Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still it is worth highlighting on this forum since many Americans believe that healthcare is "free" across Europe.
Healthcare is "free" across Europe, including in The Netherlands. The choice of The Netherlands' to structure their system as mandatory insurance doesn't change the nature of it, it is free at the point of service with the mandatory insurance costs paid for by the government when someone is unable to pay themselves.
Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
141–150 of 167 posts
Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
#142We could easily do this and it would actually be significantly cheaper. But I can’t imagine it happening nationwide. Maybe cities can create their own public options, say a flat 3% income tax and you get health insurance. So much progress isn’t made in the US due to the welfare queen myth. Heavily intertwined with racism, many imagine “lazy” people getting something they didn’t absolutely earn.
That “lazy people” getting something they didn’t absolutely earn is a core right wing narrative that has been very successfully propagandized for decades. People are still going to need work to pay for everything else. No one is going to stop working once the crushing weight of medical debt is lifted. It’s easy to debunk but I don’t see much effort going into this right now.
Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It existed only as extremely expensive boutique products until the government put its regulatory thumb on the scale and passed the ACA. 100% untrue. There were affordable catastrophic coverage plans available, and many were made illegal by the ACA and the requirement to provide boutique services for "free" (i.e., forced to pay for even if you don't use).
> There were affordable catastrophic coverage plans available Not for anyone who needed them! If you were already sick, you would die poor without coverage. Are we really continuing to have this discussion?[1] The market failed in this case. We all know it. [1] Just to short circuit: you'll want to deflect to a non-economic discussion of whose "fault" it was that they were stuck with a pre-existing condition. But my…
Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps mountains of frustration punctuated by relief that soon vanishes? I’d cap income at $5 million a year and strip the tax code down to something devoid of exceptions, but I’m in no position to do that.
...What do you mean "cap"?
Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Healthcare is "free" across Europe, including in The Netherlands. The choice of The Netherlands' to structure their system as mandatory insurance doesn't change the nature of it, it is free at the point of service with the mandatory insurance costs paid for by the government when someone is unable to pay themselves.
No matter your mental gymnastics that is not how those Americans imagine health care in Europe works. And just for your (and our confused American friends) information there are several countries in Europe where "a point of (healthcare) service" will send you a bill.
Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're just flat out wrong, it was not "basically inaccessible". Tens of millions of people had individual health insurance prior to the ACA, over 30 million in 2010, averaging 10% of all insured people from 2000 to 2010. The ACA, while very important and valuable legislation, only increased the number of individually insured people by around 25%. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/health-i...
But that was not the same "health insurance" that was sold post-ACA. The product itself was completely different, due to the pre existing condition clauses and benefit maximums. Paying $x premiums to only receive a maximum of $y of healthcare and only in certain cases is not what people refer to as the health insurance available in various European countries, which is ostensibly what the situation is compared to. Eve…
> The distinction in the US before 2011 is that couldn’t buy health insurance as an individual, hence it was a benefit dependent upon being employed. Post 2011, health insurance became attainable without an employer.
More than 30 million people had individual health insurance in 2010. If it were useless, 30 million people would not have paid $5k - $10k per year for it out of their own pocket.
Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
No matter your mental gymnastics that is not how those Americans imagine health care in Europe works. And just for your (and our confused American friends) information there are several countries in Europe where "a point of (healthcare) service" will send you a bill.
Which European countries have a healthcare system similar to the American system? A system that has "insurance" (e.g: The Netherlands, Germany) is no less "free" healthcare than a system without insurance (e.g: England) or a system that will "send you a bill" like France. "Free" healthcare means that the patient will never need to worry about the cost of their treatment because it is covered by the system (whether th…
Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
#148Another problem with this analysis is that the UK's national health system isn't the only example of a major developed country with a functioning health system. Many countries without the US's problems have private providers and private health insurance.
It's plainly obvious that the US has severe problems. Ideological polarization has fixated the discussion on a contest between public single payer and everybody-for-themselves private insurance. But the core problems have not much at all to do with insurance. They are, probably:
(1) Most Americans get their health insurance through their job, as a path-dependent consequence of bad 1950s tax policy. This in turn insulates insurers from their customers and breaks most of the mechanisms an ordinary market (like food, or transportation, or tax preparation) has from going off the rails.
(2) Americans pay doctors (and providers generally) anywhere from 2-5x more than other countries do. Providers account for the overwhelming majority of all health spending; compared to providers, drugs are almost a rounding error. This in turn is probably a consequence of policy decisions we made in the early 1990s, when the AMA lobbied Medicare to cap the number of residencies funded every year, which in turn generates artificial scarcity.
Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can get healthcare outside of employers and it's incredibly expensive. The cost of private healthcare (either employer sponsored or not) is what is responsible for what the article is talking about, it's certainly not just employer provided plans. Are you saying that if employers didn't provide health insurance that it would help the situation somehow?
Yes. Employers get huge tax incentives for providing insurance, while individuals don't. This ensures that the only economical way to buy health insurance is through an employer, which means you are not free to change plans without changing employers (or change employers without changing plans).
Individuals are the one with huge tax benefits under the ACA. Last year, the government paid 73% of my health insurance premiums as a tax credit.
Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can force insurers to cover folks they wouldn't want to otherwise by bringing more customers (employees) to the table. The word you're looking for is "convince," not "force." This whole discussion is replete with misuses of words like "free" and "force," and it's a little worrying.
Arguments about words are a little woke for my taste. Fine fine, pretend I said "convince" and then reply to that. Thanks.
I'm also curious (since this is closely related) whether you favor the tax break to employer health insurance. You wanna talk about my woke focus on words, well well, take "externality." I'm not familiar with these bad externalities of the institution of employer provided insurance of itself, but I can see negatives from the tax break. Namely, by subsidizing my employer's health plan, my private health insurance purchasing power is effectively nerfed. Bit of a stretch to call that external.