201–210 of 468 posts
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California could get rid of their budget issues instantly with a progressive property tax. How about an extra bracket for nonhomesteads starting at values over $1M?
How about we get rid of Prop 13, a not-so-stealth tax on the young.
Vermont tried this a few years ago, they had to cancel it since in the end it wasn't financially feasible [1]. CA is already dealing with severe budget issues [2][3], so while it sounds nice in theory I'm hesitant to believe the finances actually work out. [1] http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/single-payer-vermont-1... [2] http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-crisis-davis-d... [3] http://www.cnbc.com/201…
A single payer system is a step in the right direction, however, there are deeper issues with the American healthcare system. The unit cost of healthcare is so much higher than in other developed countries. In British Columbia, physicians bill at total of around $31 CAD ($23 USD) for a standard office visit. They pay all their overhead out of this fee. Typically doctors keep 65% of their billings and the offices take…
For one, doctors educational costs are astronomical in the U.S compared to other countries. The amount of people able to become doctors is artificially limited. Drug prices are unregulated. The cost of developing drugs is high and has been getting higher. Hospitals have little price transparency and the cost of same procedures at different hospitals is wildly different. The same bag of saline can cost 10x more at one…
What do drug prices have to do with the cost of an office consultation?
A well-executed single-payer system would make California even more attractive for entrepreneurship and increase labor mobility for everyone. Life would be much easier if we could start companies or switch jobs without worrying about healthcare.
Even easier if people could just let others take care of _every_ whim. If there was a guaranteed income there wouldn't even be a need for entrepreneurship!
It seems that despite your conjecture, there are a number of people investing the income into education, fishing nets, seeds for crops/livestock, fishing nets, beauty salon's, etc.
In my experience, poor people are the world's greatest entrepreneurs. Every day, they must innovate in order to survive. They remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income.
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[2] is about CalPERS, which is separate from the budget of the State. There may be a current budget shortfall, but CalPERS is fine (it is the largest non-country pension fund in the world; and comes in the top 10 when listed among countries). [3] mentions that tax revenues will fall because of the end of temporary tax increases; those increases are likely to be renewed. Categorizing these as 'severe budget issues' is…
> as a Californian...I'd rather that people like me... There is crux of the issue: not everyone shares the same opinion and belief, so should the government force those people to spend their earned income on healthcare for others? Personally I think it won't end up how you anticipate but that's just me. Right now the working people of America are already subsidizing healthcare for the masses and all I ever hear is pe…
> all I ever hear is people complaining about it
Government funded healthcare is widely supported in the U.S., including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act.
A well-executed single-payer system would make California even more attractive for entrepreneurship and increase labor mobility for everyone. Life would be much easier if we could start companies or switch jobs without worrying about healthcare.
(European liberalism is clearly culturally distinct from social democratic thought; where it comes to the same positions it's typically by other means – not that there's anything wrong with social democracy or democratic Socialism, for that matter.)
A good starting point would be, at pan-Europe level, the ALDE; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_of_Liberals_and_Democ.... National-level parties you might have heard of are the Liberal Democrats (UK) and Democraten 66 (Netherlands).
edit: full disclosure; I am an ethical intuitionist.[4]
[1] http://degreesofclarity.com/writing/utilitarianism/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
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> as a Californian...I'd rather that people like me... There is crux of the issue: not everyone shares the same opinion and belief, so should the government force those people to spend their earned income on healthcare for others? Personally I think it won't end up how you anticipate but that's just me. Right now the working people of America are already subsidizing healthcare for the masses and all I ever hear is pe…
It seems like most of the complaints about healthcare now relate to unpredictable costs and complexity though. I'm not sure the simplicity and stress-reduction of a single-payer system really are appreciated. I'm Canadian, and our system is fair from perfect. That said, it's hard for me to comprehend the stories I regularly read about people's experiences in the American system, trying to decide on plans, sacrificing…
However, when I ask if they'd be ok waiting over a year for joint replacement surgery, they get a weird look on their face. Or, if they have cancer, they aren't going to get to go to the best cancer center in Canada, you go to your local hospital. And if you want the latest and greatest cancer treatment? Well, you'll need to pay for that yourself since the gov't hasn't yet approved it for reimbursement.
There are benefits to both systems, but it's disingenuous to say that a single payer system solves all problems.
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Why is single payer better? Genuinely curious. I just don't have any solid proof of the American Government doing a better job than the private industry enabled by competition.
assuming you're asking in good faith, the answer is pretty simple. A larger population has more leverage, and if all of the citizens bargain as one bloc (i.e., if the government does so on their behalf), it drives the market. Note that a tremendous chunk of the market needs to be involved for this to have maximum effect -- if a physician can "opt out" of Medicare/MediCal and make more money, they will, by and large.…
Right there is the big problem, though: Medicare reimbursement rates are already below sustainable levels for providers, which actually results in providers charging private insurers for the difference.
If Medicare were expanded to everyone, either Medicare would have to increase its reimbursement rates, or you'd see providers close up their practices (which is already happening, and which is one of the current problems with providing affordable care outside urban areas).
> Medical care, unlike most goods and services, is stunningly inelastic in demand
That's actually not true at all - medical care is highly elastic, as evidenced by the utilization differences for people who have plans with high copays and deductibles compared to those who don't.
> As far as private vs. public, the issue here is the same as for schools, a private insurer or school can choose not to insure or educate a "customer", the government by law cannot. In the handful of cross-over studies of charter schools or vouchers, after controlling for subject-specific effects, the children who switched from public to charter or private tended to do slightly worse than expected based on their test scores from public schools. (It is a difficult experiment to run for numerous reasons.)
But we actually do have a point of comparison here, because Medicare does have both privately managed and publicly-managed plans (as does Medicaid). Consistently, the privately-managed plans come in under budget while delivering superior medical outcome metrics and patient satisfaction scores compared to Original Medicare (or the publicly-administered Medicaid plans).