Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
1–10 of 85 posts
Re: Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
#2Isn't that a given? I mean, do people not realize that the money has to come from somewhere? Of course it's going to be insanely expensive to insure everybody.
Edit: I'm not arguing against Single Payer, I'm just surprised that this is something so shocking an article was written (and then upvoted) about.
Re: Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
#3It will also provide excellent cover for California's pension shortfalls.
Re: Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
#4This headline is really misleading and clickbaity. It makes it seem as if the state is facing a budget shortfall. The cost they are referring to is a hypothetical number crunching of possible future healthcare systems.
Re: Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
#5TLDR; $400 billion total, $200 billion is currently spent on subsidies and medi-cal, $150 billion is already spent by employers.
The state would need to "find" ~$50 billion or ~$1,300 per resident more to fully fund this.
Personally, this seems like a relative bargain and some modest extra taxes should offset the difference. Article reads pretty poorly and sensationalist.
Not to mention that the missing amount is less than most people have in various deductables and co-pays already.
EDIT: Turns out in 2015, per capita health spending was $9,990 already, which translates to ~$390 billion for 39 million Californians. So $400 Billion is cheaper than what we already spend in 2017, assuming modest growth since 2015.
Further, if we assume that this money already gets spent, just not very evenly, we'll end up with a much fairer system and a lot smaller downside for people if/when they get sick.
Personally, I'll gladly trade some immediate savings for long term protection from not having insurance when I need it most. The data seems to imply that I won't even have to pay all that much more.
Re: Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
#6Isn't that a given? I mean, do people not realize that the money has to come from somewhere? Of course it's going to be insanely expensive to insure everybody. Edit: I'm not arguing against Single Payer, I'm just surprised that this is something so shocking an article was written (and then upvoted) about.
> Of course it's going to be insanely expensive to insure everybody.
The entire rest of the western world would indicate that it's cheaper than the current system, better too.
Re: Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
#7Isn't that a given? I mean, do people not realize that the money has to come from somewhere? Of course it's going to be insanely expensive to insure everybody. Edit: I'm not arguing against Single Payer, I'm just surprised that this is something so shocking an article was written (and then upvoted) about.
Right, it adds an insane cost. You then need to raise that same amount of money.
However, when you consider that people are no longer paying for health insurance there's a large pool of money available.
CA needs somewhere between $50-100B to fund this project. The population of CA is around 39M (https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&...). That means, you need about $2,564/person/year. Or about $214/person/month.
If you compare that figure to the average health insurance cost for people in CA everything starts to look possible or reasonable.
Of course, there's still some massive political hurdles to get over. But the money is out there.
Re: Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
#8This headline is really misleading and clickbaity. It makes it seem as if the state is facing a budget shortfall. The cost they are referring to is a hypothetical number crunching of possible future healthcare systems.
And even further, they are misrepresenting that somewhat. They admit further down the article that after offsetting from the existing employer based tax that "total new spending to implement the system would be between $50 billion and $100 billion per year". They make it sound like it's $400b more, rather than total.
There is also no discussion of the kind of external savings this might create. Usually that kind of thing is included in budget office analysis.
Re: Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
#9Few know this:
The United States currently spends more money per capita on socialized medicine than any other country except Norway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
In fact, the US spends more on socialized medicine than Japan, the UK and Finland spend in total, private and public spending.
The US healthcare system is totally out of control. Nothing will fix it until there is a collapse.
Re: Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget
#10TLDR; $400 billion total, $200 billion is currently spent on subsidies and medi-cal, $150 billion is already spent by employers. The state would need to "find" ~$50 billion or ~$1,300 per resident more to fully fund this. Personally, this seems like a relative bargain and some modest extra taxes should offset the difference. Article reads pretty poorly and sensationalist. Not to mention that the missing amount is les…
Yeah, the headline is sensationalist. With the current spending factored in, it's really not that bad.
A big enough tax on fast food could probably cover it, with the added bonus of decreasing the amount needed.
If that doesn't work, then there are a lot of programs they can cut that are less important than healthcare.