For those claiming that Kerry’s plan will spend more tax money than Bush’s, um, cite? How do you guys know? Has a study been done? Because I really can’t tell how Kerry’s plan automatically costs more money. Kerry has said he wants to allow drug reimportation and change the prescription drug bill to allow the government to negotiate for the best price. Both of those actions will save money over Bush’s plan. The reinsurance part is somewhat interesting, because at least some of that cost will be picked up by the insurance companies rather than the government. Kerry raises the income cutoff, so that would seem to cost more money. So, can someone point me to the studies they’re looking at to determine that Kerry’s plan is more expensive?
Personally, I don’t think either plan goes far enough to cover the uninsured, and I am very skeptical that Kerry’s plan will achieve the kind of coverage rates it purports to. The main beneficiaries of Kerry’s plan seem to be large companies who would provide insurance anyway, and small businesses who want to provide insurance but haven’t because of the cost. But, I suppose something is better than nothing, and since Kerry is also pushing for cost controls, then I’d overall prefer his plan than Bush’s.
…and how many politicians in Congress make a “common man” salary? By your logic, we shouldn’t trust any of them to look out for us regular folks, what with being stuck up in their ivory towers and all.
(Frankly, if after four years of Bush-Cheney you still think they’re out to help the Little Guy… well, I can’t think of a non-Pit-worthy response.)
That is dubious comparison IMHO. Just because not * all * high quality options are available to everyone equally doesn’t justify calling it Third World. Many life improving options, medical and otherwise, are unavailable to large portions of the population that can’t afford them.
Housing, food, education, and medical care could all be called essential to maintaining a high quality to life, but if the Government is going to provide * High Quality * health care, why not throw in generous food stamps, housing allowances, and college tuitions as well? Okay, I’m a bit disingenuous since no one here—so far—has asked for these kind of benefits yet; nevertheless, it seems to me that access to Health Care has been put on a pedestal above other necessities of life.
Maybe you don’t think it is fair, but people who can afford better quality health care are * going to get * better quality health care. I just don’t see it any other way.
Let’s keep this in perspective – Kerry is not proposing universal health care, and his plan is much less comprehensive than the plan Clinton tried to put through in 1993.
In math, generally speaking of course, $653 billion dollars is more than $534 billion…and this is assuming (incorrectly IMO) that Bush’s perscription drug benefit (which is already in place) will some how be repealed…which it won’t be. A government agency giving back money? Perish the thought. So, we’ll have what GW has already inacted in addition to whatever Kerry gets (and if he has momentum going in from defeating Bush, he could get quite a bit)…which looks like something over a trillion dollars from where I’m sitting. And thats only for this one thing.
And we’ll get this by simply squeezing the rich by putting them back to pre-Bush taxation levels. Perhaps if this was the ONLY think Kerry proposed to do I’d only snort with derision, but even a blind person should be able to see you aren’t going to get over half a TRILLION dollars back out of the rich (supposedly ONLY those making $200k or more) by simply resetting taxation to pre-Bush levels. They will be scrambling to shelter their money, so taxing them at higher levels isn’t going to necessarily bring in consumate levels of revenue. Though I’m not in the $200k+/year thats what I’ll be doing…and you can bet that Kerry and his friends (and certainly GW and his friends) will be doing even more.
As for the debate from the OP? How do you choose between two things that won’t work and are quite costly? I guess I would have to choose Bush simply on the basis of ‘it costs less’ and be damned. Both make me feel ill.
Yes, I did read the OP, and I should have been clearer. The OP mentions that in addition to the $534, there is $90 billion worth of tax credits. But the article itself also mentions a plan to help small business pool their insurance in the Bush plan, but does not give a cost for it. So, I still have no real idea how much the Bush plan costs versus how much Kerry’s plan costs.
I mean, can you just add $534 to $90 or do tax credits have to be treated differently when determining actual cost to the government?
Also, in the article, some figures are attributed to “independent analysts,” while some are not attributed at all. Are these figures from the campaigns? I’m supposed to believe them if they are?
So, yes I’m not inclined to just accept the premise that Bush’s plan is significantly cheaper.
No objections to the general concept: I agree taxes should pay for roads even if I don’t drive on them.
I don’t necessarily agree that taxes should pay for individual medical care any more than they should pay for people’s food. I’ll buy my food, you buy your food, and we can both share the cost of building the road to the grovery store.
No, I am saying that your argument against universal health care on the basis of the financial cost is largely a red herring. Poor people with life-threatening health problems are not going to go home and die silently in the dark, no matter how much you may wish it.
Our society as whole disagrees with you about paying for others’ food. As a culture we are uncomfortable with people starving to death in our midst and while we may have deep disagreements about who to feed and how, we have agreed that we all should help feed the very poorest among us, thus we have food stamps and “safety nets.” Again, we may disagree about the implementation but we tend to agree as to justification. You I presume do not?
What if it was decided that taxes would not be used to feed the truly needy, but if a hungry person showed up at a five star resturant the resturant would need to feed him regardless of ability to pay, but they charged them much more than those who could afford to eat there, and that (surprise surprise) resturants and other food providers passed the cost of feeding them on to you? Plus it was made more difficult for the poor to cook inexpensive but nutritious meals so they ended up in expensive resturants more often? What if this ended up making it so expensive to feed employees that businesses started outsourcing or pulling up shop to go elsewhere? Would agree that something should change?
The analogy is quite cogent. You pay now. But what you pay for is generally speaking the most inefficient healthcare: people showing up in ERs for routine care that could be handled much less expensively in my office, or in the ER in dire straits because of problems that could have been headed off at the pass if access to preventative care was available. The cost gets passed onto you one way or another. And this now inflated cost handicaps our economy. And the less your ability to pay, the more you are asked to pay. This is the reality. The question is how to deal with reality.
duffer, I’m not thrilled with Edwards either, but we aint seeing meaningful tort reform out of Bush either, wouldn’t get it out of Congress in any case, and it is a red herring to this discussion since neither sideis including meaningful tort reform as part of the deal. Neither do I see your specifics as an indictment of defensive medicine. More just of overall costs from all causes and the inefficiencies and counterproductivity of systems in place to, putively, help control those costs.
If the poor have no bread, then let them eat cake!
The lack of universal health care has been a sore spot for me since Clinton’s plan was shot down. And I’ve only been uninsured for less than a year. Not that I’ve needed medical care. Many people seem to assume that if everyone had equal access to medical care, then everyone will rush to the doctor to take advantage of it. I dis agree. Although I had medical coverage for all but the most recent months of my life, I’ve only sought medical attention a very few times and when I really needed it. The same goes for other insured people I’ve known. People generally don’t see a doctor’s visit as a good time. I think the idea that sudeenly 40 million previously uninsured people will suddenly descend on doctors’ offices and hospitals all across the nation is overblown.
40 million people. One person in seven. A percentage like that indicates to me that there is something wrong.
And there is the impression that being uninsured is the person’s own fault. If you’re uninsured, buy insurance you cheap bastard! If your employer doesn’t offer coverage, then get a different job! It’s your own fault that you got a job in computers, when you should have known that your job would eventually be shipped off to India!
Sometimes this country seems like a giant Ponzi scheme. The people at the top of the pyramid reep huge profits, but they must be supported by an ever expanding base. We all know that a Ponzi scheme can’t go on forever. It seems that the base is beginning to crumble.
One problem with Americans is that we tend to have a short attention span. We want instant gratification. We tend not to look at the long term, but at the immediate “bottom line”. We would rather spend a little for a cheap item that will have to be replaced several times (thus costing more in the long run) than buying a higher quality item that is initially more expensive, but will last longer and save us money in the long run. As DSeid and others have pointed out, preventative care costs less in the long run than urgent care. But since the initial cost seems to be high, no one wants to look at the long term benefits. It doesn’t matter that healthy people are more productive than unhealthy ones, and that higher productivity means higher incomes and thus greater revenues for the country. Even if we will save money later, we want to save money now. “Penny wise and pound foolish.”
Sometimes it seems we should just euthanize the poor and have done with it.
Not really default…
A friend of mine who has nothing…yes…nothing… had to have emergency heart surgery. What did this cost him you ask?
Nothing. Not even a copay. There is no bill, the hospital is not trying to collect anything.
At the moment we all pay for those who can’t, and sometimes I think we pay in quality of care to all of us. So much of our system is now geared to the highly expensive emergency care. Go to any inner city emergency room at any hour and look at the people waiting. It can take hours to get seen for something your own Dr. agreed was an emergency. Look at the people sitting around. There is the man with the gangrenous toes gained by untreated diabetes. Over there is the lady with scarlet fever, a round of antibiotics would have cured her strep throat two weeks ago. Anywhere in this packed disasterously contageous room are people who didn’t need to be here if they had been treated earlier.
Tuburculosis is making a huge comeback in this country, partly because of immigration, but it costs us all. If we say they can’t get health care because they can’t afford it then we are all at risk.
I think though, that loss of productivity is the biggest problem with our health care system. I think that part of the reason this economic recovery is so soft is because of health care. Companies are afraid to add new people to their roles because of benifits. Jobs move to other countries, in part because of benifits. The school system I worked for last year had to loose 600 teachers because of health care. (Some of the Algebra I classes had 48 kids in them). This will cost us even more productivity in the future.
The argument that you don’t want to pay for other people’s health care doesn’t wash. You are. You will pay for this woman’s skull to be sewn back on. You will pay for the guy to get his toes cut off, and you will pay for the lady with scarlet fever. You will pay for people who more and more can not get insurance on their jobs. One way, or another
Some of my interest in universal care (which neither of these candidates are proposing) is very self-centered.
I want to live in a place where I’m not likely to get TB because of someone not being able to go to the doctor and get diagnosed. I want to live in a place where diabetics aren’t on the road with dangerously high blood sugars because they can’t afford insulin (a year or so ago, a woman passed out while driving because her blood sugars sent her into a coma).
On the money front, I want the money that people are already taking from me to go toward making someone’s life better: by keeping them in good health rather than performing a stop-gap surgery; by getting them insulin rather than amputating their feet; by getting them psychiatric drugs instead of paying for the ambulance to haul their bodies away after suicide; by getting them Plavix instead of planting them in the ground after their stroke; by getting them a script for amoxycillin at 2 p.m. in a doctor’s office instead of waiting behind them at 2 a.m. at the emergency room when my husband is having a heart attack and all the beds are full.
I’m already paying out the nose. I want the quality of care to reflect the price I’m being charged, and I want to benefit from my payments as well. Currently, I don’t.