DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Repeal and Replace II

We can't afford to do the same as those socialist countries because all our money goes to defend their arses militarily!
Wise up.

Is that all the same money that was protecting their arses when terrorists stole a Venezuelan police helicopter and strafed their Supreme Court?

You mean the attack that the government staged so they could roll out more forces to oppress their people? I doubt we spend (nor should we) a bunch of money protecting the failed and oppressive Venezuela government...

The best thing about these tweets is that Venezuela is hardly socialist. That's the reason it's so unsafe. Many of Venezuelan hospitals are private. And 20% of the country is on a private health plan. There healthcare resembles more of our system than a socialist country in Europe.

How are you reducing the financial burden when taxes will have to skyrocket to pay for this? Coloradocare had a 10% tax increase just to cover Colorado. Colorado population accounts for less than 2% of the country population. How much are we going to have to raise taxes to pay for the other 98%?

Guaranteed healthcare? Again, not going to happen. The unfortunate reality is that healthcare is a finite resource. You'll never have healthcare for 100% of the population. It will always be rationed, whether it be by money, government bureaucracy or some other means.

So, someone posted that California wants to do single payer.

I looked into this last night. They estimate it will cost their taxpayers 40 billion dollars.

Then I looked up the population. I think it was 40 million in 2015.

So, 1000 dollars per person per year in taxes? Is my math bad? (Obviously some pay more/less)

That seems really cheap.

I would get on that bandwagon all day long.

I think I am missing something.

Another thing people forget is with single payer, the government is in charge of all your healthcare.

If the gov says, "Nope, we don't cover that" or "Nope, you can't have that treatment", there is no competitor to go to.

No competition = Bye Bye, time to die.

I just looked to see what was up.

It was suppose to cost 200 billion to implement the program. But I dunno, eve. The figures are all over the place depending which article we read.

One says 200 billion. another says it's 40 billion IF they keep he funding up for Medicaid and all those things. Another says 100 billion pluses another 100 billion for Medicaid expansion.

So I dunno.

Ok thank you. I should have looked harder then. I guess it depends how they do it.

It would be better if a "normal state" did it first as an example.

California is kind of a screwed up state financially.

Colorado should do it first and use their drug taxes to pay for it. lol

I want to see each and every hospital list their prices for every procedure. The consumer should have that information up front.

I want sales of insurance policies on a national basis. If a company can't sell a policy in all 50 states, then you can't sell them in any.

I want health savings accounts, with catastrophic riders. Let's say that a family of 4 has a policy with a $25,000 deductible. They put $800/month into a health savings account. (perhaps even with an employer split) If they are like most people, they will probably only have minor medical issues, especially if they are a younger family. If they have a non-ER type medical issue, they shop the procedure at their local hospitals using the above guides, and decide which way to go.

Pre-existing conditions are a problem, that really blow up premiums. I want high risk pools, supported by the government, to take pre-existing conditions out of this, essentially, new insurance market. This isn't a perfect solution, but I don't really see any other way to keep premiums down at the start. We want healthy people in, to build up the revenue side, so we have to keep premiums down. Pre-existing conditions have to go into their own pool, supported by the government, to keep those prices down.

Raise the out of pocket cost for the ER for the patient. People have got to stop using the ER as a doctor's office. Most policies have Urgent Care as a less expensive option, that that should remain as such. We have to get the sniffles out of the ER. Every insured person has to have a family doctor. Don't want one? Too bad. Sniffles go to the family doc, local clinic, or urgent care. (at a $75 co-pay) Want to use the ER? $500 out of pocket unless the patient is admitted. It's going to have to be harsh in order to get those who abuse the ER to stop doing so.

There are so many ways to save money in healthcare. We should be using everything we have in order to lower the price of care. I think that when a patient sees a physician assistant instead of their physician, it should cost less. Just stupid stuff like this. We are looking at insurance, and not at how to drive down the cost of medical services. We should be looking at malpractice reform. Malpractice insurance drives the cost of care up dramatically. Reform could help bring it back down somewhat.

We need to look at absolutely everything.

No thanks to high risk pools. If they want to go that route, then they should just put pre existing conditions on medicare/medicade, only if they are unable to get group insurance from an employer, spouses employer, or parent.

Romney did it in Massachusetts years ago. I haven't really looked into how well it's working there but it may be a place to look.

And insurance companies can do that now. The only thing we do know is that 22 million will not have health insurance under the new Republican plan. So if you want to talk about it being time to die, you might wqant to start there.

Hey, in theory, would the Feds be able to specifically declare that all taxes collected from a specific industry must go toward a specific purpose?

Like in Colorado, a percentage of all taxes from pot must go to schools and infrastructure. I know states can designate those sort of things, I'm just ignorant on if the Feds can do the same.

Cause in 2016, Colorado collected more than 150 mill in pot taxes, as pot sales went over 1.1 billion last year.

So if every state legalized and averaged maybe 50 mill in tax revenue from pot, that's 2.5 bill in tax revenue that all the states pulled.

Could the Feds designate at their level that the money they receive must go directly to Medicaid or single payer funding?

Key word = "companies".
Competition!
If one plan doesn't fit, you can look at others.

I dont know, but I think it would be a great way to pay for it. Or at least help offset the costs.

And kill two birds with one stone.

Cheap(er) healthcare
Legalize pot

Yes and you should look at what companies are "no longer required to cover" under the new GOP plan.

The funny thing is, we are the ONLY developed nation that doesn't have a single payer plan. The world knows that it works. Yet all we hear from some are the scare tactics against it.

Well, in countries in Europe, they have national healthcare, but you are allowed to pay for private insurance if you so please, but the base coverage will always be there.

I'm struggling to understand why something like that is a bad thing to you.

We ain't Europe so how can you say healthcare would work that way here?

you're right. we aren't europe.

which means we're SUPPOSE to be better, at least when it comes to this topic, yet we aren't.

Yes taxes would go up, but you would no longer be paying those LARGE health insurance premiums. DO THE MATH. 30% of your premium is profit wages for insurance middlemen. 30%!!! That's a 30% savings off that bat. It cost 8% to administer medicare/medicaid. SO Now you have realized a 22% total save without changing anything else. Then you negotiate cost controls with big pharma and hospitals. Next you change the way we think about healthcare. Taking the profit out of it will let us focus more on keeping people healthy in the first place.

Don't forget the massive deductibles we'd no longer be paying. Or no longer living in general fear of debilitating debt. That alone is priceless.

So, single payer health insurance doesn't have deductibles? Sincere question.

It depends. Some systems have copays, usually small. No deductibles.

A friend of mine lives in Columbia, he's an expat that retired there. He has been talking a lot on FB about their system. Cost like $8 copay for doctor, $5 for scripts and the basic health care system takes care of everything a major plan would here. Dental and Optical are subsidized to be affordable, yet have costs associated with them. And electives are covered by free market insurance or self pay; IE: cosmetic surgery, stomach staples, etc. where the need is not based on poor health or being necessary.

Oh and his monthly tax for him his wife and 4 teenage kids is about $240 a month. No shortage of doctors or care providers, hospitals compete to serve you and there are a lot of programs like gyms, swimming, yoga classes, food education, etc. that are covered as preventive medicine.

listening to him makes me feel like I live in a 3rd world country.

Well, lets keep it real. This isnt Columbìa. Medicare has deductables. So use that as a starting point.

LOL...........and which group do you belong to?

Well considering I've been offering a solution to the ACA since 08, probably the latter.

In today's political climate you either belong to the exasperated liberal group or the oddball loosely conservative rhetoric spewing fractious troglodytes group, there seems to be no in between. LOL...........and which group do you belong to?

Nevermind, I know you are liberal.

I have one HUGE problem with the government being in charge of our health care. They will screw it up. When it takes forever to learn what would and wouldn't be covered under medicare, what it will cost, and what is available is like trying to figure out the rules set in place by the IRS. It's a cluster funk.

Now add in the fact that even the people who work for medicare have no clue about it, and it's down right scary.In one day last week I talked to three different people who work for medicare and I got three different sets of answers on what is covered, how much it costs, and what co-pays, and scripts cost. I asked the exact same questions to three different people and got three different answers. Also not a single one of them knew if my chemo was covered, OR had any clue if it was just how much it would cost me out of pocket. Bottom line IMO a single payer system would be good, but our government would just screw it up.

All medically necessary treatment would be approve at the hospital level. Only elective things would be covered in the free market. The medicare that works better.

Doctors are used to asking for extra test and other stuff trying to negotiate your treatment with insurance companies. With single payer they know what's covered beforehand and just process you claim to get paid for treating you.

That's a really bad rationale... and one of the things that bugs me about some American conservatives.. the "we ain't them" reason gets tossed out a lot.. and it implies a level of arrogance that no other countries do things well or have good ideas.... no, we ain't them, but that doesn't mean we can't learn and adopt things that have been successful in other places.. we might have to tweak them to fit our specific circumstances but, believe it or not, America doesn't have a monopoly on good ideas....

Unlike many conservatives, I don't live in fear of a single payer system.. I do have serious concerns about it.. the first being the ability of our government to actually set it up and manage it well.. which would be about the first time in history they set anything up and managed it well.

I don't know the numbers, they are staggeringly huge and complicated when it comes to how much it would cost, but then you have to back-out what we are already spending, etc.. I'm not exactly sure what it would take for somebody to put the numbers in a format that I could understand..

The second being that it is set up in such a way that we are still incentivizing the best and brightest to become doctors and surgeons.. I don't want a guy making $80K a year doing my surgery, I just don't. I want somebody who has put in the painstaking effort it takes to get to that level who is making $500K a year and is worth every penny of it.

Same goes for research, I worry that if you cut off the profit incentive in research that it will stagnate.. if the government dictates to these medical research companies that you can only make $X dollars for your fruits of your research that we will lose our edge in that industry and.. it will stagnate.

And the third being that if government runs it and government pays for it (with our money) that they will use that as an excuse to start making decisions for us.. taking things like smoking, drinking, dietary habits and saying that these things are too big of a burden on the healthcare system, therefore the government is going to start regulating when/if you can have certain things...

But I'm willing to listen.

i agree, i'm worried about the set up. the ACA online rollout is a perfect example of a trainwreck opening for a government sponsored-program.

however, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. i would assume a single payer plan would actually be less complicated than the ACA and it's rollout, as the plan just needs to offer base coverages.

also, this boils down to perspective, opinion, and comfort.

i rather deal with a system that needs to be tweaked like the ACA or single payer, than the crap we had BEFORE the ACA, were premiums were rising at a ridiculous rate anyway. people tend to forget that.

so if i have to choose between a faulty government program that offers base coverages and a market based system were companies go out of their way to intentionally screw over the citizens, i'll choose faulty government program for 500, alex.



you mean for ANY of us to understand. crap is confusing as all hell no matter who is doing the reporting on it. we're in the same boat so i feel you.



this is the part where we definitely start disconnecting.

because i don't think you realize that we aren't talking about healthcare anymore. now we're talking about the culture, identity, and greed (or lack thereof) of people in an industry based on country.

so out of respect of this dialogue, i did some research:

https://medicfootprints.org/10-highest-paid-countries-world-doctors/
https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doctors-in-other-countries-make/

here's a list of what doctors average based on country.

notice how the US is top 3 on the list, and depending on what figures you want to use, #1 in other categories?

yet.....

http://www.businessinsider.com/healthies...net-825-years-8

and i didn't bother posting any other links, cause they all say the same thing.

we are top 3 in paying our doctors, something which YOU just said is important, yet based on the overall system, we aren't getting the best care.

we aren't even in the top 10. or top 15 depending on sources, yet we spend the most on healthcare, and PAY the most to doctors?

yet the only two countries that are above us in pay, have national healthcare systems.

all the other countries who DON'T spend anywhere near as much as we do on doctors, have better overall care.

hmmm.... now, i can definitely dwell further on this, but at least initially, i think i made my point.



based on what evidence? again, a disconnect, because it's increasingly seeming as though your argument is that healthcare in our country is greed-based.

and that's a huge problem if true.



ummm, they already do that. they tell us how fast we are allowed to drive, what we can or can not smoke, what we can or can not drink (moonshine is illegal), polygamy is illegal, even though there's really no reason it should be, and i can go on and on and on about what government says we can or cannot do.

and just in case you forgot, the free market insurance companies were ALREADY doing it. they already charged smokers more. i'm pretty sure they started charging obese people more due to all the diabetes, strokes, heart disease that comes with being obese sometimes.

your fear of what could happen has already happened.

your favorite word in this post seems to be 'incentivize'.

well, just using your own logic, the threat of healthcare costing more could "incentivize" people to live a healthier lifestyle.

I was against a single payer system, then I turned 65, got on Medicare, bought a substantial Supplemental plan with a prescription plan. They way I'm set up now, it seems to be terrific.

I'm having surgery this month to remove a lipoma. I checked with Medicare and Medical Mutual (sup plan) and my out of pocket will be zero. Pretty damn good if you ask me. even the high level plan I had prior wouldn't have been that good. I'd have had a copay, and the best it would have covered is 80%. 20% coming out of my pocket. And I paid a helluva lot more for it.

Not everyone is 65 so I get it, they can't get this, but what if they could?

So now with the experience I've recently had, I am rethinking it. NO, you can't charge them what I pay for Medicare, they have to pay more. How much more? I don't know.

But what I do know is that the system to provide healthcare to everyone is there, in place, and it works.

Can it be tweaked to meet the needs of the masses? Not sure, but I do think it's at least worth a look see.

I'm sure the insurance industry would frown on it. I mean, it would/could put them out of business. I'm sure the medical community would frown on it, I mean, they'd be forced to accept the rates that Medicare insists upon. that wouldn't make them very happy at all.

But in the end, Single Payer works for people over 65.

I heard a Democrat say yesterday, hey, maybe we just move the start of Medicare from 65 to 50 (I think he was picking a number out of the air) But seriously, would that even help?

A Cuban vaccine might some day turn lung cancer into a chronic disease

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article155129444.html

I could give you many examples of industry leading research done in countries with single payer systems. It seems to be a fear among many that R&D of new drugs and treatments will be stifled if we turn to a single payer system. Yet if you look at all of the advancements coming out of countries with single payer systems, I believe it's easy to see this simply isn't so.

It's not so much the single-payer system, but more to do with the regulatory requirements to introduce a medical device.

Yes, both the single payer system and regulatory bodies/requirements are controlled by government, but one does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with the other.