryin' out loud do you just swallow EVERYTHING the Federal Government tells you without at least giving it a seconds worth of thought? Companies will still have to pay for health care, just like they do now, only instead of putting the money into private sector companies they'll be sending it to the government and passing those costs along to the consumer. It's a zero sum game all this plan does is transfer who gets the money from the productive private sector to the non-productive (in our case counter productive) public sector.

And because right now we are overpaying, the companies will save money.

And we will save money too because the costs will go down.

The gub'ment promised that Medicare part D would save money and reduces costs, guess what , the latests estimates from the Social Security Administration show that is now carrying $8 Trillion in longterm unfunded liabilities and growing every year, how many times are you gonna fall for the same lie?

Our current unfunded liabilities ($56.4 Trillion) GUARANTEE that the federal government will need to either raise taxes to draconian levels, cut entitlements drastically or both... will you folks on the left never learn that there isn't an infinite supply of money to plunder from your fellow citizens and their children to pay for your social experiments? It's something we that live in the real world call UNAFFORDABLE, perhaps you should look it up.

In the meantime maybe you should take 30 minutes and watch this video, perhaps it'll open your eyes a bit.....

I.O.U.S.A: The Movie - 30 Minute Version

 

[Sinatra]

I believe the point being that VA care is not such a wonderful thing. I have family who use it, and they are complaining all the time about the wait periods, the paper work - in short, it is a mess.

Take the VA example, mulitiply it by several more million participants, and you have an inkling of what a single-payer plan would be like in this country.

Single payer will not happen - word is, that idea has already been scrapped.

What Obama Inc and the leftist Dems are working on is some form of hybrid care plan.

And while such a plan might be marginally better - it will still be damn expensive, and will allow the foot of nationalized medicine in the door, where over proceeding years, the statists will hope to eventually turn it all over to the government - because the government runs things so well, yes?

 

[auditor0007]

sigh! here we go once again..take what you get multiply it to 400 million people and 1/2 of Mexico.. how do you pay for it?


again,, check out countries with 30 or 40 million people on this system,, they have big problems.. ie no money, shortage of services,, long long long long waits



again,, check out Mass.. how is that working out



check out california,, how is that working out..



and lastly tell us how much it will cost and where the money comes from.. and why you feel satisfied that pelosi can do it right! TIA

The problem with single payer is not in the system itself. The system itself actually works quite well and is very efficient. The argument that private insurance subsidizes Medicare and Medicaid is very accurate.

If we look at countries with single payer systems, what we find is that they pay about half of what we pay overall for healthcare. And with that, they receive less in services. That makes sense because they aren't paying enough. It is more a matter of how much they are willing to spend.

Look at the Canadian system. Their system is lacking due to a lack of funding, but they only pay half of what we do. If they chose to pay more through higher taxes, they would receive all the services we do, but they would save around 25% on the administrative end.

On the other hand, we pay way too much for healthcare. The argument should not be that we want to be like Canada or to cut our healthcare costs as much as the Canadiens have. Our goal should be to reduce administative costs, remove the profit margin, but continue spending what we do currently on the actual healthcare side, while controlling costs long term.

The bottom line is that with our current system, healthcare will become unaffordable for all but the few. We have gone from spending 7% of GDP on healthcare to the current 16 plus percent. And that number is expected to hit 30% of GDP within the next twenty to twenty five years. There is no way that is sustainable, and we need real ideas as to how we can cut that, because it will destroy our economy completely, and once that happens, our healthcare will go straight down the toilet because no one will be able to pay for it.

What we need is to find a happy medium where we still receive top quality service, and make certain that healthcare spending actually goes to healthcare and not outside sources running the show. If you want to keep it private, then my suggestion would be to do it the way Switzerland does. Make the health insurance companies all non-profits, and make rates for normal everyday procedures standard rates that are acceptable to healthcare providers.

 

[auditor0007]

I believe the point being that VA care is not such a wonderful thing. I have family who use it, and they are complaining all the time about the wait periods, the paper work - in short, it is a mess.

Take the VA example, mulitiply it by several more million participants, and you have an inkling of what a single-payer plan would be like in this country.

Single payer will not happen - word is, that idea has already been scrapped.

What Obama Inc and the leftist Dems are working on is some form of hybrid care plan.

And while such a plan might be marginally better - it will still be damn expensive, and will allow the foot of nationalized medicine in the door, where over proceeding years, the statists will hope to eventually turn it all over to the government - because the government runs things so well, yes?

Actually, the way they want to set it up may not be so bad. Because they are not looking for a complete takeover of the healthcare industry, it will give everyone time to actually see the results. If the results are good, then we may well see more of a move to a one payer system. On the other hand, if it turns out to be a complete disaster, then it will likely be scrapped for something else, although what that something else is would be anyone's guess. The great thing is that we do have the ability to make changes on the fly. Nothing is set in stone.

 

[Navy1960]

I'd like to address this issue as well, TRICARE works because Humana also has a private healthcare offering that supports them as a company and they do not directly compete with the Federal Govt., they are a contractor. The current number of proposals floating around out there include the Federal Govt. entering into direct competetion with the very same people they contract from . This will result in those providers limiting services, or getting out of the business all together. One other thing to consider here as well. The reason TRICARE works like it does is because as mentioned above it is not supporting over 200 plus million people and the management of it is done by private contractors. Further, Govt. mandated healthcare is not sustainable and will result in a system that eventually will lead to quality issues such as wait lists, poor quailty health, and medical research decline. To simply say well we can do this because the Govt. already uses TRICARE is to over simplify the issue if there even is an issue of coverage. While there is one of costs, personally if you look at the census data that all this is based on, and you discount for factors such as those who make over 50k a year and those who choose not to have health insurance, I don't see this as an issue of coverage. What I do see it as is an issue of regulating costs and promoting comeptetion to bring down costs in order to make insurance available to those who want it.

 

[Oddball]

Actually, the way they want to set it up may not be so bad. Because they are not looking for a complete takeover of the healthcare industry, it will give everyone time to actually see the results. If the results are good, then we may well see more of a move to a one payer system. On the other hand, if it turns out to be a complete disaster, then it will likely be scrapped for something else, although what that something else is would be anyone's guess. The great thing is that we do have the ability to make changes on the fly. Nothing is set in stone.

We've had 44 years of Medicare/Medicaid, and they are unqualified disasters.

The costs are WAY higher than projected -even accounting for inflation- and the quality of care is far below that projected.

Yet, is the assessment of those results seen as indicative of the inefficiency and lack of cost contaiment of bureaucracy??....

NOOOOO!!!

We're told that it's the eeeeeviilll and grrrreeeeeedy "free market" that is to blame, and all we need to do is expand the models for those failures to cover everyone.

Socialist democrat plan: Let's do more of the same thing and expect a better result!!

 

[sealybobo]

Yeah, we have "universal" medical services for veterans....It's called the VA.

If that's such a hot deal, who needs an HMO??

The VA is different. Get your facts straight.

I want what John McCain gets. He certainly doesn't go thru the VA.

How do you know?

Because he consistently votes against funding the VA, that's how. Plus he has a great plan being a Senator. Which one do you think he uses?

 

[elvis]

The VA is different. Get your facts straight.

I want what John McCain gets. He certainly doesn't go thru the VA.

How do you know?

Because he consistently votes against funding the VA, that's how. Plus he has a great plan being a Senator. Which one do you think he uses?

So in other words, you have no clue as to which health care plan he uses.

 

[Sinatra]

How do you know?

Because he consistently votes against funding the VA, that's how. Plus he has a great plan being a Senator. Which one do you think he uses?

So in other words, you have no clue as to which health care plan he uses.

Bingo.

His attempts at discourse in here border on sub-human...

 

[DiamondDave]

And of course the liberal/leftist mantra of "I WANT'

usually followed by 'at the expense of someone else' said lightly under their breath