That would be fraud that they could catch, and prove.
[QUOTE]
I’m not able to find any useful numbers on the federal side, but this document (warning: PDF) provides some details on welfare fraud in the state of California (mostly LA county) in the year 2002. From the document (for the entire state of CA):
[li] 421,022 cases referred for welfare fraud[/li][/QUOTE]
Over 400,000 cases in one year.
[QUOTE]
[li] 34% of referrals had sufficient evidence to support the allegation[/li][/QUOTE]
Which certainly does not mean that the others were not true, just that they only go forward with the ones they are fairly sure they can prove.
[QUOTE]
[li] 8% of those allegations had enough evidence to warrant prosecution.[/li][/QUOTE]
Which certainly does not mean that the others were not true, just that they could not be proved in a court of law.
So, out of all the folk on welfare in California, most of which are apparently living in LA county, over 10,000 in one year could be proven to have commited welfare fraud. Over 400,000 others they were suspicious of but couldn’t prove (of course, some were probably innocent). And this is of the ones that were reported.
Proving once again that you can make statistics to say whatever you want them to.
And, since I missed the edit window on my last post, my point wasn’t welfare abuse per se, it is that the more the government hands people, the less likely they are going to want to go forth and earn anything for themselves. Why rock the boat? The government is giving you food, shelter and medical care, where is the incentive to leave that behind?
After having skimmed the thread, I just want to make sure I have grasped the points under discussion before I join in.
[ul][li]The US health system consumes a greater share of national wealth than in any other developed country while providing less widespread services to the population than in any other developed country. It’s pretty shit unless you’re rich.[/li][li]Other developed countries managing to provide reasonably successful UHC to their citizens using different approaches based on various combinations of taxation, mandatory contributions and optional private topups. However it is inconceivable that any of these various approaches would work in the US because[/li][ol][li]Having the government involved would automatically result in vast and inefficient bureacracy. That 50% or more of all US health dollars already come from the government is irrelevant.[/li][li]The US is afflicted by enormous numbers of parasitic workshy scroungers, who would soak up all the contributions of the hardworking middle classes. All these individuals are currently entitled to have their overdoses/bullet wounds/crotch rot treated in the ER at someone elses expense, but this is irrelevant as is the fact that every other developed country also has a fair proportion of workshy parasitic scroungers.[/li][li]Despite the complaints from tens of millions of american healthcare consumers, along with the employers who are trying to keep the current system funded, the status quo is preferable to any alternative that might provide anyone with more out of the system than they have contributed. There can be no compromise on such a fundamental principle of the american way of life, so any potential benefit to the nation is irrelevant.[/li][/ul]
[li]Even if it was theoretically possible to implement UHC and the need to punish the underserving was overlooked:[/li][LIST=1][li]Americans are too lazy and corrupt to ever try to fix the current system. Even if they did try, they all have shit for brains and could never make something as complex as UHC work.[/li][/ol]Therefore there is no point in attempting to improve the current system, which is the best the US could ever hope to achieve[/LIST]
After having skimmed the thread, I just want to make sure I have grasped the points under discussion before I join in.
[LIST][li]The US health system consumes a greater share of national wealth than in any other developed country while providing less widespread services to the population than in any other developed country. It’s pretty shit unless you’re rich.[/li][/QUOTE]
To be fair, the US healthcare system does provide a higher standard of care overall. We have the best doctors, the most advanced medicines, the hottest nurses, and the shiniest hospitals. Privatization (or, more accurately, non-nationalization) has to take the lion’s share of the credit for that.
On the other hand, theoretical access to The Cancer Treatment Of Tomorrow isn’t much good if your health insurer doesn’t feel like paying for it. So, there are swings and roundabouts.
I could probably spend a week thinking of ways that someone who is irresponsible/improvident/self-destructive would strain and drain the health care system – directly or indirectly. Shall I try to come up with 2 or 3 examples?
What exactly do rates of welfare fraud have to do with UHC? Welfare is NOT universal - the fraud is due to people trying to get money they are not entitled to. UHC is universal - everybody’s entitled. Health care fraud in Canada is mostly non-residents popping across the border to get free health care using borrowed/stolen ID cards (but the US already provides free care for your illegal immigrants IIRC, so this shouldn’t change much) or physicians and other health care providers fraudulently billing the system. Abuse tends to be things like going to the ER for something a local clinic or personal physician could handle.
I expect that “doctor shopping” and similar abuses of the US system are more difficult here since there is a centralized record of all a patient’s visits for payment purposes. There are also limits placed on how often some repetitive costs are paid for, such as routine checkups and tests, which would prevent other types of abuse.
What has distance got to do with it? But I can see why you want to ignore that every other western, industralizied, civilised nation that’s for that reason comparable to the US, has a UHC of some kind, and manages somehow.
Tell me: do you believe that inefficient, corrupt, tax-wasting bureaucracy and govt. programs exist only in the US - that somehow, Europeans et al. (wouldn’t want to forget the Canucks or the Aussies!) are immune to this problem and everything is efficent there? (The US is so unique, even their corruption/waste problems are bigger than everybody else’s? There’s an old Cold War joke “Our dwarfs are the biggest dwarfs” kind like that?)
Or what other reason do you have for ignoring that UHC works elsewhere?
Please point out where the OP or other pro-UHC posters in this thread have said this? Because all I’ve been reading is a general discussion of UHC not a specific plan. Since there are easily a dozen variations on how to implement UHC in the US, saying that everybody would be forced to participate is a straw man.
Cite please that Canadians have no choice? Do you know any facts about UHC in other countries at all, or do you not care because you disregard them anyway?
Except for all those dopers who posted in various threads or other Americans who told about how difficult it is for them under their restrictive plan to visit a doctor. But as long as you have no trouble, other’s people’s problems don’t exist, is that right?
Unless private insurance companies won’t take them, or they can’t afford it. Which is obviously the reason why a lot of Americans don’t have a private insurance. Have you never heard people saying that they joined the Army to get Health Coverage for their family?
Again, you’re either reading a different thread or lying, because there is no leading plan with any details.
That must be your own special definition of taxes. Are sales taxes then not real taxes? After all, you don’t have to buy these things. Alcohol and cigarette taxes ditto - you can choose not to smoke.
The difference - as I explained already - is that this money doesn’t go into the big pot marked taxes, where the government then distributes it to education and defense and all the other budgets, it goes directly into the insurance pots.
As for what happens if the money is used up - try reading my post. I said welfare kicks in. What happens in the US? You land on the street, don’t you?
Yes, that’s how insurances in general work. Or does your Health insurance only cover your surgery after you’ve paid in enough for the last 20 years, but not in the first 5 years, no matter if you need it? Some people pay their whole life and never need it, some people need it after paying for 20 years, some need it after paying for 6 months. The big pot balances it out.
I’m tired of your lying and distortions. You didn’t show any figures that a) the abusers of the system (as opposed to people simply unlucky) are bigger in the US than in Europe (which would be a feat, since it would contradict dozens of sociology and psychology research) or b) that paying welfare for the poor and the unemployed is the reason the middle class is shrinking. (The opposite is the case - less government programs means also less assistance for the Middle class, which the previous generation profited from. You can see some real figures here.
I refute your premise. My proof is that I gazed into my crystal ball yesterday evening, and the forces are advantegeous to implementing a UHC in this year. If you do it right now, you will have a surplus by 2015. I promise. My proof is my belief, just like your assertion.
But seriously, that finally convinced me that you are either
un-intelligent, that is, too dumb (either unable or unwilling)
or dis-honest, that is, trolling
for an intelligent discussion. Otherwise you’d realize that your premise as stated above is circular and un-refutable (which, according to Popper, makes it also unverifiable, of course), because it’s dumb shit. Nobody knows what will happen in the future.
And while I’m the last to defend the US government and the first to accuse it, this is mind-boggling stupid. Because a program costs money, or because it’s ineffecient, doesn’t make it a total failure. Guess what - private companies of a certain size also have bureaucracy, and waste resources.
So please, if you belive that all govt. programs are bad, leave this country and go somewhere with total anarchy (e.g. HAiti) where the govt. doesn’t interfere with your middle-class lifestyle and everything is privatized, and leave the rest of the world alone.
Objectivly, or by your impression? Because I’m tired of the oft-repeated argument that the US must have the best care in the world because all the foreigners are coming to get treated there, while completly ignoring that foreigners come to European clinics, too. Yes, some top-of-the-world specialists are in the US, but for others, it’s Europe.
After an almost exhausting read, just a few points:
I’m a fairly strong free-market libertarian, but even I’ll admit that health care does not lend itself to market solutions. Markets distribute scarce resources by pricing some people out of the market. Meanwhile, physicians have an ethical duty to treat anyone who needs immediate care (which is a moral good IMHO). Thus, there’s a theoretical problem right up front; if you can’t turn people away based on an inability to pay, the ultimate basis of a market system is gone.
As a result of the above (and other social and ethical concerns), our system of health care IS ALREADY socialized. Not only do we have Medicare, Medicaid, hospital write-offs, etc, but our insurance system itself is a means of socializing the risks of health care costs, simply administered by private companies. This is why curlcoat comes across as such an asshole–proudly saying she gets more in benefits than she pays in premiums–i.e. driving the rest of our premiums up–while bitching and moaning about having to pay higher taxes to cover others (and that’s putting aside the fact that she has apparently convinced an insurance company that she is incapable of working and paying taxes, her capacity for ongoing, voluminous typing notwithstanding–abuse?).
3)Brazil’s sweeping generalizations are a simple matter of ignorance (willful or not), but I wonder whether it even matters about the murder rates. Does a person who is murdered really have a greater net cost in health care. Compare an emergency room death to the long-term disability costs of caring for the aged. (And of course, since we’re talking about the “underclass,” we don’t even have to subtract out the loss of years paying into the system).
4)Everyone is going to need health care at some point. You may be young and healthy and not believe you need to pay in, but when your time comes, there will be someone else helping you out. Someone above mentioned that UHC would give folks the feeling that they would then be able to dictate private behavior (which is a fear I share), but the question, as above, is the total net costs to society, and I don’t think ANY certain behavior can necessarily be linked to that without consideration of so many other factors. (And I would be a staunch advocate for leaving personal decisions out of the realm of government simply due to taxpayer puritanisms). Just anecdotally, it seems that the main factors are how much you put in, whether you get a major illness before you die, and how quickly you die–the fcators that no one knows and that we all use in the socialization of our present health system.
5)What we have now seems to work less well than what other countries have. With UHC, we will continue to lead on the cutting edge technologies, not because we have private insurance, but because we have well funded public (and private) universities. The difference will only be in delivery to the masses and the divorcing of health care from employers–making our companies more price competitive and our labor more flexible.
No. Not a straw man. Your point was that the US couldn’t do UHC because of the underclass and all of its attendant social ills. You went on an on about murder rates as if that indicated that the underclass makes it too expensive for UHC to work in the US.
I’m just asking if it really would be more expensive to insure the underclass–especially given existing Medicaid. I use the murder rate as proxy for that general question since you guys were arguing it so much.
I would add that economies of scale with UHC would seem to drive prices down, and even the malpractice insurance increases would be offset by liability insurance decreases as personal injury risks were reduced due to juries knowing that everyone’s medical costs were already covered (this just a thought).
ETA: You don’t know shit about poor people beyond your narrow, cartoonish insults. And I actually have purposefully moved into worse neighborhoods to learn and to try and fix things–not from a liberal standpoint, but a moral and ethical one.
Not that we can’t do it, just that we should not expect it to work out (?) like in Canada.
No, it’s not the murders themselves. I used murder rates as a proxy, i.e. a way of measuring the size of the underclass. As I suspected, you missed the point.
I don’t know if it would cost more, I would need to think about it. I do think that the quality of care would go down for many people. It’s common sense. Right now, we basically have a 2-tier system - an upper tier, and a lower tier. Common sense says that if we switch to a 1-tier system, that one tier will be somewhere in the middle.
It’s also consistent with my observations that the underclass has a tendency to cause unpleasant problems with many or most of the institutions it comes into contact with.
As the instigator of this thread, I’m flummoxed that there appears to be a “leading plan.”
I’m personally for a British-style system, but in this thread am really contrasting UHC in general vs. the present chaos. RickJay’s talking about Canadian-style Medicare. I’m not sure what Ocean Annie’s talking about other than changing the bias in government funding.
I raised multiple points, and you picked out a very minor one, to the exclusion of the rest, to raise the “straw man” argument.
If it’s not the murder rate of the underclass, what is it that makes them so expensive to switch from our current scheme to UHC?
Why does this underclass make the US so different from all of the other countries that are already providing UHC?
Is it profligacy? If so, how does that increase the costs versus existing programs?
Is it birthrate? What?
I think the purely economical decision is whether the addition of the uninsured will be offset by their contributions, in the context of the rationalization of the myriad of programs we already have, and the movement of the "underclass from Medicaid to UHC.
Do you have an opinion about that, or am I stuck in a straw man rut, or just another idiot who doesn’t “get” you?