In CA, Community colleges are more or less free. I think this should be nationwide.
I think that the next two years should be subsidized, but not free for all. Means tested, etc.
Too many kids go to a big 4 year college and drop out. Let’s have more go to a nice two year college, and if they find academics not for them, continue as a trade school.
Lets bring Medicare to anyone up to 18 or over 55. This is a start, then for everyone. And I mean REAL Medicare, with small premiums for parts B, C, D, etc.
REAL Medicare for all can be paid for by a tax on business equal to about what they pay out in health premiums now. I mean REAL, not sanders crazy expensive plan.
Does it have to be crazy expensive? Can’t costs be significantly reduced? Can’t billions of profit dollars currently going into certain pockets be significantly reduced? Won’t there need to be cost controls to make MCFA or single-payer work?
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Not only that, but the current system could be “crazy expensive” as well, perhaps more so. It’s just that the cost is being hidden by being borne by the public at large as discretionary spending, rather than taxes paid.
Some European countries have, or in the case of the UK, had free higher education. I don’t know what the restrictions were, but I’ve read that they didn’t have that many students, and they had to perform well.
This doesn’t sound very different than the American and British systems, though. In Canada, there isn’t such an exam, but when I was a kid, I was told I needed an average of 83 per cent to get into university. Many children could not reach such an average.
Next time you want to buy a car, call me. I’ll find the car you want, and add 10% to the cost of it for my fees.
Then if you complain that I’m charging you too much money and adding no value, I’ll remind you that you were once opposed to increasing efficiency at the cost of jobs.
No costs is being removed here - just shifted from the med student to the taxpayer. So you aren’t saving any money overall. If more doctors go into lower paying specialties, you would lose money, because they would not repay the loans in the form of higher taxes. There is no free college, and TANSTAAFL.
Whoa, I never considered that we should keep EVERY aspect of our failed heath care system because they are all interdependent. We can’t trim the number of millionaire doctors because student loans are too expensive; we can’t make college more affordable because what about all those debt collectors who might be out of a job; we can’t make health care like fire and police service because there are struggling bankruptcy attorneys out there.
I mean, knock any leg out of that pyramid of malevolence and the whole system might get better!
But you’re NOT cutting out middlemen with government-run healthcare. All you’re doing is replacing one set of middlemen (private corporations) with another set (government bureaucrats).
At least the private ones have a reasonable chance of actually being fired from their jobs if they’re not adding value somewhere to the equation. The government ones, not so much.
So, Medicare is less efficient than private insurance companies? Really?
And you would consider it more efficient for doctors to have to hire staff to navigate the many different billing policies for each insurance company? Explain to me how having to deal with a dozen or more different billing practices in order to get paid is better than one.
Shit, maybe merchants would be better served if Visa demanded that a hundred different conditions apply to any sale; MasterCard can have a very different set of 150 conditions; AmEx could have a random number of new policies; and Discover could just randomly demand proof that its customer needed to buy groceries otherwise refuse to pay the merchant.
Pretty much, every expert sez sanders plan is too damn expensive. One reason why Warren dropped it, she was trying to come up with some way of paying for it, and concluded it wouldnt work.
All the (western) countries that have free or heavily subsidized healthcare and college–how many of them have the US footing the bill for their national defense? Is it possible that you can have a robust national defense or free healthcare/college, but not both?
I think “free” college is going to mean free community college. The states will cover your first two years, then you’ll transfer to a four-year college and will be responsible for the final leg of your Bachelor’s degree and graduate school (with Pell grants and such). I don’t see any proposals that guarantee a free Ivy League education for everyone.
Except all of the western countries that provide universal health care spend less, as a percentage of GDP, than does the US, with better results: universal coverage for all residents, and better indicators of health.
Here’s the wiki article health care spending by GDP. The US spends more public money on healthcare than other OECD countries, but doesn’t achieve universal coverage. As well, the public spending by US governments is roughly in line with government spending on health care in other OECD countries; again, without achieving universal coverage.
Providing “free” universal coverage is less costly than the US model, freeing up more public money in those countries for other purposes. Tying the health care spending to defence spending is a meaningless way to look at the issue.
Yes, you are, at least in a single-payer system like Canada. You go to a doctor, get treatment, the doctor bills the Medicare system and gets paid.
The doctor doesn’t need to have a large staff to bill a great number of insurance plans, each with their own billing system. It’s a single billing system.
And, more significantly, there are no bureaucrats scrutinizing the doctor’s bill and substituting their views in whether it was medically necessary treatment. Cost control is handled globally, by negotiations between the Medicare officials and the doctors to establish a payment schedule. Doctors then bill for treatment provided, and get paid. They don’t have to justify their treatment choices to government bureaucrats, unlike a system of private insurance.
The only time i’ve run into a bureaucrat second-guessing my treatment is my dental insurance, which is private insurance, not part of Medicare.
A single-payer system of this type does eliminate a large bureaucracy, compared to a private insurance system where insurance bureaucrats scrutinize and question the doctor’s treatment decisions, for cost control reasons.
I’m not sure about the other provinces, but Ontario has some pretty dismal waiting times for things that are pretty important. Because I don’t have USA data, I can’t claim an advantage, but looking at some things like “imaging,” I can’t imagine have a wait time at all. Anecdotally, I’ve met multiple Canadians who cross into Buffalo or Detroit for expedited services.
I get it, our system is fucked up, albeit in in a different way. At least I can visit radiology same-day.