That literally sounds like someone getting more than them, to me.
They pay $X and they get health care. Other people pay $0 and they also get health care too. The other people get more health care per dollar spent than they do.
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And from a certain vantage point, they’re not wrong. Most of the arguments for UHC are essentially do-gooder arguments, and if you’re not making more money than you think you should, do-goodery is going to fall on mostly deaf ears. People aren’t going to agree to paying more taxes without a tangible, clear benefit to them, unless they are do-gooders. I mean in all likelihood a real UHC program would cost me more for the same or less service. So short of do-gooding, what’s in it for me?
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I can’t rap my head around the “more taxes” argument. I’m a business owner and I cover the cost for 2 people, one single and one with a spouse and child. It costs us $23,800 per year to fully insure us plus out-of-pocket expenses for all of us. Health insurance is the company’s biggest expense after payroll.
I just can’t imagine UHC taxes would be more than that for my company or for me and my partner in a year. If we didn’t have to pay for this individual insurance, that’s $23,800 more we could be paying in salary then taxing and neither of us would have out-of-pocket expenses and I’m pretty sure we’d all be coming out ahead.
The way I see it, presumably your employers’ costs would go down, salaries or available jobs would increase, your taxes would increase but your out-of-pocket expenses would be gone. It could be a wash for you. IF your salary doesn’t increase or jobs don’t open up that is not the government’s fault - they took away the burden of health insurance benefits for the employer. It’s the fault of greedy companies hanging on to that extra money to the detriment of their employees/taxpayers.
I don’t think it is. But I do think that in a country as amazingly wealthy as the U.S. we could easily, with a pleased conscience, make it tantamount to one. Why, we could even provide it for people in other countries. If it weren’t for our favorite deadly sin.
I voted NO. To me a “right” acts as a wall between me and my actions, and the government. Healthcare, however it is defined, does not satisfy my definition of a “right”.
Your post didn’t quite go where I was expecting it to go, but this part I found troubling amongst all the other pro-right arguments. It appears here that we a society can provide this societal good of health care as long as we the ones who receive this care does their job of meeting minimum requirements. I find this line of thought to be most perverse. This sounds like creating a bureaucracy to see if people are eating right, exercising, taking their vitamins, etc. What do we do with people who overeat, are addicts, or otherwise employ unhealthy lifestyles? Do we deny them health care? Do we educate them? I’m sure this wasn’t what you actually intended, so call it a strawman if you like, but I felt that it should be addressed.
Anyway, even among my most liberal friends (not quite Bernie Sander supporters, but think taxing and paying for stuff is a goal we should obtain), most of them think that healthcare shouldn’t be a right. However, even among us, I think we can come to some minimum level of basic healthcare: triage from common cold to broken bones to emergency room services (it’s the concept of emergency room services that gets wonky); and, birth/delivery (though not necessarily ob/gyn care) and that’s it. Whatever the level of care, everyone pays something, whether it’s as nominal as a $1 or 100% of services, everyone pays.
I still can’t understand why the business community in this country hasn’t gotten behind UHC. Why does any business not in health care want to be involved in the cost and headache of managing health care?
So the plan is to drastically increase the scope of the things which the government pays for, and yet somehow cause that to have a lower burden on those who actually pay taxes? Where is all this money going to come from exactly?
That’s the source of a lot of the skepticism. Another source is people’s awful experiences dealing with govt agencies. The expectation is that going to the Dr will become akin to going to the DMV, social security office, VA, courthouse, etc… with poor, slow and indifferent service- lowest common denominator care, if you will.
That’s why many are against it. You pretty much have to be a do-gooder to be for it unless you are particularly well informed, or so wealthy that a moderate tax increase won’t affect your standard of living.
There’s no mystery as to where the money will be coming from. It will be coming from some combination of increased income tax rates and employer/employee per head taxes.
It’s also a little bit of a misconception that a single payer plan has to be “government run” at the consumer level. Health care should be conducted by health professionals, not bureaucrats.
“Do-gooder” is a curious charge. Is that a bad thing? It seems to be the equivalent of “well-informed” in your post so maybe not.
Do-gooder isn’t a negative at all. But I doubt enough of the population is so altruistic as to vote themselves higher taxes and potentially worse health care, just for the sake of others.
I mean if you confront most people with the option of foregoing their annual family vacation in favor of higher taxes so some other people who the don’t know can have health care, I bet most will vote no and probably feel no remorse while at Disneyland.
We don’t know that that’s going to be the choice faced by most people. Taxes may/will go up for some, health insurance costs may/will go down. Direct care costs may/will go down. Opposition seems to be based on facts not yet in evidence. Your hypothetical imagines some group of people for whom the choice comes down to vacation vs health care for others and we don’t have any idea how prevalent that example may be.
Indeed. But to reject implementation of UHC on the grounds that it is socialist/Communist; to do so specifically because it fails to generate – nay, even diminishes – profits is hyper-zealotry in Capitalism. I’m only being slightly facetious here and above. ‘to an extreme extent’ might be a better phrase; whether or not it’s “best” depends on the overall values of the beholder.
This reinforces the conclusion of my original response, above. So does Bobot’s post.
I think you’re right about the strawman argument but it’s not my invention. Regressives were arguing against the “Death Panels” built into the ACA and Michelle Obama’s revision of the nutrition guidelines for exactly this reason. Nation-wide mandatory education took a long time to achieve and we’re still struggling to standardize minimum requirements throughout the country due to various groups with differing cultural values arguing over what should and shouldn’t be required*.
I briefly noted above that we generally have basic healthcare available already: I don’t think there’s been a whole lot of controversy# about the piecemeal patchwork of local governments contracting with private companies to be EMT responders and it’s illegal for a hospital to turn away urgent care cases. The controversy I’ve seen in the last few years has been about hospital chains dumping their less affluent patients on other chains or lesser facilities in order to maximize investor returns. The level of service being proposed is above basic care, right there in the ob/gyn, mental health, annual physicals, and long-term treatment arena.
I opened a thread quite a while ago, asking people what they thought of ‘alternative medicine’ because my ex-girlfriend was being offered some odd therapies for her cancer. I later mentioned the matter to my brother and, during our discussion, I wondered aloud, “Why should I even care? She dumped me and I’m no longer the least bit responsible for her.”
My brother responded without hesitation, “Because that’s what makes you a decent human being: Caring for others simply because they, too, are human.”
That, to me, is the core of this issue: Those of us who feel the planet’s richest nation should take good care of its inhabitants – regardless of income, nationality, political affiliation, educational credentials, Body Mass Index, color of hair or lack thereof, or previous year’s tax payments – feel that such is the obligation of a decent human being and such is the social obligation of our government as an extension of ourselves.&
So I would turn the question around: Why should we, as decent human beings, pay into a system that takes care of everyone’s health when others, out of simple selfishness and avarice+ take those same funds and piss them away in the National Gambling System% or blow them on a seventh annual trip to Aruba? Since nobody would be excluded from the care, it seems nobody should be excluded from financially supporting it – thus it would come via government funds (which are, of course, ultimately acquired from individuals’ funds).
No, not by a private individual. Corporate or government contractors, but not pri–what am I saying!!! :smack:
And it’s the “Keep yer hands offa my stack!” crowd that are vehemently opposed to any efforts to diminish their excretionary funds.
I quite heartily agree! However, it’s quite clear the **distribution of funding for healthcare **has been handled in the USA by bureaucrats – we now call them Health Insurance Companies – for almost a century. As to whether or not that bureaucracy is good or bad, note that Health Maintenance Organizations have (at least since the mid-1970’s) collectively worked to keep what were (in the 1970’s) skyrocketing doctors’ fees down at relatively affordable levels. The modern twist on the perceived HMO vs Hospitals war is that Health Insurance executives (rather than doctors) are buying private jets in six-packs and the hospitals have learned to game the system by inflating their prices to make the 20 of 80 payments@ still yield big bucks. Furthermore, while the average person considers bureaucracies in general to be bad things, sociological studies repeatedly show that the increased efficiency made possible by standardization of processes and forms far outweighs the discomforts and inconveniences that people complain about.
Those with a selfish philosophy (e.g. Rand-ians) throw the term “Do-Gooder” around as an epithet. I’m not sure if they consider it stronger or weaker than “liberal” as an invective. My view is that UHC shouldn’t be the providence of do-gooders but just the lower limit of what decent people should be doing for each other.
I repeat from my first response, but more clearly this time: such an attitude is both disgusting and characteristic of Capitalism’s problems.
Except that we do. We can look at other countries that do and don’t have UHC and conduct detailed studies to determine facts and factors, separate rumor from reality, and identify helpful and harmful methods. Leaving the current wave of USA-uber-alis exceptionalism aside, we can develop and implement a system that fits the USA’s particular needs and circumstances. Furthermore, there’s nothing that says such a system can’t adapt to changing conditions or be modified if something doesn’t quite fit.
My experience is with the Japanese form of socialized medicine, during a time when I was teaching English conversation over there (Wow! It’s been 32 years!): The first work day after I got my employee visa (literally a green card) my school sent me downtown to get a complete physical – for free. Later, when I was suffering from colitis, I spent 10 minutes in the waiting room= and had an interpreter help me divulge my symptoms to the doctor. The medicine (two weeks worth of a twice-daily powder) cost me $60; the rest was absolutely free.
–G!
*Not to mention the newsmaking scandals with the standardized testing system. #There was a scandal in the 1980’s about the City of San Diego changing ambulance contractors, but the issue wasn’t about the fact that the city subcontracted 911 call responses; it was about the way the contract was awarded to the company that got the job; whether or not the criteria were fair and realistic as well as economical.
&Oh, yeah…regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, sexuality, ethnicity…
+Bobot refers to this, as well. Some lists call it Avarice, some call it Greed.
%Otherwise known as stock and bond market investing @for example, my HMO says they will pay a doctor 20% of the fee charged by 80% of the doctors in the same region. So now the medical groups respond to surveys by saying they pay $10 for a 20-cent Band-aid, knowing they’ll get $5 for the Band-aid and, after paying for personnel, building fees, utilities, and medical malpractice insurance, still make a three dollar profit off the Band-aid.
=Not ten hours. And it was a Sunday, no less; a day when non-emergency medical offices in the USA would never have anyone working.
Well, it is generally considered a right in developed nations, all of which seem to be able to provide it at a fraction of the US cost, even adjusted for population, and generally with better results.
But people here seem a little confused about “rights” in general. Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, an American jurist’s analysis of rights is one of Americas genuine contributions to the world. In his seminal work “Fundamental Legal Conceptions, As Applied in Judicial Reasoning and Other Legal Essays.” he divided rights in to first and second order rights.
First order rights are claim rights and liberty rights. A liberty right is a right to do something without being stopped from it by others. Your right to free speech, peaceable assembly and due process are all liberty rights.
Claim rights are rights that impose duties or obligations on other parties. Your right to a lawyer if accused of a crime, right to trial by jury, right to compulsory process for obtaining witnesses, right to a basic education, and right to nurture if a child are all claim rights.
Liberty rights and claim rights are inverse, a persons has a liberty right as long as no one has a claim right forbidding it. You do, for example have a right to go where you like, but not if you in doing so leave your infant child to die of neglect while you are gone.
Second order rights are powers and immunities regarding the powers of government to modify first order rights, and the peoples immunity to have certain rights abrogated.
In almost all developed nations, health care is considered a claim right, similar to the right to basic education or the right to a lawyer if accused of a crime in the US. But different from the right to a jury trial.
Like legal counsel or education, there are no legal means of forcing people to work providing these things. It is (generally sought-after) employment. Since the government has a duty to provide these things and no power to compel its provision, work has to be attractive enough that people apply for the jobs.
Jury duty, however, is an actual duty, and there are provisions to compel it. Similar to conscription for military defense of the nation.
I think it is a policy goal of India to have UHC up and running in 2022.
I also believe that it won’t be first world quality for a while after that. But in a country with a GDP per person thav low, it’ll be far cheaper to implement than in a fully first world nation. Also, there is definitely a diminishing returns effect here. Going from 0 per citizen to 200 is going to have far more impact than going from 4000 to 5000 $ per person.
How is that different from the current situation for lawyers, judges and teachers, all of whom provide their services in areas where people have a right to recieve them?