111–120 of 353 posts
Anything less than the Federal government threatening to nationalize Aetna would be insufficient, lest the Obama administration wants to appear weak and invite further dissent.
Just another reason why single-payer is the best option.
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There's no way that we'd get single payer here because the Republican party has convinced their base that single-payer health care is socialism and that socialism is evil, which leads to the situation where poor people who desperately need health care and can't afford it still oppose single-payer even though they stand to gain the most from it.
The situation is not helped when proponents of single-payer say things like "there will be no denial of claims." I think there are things to support about single-payer, but it really, truly, I swear to fucking God, has trade-offs, and since it has been sold as not having any honest trade-offs, we can't actually implement the hard parts of single-player. http://www.vox.com/2016/1/17/10784528/bernie-sanders-single-...
Anyway, in almost all world single payer systems, rich people can still pay for vanity doctors.
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Tell it to Australia, Canada, and the UK.
I am in Canada. Animals have a MUCH higher quality of healthcare in Canada than humans do.
Her treatments were cheaper than paying a doctor here in cash. Normally I pay a doc $150 or less for a routine walk in with "I have the flu".
Our dog got chemo pills, checkups, hell the vet even called us each week to check her status between treatments cheaper than that $150 I would pay for fifteen minutes of doctor time.
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Of course, the constituencies which oppose single-payer seem often to be composed of the same people who will vote out anyone who messes with their Social Security, Medicare, or VA benefits.
That's an excellent point. Medicare and SSI are equally bad programs that should be phased out.
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The main issue with healthcare in the u.s. actually has to do with Medicare, Medicaid, and social security. All of the state options pay only ~10% of what they are billed no matter how large the bill (there is also usually a cap). This forces hospitals to charge exorbitant prices. Private insurance options pay larger percentages: 12 - 50%. People without insurance usually will pay either 100% or 0%, with some people…
> Honestly, the easiest way to fix it is to get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, and social security or force everyone to pay 100% as opposed to negotiating lower rates. Bullshit. This isn't an easy problem, and you're casually dismissing systems that support millions of people.
True or false?
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It's hard to tell if there are inefficiencies and waste or if health care is just simply really expensive. Health care is done by the Provinces in Canada, with transfers from the Federal Government to help out. The most recent Alberta budget[0] puts the cost of health care at about $20B. This represents approximately 40% of Alberta government spending. Is that due to waste or inefficiencies? I honestly have no idea.…
> Health care is done by the Provinces in Canada, with transfers from the Federal Government to help out. The most recent Alberta budget[0] puts the cost of health care at about $20B. This represents approximately 40% of Alberta government spending. Worth considering: Per http://www.chcf.org/publications/2016/05/health-care-costs-1... > US health spending reached $3.0 trillion in 2014, or $9,523 per capita, and accou…
I'm Canadian and can't get a family doctor (nor can my wife). I don't consider that a "good deal". Maybe if it was more lucrative (read: doctors made more money, budgets were higher) we could attract more talent and I could?
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There is no benefit. The benefit is for the legislatures who passed the law. There was no way that we'd get single payer here in the US because our Congress is very much in the pocket of the health care industry. As such, the markets were a compromise measure enacted by congress to make it easier for people to choose health care. Before Obamacare, it was sort of a black box where only HR people could figure out prici…
Obamacare has had one significant, lasting effect: culturally, the idea is now that everyone should have access to health care. That's the default. Bringing in a public option will be an easy, natural next step, if not for Clinton, then for whoever succeeds her.
If she does get us single payer, she's the greatest trojan horse ever in American politics.
Can anyone succinctly explain the benefits of having a market for private health insurance companies, rather than a single provider of health insurance (government, aka "public option")? Can a capitalist case be made for their existence? Does the lack of a large private insurance market in countries with government-provided health insurance cause lots of inefficiencies and waste?
It's hard to tell if there are inefficiencies and waste or if health care is just simply really expensive. Health care is done by the Provinces in Canada, with transfers from the Federal Government to help out. The most recent Alberta budget[0] puts the cost of health care at about $20B. This represents approximately 40% of Alberta government spending. Is that due to waste or inefficiencies? I honestly have no idea.…
Then you have amortization of the equipment and operating room, and some fraction of the hospital support staff during the prep and recovery stages. But even with that I still don't see where the $80,000 for the surgery cost comes from.
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Private insurers also ration the amount and quality of care given.
Everyone rations. The difference between the US and the single-payers is that more care is given and better care is given vs. the rest of the world where gov't budgets are constrained so care is constrained. I'm in Ontario and I can't even get a general practitioner. This is worse than communism.
As for your problem getting a GP, that sucks for you, but that is a local political problem and not a systemic problem with single payer. E.g. in Norway everyone has a legal right to a named GP, and gets one. I live in the UK now, and while there is no guarantee here I've never had a problem finding a GP.
I can afford private insurance here if I'd like it, but I've never had any issues with the NHS that'd justify it. On the contrary the treatment has always been stellar (I've not had to use it all that much myself apart from a "mystery infection" t
If you have the money, nothing stops you from getting supplemental private insurance in Canada either, so I wonder what you mean when you say you can't find a GP. Do you mean that you're unwilling to go private? Or that you actually can't find one either way?
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There is no benefit. The benefit is for the legislatures who passed the law. There was no way that we'd get single payer here in the US because our Congress is very much in the pocket of the health care industry. As such, the markets were a compromise measure enacted by congress to make it easier for people to choose health care. Before Obamacare, it was sort of a black box where only HR people could figure out prici…
There's no way that we'd get single payer here because the Republican party has convinced their base that single-payer health care is socialism and that socialism is evil, which leads to the situation where poor people who desperately need health care and can't afford it still oppose single-payer even though they stand to gain the most from it.