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NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

nysenate.gov

161–170 of 569 posts

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#161
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 60% marginal rates. Last year I paid 17% of my total income in taxes.

You paid much more than that. A substantial part of your rent is property taxes. I also doubt you included sales taxes in that number. Then there's more esoteric stuff like tariffs, etc

NY has low property taxes compared to most no-income-tax states

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#162
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wouldn't. The European single-payer systems pay half what we do per-capita, factoring in private and public spending in both systems. The US system is wildly cost inefficient. See the chart at https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm

Of course it'll raise tax rates. That money does come from somewhere . The real question is whether employers will raise salaries enough to compensate for the additional taxes, once they're no longer providing insurance as a benefit.

> The real question is whether employers will raise salaries enough to compensate for the additional taxes, once they're no longer providing insurance as a benefit.

Spoiler: they won’t. They’ll spin not having to pay a premium as a pay raise.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% of the US federal budget is healthcare spending. https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function And that is only because a ton of people do not actually get healthcare, either because deductibles dissuade them or they do not pass the means testing to get enough subsidies to buy Medicaid or healthcare.gov insurance. And that is because Medicaid severely underpays doctors to the point that if you visit a US c…

Very broad strokes, doctors in the US are overpaid and conservatives legislated Medicare can't negotiate drug prices. Lots of room to drive down costs. Spending is high because of a dysfunctional system driven by profit instead of care. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/12/702500408/are-... https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2010.... https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/10/25/opinion/let-medi…

Agree with the part about doctors being overpaid in the states. My wife is a 3rd year resident of a fairly well-known hospital system in one of the biggest metro areas of the US. We always feel lucky that she is a doctor because we know that she will make $250K+ (more like $300K/year if she choose a hospital in a rural area) as an internal medicine doctor (hospitalist/attending). My wife might go for oncology fellowship and that might put her earnings close to $400K+/year after 3 years of fellowship training (during the fellowship, she will make ~$80-90K/year). We get very good health insurance from her hospital since she started her residency there. I myself quit medical school after 2 years because I hated the way I had to study to get good grades there (a lot of rote memorization). But looking back, I regret quitting.

Both my wife and I agree that if we ever have a kid, we'd encourage him/her to at least consider medicine as his/her profession (assuming that the US healthcare system stays the relatively same). We are NOT the only ones. There are so many doctor friends of ours whose parent(s) are doctors. Our friends also think the same as us (that they'd encourage their kids to consider medicine as a profession).

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You paid much more than that. A substantial part of your rent is property taxes. I also doubt you included sales taxes in that number. Then there's more esoteric stuff like tariffs, etc

Rent is not tax, what an absurd comment.

I’m a landlord and yes it is. My taxes doubled last year because of the stupid housing bubble and so we had to raise rent as well. Gotta make a profit here for this investment to be worthwhile.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#165
One thing I don't understand is how you can make healthcare "equal" in the sense that it will stand up to court challenges in the U.S.

Free speech is a self-service right, so the government can just step out of the way and everything is fine. But healthcare requires the government to do a lot. Not doing something equally (like stepping out of the way of free speech) is easier than doing something (like healthcare) equally.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#166

50% of health resources are used in the final 5 years of life. The young should not pay for the healthcare of the elderly. Society should be apportioned into different age categories, and funded separately, with a 'base' tier for all citizens and legal residents, and a higher tier for those with private or employer insurance.

> The young should not pay for the healthcare of the elderly. The same way responsible drivers should not pay for reckless ones? Or responsible homeowners shouldn't pay for reckless ones? The whole idea of insurance is to distribute the costs so that no one has to bear long tail costs alone...

Private auto and homeowners insurance are not price-insensitive, despite being mandatory (former case, by mandate, latter case, in practice for mortgaged property). If insurance companies paid out indiscriminately to the reckless; i.e. failed to manage their risk; then their premiums would get too high and they would lose their average customers.

There is no analogue for taxpayer-funded healthcare. There is no practical upper bound on the cost. The over-users will not run out of other people's money. Unless, of course, there are death panels; everyone loves death panels.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You paid much more than that. A substantial part of your rent is property taxes. I also doubt you included sales taxes in that number. Then there's more esoteric stuff like tariffs, etc

Rent is not tax, what an absurd comment.

"rent" != "a substantial part of rent"

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#168
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New York is losing population at a breakneck pace. Our government is to blame. I am for single payer to some extent, but if done poorly medical staff (who are already leaving due to pandemic policies) will just pick up and leave. We recently expanded the privileges of nurse practitioners which is great, but two large nursing unions are less than 60 days away from striking.

Citation needed. Every population graph I can find show a small decline over the last few years but it's still above 2000 and they've had population dips before (1970-1980) that then recovered. This comment reads like my in-laws who always talk about how "people can't get out of CA fast enough", um the population numbers say otherwise.

NY had been holding steady at about 6.5% of the US population since around 2010, but recently dipped just below 6%

https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-tr...

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would healthcare overall in e.g New York be equivalent though? In Canada, we have "free" healthcare but literally have no other option so it's the Soviet style mess you'd expect a government monopoly to be. But would this bar paid healthcare? Couldn't people still have health insurance and get private care? Is there something preventing that?

I’m a Canadian living and working in the US and I’d take the Canadian system any day of the week. I think it’s crazy that your access to healthcare is dependent on your employment.

Are you making that decision because the quality of care you've received is better in the Canadian system than the American system, or because you disagree with how the American system is structured?

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would healthcare overall in e.g New York be equivalent though? In Canada, we have "free" healthcare but literally have no other option so it's the Soviet style mess you'd expect a government monopoly to be. But would this bar paid healthcare? Couldn't people still have health insurance and get private care? Is there something preventing that?

You're not supposed to be able to get private healthcare in Canada, but actually there are plenty of fancy clinics that will fix you up on the spot if you have money. It's all hush-hush because those in power are the primary users of that parallel system. It's not a criminal underground but an unregulated mezzanine, yes? Also, in my experience, public healthcare _can_ be quite good, but the quality of service varies…

That was the part that pissed me off in Poland. Long story short, country moved to a very weird spot healthcare-wise, where, in theory, 'money would follow the patient'. Doctors did well ( cuz they tend to be smart and are well organized ); patients.. not really. I was young and very, very naive at the time. I figured that if the guys, who are voting for this have to use it, it won't be so bad.

I did not anticipate that they would grant themselves special kind of access to healthcare. Like I said, very, very naive.

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