Actually, most people were happy with their health insurance, because most people weren’t sick. Of course people WITHOUT health insurance couldn’t be happy about it.
That will change as employer-provided plans change. I know my company has just massively increased the employer-contribution part of the plan to bring it in line with “industry averages”.
If you’d like to see support for single-payer go up, I’d propose this: require employers that provide health care coverage to include its cost on a pay stub.
I know for my rather large employer, health care and disability insurance is rated as about 10% of all employee compensation (how accurate this figure is, who knows). Show that as a flat deduction from every paycheck and folks might start wondering how Medicare can cover all of the oldest Americans for only 2.9% in Medicare withholding…
Are you seriously under the impression that emergency rooms only treat patients when life threatening emergency treatment is required? You might want to go visit one some day and see how long the line is due to common ailments
Which falls directly into my approach (b) for reducing health-care costs - increasing efficiency. It is highly inefficient to use an Emergency Room to treat things better handled by a GP (or even a walk-in clinic with an RN). But for folks without health care, the ER is often the only place that will treat them (or they just wait on perfectly treatable diseases until it really is an emergent condition for fear of inability to pay).
Here’s some poll numbers from that time period:
University of Texas/Zogby - 6/18-22, 2009 = 84% of people are satisfied with their health care
The Washington Post, 6/18-22, 2009 = 81% satisfied with insurance coverage, 88% satisfied with quality of care
NYT, 6/12-16, 2009 = 77% are satisfied with quality of care
Democracy Corps, “The Health Care Reform Debate”, 6/15, 2009 = 76% of self-identified independents, 72% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans are satisfied with their coverage
Gallup, 12/4/08 = 83% of Americans say the quality of healthcare they receive is either ‘excellent’ or ‘good’
CNN/Opinion Research Poll, March 2009 = 73% of Americans were satisfied with their health insurance coverage
Okay, then we’ll rephrase it to “coverage does not equal being able to get treated in an emergency room for some conditions without proof of ability to pay.” Is that better? Either way, your post wasn’t a valid response to the statement that was made. In 2003, while 16.6% of the population was uninsured, only 4.5% of hospital stays were uninsured. Again, that doesn’t equal “coverage.” Please, please, please let some politician spout this sort of bullshit. “We already have universal coverage because everyone can go to the emergency room.”
Since the uninsured account for about 1/5th of emergency room visits, those long lines aren’t on them, and plenty of insured people take little Johnny to the emergency room because he has sniffles.
Yeah because right now there are no people that stand between you and a doctor to decide what treatments are paid for.
There are a lot of reasons.
Medicare taxes all Americans to pay for the oldest Americans. Your employer “taxes” only its employees to pay for its employees.
Medicare coverage is not nearly as generous as most employer plans, which is why many employers offer Medicare supplementary coverage to retirees (and many other retirees purchase these policies on their own).
The cost of Medicare (and many other government programs) is illusory, in that the rates providers can charge are set by the government. This means that some of the cost is effectively passed along to the private plans. Which means that some of the 10% cost of the private employer plans is really going to offset cuts to provider reimbursement for Medicare (& Medicaid, and charity care etc.), which make a higher number seem like 2.9%.
Which is not to say that a lot of people won’t ask these questions. A lot will, and a lot of people look at things in a very simplistic manner. That’s why a lot of people believe politicians promising that “the government” will give them all sorts of things. Just vote for me …
This is false. “Medical tourism” is a growth industry for many countries. The super wealthy come to the United States. Middle class Americans go to Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, etc. More Europeans are also choosing to do so. I have a friend with a particularly nasty form of cancer who had to go to Europe to get the best treatment because they’re not available in the United States, not because they’re not approved, but because they were dismissed as not profitable enough.
Most people are not seriously sick. Most people have no preexisting conditions. Most people do not suffer catastrophic accidents. Most people happily pay their insurance premiums and cost the insurance company almost nothing year after year. This is completely meaningless to the healthcare debate and in no way shape or form addresses the need of reform.
You must be unaware of a quote by our illustrious former president George W. Bush in 2007, in a speech in Cleveland:
I’m just telling you what a conservative would think.
And I’d love to see some proof of your second statement, since it’s accepted as doctrine among so many on this board.
Um yeah, really.
That’s not to say that they weren’t looking for reform. Just not the wholesale, baby-out-with-the-bathwater stuff that we got (again, from the eyes of the centrist American, which I understand is not the audience of this board).
When I saw this earlier today, I was just happy that here in Massachusetts, we have a statewide individual mandate, so if the rest of the country gets caught in an “insurance death spiral” I should be fine.
Read my post again. Happy with their healthcare.
Most people who lose arguments in the court of public opinion like to blame the media, the opposition was working the refs, etc. Whatever.
I’ve never seen anyone stump for anything as much as Obama went after this. The country talked about nearly nothing else for a few months (which is unfortunate, since he should have been focusing on the economy, which is why he got the asswhuppin 5 weeks ago).
Maybe the people just dont want government so heavy-handed in something like this. Heresy to a liberal, sure. But America’s not a liberal country - if anything, they are center-right.
This makes good news and talk-show fodder. I’m sure there are lots of Pubbies that will be going on about how this validates their earlier statements about the constitutionality of the HCRB. But I’ll be very surprised if this ruling holds up on appeal, especially to the SCOTUS.
In Michigan and in, of all places, Virginia, there have already been two decisions upholding the law. This makes it, to the best of my knowledge, 2-1 for. Odd that those decisions are not mentioned by the liberal media.
It’s definitely going to the Supreme Court, and I see no reason for anyone to start celebrating.
I think we should follow the pattern of our cousin language, German, and just make “liberalmedia” one word.
Well, forsure they never want to understand that conservatively speaking we are wasting a lot with the current system we have.
Kinda silly. We could just go ask Justice Kennedy now whether its constitutional or not and basically resolve the whole issue by next afternoon. Instead the things going to wind its way through the courts in 21 states taking multiple years, I can only imagine how many multiple millions of dollars, thousands of manhours in lawyer and judge time, finally make it to the SCOTUS, at which point the liberal justices will vote for the bills constitutionality, the four conservatives will vote against, and Justice Kennedy will decide the issue anyways.
Its gotta be some sort of record for inefficiency. Its like a Rube Goldberg machine for getting an old mans opinion.