the emergency care you are, by law, required to receive at an emergency room is not, on any planet in this universe, “basic health care”. never mind the fact that you’re still billed for it.
and you didn’t actually make any sacrifices. you borrowed money on favorable terms because that was a benefit that non-loan-taking taxpayers decided to graciously afford you.
but your equating a human’s health to automobile status is cute.
Not everyone in my company has the same health plan, but people in my division, at least at my level, don’t pay anything. That is, there is no health care taken out of the check (unlike vision and dental). Every year I have to declare who will be on my insurance plan (open enrollment), and I get cards in the mail about a month later. On those cards, I pay like $10 co-pay for prescription medicine, and $15 for PPO and $25 out of network. We had a new thing where emergency room visits are $70 and urgent care is $35. Since I don’t see the doctor for anything, I pay nothing.
So, really, I have no idea how much I pay towards health insurance. Actually, it’s probably on my W-2. I’ll look when I get it, but I’m sure it’s not that much.
I agree that I would pay whatever this amount is into a UHC plan. I also bet if UHC were to come into existence I wouldn’t see my salary increase not one cent. What I don’t want is to incur extra taxes. I’m also highly suspicious that if we all took my stance (and the one quoted above), there would be enough to cover everyone.
But, let’s be optimistic: let’s say that there is indeed enough money to cover everyone. Wouldn’t this imply that there is a single payor system (something I find we should be wary of, if I can’t find the link to the study I’ll post it)? What would we do with all those insurance company workers? Would we make them all part of the government bureaucracy? Doesn’t anyone feel strongly against nationalising all of them?
mazinger_z, are you at the top or the bottom of the food chain at your organization? can’t quite tell.
It’s not free. They are billed. If they can’t pay, then YOU are paying for their care, through the hospital charging your insurance company higher fees to compensate.
Not a dime.
According to all the proponents, I’m already grossly overpaying for (1) the uninsured who rack up medical bills but can’t pay them, (2) waste, fraud, and abuse, and (3) redundant administrative overhead, all of which will go away under reform.
Therefore, any increase I have to pay to can only be cause by somebody skimming something off the top, right?
your analysis is poor, your attempt at sardonic wit a failure.
employers pay for a variable portion of most everyone’s health insurance. therefore, to the extent that those costs are shifted to you via UHC tax (with or without a resulting increase in pay) you can be paying more for UHC without it implicating bureaucratic waste or failed policy objectives.
Point one: I had to spend considerable evenings with my daughter in emergency rooms. You may be surprised how much treatment people can get for free that is not life-treatening or even major. Free pain killers for a headache (numerous time), free bandaid for a kid whos’s pet rat bit him, etc.
Point two: No sacrifices? Even ignoring paying off a student loan interest, there were the nights studying while my friends went out drinking and books costs. Do you know how much I’ve had to pay simply in tests and fees for my credentials? Easily over $1000.
Oh and the “non-loan-taxpayers” only saw fit to lend me $454 for two years of school because I was under 24 and unmarried at the time. Who paid for the rest.
Point three: I admitted I’m a jerk when it comes to paying for UHC or many other social programs because in many cases the rationale for paying for them has more to do with wealth redistribution than a needed social obligation (hence the car analogy). I fully support social programs when a need is shown to exist and frankly poor decision-making is not a need. There are many social welfare programs where there are honest needs such as children with disability programs or job skill programs that I fully support but all I’ve heard on both sides of the aisle with UHC is rhetoric.
And I do not opposed UHC in principal. My girlfriend cannot get reasonably priced insurance because she is out of work, older and overweight. Guess who pays for her health care? Me! There should be some way she and many others like her can get basic insurance and I love the point being made in this thread that many of us would be willing to transfer the $ we pay for health care now into UHC. But the point still reamins that UHC will cost more then the sum of our health-care costs now and someone has to foot the bill for the difference. Who will it be? You? Me? Or “the rich”?
When someone can PROVE (and that does not mean a posted unsubstantiated claim on Straight Doper rhetoric from a politician) but an honest to goodness report or study from a reputable source that a significant number of people are dying because they cannot (not “will not” or “choose not to be insured” or “it would be expensive for them”) get the most basic of health care then I will be a firm supporter of UHC.
As noted, UHC would cost less than the current American system.
But when our NHS started, GP’s surgeries were small businesses and hospitals were mostly charitable and run by a council of consultants, there weren’t a load of private, profit-making, hospitals and that sort of thing.
So perhaps a better question would be how much would you be willing to pay up front to buy out the health-rentiers and sey up a reasonable system.
You do realize that your healthcare costs are being transferred to other people, yes?
I was like you in that I had like a $5.00 or $10. 00 perscription payment, $35.00 medical vist, maybe a $500 hospital deduction.
Fortunately, I hardly ever used the stuff, so i was rarely out of pocket.
Then I changed jobs and aged a bunch of years and all of a sudden, i’m paying like $150 a month for meds and whatever the hospital charged for doctor’s visits and what not. It was a cry from what I was used to, even though I hardly ever used it.
So the question is, which is the real price for care? Is it the $5.00 or the $150? Is it the $500 or whatever the final bill is? If it’s not $5.00 or $10.00, then who is making up the difference?
I am, because I’m paying $90.00 (true) for the same med, that costs you $5.00. So it seems to me, if we all paid our fair share a lot these problems will go away or be reduced. Maybe we both should pay $20?
That’s the problem here, you pay $5.00, some guy pays nothing, I pay full price and another guy skips on his bill and as time goes on, the burden shifts to those of us who can afford to pay ‘full price’, until our backs are broken.
Then the burden will shift to you.
headache pills and band aids are not medical care. they’re palliative remedies to shut people up. basic health care is the proactive addressing of medical problems.
judging by the cost of your school, i’m going to assume that large swaths of the cost of your education were shouldered, again, by taxpayers. yes, i’m being a jackass too, but the whole “i sacrificed yet welfare queens get to reap benefits for their own poor decisions” thing is annoying. very.
so it’s your position that adverse health consequences are always a result of poor decision making? Really now? To the extent that you’re willing to pay for “blameless” health ailments like catching a disease, they aren’t really separable from the “blameworthy” health ailments - at least not in any fair way with low cost.
but we’re all wealth redistributionists because we don’t want to worry about our future health care driving our employment and life decisions? that’s nice. try this for rationale: it’s an inefficient system we have that costs more than it should, doesn’t cover every one it can, and is unsavory from the standpoint of the things you must do to maintain coverage.
so “good health” is not an honest need?
i don’t know how you simultaneously can claim that an uninsured person’s health care needs are, currently, paid for by you, yet UHC would cost more… because she would be covered.
so, again, the sine qua non of justification for UHC is that people cannot be dying en masse - there’s no other rational justifications, like the aforementioned lower cost and/or psychic benefit from having health insurance decoupled from employment status?
My Federal tax rate could go up by a full 6.5% and I would break even if my medical insurance was paid for out of the tax pool.
If we count my company’s contribution to the insurance as part of my “salary”, my Federal tax rake could very nearly double and I would break even.
Between my company and myself, my family health insurance (health/vision/dental) with $10 copays and a $500 deductible are costing me almost $900/mo.
So under the current tax regulations/deductions/etc, I could easily be in favor of seeing my personal federal tax rate go from 25% to 30-40% if it meant I wasn’t paying anything for health insurance. And I’d be willing to tack on another 2-5% for those who aren’t able to pay enough into the system to cover themselves, too.
I already pay more than “my share” for health insurance.
My employer (a large group) instituted “tiered fees” a couple of years ago for our insurance. Kind of like progressive tax rates.
Insurance rates had gotten so high that many of our low-end employees could not afford insurance for their families.
So now I, a single person (on their books at any rate), pay out of my pocket each month to contribute towards covering insurance costs for lower-paid employees, in addition to the amount that my employer pays (and the amount that those employees pay for their family coverage). I know people above me on the payscale are paying in more than I do, as well.
I have no problems with this. I’d rather have my co-workers healthy and happy than have that (fairly reasonable) amount of money.
In fact, I haven’t heard a single person complain about this - and most (if not all) of my department is paying into the program, not benefitting.
I, too, would be willing to contribute all of the money which my employer pays for my insurance (several hundred dollars per month), which would (according to McCain) be added to my paycheck if my employer weren’t paying it to the insurance companies, plus the money I’m putting in.
In addition, I would be willing to contribute the money I put in my FSA last year (at least $1000, maybe $1500, I can’t remember exactly).
And I’d be willing to kick in a little over that if needed.
Just like I pay property taxes for schools that I have no children in, without complaining about it. It’s called being part of a society.
It’s NOT free. Why do people persist in thinking that the care that an uninsured person receives at emerg. is free? It costs YOU money when they are treated there.
I still don’t see why you think it is an obvious point that UHC would necessarily cost more than what you are paying now. It does not in any other country with UHC. What makes you so special?
You are currently paying for uninsured people’s healthcare. You pay in higher rates for your insurance, and through taxes that cover the elderly, those in prison, etc. etc. UHC just makes you pay for them in a different, more efficient way.
I can barely afford what I’ve got. But there are other options as well. Like cut government spending elsewhere.
Do you know how much my school cost? Over $5000/yr (in the early 90’s). I was simply loaned $454 of it and I had to come up with the rest. And I notice you ignored all of the other sacrifices I mentioned as well.
As for the other issues, I never said poor health due to poor choices although that does raise the point that maybe people concerned with their health should eat a baked chicken breast rather than a Big Mac.
I’m tired of all of you UHC proponants that try to make this out to be about health care because it’s not.
YOU WANT UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE!!!
At least be honest about what we’re talking about - health insurance reform.
Life is full of choices and many people choose not to have insurance or they make career choices that gave them one benefit rather than another (like good insurance).
As long as you twist the discussion to a “no one chooses to have cancer” strawman from the real issue that the person chose not to pay $50/mo for group health or chose to smoke a pack a day, then we cannot have an intelligent debate.
But actually you did give me an idea for a GD thread that I’d love to debate with you. Give me a sec.
So every American will be healthy when the lack of a stealth bomber fleet allows the opportunistic Chinese to invade and conquer? I think not!
I just read through the thread and am left with the feeling that most posters are taking it as an assumption that the employer contributed dollars towards their health insurance will be converted 1 to 1 back to their salary, should UHC come to fruition.
I’m not that up to speed on the current HCR plans. Is there language in the bills that guarantees this? I’m self-employed now and have no medical insurance. Reason I’m asking is, I can’t under any circumstances other than threat of imprisonment, imagine my last employer not finding some way to keep his contribution to the health insurance premiums. He would contend that it was his money to begin with, and given the employment climate, and lack of sophistication on the part of the majority of the employees, he would get a lot of bitching, but few would leave. I have to think that there would be many other employers doing the same.
What would protect the employees (non-union) from this type of abuse?
I wouldn’t want to take one dime away from defense, but I would definitely want to take a long hard look at discretionary spending. I’m thinking foreign aid would be the first thing I’d cut, then go domestic. If We The People are truly serious about wanting HCR or UHC, then we need to start asking ourselves why we’re building skateparks and bridges to nowhere with money that could be spent on health care.
OccamsTaser - absolutely nothing. I don’t for a moment believe that salaries would go up if employers no longer had to pay for health insurance. That’s not how companies make money.
It’s riffing off of claims from some Republicans about how we could fix healthcare by providing tax credits and switching to people buying their own insurance independent of employers, which they’d have the money for because their salaries would go up if the employers didn’t have to buy insurance.
But then I don’t really think that I’d be sitting down and having $100 per month deducted directly from my paycheck to pay for UHC (rather than going into my FSA) either.
It would be possible, however, to treat the insurance program the same as FICA, and have both employees and employers contribute through payroll tax deductions.
Free market will balance things out. No one except those trying to misconstrue facts are saying we’ll have to rely on employers benevolance
Imagine - your taxes raise and at the same time your employer is much more profitable due to not having to supply health insurance as a benefit. He naturally thinks - too bad for OccamsTaser, I’m keeping that money and making more profit.
Well, I notice your employer suddenly has a much boosted profit margin. I start up a competing business - or maybe I already own one. I say OccamsTaser - you’re really good at your job, come work for me and I’ll pay you more. I’m still profitable and you got more money in your wallet. Or, your current boss realizes this will happen and boosts your salary to keep you onboard.
No doubt all this change/upheaval will screw some people up, but overall it will be a good thing for the majority. As health care costs per capita will be lower with UHC, employers will have a little more profit and employees will have a little more money, even after paying the new tax.
UHC = profit for everyone!