Story here.
Any chance the pols will take note of this and get something done before the 2008 election?
If not, how will that affect the election?
Zero chance of it happening before the election in 2008.
Could become a major campaign issue, but “universal health insurance” is just another way of saying socialized medicine. The AMA and the insurance industry will pour money into candidates that oppose it. Prolly use the same bullshit tactics they used to push tort reform.
How much “universal healthcare” do we get for $500 more in taxes per working person per year? I suspect not much.
quote:
“Nearly two-thirds said the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans and half said they would be willing to pay as much as $500 more in taxes a year for universal coverage, it said.”
I bet they would. I would too considering that family coverage often costs literally 20 times that total and still way more than $500 out of pocket. I don’t know who designed that question but it has little bearing on reality. We aren’t going to get universal coverage for everyone and only have people pay $500 more a year in taxes. I have know idea what a poll throwing out absurdly attractive yet fictitious choices is supposed to prove.
We won’t have true universal healthcare any time in the foreseeable future. Clinton made a bold attempt and got shot down so abruptly that it disappeared as an issue entirely back in the early 1990’s. The problem is extremely complex from lots of angles and really too scary for anyone to tackle. There are some powerful groups that oppose it and their added resistance should be enough to stall it indefinitely any time it comes up. No one would dare dismantling most of the health insurance industry for example but that would have to happen for European style nationalized health care. The U.S. is much bigger than other countries with comparable levels of health care and we have a state system that tends to block such initiatives.
People in the U.S. are all for universal health care given that:
- Tax increases to support it are nonexistent to minimal.
- They still get to choose their doctors and have nice luxuries like private hospital rooms like they do today.
- Cutting edge treatments are not curtailed in any way and the government won’t base individual treatment on cost.
- They get to see just about any doctor they choose on short notice.
- Treatments for everything start just as fast as they do today.
Yes. I lived in a country with “socialized medicine” for eight years: Japan. It works. It’s been working for a long time, so any pissing and moaning on the part of reactionaries in the US about how we can’t so it is only so much caca.
Yes it works, but Americans don’t want it.
It’s like trying to argue with religious fundamentalists–logic and facts are irrelevant. Tens of millions of otherwise intelligent people simply don’t want to hear about it, and prefer to live with the devil they know rather than try something new.
I know Americans whose lives were ruined by medical debts; I’ve known Americans who ruin their professional career advancement because at the newer and better job, the health insurance didn’t match their spouse’s medical problems. Yet these people are absolutely horrified when I tell them that I live in a country with socialized medicine.
So , despite what a nicely-worded poll suggests, it will never happen.
No chance whatsoever that universal healthcare coverage will happen before the election.
High probability that it will be a major campaign subject. HRC, Obama, and even Edwards have all declared it to be major issues for them. Romney will certainly bring it up (and I suspect that he will begin to gain ground as a Republican electorate already uninspired by McCain finds that they really don’t like Guilianni either even if they have a favorable initial impression of him.)
Zero chance that single payor will happen after the election either.
Some chance that a hybrid sysyem resulting in near universal coverage will occur. One that gives all of the major players an ongoing stake in the game. It will likely lbe inspired by the new state systems, with personal mandates coupled with sliding scale tax credits, insurance industry reforms, an expanded safety net, and voluntary sign-up for a fee-based Medicare style system as an open option to compete with others available.
More of a chance of getting bits of that at a time.
Is it socialized medicine, though? Key distinction: Socialized medicine is what the UK has – the state directly employs doctors and manages hospitals through the National Health Service. Single-payer health care is what Canada has – most hospitals are private, doctors employed by hospitals or by themselves, but the state/province takes over the role of health insurer.
Universal health care will be a huge issue in the 2008 election, second only to Iraq. And the debate won’t be “should we?” but “how should we?”. Don’t expect any action from Congress, if only to not steal the candidate’s thunder.
Romney will force the other Republicans do address the issue, even if he doesn’t ultimately win the nomination, and then Democrats will be more than happy to meet them on it.
That’s not to say that anything will actually be done 2008-2012, but they’ll certainly talk about it during the campaign.
BG, no, no flashback. Very little in common actually.
How about I do a poll and ask this question: If the federal government will guarantee you free food and beer, would you be willing to pay an additional $500 more in taxes to get it?
What do you suppose people would say?
This is the kind of stupid poll that is meaningless. Hell…I would gladly accept universal health care for everyone in the US if it was only going to cost $500 more in taxes per year (and presumably save me thousands that I currently pay into the health system we have). Lets see…free health care that actually saves me thousands of dollars a year? Yeah…I think I could be for that.
On second though…no, probably not. Because thinking about it, you don’t get something for nothing. And shitty as our current system is, it would be a hell of a lot worse so underfunded. Of course, the next step would be to Kyoto us…‘oh, this is merely the FIRST step. Once we get this in, then it will be a, er, increase over our original projections’. etc etc.
As for whether or not it will be a significant point in the next election…well, I don’t see it, but I could be wrong. I don’t doubt that the Dems might TRY and make it an issue…but I think anyone running on a platform of universal health care in the US is going to be in for a bit of a surprise…unless they toss out that $500 per tax payer per year thingy of course. And then I’m going to be going on Factcheck to see the fireworks. 
-XT
Don’t forget that you’re probably already paying for health insurance and so is your employer. If you add this money to the proposed “$500 more in taxes,” there may very well be enough to pay for universal coverage. Plus add to that the money spent on adminstrative costs (by doctors and hospitals attempting to get payment from insurance companies, and insurance companies trying not to pay to doctors and hospitals), which would not be necessary in a single-payer environment, and we could cover everyone at lower cost.
I am American. The reason I moved overseas 5 years ago was because no insurance comapny would insure me in the USA. I have a genetic disorder that causes no medical issues for me and I lead a perfectly normal life… unless you were my doctor, you’d never know. However, it is an automatica declaine with US insurance companies… although one company did offer to insure me for $3,000/month.
I am self-employed so no “group” plan was available to me. I bought my own private insurance plan in the UK (I don’t live there tho) which is valid everywhere in the world except the USA. I pay about $100 per month for $10 million in coverage and a $1000 deductible.
I’d love to return to my own country, but until I can get insurance in the USA without having to get a “real job”, I will be an American Refugee.
What do you call the system we have here in Israel, where the insurers are privately owned, but the premiums are paid by the government?
There is an Achilles heal to this whole concept that I don’t think can ever be overcome at least with the ideas I have seen. Most Americans have decent health insurance and get great care. It is a minority of people that don’t and while their plight make us all a little sad, it doesn’t happen with enough regularity to keep it at the forefront of people’s minds. The major flaw that I am alluding to is that this whole idea would require the masses to sacrifice their own health care to help the minority that is having problems and that isn’t going to happen. The only way it would sell is if the general population would see an increase in their own level of care based on new efficiencies and that isn’t going to happen. One reason health care is so expensive in the U.S. is that the latest treatments and latest equipment are available to most people should we need them. We also get instant or at least very fast appointments plus private hospital rooms with an attentive staff and a a “money is no object” approach.
I have never seen a universal health care plan that outlines how care for the insured population would go up. I have never even heard one that claimed care would remain the same. That is the fatal flaw because health care is important and people aren’t going to sacrifice their families and themselves because some people are having insurance difficulties.
What Shagnasty said.
You’d have to wrest the 118.4 billion dollar subsidy currently enjoyed by the broad middle class (see the spreadsheet on tax expenditures) from their hands. Good luck with any plan that actually succeeds in doing this. If anything that tries is proposed, it’ll be immediately shot down. Note that this dwarfs even the mortgage-interest deduction, another highly popular middle-class subsidy.
Never mind that, over the longer term, this will mean that employer-provided healthcare will go the way of the defined-benefit pension plan, since employers who don’t provide healthcare have an automatic cost advantage over those who do, and as more opt out, the overall risk pool shrinks, making it more expensive to insure those who are left, and of course the more expensive it gets the more employers will opt out, and so on. See this article for the declining coverage rates.
Ummm… Nope. About 40% of Americans are uninsured. I was one of them… no company would cover me so I packed up my things and moved overseas. It was easy for me to get a fantastic policy through a UK insurer, but now I am in the bizarre position of being an American who can not return to my own country as I will then be uninsured.
Very, very good for the insurers?