Bulleted point #2, for folks who don’t want to refer back to page one:
Are you really that obtuse? Because it should be pretty obvious that the per capita cost isn’t a literal head tax.
If you use the same yard stick, it’s plain that the American system is more expensive. This is totally uncontroversial. Per capita expenditure in the U.S. is around $4200 USD. Per capita expenditure in Canada is around $2300 USD. For the same services – except everybody’s covered in Canada, and millions and millions of people are left in the lurch in the U.S.
If you can put a good face on that without playing silly games like “Yeah, but what if we multiply the costs by the number of dependants plus one in the system that I don’t like,” knock yourself out. If we play that game in the other direction, your health care costs are closer to $20,000 for the family. Gotcha Ya! Except of course that that’s stupid.
I see. It’s lack of foresight if someone loses their job and gets sick. It’s lack of foresight if someone is uninsured, oh except when they choose to be underinsured, 'cause when they do like you did, that’s foresight!
How do you feel that the numbers prove your case, Dave?
It would prove your case, if it actually cost upwards of ten thousand dollars to cover a family of four in a socialized or partially socialized system.
But it doesn’t.
Nice, too, that your rosiest picture (which still is a bad bargain compared with the cost of socialized health care) leaves out out-of-pocket expenses. So it’s within your budget, so long as no one in your family actually needs hospitalization or medication? (Which I earnestly hope is and continues to be the case, BTW.)
No, actually it’s not, because you absolutely failed to point out that I was doing anything hypocritical. Here’s a hint: You can jump up and down and scream “hypocrite” until you’re blue in the face, but your saying that doesn’t make it so. Words have specific definitions, you can’t change them to please yourself.
Here’s the problem, Dave. You’re paying as much in taxes to support Medicare/Medicaid as Canadians are paying in taxes to support UHC. And then you’re paying your private health insurance premiums on top of that. So how in the heck are the numbers on your side here?
There is no possible way we are going to get a fair, objective answer from weirddave here. His entire way of making a living is based upon our system staying the way it is. He has too much personally invested in this to have the capability of changing his mind. We should just get Weirddave to admit this and we’ll save ourselves a lot of headaches.
Canada is the only western country that has a tax rate similar to that of the US that offers UHC, and they are also somewhat unique in that they have such a huge country but very few people. If the US had only 30 million people, we’d have had UHC long ago too, I bet. Even in Canada, it varies from Province to Province. Instead of being “universal”, some Provinces charge an additional premium for health coverage. Are you proposing the same for the US? Do you think a system where the residents of Virginia paid nothing extra for their health insurance, but the residents of Montana were required to pay additional premiums would fly here? As for the US, Medicare/Medicade won’t change. UHC would add a minimum of 50 million people on top of that, and likely a whole hell of a lot more than that( Does anyone really think that corporations are going to continue to foot the bill for employee benefits if there is a government program providing them? Anyone? Anyone?). Canada is a country of 30 Million. Holland has 16 million. Even the “big 3” in western Europe, the UK, France and Germany, have populations of 60 million, 60 million and 80 million respectively. The US has half again as many citizens as all three of those nations combined. Is the scale of what we’re talking about sinking in? What works in a country of 16 million or 30 million is not guaranteed to work in a country of 300 million. Even assuming all other costs stay exactly the same, I still haven’t gotten an answer for how UHC proponents propose to extend coverage to 50 million new people and still save me and everyone else money. I like pie, but when it’s served in the sky I say no thanks.
If you think this is true, then answer my objections. What you’re saying is basically senseless, boil it down and what I am is a salesman, I could go sell anything if I had to. I wouldn’t get the same sense of personal satisfaction that comes from helping other people everyday by selling Hondas or houses, but I bet I could make the same amount of money.
Another pointless argument. You could look at the U.S. as a collection of States, and you could look at the Europe as a whole. The level of organisation does not invalidate the method here. The question at the end here has been answered several times.
As regards to this:
I’m not one for insults. For me, this is a factual observation, and I’m pretty much done talking to you. You’ve been insulting our intelligence long enough now.
We pay for the positive rights that we decide belong to us. And as soon as we get our collective heads out of our collective selfish, backward, knuckle-dragging asses we will finally make the giant leap to civilized nation status by paying for universal healthcare. (Yep, that’s right–we’ll pay for it with TAXES; you know, the dues you pay to belong to such a wealthy, prosperous “club” [the USA]).
As you may know but choose to ignore, paying upfront for a healthier population will save us oodles of dollars down the line because of, among other things, higher productivity, less time off work due to illness, and a decrease in the number of people with advanced illnesses that could have been slowed or halted entirely.
There aren’t that many salesperson jobs where you get paid for selling your product, and you even get paid for telling people to not buy your product, but to go use the government subsidized product instead. You were pretty saintly when stating that you gladly referred people to MHIP, but you didn’t mention that you get a referral fee for this. In fact, you not only signed up for government subsidized support for your wife, while simultaneously telling us why it’s bad that others get that, you probably even got paid for signing your wife up for it.
That’s quite a gig, so I can’t blame you for not wanting to give it up.
In the year and a half that MHIP has been available, I have received the $50 referral fee exactly one time. Most of the time I don’t even bother filling out the portion of the form with my license number and information anymore because they never pay. But hey, thank you for your concern.