I think people forget the part where insurance now has to use 80% of it's collected money to actually go towards treatments and if it doesn't it sends you money back.
I think people forget the part where insurance now has to use 80% of it's collected money to actually go towards treatments and if it doesn't it sends you money back.
GAH WHAAAAA????
Japan is very similar in this regard, and it works well for them.
Yeah. There are about as many different ways of running universal health care in the world as there are Western-style democracies in the world. People always seem to make comparisons to the British NHS (basically, the government runs all the hospitals and pays all the doctors) and the Canadian single-payer system, but they don't look at the Japanese, German, Swiss, etc., systems out there. This is not a problem that has only one obvious solution -- there are a myriad of different solutions out there and due diligence means we should investigate all the options and see what is most applicable to the situation in the US.
Single payer is the way to go in the US. Medicare/Medicaid is a very good example of that. Despite Republican rhetoric, the program(s) are extremely efficient, not going broke, and control costs very well.
The hurdle is 6 decades of anti-Socialist propaganda from the Right.
Don't get me wrong, the content of the bill is pretty good. Children on plans till 26, no denial because of pre-existing conditions, that's all well and good.
The problem I have is the individual mandate that was just upheld by SCOTUS, and I particularly have a beef with the WAY they upheld it. FORCING people to buy health insurance or pay a fine is not the way to do it. And saying the fine is a tax, instead the regulation of commerce, is dickish considering that everyone involved roundly denied that it was a tax, and in fact the case should not have been heard if it was due to Anti-injunction laws (saying you can't rule a tax unconstitutional if no one has paid it yet). The whole thing stinks, and SCOTUS needs to throw out its own decision due to the anti-injunction legislation.
Mandated insurance is how you keep it affordable. Without mandated insurance, with the removal of pre-existing condition discrimination, people will ONLY buy insurance when they are sick and drop it the rest of the time. The industry can't function under those conditions.
You have to force everyone to have insurance with this plan, or else adverse selection means that only sick people have care, driving costs way up and removing the whole concept of a distributed burden.
We'd all like a better option, but with the current Republican party, this is the best we can get.
I'm Conservative, but yes, I'd be all right with universal healthcare along the lines of Great Britain. It sucks that the party I most align with is the party of "No" right now.
I have no problem with a Medicare style payroll tax and universal health care sufficient to meet basic needs. My only stipulation would be my desire to see a responsibility clause to prevent people from doing stupid shit.
Do something stupid that requires major reconstructive foot surgery? Denied and amputate. Not your fault? Six million dollar man!!!!
Who would be the arbiter of stupidity? Don't give some glib answer. Actually think which government functionary you would want serving as the arbiter of stupidity. Then consider the maxim that liberty is the freedom to be stupid.
I'm Conservative, but yes, I'd be all right with universal healthcare along the lines of Great Britain. It sucks that the party I most align with is the party of "No" right now.
I'm Conservative, but yes, I'd be all right with universal healthcare along the lines of Great Britain. It sucks that the party I most align with is the party of "No" right now.
In what ways are you conservative?
I want the federal government's power to be limited to what it has been given in the Constitution. It has been given the ability to levy taxes, we already are taxed for medicaid and medicare, so it's not expanding it much to extend medicaid to all.
I'm Conservative, but yes, I'd be all right with universal healthcare along the lines of Great Britain. It sucks that the party I most align with is the party of "No" right now.
In what ways are you conservative?
I want the federal government's power to be limited to what it has been given in the Constitution. It has been given the ability to levy taxes, we already are taxed for medicaid and medicare, so it's not expanding it much to extend medicaid to all.
The constitution gives the government the unlimited ability to regulate commerce. If you like the government regulating all sorts of commerce, then you are definitely not conservative.
I'm Conservative, but yes, I'd be all right with universal healthcare along the lines of Great Britain. It sucks that the party I most align with is the party of "No" right now.
In what ways are you conservative?
I want the federal government's power to be limited to what it has been given in the Constitution. It has been given the ability to levy taxes, we already are taxed for medicaid and medicare, so it's not expanding it much to extend medicaid to all.
The constitution gives the government the unlimited ability to regulate commerce. If you like the government regulating all sorts of commerce, then you are definitely not conservative.
You caught me. I self-identify as Conservative but I fully admit my political views are too goddamn complex to call myself anything. On the whole I prefer minimal regulation and support business growth and commerce, along with State's Rights. I definitely don't believe in unlimited regulation.
I thought we settled all the "States Rights" vs. Federal Law thing back in the 1800's. Federal law trumps state law, etc. No? Am I missing something here? I know it's more complicated than that and states are given the power to regulate themselves by the Constitution but only if the Federal government hasn't set up a policy already (due to that aforementioned disagreement).
"States' Rights" pretty much means, for all intents and purposes, "the red states will destroy themselves."
I also believe there is no entity that is "too big to fail." They destroy themselves then welp shoulda been a little more cautious.
We let them get too big by not regulating them. They were big enough in this case to actually, for real, ruin the economy if they actually, really fell.
Strong regulation would have been needed to prevent them from getting into this perverse situation in the first place. Once they were already there, it was too late to just let them collapse.
I self-identify as Conservative but I fully admit my political views are too goddamn complex to call myself anything.
I self-identified as conservative until a little before 2000 when the conservatives started going completely insane. Seriously, there was a time when "conservative" mostly just meant that you didn't want to hand over all your hard-earned money to Uncle Sam. Okay, that makes a little bit of sense. But then they started the evolution denying, climate-change denying, general hostility to science and rationality, and the whole pre-emptive war thing. That turned me "liberal" very quickly.
I self-identify as Conservative but I fully admit my political views are too goddamn complex to call myself anything.
I self-identified as conservative until a little before 2000 when the conservatives started going completely insane. Seriously, there was a time when "conservative" mostly just meant that you didn't want to hand over all your hard-earned money to Uncle Sam. Okay, that makes a little bit of sense. But then they started the evolution denying, climate-change denying, general hostility to science and rationality, and the whole pre-emptive war thing. That turned me "liberal" very quickly.
I firmly believe they got hijacked by the crazy fringes of society. I am fiscally conservative, socially liberal, and vehemently individualistic, and I call that Conservative.
And to Rym: Yes a little regulation is necessary for real growth, and to keep everything running smoothly. But right now the EU and even the US are pressuring Germany, the only country to be doing well in the Western hemisphere to prop up Greece as they're failing miserably. I say a country can fail.
The republican party is dominated by a number of people trying to bail out the sinking American ship. What they don't understand Is that bailing involves getting water out not pouring it in.
And to Rym: Yes a little regulation is necessary for real growth, and to keep everything running smoothly.
I've said it before. Capitalism only works when there is competition. However, any civilized competition requires a fair set of rules and a referee. That's where government regulations come in -- to provide the role of rule-setter and referee. I mean, no one would ever want to play a hockey game without at least a set of rules and, if it's a serious game, a referee.
The republican party is dominated by a number of people trying to bail out the sinking American ship. What they don't understand Is that bailing involves getting water out not pouring it in.
This is pretty optimistic. The modern Republican party is dominated by delusional rich with no grounding in actual reality, nor have they apparently been reached by any meaningful education. They're flat out stupid and insane, there is no nice way to put it.
This is pretty optimistic. The modern Republican party is dominated by delusional rich with no grounding in actual reality, nor have they apparently been reached by any meaningful education. They're flat out stupid and insane, there is no nice way to put it.
They're neither stupid, nor insane. They're "crazy like a fox," to use the old expression. Their attitude is if they run this country into the ground, they'll have enough money to flee to the Cayman islands or some other tax shelter anyway, so who cares if Rome burns.
I want to be in a party that's associated with extremism towards science, education, and technology. Like, flip the combined budgets of those three departments and the military extremist.
And to Rym: Yes a little regulation is necessary for real growth, and to keep everything running smoothly. But right now the EU and even the US are pressuring Germany, the only country to be doing well in the Western hemisphere to prop up Greece as they're failing miserably. I say a country can fail.
You do understand that if Greece fails, it will take the entire European Union with it, right?
Comments
The hurdle is 6 decades of anti-Socialist propaganda from the Right.
The problem I have is the individual mandate that was just upheld by SCOTUS, and I particularly have a beef with the WAY they upheld it. FORCING people to buy health insurance or pay a fine is not the way to do it. And saying the fine is a tax, instead the regulation of commerce, is dickish considering that everyone involved roundly denied that it was a tax, and in fact the case should not have been heard if it was due to Anti-injunction laws (saying you can't rule a tax unconstitutional if no one has paid it yet). The whole thing stinks, and SCOTUS needs to throw out its own decision due to the anti-injunction legislation.
We'd all like a better option, but with the current Republican party, this is the best we can get.
Do something stupid that requires major reconstructive foot surgery? Denied and amputate. Not your fault? Six million dollar man!!!!
8% FICA style payroll tax with no income cap?
Strong regulation would have been needed to prevent them from getting into this perverse situation in the first place. Once they were already there, it was too late to just let them collapse.
And to Rym: Yes a little regulation is necessary for real growth, and to keep everything running smoothly. But right now the EU and even the US are pressuring Germany, the only country to be doing well in the Western hemisphere to prop up Greece as they're failing miserably. I say a country can fail.
The reason it is definitely not true is that these rich people already have enough money to flee.