Someone mentioned spending power being increased. I don’t see employers giving the money they used to fork over for health care to the employees. They would of course substitute the withholding for insurance premiums with the withholding for the new tax which may be more or less, but probably not much less. Now it’s true that employers can now spend the money used for health insurance premiums as well as all the people connected with health insurance benefits and can presumably spend that on other things or not take on the debt in the first place as the case may be, lowering the barrier to entry for new businesses. But while that’s good, I don’t know how I as an employee will pay less.
Also, were we to implement UHC, what about all the debt racked up by doctors to pay for their schooling? I am not sure why medical school is so expensive in the first place (I guess because the professors are all physicians), but doctors under the new regime are still going to need to be compensated to cover these costs. For that matter, they are probably going to want to be compensated to maintain the same purchasing power that they now have.
I also don’t understand how are liability costs lowered under UHC systems? I assume you can still sue for malpractice.
What will the effects be to the economy if the insurance industry goes away? One issue is that the industry is a large source of capital. Another issue is that the people the industry employs will have to be reabsorbed by the overall economy which will presumably take some time. Given the high unemployment rate right now, this may be a problem in the short term.
size of nation and demographics
One other thing I haven’t heard mentioned is that the US is larger than any other first world country. Its population is aging requiring more care (although I would expect that to be true of Europe too). How would this effect implementation of UHC?
I’ve mentioned in the past that even completely discarding the “moral imperative” argument in favor of UHC (a pretty strong one IMHO), one could make a convincing case for it in terms of it actually benefiting the rich that the population is healthier.
I’ve snarkily referred to this as the rich couple walking from their limo to the opera house not having to deal with beggars coughing on them or being inconvenienced by having to step over prostrate bodies. But I’m quite serious in that most property crimes and quite a few violent crimes are committed out of desperation. Reduce the number of desperate people and society as a whole becomes safer.
Also, Mr. and Mrs. Pennybags are just as exposed as any of us to pathogens that would more easily circulate if some people didn’t have the resources available for basic maintenance/health care.
OP, if you want to take morality out of the equation, and only look at the quality and cost of health care, then have a look at the World Health Organization statistics. Americans spend more per capita, and their government spends more per capita, on health care than any other first world nation, but their health (DALE) is only 24th. Every nation with better health for lower cost has universal health care.
Apples to apples? Compare Canada to the USA. Canadians live longer, live in a healthier state for a longer period of time, pay less per capita personally , and pay less out of the government purse. http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/whr00_annex_en.pdf
Conservatives, in general, invite arguments based on morality. They cite morality as a reason why gays shouldn’t get married or women shouldn’t have abortions. So why shouldn’t they get beaten over the head about the morality of providing healthcare?
Exactly! The same conservatives who crow so loudly about the economic efficiencies of the free market apparently see nothing wrong with the huge distortion of the labor market forced by having employer-tied healthcare as an accident of capricious history. I would think they’d be itching to switch to a system that removed this friction, made entrepreneurship more appealing, and so on.
Just to note that the late Milton Friedman, master-mind of conservative economics, said that he thought having employers pay for health care was idiotic. He argued either for everyone paying for their own, or universal care, but not burdening employers with something that’s (a) none of the business and (b) outside their areas of expertise.
My thought in general is that the question is whether health care is a service or a commodity. If it’s a service, it needs to be available to everyone and paid for by taxes – like the schools, roads, fire departments, police, etc. (as per Johnny L.A.). If it’s a commodity, then it should be available to those who pay for it – like your car or tv set or computer.
I personally think it’s a service and should be treated as such, but the entire American focus is that’s its a commodity to be traded on the open market.
You haven’t been paying attention if you think economic conservatives or libertarians haven’t been trying to untie healthcare from employment. In the last presidential election, McCain advocated giving individuals the same tax deduction for health insurance that employers get specifically to decouple the two.
I"m not sure but he may have also advocated for giving every individual a pony that poops skittles. Both suggestions had about the same chance of getting approved by the Republicans who pass laws though.
The commodity approach falls short, for private health insurance can not be traded by policy owners on the open market. Unlike a car or a tv set or a computer, a health insurance policy owned by an individual who is in good health and feeling lucky can not be traded by that person.
The populations were younger then. Why would a much larger population have no effect on implementation of UHC? I don’t think that it can be taken for granted that this will scale smoothly. Of course, we aren’t talking about a particular plan, just the idea of one.
Good luck getting most Americans to believe that after decades of being fed propaganda about how the government is always, always less efficient and more expensive than private industry.