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Can America afford health care for everyone? How would we pay for it? If you have to pay higher taxes or have your health care taxed- do you think you'll be able to afford it? If employers have to provide it, do you think it will put added stress on them- making it difficult to hire workers? Do you understand the health care bill as far as it's been explained? Will quality of care suffer with everyone having instant access to care? Is the system prepared for the mass influx of millions of currently uninsured? Will the elderly be treated the same as the rest? Will it be faster or slower getting your health care needs met? Will govt. health care put the private sector out of business?
America can't afford health care for everyone at current rates... under current conditions... we have lost our production centered economy and replaced it with a service centered economy... and although some services... eg health care demands exorbitant rates... there is no production to facilitate the money spent for the services... which means more fiat money will have to be made.. which means ever growing costs... no matter if it is privately or publically funded.
Health care costs have to come back down to earth...
However... since we have alotted $24 trillion worth of debt to Wall Street... if we are to pay for socialized health care... let's take the money away from the plutocrats to do so... let laissez faire capitalism take its toll on the overgrown monpolists... as it does with the rest of us who play fairly.
[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32010841/ns/business-us_business]
Since health care prices are outrageous... and we would supposedly be cutting out a middleman insurer... taxes would simply supplant our premiums and in an ideal world... those businesses whose overhead have decreased would pass the savings on to the consumers. Ideally the govt would supply health care with no beaurocratic charges added... so the service would be cheaper. Realistically... it will be a wash... so it is a zero sum game.
This is the matter of sleight of hand from the bean counter. Socialized medicine adds no beans into the bean account. Fiat money is not a commodity... it's supply is counterbalanced by inflation by the time the supply makes its way to the common market. We can argue on how to count our beans... who gets what beans... who holds the beans at a given time... it's all specious... to make us think that something is being changed. Only production can assuage the economic quagmire. There is no free lunch.
Right now we basically get to choose our poison. Let the companies we work for dictate our health coverage. We get to become health insurance slaves to our companies... who are in their own way playing host to parasitic health care providers be they professionals or insurance providers. Or we can let the federal government dictate our health coverage... we become subjects of the state and are no better leveraged against the usurpers.
The government is composed of people who like to turn a profit... wealthy campaign financiers spend all of their ill-gotten means assuring this. Who are the wealthiest campaign financiers/lobbyists... Banks/Insurance firms... Health care institutions... the cronies who some think elected leaders will rein in. Those people who find the time to think between condominium time share proposals they're attending.
This is a problem of capital... most can't afford health care... and as I said... there is no magical sleight of hand shifting of the beans that will change a damn thing. A fixed amount of beans buys a fixed amount of goods... we can trade in all our possessions... houses... land... any real asset in order to afford health care... as is happening right now... and let the plutocrats control even more... or we can make some fundamental changes that are past due.
Return money to a commodity... demolish the federal reserve and fiat money and establish a precious metal... stone... whatever backed dollar.
The problem of outrageous health care costs is more difficult. First we can become a production based economy again... this requires something that progressives leave to government to dictate... collectivism... but from a capitalist eg free prospective... we need to buy from our neighbors in our community... not multinational companies... we need to support each others well beings along with our own... because ultimately they are interconnected. Only support local health care when they lower prices back to affordable levels... if they wish to use their leverage to take our possessions instead of aiding us for the common good... there is no impetus to patronize their services and we should instead outsource our care when and if at all possible.
Maybe this is a tall order... but anything else is merely hand-waving
Lets see. I pay $500/month for my company's health insurance for myself, wife, and daughter. My employer says that they subsidize $300 of it. It looks like our health insurance won't cover some of my daughter's treatments which will set us back another $1,500 and I have to pay $300 of an emergency room visit when we thought our daughter broke her ankle. One of my wife's medications isn't covered by our drug plan so add another $1,440. Our other miscelaneous prescription drugs are around $600.
So we are paying over $13,000 this year for our health care (assuming nothing else pops up between now and Dec 31) . As long as my taxes don't go up by over $13,000 we come out ahead.
The cost of our health care has been going up much faster than inflation for decades. Health care costs are a big part of what is running our auto industry out of business. One of the perks of working for the big three was lifetime health insurance. When this benefit was offered the big three had no idea how expensive health care would become decades later.
The real question is can we afford not to have universal health care?
Misecegenymiser, I thought your post was EXCELLENT. A real eye-opener for me - I thought it was much simpler... you wrote a lot but I can see the whole picture is important.
We have free health care in Canada and although it's far from ideal (there's a huge shortage of doctors, the wait to see a specialist can be as long as 6 months... and we dont use the most advanced equipment or technology) when I look at what my American friends have to go through, I do feel better off. And of course even here, not everything is covered and the insurance companies are right in there. Many doctors actually raise their rates when they know an insurance company is paying.
Seems like insurance companies and hospitals are enablers for one another. The hospitals charge as much as they possibly can, because usually the insurance companies are picking up the tab, meanwhile making it unnecessarily expensive for the person who isn't insured.
The US already has universal health care. Anyone can show up at an emergency room, and hospitals are legally obligated to treat them regardless of ability to pay.
This is the worst kind of universal health care - urgent care is much more costly than preventative care - and the burden is carried by those with health insurance who do pay their hospital bills.
Further, the US is one of the wealthiest nations on earth in terms of per capita income, so if anyone can afford it, we can. Even countries like Cuba and El Salvador have universal health care.
I'm not sure I'm excited about the approach that's being taken though. I think it would make a lot more sense just to give everyone a medicaid card and raise taxes to pay for it.
If we hadn't blown a couple of trillion on bailouts and "stimulus", we could have paid for it already.
You've actually asked 2 questions: Can america afford universal health care? How are we going to pay for it?
1)One third of americans do not have health insurance; who can make the moral judgement that 100 million americans should die so that 200 million can live better lives? The question isn't "if" its "when" the health care is going to happen.
2)How to pay for it? President Obama says the rich should pay a 3.5% premium tax on their gross incomes. He bases this upon Universal Health Care as done in such places as Norway and Denmark, or Germany.
Uh, England not so much- look at their teeth. Like I said, England not so much.
We can't afford not to do it. It is one of the major factors causing our current economic woes. The majority of personal bankruptcies in this country are due to catastrophic health care costs. That is just wrong for the richest country in the world. In the end we will be paying less for health care through taxes than we are now through huge insurance premiums that make private comanies and their CEOs rich. The only thing I am concerned about is them not going far enough. I think we sholuld completely abolish private insurance and just make a single payer system like medicare for everyone.
I pay $259/month for private health insurance with a $5000 deductible. That amounts to over $8000/year out of pocket before my insurance even begins to pay a bill.
I agree with jimahl and fillet... we can't afford NOT to have universal health care.
I also agree with jimahl...I think we should go to a single payer plan...the insurance companies are wealthy enough and it would benefit employers by reducing their share of employee coverage.
"1)One third of americans do not have health insurance; who can make the moral judgement that 100 million americans should die so that 200 million can live better lives? The question isn't if its when the health care is going to happen."
" This is a blatant lie"
freefromself, the only thing that is untrue, is the part about 100 million dying. Lack of health insurance will not necessarily cause your death, but it sure helps it along.
Yes. Taxation. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No (they aren't now, either). Faster. No.
Oooo that was well stated
