Healthcare Reform

[BigRedBuster]

2 minutes ago, Frott Scost said:

 

Free at the point of service.

You're right.  But, that's not how society and government should look at it when deciding what they should do and what the true costs of each system is.  Unfortunately, a lot of people think that it truly would be just free healthcare.  It's not.

[RedDenver]

8 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

You're right.  But, that's not how society and government should look at it when deciding what they should do and what the true costs of each system is.  Unfortunately, a lot of people think that it truly would be just free healthcare.  It's not.

I don't think anyone believes it'll just be free. But the Europeans pay a lot less than Americans do and generally get better care.

 

Interestingly enough, Germany doesn't pay the majority of its healthcare costs from taxes but rather most is from premiums. Here's a good article about it:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91971406

[BigRedBuster]

Just now, RedDenver said:

I don't think anyone believes it'll just be free. But the Europeans pay a lot less than Americans do and generally get better care.

 

Interestingly enough, Germany doesn't pay the majority of its healthcare costs from taxes but rather most is from premiums. Here's a good article about it:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91971406

I know that and I've pointed that out in this thread multiple times.  Americans are paying way more than anyone else in the world practically.  

 

I'm just pointing out that the one quote above is misleading.

[RedDenver]

8 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I know that and I've pointed that out in this thread multiple times.  Americans are paying way more than anyone else in the world practically.  

 

I'm just pointing out that the one quote above is misleading.

I agree with you, but I'm pushing back against this part of your post:

24 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Unfortunately, a lot of people think that it truly would be just free healthcare.

 

[Ratt Mhule]

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

You're right.  But, that's not how society and government should look at it when deciding what they should do and what the true costs of each system is.  Unfortunately, a lot of people think that it truly would be just free healthcare.  It's not.

 

Bernie has said multiple times that your taxes will go up, but it will net save you money without premiums, deductibles, co-pays.  Maybe mainstream media should be truthful about medicare for all when they describe it.  Instead of saying your taxes will go up and you will lose your private health insurance, they should tell the truth that you will save money and you will get better healthcare, free at the point of care.  They never will though because insurance companies spend too much money on their channel for advertisement.

[BigRedBuster]

3 minutes ago, Frott Scost said:

 

Bernie has said multiple times that your taxes will go up, but it will net save you money without premiums, deductibles, co-pays.  Maybe mainstream media should be truthful about medicare for all when they describe it.  Instead of saying your taxes will go up and you will lose your private health insurance, they should tell the truth that you will save money and you will get better healthcare, free at the point of care.  They never will though because insurance companies spend too much money on their channel for advertisement.

 

I've stated multiple times I'm all for an honest discussion on it.

[sho]

https://congressionaldish.com/cd199-surprise-medical-bills/

 

You should really listen to this, how people are getting scammed by healthcare on all sides, physicians, insurance companies, providers.  Examples where people call to see if the facility is in network, they are, they go, only to find out that the actual doctor, anesthesiologist, pathologist, etc are not in network and how they are getting screwed thinking it'll be covered by insurance only to find out that it isn't and how there are no checks and balances on what can be charged.  There is no way anyone can listen to this and think staying with the for-profit model is the best way to go.

[Ratt Mhule]

This is awesome for these folks. Their stories are incredibly sad, especially the teacher who had to decide to pay her electricity bill or her sons insulin and correctly chose the insulin which made their family go without electricity until the bill was paid. They ended up purchasing six months of insulin for the price of one month here in the US. 

[Moiraine]

Just some thoughts on MFA.

 

Medicare is used by 15% of the population, and it's used for the least healthy part of the population in general since it's for old people and people with disabilities.

 

But let's pretend the rest of the population would cost just as much $; that means after dealing with the implementation costs, it'd be around 6.7 times more expensive than what we're paying now. Right now Medicare is 1.45% for the employee and 1.45% for the employer. People making over $200,000 also pay another 0.9%.

 

Median household income is ~$60,000 and people making that much are currently paying $870 per year. If they kept allocating it the way they do, that would increase to $5,803, or $484 per month, and health care costs would go down a lot (there are still some things not covered by Medicare - maybe those could be covered by MFA since the average person on MFA would be cheaper than the average person on Medicare right now). But if employers are no longer paying for expensive health insurance, I think they could afford to pay more than half of the 2.9%. I think they could pay more than half and it would still be cheaper to them. Unless of course they aren't currently providing health insurance. They could also do it by tax bracket; which in this case would make a lot of sense since people make more money as they age, and need more health care as they age.

 

I probably wasted my time thinking about this because I'm guessing someone's assessed it online already and thought of way more things than I did.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is I think the prices would be forced to come down if we got rid of health insurance, so it might not be necessary to pay as much as I've stated above.

[QMany]

On 7/11/2019 at 11:06 AM, Frott Scost said:

 

Bernie has said multiple times that your taxes will go up, but it will net save you money without premiums, deductibles, co-pays.  Maybe mainstream media should be truthful about medicare for all when they describe it.  Instead of saying your taxes will go up and you will lose your private health insurance, they should tell the truth that you will save money and you will get better healthcare, free at the point of care.  They never will though because insurance companies spend too much money on their channel for advertisement.

 

 

[Ratt Mhule]

55 minutes ago, QMany said:

 

 

 

JHFC.  If there is one thing I agree with DT on its that mainstream media is terrible.

[BigRedBuster]

@Moiraine @QMany Those are exactly the issues of why...as a conservative....this needs to be seriously looked at.  Get better service for less money.  That sure seems like it should be the conservative agenda.

 

[commando]

this election comes down to medicare for all from the dems to medicare for none from trump

[TheSker]

43 minutes ago, commando said:

this election comes down to medicare for all from the dems to medicare for none from trump

Not true.

 

There are Dems who are not on board.  At least three from Tuesday's debate.

[Danny Bateman]

2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

@Moiraine @QMany Those are exactly the issues of why...as a conservative....this needs to be seriously looked at.  Get better service for less money.  That sure seems like it should be the conservative agenda. 

 

 

We should all be fine with this discussion of improving healthcare access and constraining costs. We likely need more government intervention. But how much? Do we take a more drastic approach and completely overhaul the system or do we keep working to improve the current framework? It's healthy to have this discussion and it will yield changes that lead to a better system.

 

The problem is the discussion is only happening within one party. Republicans still want to tell everyone how socialist the ACA is and are STILL trying to hatchet it in the courts after failing to undo it in Congress.

 

It's damn near impossible to move forward when one party flat out wants to restrict access to healthcare and turn a blind eye to the root cause of rising costs. We don't share the same fundamental goals in "reforming" healthcare.