Politics Thread

[paulxu]

Totally anecdotal, but I have many German friends (who moved to the Spartanburg area for textile machinery support decades ago, and then BMW) in my neighborhood and at Rotary.
They to a man think our health care system is nuts.
I know...small sample size.

But their feelings are supported by the data shown above in the chart.

[ArizonaXUGrad]

Yeah I'm beginning to wonder if Xville believes state healthcare should be a money maker.

What poster was it before during the Obamacare stuff, Kimcrawford? The profit motive has no business in healthcare.

[Xville]

All the data show clearly that Medicare delivers access to healthcare more efficiently than the private sector does in our country. The funding deficit is yet another red herring in this conversation.

You think a 40 trillion deficit in funding is a red herring? That's interesting...guess the money will just fall from the money tree to fund it.

[Xville]

So again your ignorance of their system shows, you can be on the German system or you can pay for supplemental additional coverage. In my friend's case, he gets a few things like his own room when he or his family are in the hospital. There are a few other differences but they are negligible.

The Germans run a non-profit single payer system. The non-profit sets the price and the entire profit motive for healthcare has been removed.

So essentially free market which is what we have today...except of this was Germany I'd have to pay extra for my own room.

If the services are so great, again why does he pay for supplemental coverage?

So how much does he pay extra? What is his tax rate?

[GoMuskies]

The profit motive has no business in healthcare.

That's a damn fine way to ensure health care is shitty.

[paulxu]

That's a damn fine way to ensure health care is shitty.

But that's exactly what all those other countries have proven wrong. They took it out and got better results.
Because they decided it should be a universal service like police and fire (which have no profit motive...yet).

[Caf]

But that's exactly what all those other countries have proven wrong. They took it out and got better results.
Because they decided it should be a universal service like police and fire (which have no profit motive...yet).

It is necessary to point out that we are leaders in pharmaceutical research and that our current set up is the cause of that.

[scoscox]

Again, better results in some areas. We are vastly superior in specialized care and medical technologies because we haven't abandoned profits. It's not totally black and white. There are definite advantages to each model.

[boozehound]

The problem that you all don't seem to be grasping, is who and how is a single payer health system going to be paid for? Income Taxes, Corporate Taxes, Capital Gains Taxes, Payroll Taxes to Corporations? Somehow, Someway this has to be paid for and again, none of the countries cited have anywhere close to our population not remotely close. Just because it works in some countries in Europe, doesn't mean it would work here.

Medicare has worked well in this country, about 40 trillion in the red at last count by the way.

Medicare is in the Red in a large part because we have basically enacted a single payer system that kicks in when people hit 65 without any offsetting premiums from younger, healthier, people (outside of the Medicare tax, which is relatively minimal at 1.45%). That's not how risk pools work. It's fundamentally unsound mathematically. That's not an opinion - it's a verifiable fact. Even in cases where people have retiree healthcare benefits from a large corporation those benefits typically subordinate to Medicare, further adding to the cost.

In the end, government and thus you and I do. That's on a per incident basis, and not every uninsured person go to the er..so how much of a cost now would it be to basically insure everyone 24/7?

Some on here try to say costs would go down because of the larger pool, that's only the case in a private free market system, not the system we are talking about.

You in for trillions more in federal spending, more corporate taxes, capital gains taxes etc? How do you think wages for workers would look then?

Explain to me using facts, not talking points, how the concept of pooled risk somehow only applies in a private free market system. That is an insane thing to say.

Furthermore - in a version of a 'Medicare for all' type of scenario, let's look at the average American family:

The average American family makes $56K per year. They pay a 1.45% Medicare payroll tax which is $812 per year. Let's assume that they carry health insurance for the family at a cost of $600 per month (which is probably on the low side of average for decent coverage). They are paying $7200 per year in insurance premiums, not including the ubiquitous co-pays and deductibles. So they are paying 12.5% of their income for insurance. You could raise taxes, or simply charge a premium for single-payer healthcare, that would generate a significant amount of the revenue needed to fund it. I'm not even sure how much deficit expansion would be necessary, if any at all. If we want to talk about deficit reduction let's talk about military spending, and reducing some of that while spending more on healthcare and infrastructure.

It's also pretty universally regarded that preventative care reduces costs overall, which single payer would theoretically encourage.

Again, better results in some areas. We are vastly superior in specialized care and medical technologies because we haven't abandoned profits. It's not totally black and white. There are definite advantages to each model.

This is generally how I feel - we can't simply just remove the profit motive from healthcare. It should still exist. I would, however, like to remove the profit the insurance companies (middlemen) make from the equation and use that savings to offset overall healthcare costs. Doctors, hospitals, and drug companies should still be profitable, and significantly so. The other challenge with comparing our outcomes to a lot of European countries is that we are so much unhealthier than they are, which has to have an impact on outcomes.

[scoscox]

This is generally how I feel - we can't simply just remove the profit motive from healthcare. It should still exist. I would, however, like to remove the profit the insurance companies (middlemen) make from the equation and use that savings to offset overall healthcare costs. Doctors, hospitals, and drug companies should still be profitable, and significantly so. The other challenge with comparing our outcomes to a lot of European countries is that we are so much unhealthier than they are, which has to have an impact on outcomes.

Last sentence is very true and is a huge drag on costs as well as outcomes. As for the rest of your point, figuring out how to get the best of both worlds is basically the crux of our current problem. Not easy to do.