If their private insurers actually can compete with the public sector, as their ideology constantly claims it can, despite the administrative bloat that makes our health care system the most expensive as well as the narrowest-covering one in the civilized world, then it would be available to them, yes.
Wow, Sam Stone, that was amazing. So what you’re saying is that practically everything you name as a problem of the Canadian system is one that your southern neighbors already have, but a Canuck could get a torn ACL fixed for free after being on a waiting list for a year, and emergency departments don’t charge bills of several thousand dollars.
Yep, you are still better off.
Both the USA and Canada suffer from shortages of trained physicians, but that dates to policies from the 1990’s that capped the number of physicians we train, not from health insurance systems as such. If we fixed those shortages, that would solve some of the pricing problems here and most of the wait times on both sides of the border.
I think the private sector would LOVE to take that challenge, provided the public system doesn’t enjoy a bailout guarantee if it runs out of money. If it runs out of money, it dies, just like a private company.
Also, administrative costs can’t be offloaded onto another federal agency as with Medicare. Medicare fraud is not investigated by CMS, but by the FBI. A new single payer system would have to have responsibility to do its own fraud investigations.
Gotta have those conditions, because it’s easy for public companies to outcompete private companies when they get all kinds of aid that private companies don’t have access to.
Oh, and in case it wasn’t obvious, premiums have to cover 100% of the single payer system’s costs. No supplementing it with general revenue.
You seem to be saying that everyone should have the exact access to the same healthcare and we can achieve that by making it free for everyone at a sufficiently high level that there won’t be a market for private insurance.
We can’t afford that.
We have plenty of programs for the poor that work reasonably well.
Would you say that we should get rid of the private food market and replace it with universal food stamps so that the poor don’t end up eating worse than the middle class? There are certainly health concerns because of poor access to healthy foods.
All goods are rationed. Sure health care should not be rationed based purely on ability to pay like a flatscreen TV or a pedicure but if you remove the cost of health care entirely, there are negative consequences. Healthcare is not like any other program. Nothing else can bankrupt our nation within a generation or two aside from health care done wrong.
The level of care afforded to those who pay nothing should achieve some minimum standards but trying to level the playing field by nationalizing healthcare and making some relatively high standard of care free for everyone and leaving no room for private health care insurance seems economically unsustainable.
Sorry for your troubles but do you really think that a universal health care system would be more generous than blue cross/blue shield?
Yes, its more cost efficient. But the premium we pay also ensures that we have the best doctors, the best drugs, the best facilities… if you can afford it.
So perhaps some base level of health care for everyone plus capitalism care for people who want or can afford more?
Actuarially, its not that hard as long as you don’t count the people who currently qualify for medicare because its really the geezers that fuck it up for everyone. If private insurance companies had to cover current medicare patients, they would cost a lot more than medicare currently does for the same benefits. We know this because we have meidcare part C for long enough to know that they cannot provide the same benefit for the same money as medicare.
CMS has people that try to detect Medicare fraud, just like some private insurance companies. Medicare refers those instances to the FBI (just like private insurance companies refer their fraud cases to the police). What medicare doesn’t do is underwriting or a lot of claims adjustment.
If there are assets already in place that makes the federal government better equipped to do this, then why wouldn’t you let them take advantage of their competitive advantages?
This is pretty easy to achieve in the pre-medicare crowd.
An excellent take down of Bernie’s rants about big banks.
Dear Bernie: I Like You, But These Red Flags Are Too Frequent to Ignore | HuffPost Latest News?
Glass-Steagall did not cause the financial crisis. I also agree completely that the ‘audit the fed’ nonsense is dangerous. It has turned every Fed chair appearance in front of congress as nothing but political potshots taken at the fed to appeal to low information voters
Why would auditing the Fed be dangerous?
Did you read the article? There is already an audit of the Federal Reserve. “Audit the Fed” types on the far left and right are pandering to the low information types who have an irrational fear of central banking.
Yeah, to me it comes across as Ron Paul, goldbug eccentricity. Andrew Jackson would approve, that fucking piece of shit.
That’s definitely not obvious to me. I don’t even think of single payer as having premiums.
Because the “audit the fed” people are really trying to politicize the fed and subject the fed to political pressure. This is dangerous.
If it was up to the congress, they would have interfered with the Fed and tried very hard to stop quantitative easing because it was helping the recovery while Obama was still president.
Great point.
Here’s a really interesting column with insight into why Bernie may find such tough sledding among Southern black voters:
That’s fine I guess, but just don’t call it competing or the government being better at providing health care services. The government could just as easily put all the grocery stores out of business by being the sole legal supermarket owner. Just call them all “Obamamarts” and undersell even Wal-mart.
I’ve been advocating for the government to do this for years. But they wouldn’t put other stores out of business, because it would be just healthy food at low prices (and you could only use your food stamps there).
I do want to see the feds put payday loan and check cashing places out of business, though, by offering the same services much cheaper at the post office.
Quoting a NYTimes opinion column endorsing Clinton, based on differences between regions in *1964, *is laughable.
Bad enough Hillary is playing to a the fantasies of Gloria Steinem in 1972, now she wants to go back to 1964? OK, lady. Can we look at her record in the South in the 1980’s and in Washington in the 1990’s? Which is at least credibly relevant?
I get that Bernie is only now starting to talk much about race now because he finally realizes he has to do so. It’s a real problem for him. But the real difference between the two is on class, and Hillary is so far to the wrong side on that that she might lose to Donald Trump if she were, in some disaster of misjudgment, somehow nominated.
I don’t suggest she go back to 1964. She supported Goldwater that year.
Which is fine, as long as the program has to fund itself. That’s how you find out if it’s actually gouging, or just the cost of issuing such loans. Anytime a government is offering a service that the private sector already offers, it should compete on the same terms.