What would you **personally **sacrifice for health care reform(as defined by whatever you think should be done)? You think there should be a public option, well what would you sacrifice? You think there should be a free market nationwide exchange? What will you give up for it? You think health insurance should be illegal, and all health care should be paid out of pocket? In exchange for what? Salary, taxes, government programs, retirement security, principals, they are all fair game, as long as they affect you directly.
For example, I can’t sacrifice Military spending, because I’m not in the military, I can’t sacrifice Medicaid benefits, because I’m not on Medicaid. I can sacrifice future SSN benefits or retirement accounts. I can sacrifice infrastructure programs because I use the roads a lot.
I would be willing have large deductibles ($5000+) in order to be able to provide very affordable catastrophic insurance for everyone. I would be willing to raise the baseline of required coverages (such as mental health, counceling, or other things I wouldn’t make use of) in order to facilitate a nationwide market place for insurance policies.
I also would be willing to pay a payroll tax for catastrophic insurance for everyone.
I’ve said it before and I’d say it again - I’d be willing to pay whatever my company pays in monthly health insurance premiums (2 employees) PLUS a little bit more, in payroll taxes, if we had a completely federal-funded health system. That “little bit more” would be covered by whatever we have to pay in out-of-pocket expenses now. So if we had no out-of-pocket expenses, we’d be willing to pay more in taxes.
I’m not seeing where I’d have to sacrifice anything, really. The root of the whole problem as I see it is the ridiculous cost of specialty healthcare and not so much the cost of insurance (Whole ‘nother thread). Those who can pay already pay for those who can’t when they need ER treatment. If I could reduce that expense simply by paying for preventive care, why the hell wouldn’t I? I can either pay my insurance company to finance non-payers or I can pay my government to do it. For a million little reasons I’d prefer to have Uncle Sam at the helm (Whole ‘nother thread).
So what would I give up? My employer provided healthcare and maybe another 5% of my income to taxes. Just because it’s the right thing to do.
The thing that worries me about health care is not that I may have to sacrifice something; it’s that if things keep going the way they’re going now, pretty soon all of us will be “sacrificing” by paying a crazy amount of money for crappy health care - either by paying directly or giving up raises if you have employer-provided health care.
There was a really great debate between Paul Krugman and Stuart Butler on Fresh Air - you can read the transcript here - where Krugman says:
That’s really what I worry about, because I already see it happening. I pay 60% more per month for my insurance premiums than I did 2.5 years ago; that’s a crazy increase, and if it keeps going that way, it won’t be too long before it becomes unaffordable.
If someone were to come to me right now and say “Your health care is not going to get any cheaper than it is today, but we’ll cap it so it can only go up 5% a year” I’d be a little upset, as my health care is one of the largest bills I pay every month, but overall I’d breath a sigh of relief. My biggest fear is that in a few more years we’ll all be “sacrificing” a heck of a lot more than anyone wants to let on unless something is done to fix it.
I’d gladly give up my HMO and all the doctors and administrators and policy agents connected with it. Let them go out and buy their own coverage on the private market. If we forced all those opposed to public health to buy private insurance, then the industry would last forever.
But no, once a pubic plan is approved, they will join everyone else rushing to it, nailing their own coffin, as it were.
The insurance industry whines “What will become of us if you no longer need insurance?” Well, that means insurance itself is a waste of time and energy. I hope they can be retrained. We didn’t worry about that ditching the textile industry, the steel industry, the consumer electronics industry. And those people actually produced something other than paper.
I will sacrifice all the ovarian cysts I have right now that I can’t have removed because I have no insurance and I can’t afford to pay for it myself because I’m a big dumb poor loser.
Since I can’t buy health insurance at any price (and moved overseas to obtain insurance), I would sacrifice the US military “defending my freedom” in useless wars that have no endgame. I am willing to have less “defending freedom” and more healthcare.
