I'm told we can't afford universal health care. I call bullshit on that!

[flamin lib]

The fact is we can’t NOT afford universal health care. Most appropriately single payer health care. We won’t get single payer any time soon, but it is the least expensive way to provide superior health care to every citizen of the United States.

Besides, we’re paying for it now. In fact we are over-paying for it by double what it costs in the most expensive system in the 37 countries that offer it. The problem is that nobody can see the cost directly. If you’re insured by your employer it cost them about $500 a month for a single person and $1000 for a family of four. That expense could be going into payroll, re-investment or modernization of the business. You might even get a share of it in your paycheck. That cost is a hidden tax that you never see.

If you’re not insured by your employer you either know exactly what health care costs or you get your health care at the emergency room. There are three problems with that: it’s the most expensive health care available costing many times what the same treatment would cost at a doctor’s office, you have to be critically ill to get treatment there so what might have been cured with a simple doctor’s visit and some medication now requires far more aggressive treatment, and if your condition isn’t traumatic you can’t get treated at all. Got cancer? No treatment for you! Have chronic allergies that require prescription drugs to control? No treatment for you! Who pays for all this expensive treatment? Everybody with health insurance, that’s who. Why do you think an aspirin costs $35 in a hospital? To offset the 30-40% of treatments that never get paid for! Oh, and by the way, that chronic allergy costs your boss additional money in lost productivity which is another hidden tax paid by your employer and passed on to you in lower wages.

My answer? Quit hiding the costs. Just raise taxes and give everybody Medicare for All. Everybody in, nobody out. Ask any employer if s/he would trade a $250/employee tax for the $500 insurance cost? Think they’d go for it?
Medicare already exists, costs 30% less than private insurance for administration and everybody I know who uses it loves it. Oh, but the Conservatives say that there is too much fraud and abuse in the Medicare system. Yeah, ya’ know why? Because the private insurance companies perpetrate it on you and me tax payers. In Senate Testimony Senator Bernie Sanders (I Vermont) read off a string of Medicare fraud cases that totaled $4.4 Billion (read it here: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=315056 ). Those were just the cases caught during the Bush years when the DOJ was busy prosecuting Democrats, justifying torture and generally ignoring big business raping and pillaging the public. Get the profit out of health care and, poof!, fraud goes away.

There is something profoundly wrong, some would say sick, about an insurance company making a profit by denying treatment for people in pain.

[Psychic Consortium]

1. You are correct.

We cannot afford to not have universal healthcare.
If the crooks are out of the system, there is money.

[PDJane]

2. It's sick.

It's immoral. It's expensive. And it's just plain wrong.

[rurallib]

3. kickerooni and great rant

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. K&R.

[sutz12]

5. We can afford to if we want to...

That is the crux of the matter. If we really want to do this, it is eminently doable.

The problem now is that the people who don't want to do it seem to have the loudest microphone in the room. That is changing slowly.

The internet helps. The "people in power" are having difficulty hiding the fact that everybody else in the civilized world has it and does fine with it.

To the indoctrinated Ayn Randian Neo-cons, there is no "we," though. To them there is only an "I".

[OHdem10]

6. We can afford two wars, we can afford all kinds of money including

Heaalth Care in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can afford millions
to Pakistan--including social services for the people.

This is middle class workers taxes. We can never afford
a safety net in America. I wonder why.

[napi21]

7. The other side of public HC that I NEVER hear discussed is that

it wouldn't be FREE! Medicare is NOT FREE! Why couldn't a "FEE" or "TAX" be deducted from frim every paycheck and be at a rate to cover UHC, very similar to the way a separate medicare tax is deducted now, and for those not working, it would simply be deducted from unemployment checks or welfare payments. In return, there would be no more employer HC payments, no more payments from the employees to help cover the HC expense. It would cover basic HC and insurance comopanies could still offer supplemental ins. the same as they do with medicare.

When I hear Pubs talk about a public plan, they NEVER MENTION that the much of cost of such a plan would or could be offset by premiums the consumer would have to pay. I don't have the option of receiving SS WITHOUT the Medicare premium being deducted from my check!

[Wednesdays]

8. K&R

:kick:

[Festivito]

9. I understand it to be LESS. They're desperate to NOT COST it.

$500/month is $6000 a year. That's what we were paying in Bill Clinton's time. Now it's over $8000 a year.

When we were at $6000 a year, Canada was paying half that: $3000 a year, covering everyone, covering everything, and doing it in a transition.

If these bribed buffoons we call representatives allow US to cost what single-payer really would cost US, the cost savings would be so obvious they'd have to lie about the effects next.... That is: Covers everyone, for everything, you pick your own doctor and it costs less for less bureaucracy of any kind between doctors and any American in need of a doctor.

EDIT ADD:
$3000/year for 300 million Americans yields .9T$/year. WE CURRENTLY PAY $8000/year costing US 2.4T$. By going to single payer we save 1.5T$ per year. SAVE!

[Senator]

10. K&R

[lonestarnot]

11. Insurance cos. are some sick bastards alrightie.