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

nysenate.gov

171–180 of 569 posts

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

#171

Coming from a country that has this, there should be caution: it gets more affordable, but you get what you pay for. In my country of origin, you get a partially-paid-for ride to the emergency room, where you pay for things like casts, non-ward rooms, dental care out of pocket. There is no prescription coverage. There is no optometry coverage. I would wait significant chunks of a year for procedures and diagnostics.…

I come from a country with universal healthcare too, and my experience is the opposite. Yes, to this day, it doesn’t cover dental or vision, which is BS if you ask me, and there is some co-pay for certain prescriptions; regardless, it is a fantastic system, and I miss it so much every time I need to go to the doctor here in the US. The main reason is uncertainty: in the US, I can never know how much something is goin…

> I can never know how much something is going to be

I think the closest thing you can get to the cost experience of universal healthcare in the US is one of the better HMO providers like Kaiser. Everything is a known cost up front.

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

#172
post #28
post #4

With California and New York both exploring statewide single payer healthcare it looks like the Overton window is moving closer to legitimate discussion of a nationwide single payer plan in the US. It’ll be interesting to watch, since this is such a hot-button topic here on many levels.

Massachusetts may try it as well: https://masscare.org/ It'll be a very interesting experiment, if it works, other states will copy it. If it fails wealthy people will leave those states for places with lower taxes, and poorer people will move in to gain free health care. There's a reason the most populous states (CA, NY, MA) are the ones trying it first, and it's not because it's cheaper.

>Massachusetts may try it as well: https://masscare.org/

Massachusetts has had 98% health care coverage for more than 15 years. (The only countries in the world with more than that are those, such as the UK, in which no membership card is needed for receiving care.)

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

#173
post #146
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NY should pay for single payer in part by raising real estate taxes, it's the only clear way the state has to avoid capital flight in the way you're describing here. This said, a big thing NY benefits from is that a lot of people work in NY state temporarily as consultants in addition to the bridge and tunnel crowd that come in from NJ and CT, this gives them a much larger tax base than the population living there br…

I live in NY and pay >$18k a year in property tax for a small house. Real estate taxes are high enough.

They are offensively low for multi-million dollar buildings in NYC. Cut some slack for owner occupiers who had the assessed value skyrocket on them. Tax everybody else fairly.

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent is not tax, what an absurd comment.

If you're renting, your landlord is paying property tax and passing it on to you.

Some states let you deduct a portion of rent in place of property tax.

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

#175

Coming from a country that has this, there should be caution: it gets more affordable, but you get what you pay for. In my country of origin, you get a partially-paid-for ride to the emergency room, where you pay for things like casts, non-ward rooms, dental care out of pocket. There is no prescription coverage. There is no optometry coverage. I would wait significant chunks of a year for procedures and diagnostics.…

For your first paragraph, I’ve seen that alot. My european friends from big economies there brag about their insurance coverage, some working in the states with some global coverage plan, and as soon as I ask about something seemingly basic: “oh thats elective or cosmetic, why would that be covered” I think there is a way to make it work with American expectations, American resources, no equivalent tax burden.

> and as soon as I ask about something seemingly basic

Do you have an example?

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

#176

It's not rocket science, plenty of other countries manage to provide healthcare. Just remove the age limit on Medicare.

But won't you think of the administrators at all of these private health insurers that would be out of their cushy jobs? I consulted for a "non-profit" Blue Cross Blue Shield franchise 15 years ago. It was rampant with nepotism and outright incompetence. A good chunk of our health-care "system" is just a giant jobs program.

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

#177
post #4

With California and New York both exploring statewide single payer healthcare it looks like the Overton window is moving closer to legitimate discussion of a nationwide single payer plan in the US. It’ll be interesting to watch, since this is such a hot-button topic here on many levels.

Why would you want it nation wide? Even if you “support it”, I’d much rather watch the implications from the various experiments across states. Then we can select the best option. Personally, I’d like to see some states ban healthcare outright. Others have full coverage and everything in between. Then wait 10 years and we can see the results. I strongly suspect there would be states willing to do this.

> Why would you want it nation wide?

They didn't say they did, they said we're closer to having a legitimate discussion.

But to answer your question, if it's better, we might want it nationwide for similar reasons we have a national minimum wage and national child labor laws. For some things making sure there's a lower bound that everyone can rely on is a large part of the benefit, so inconsistent rules across the nation don't allow for a large portion of the benefit to be realized.

Whether this is one of those cases is something we'll hopefully get some more data on.

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

#178

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. Why?

I think funding the elderly is a lofty goal, but I don't see a good intellectual argument for FORCING our children to pay for our healthcare. You shouldn't view your child (nor your neighbor's child) as your own personal piggy-bank to extract from when you get ill.

IMO our goal should be to hand down resources from parent to child, not the opposite direction.

If I made this story a bit more personal and wrote ("I am too ill to work anymore, so I drove to my son's house and took $200 off his counter to buy my medication) HN would be reacting with outrage.

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

#179

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.

I mean the young get kicked out of their commercial plans at age 65. So in a way they don't pay for it at the commercial level.

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

#180
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

You can't just assume tax increases directly lead to increased 1:1 consumer prices, that's not how supply and demand works.
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