# How much would it cost for the government to cover everyone with high deductible health insurance **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 25, 2019, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-it-cost-for-the-government-to-cover-everyone-with-high-deductible-health-insurance/839191 "2019-08-25T00:10:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CelticKnot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/celticknot/32/3392_2.png) [@CelticKnot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CelticKnot)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2019, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-it-cost-for-the-government-to-cover-everyone-with-high-deductible-health-insurance/839191/61 "2019-09-02T18:57:35Z")
Has everyone tuned out the Democrats running for president for 2020? Bernie tells us all the time that government is corrupt and sold out to corporations. And he wants UHC, so the corrupt government will control that part of life. Or do you think he can drain he swamp? He and others have also said they will end all private insurance, so no, I will not necessarily be able to use the system I prefer. And I’m old enough to remember “If you like your doctor/plan, you can keep your doctor/plan.” Refusing to support UHC does not mean that the government cannot expand Medicaid. It just means that there are many people in the country who do not want to get on that train because we don’t like the destination. “The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as ‘free education’ is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education - just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office - and cannot possibly be separated from political control.” Frank Chodorov (AZQuotes) It seems that the people who whine about Christians imposing their beliefs on them are happy to return the favor. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2019, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-it-cost-for-the-government-to-cover-everyone-with-high-deductible-health-insurance/839191/62 "2019-09-02T19:04:10Z")
I’m certain private insurance companies are already making plans for the future in the event of a single payer system popping up in the United States. There might be fewer people employed by a blue plan or Kaiser Permanente but those companies will still be around in one form or another. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2019, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-it-cost-for-the-government-to-cover-everyone-with-high-deductible-health-insurance/839191/63 "2019-09-02T19:21:44Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > I don’t know how it works in other countries with UHC, but that’s certainly not how it works in Canada. We have single payer, not single employer. > > … > > As for why young students would want to become doctors - we’ve had this system for 50+ years, and students continue to apply to med school, which turns candidates away in a highly competitive admissions process. I assume that means they think it’s a good financial deal, in addition to personal satisfaction with that career choice. In the Spanish system, while there is definitely no single employer, one of the reasons of some people to want to go into medical work is that if you do get into your regional public healthcare system it’s “government scale”: it’s seen as safe, stable employment, with a salary that never gets terribly high but which is very good as a starting salary and perks you can “play with” (you decide whether you accept guard duty or not, for example). This is more likely to happen with people who don’t have medical workers in the family: the same people often don’t even realize that there’s other types of medical worker than “doctor, nurse or janitor”. People with better background knowledge are more likely to go into medical work as a vocation and to target the specific job better. They’re better at deciding which specific course of study to pursue, whether to go public or private… but similar situations happen in any field, my brother had a much better idea of what to expect from Business School than people whose dad wasn’t a Business School graduate. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2019, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-it-cost-for-the-government-to-cover-everyone-with-high-deductible-health-insurance/839191/64 "2019-09-02T22:18:54Z")
> [@CelticKnot](#): > > Some people choosing to not depend on government hurts others? Explain. If you want to hire a private security guard do you get to stop paying taxes to fund the public police department? What would you think about someone who said we shouldn’t have a publicly funded police department for all, we should only have private security firms and if people can’t afford private security… well, sucks to be them, right? They should be self-reliant and responsible enough to hire their own guards instead of asking that the public fund protection from crime for everyone. Your opposition to a system that would cover _everyone_ does not speak highly of you. You are selfish, concerned only with taking care of your own self and family and fuck everyone else. And you don’t even do that well! Your patchwork of a system that you have cobbled together will not save you in the event of a major medical problem, yet you refuse to see that not only have you denied healthcare to your neighbors your own coverage is threadbare and full of holes. > [@CelticKnot](#): > > I thought ACA was going to solve all these problems. More propaganda from the opposition, said with a sarcastic sneer. NO, ACA was never going to fix it all, that was stated from the beginning. What it did do was cut the number of those without insurance roughly in half - before ACA there were 42 million people without any healthcare coverage in the US. Since the regime change and the gutting of ACA that number has gone up again but really, ACA helped 20 million people. How is that a bad thing? > [@CelticKnot](#): > > And so now you want the same people who screwed it up to try to fix it again? No, I want the people who hamstrung and gutted ACA to get the fuck out of the way instead of leaving people to suffer in the gutter. It wasn’t the Obama administration or the Democrats that screwed up the ACA, it was the conservatives and their pet Republicans who fought against implementing it, funding it, and rolling it out who screwed it up, and even then they only reduced its effectiveness by half, they haven’t (so far) been able to kill it. > [@CelticKnot](#): > > The world survived for a long time without UHC. The world survived without effective anesthesia or antibiotics, too, but a LOT of people died horribly before we had those things. Everyone else in the developed world has UHC, and some not-so-developed places. They are get **better outcomes**. Quite a few of them have a **longer life expectancy, better survival rates for pregnant women and their infants, and no one goes without basic care**. So, tell me again - why can’t the US do this? Or are we insistent on being stupid and cruel? > [@CelticKnot](#): > > Why don’t we change the laws that gave us the situation we are in instead of just making it worse? Good point. Let’s change our laws to have UHC since that works so much better than private health care. Rather than trying to prop up an unsustainable system which will just get worse and more expensive. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-it-cost-for-the-government-to-cover-everyone-with-high-deductible-health-insurance/839191.md?page=3)