I don’t know whether this qualifies as “nanny-statism.” Decide for yourself.
This is a myth. It is not a universal myth, there are places where health insurance is very expensive (New York and New Jersey come to mind), but this is due more to stupid local laws than anything else. I have affordable health insurance. I sell affordable health insurance, and it’s not nearly as expensive as everyone thinks. I have great coverage on my family of 4 for about 400/month. Would I like to pay less? Sure. I'd like .99/gallon gas too. That doesn’t mean that what I have isn’t reasonable. Not cheep, no, but reasonable. It also doesn’t have to be that much, I chose a higher end plan. That was MY choice, and I’m glad to have it.
At a poverty level income, that would be about 1/3 of gross pay.
Lower taxes.
Even after paying for your private health insurance, if you pay an average amount of tax, you actually pay MORE tax to social health programs than the average Canadian does.
Health care reform could offer you a chance to pay less tax and get the same insurance coverage for less additional money. That isn’t an incentive?
Christ, that’s a lot of money. Considering you then have to pay a pile of tax to support Medicare and Medicaid anyway, I’m starting to like my situation.
Hardly a myth for people I know, but I do live in NJ with friends and family in NYC.
I would try $600 to $800 per month for decent coverage.
This surfaces like kudzu. We already have universal healthcare for the poor. It’s Medicaid. Nobody is facing death who would be helped with UHC. Tell your girlfriend that I’m shocked about how long it takes to get a hip replacement or kidney stones removed in England.
As one of the richest nations in the world we can afford private insurance in addition to funding the poor (and one or two illegals). So if you want to pay $7 gallon for gas and live in an apartment then move to England and quit whining.
And as for dying, try getting a heart-bypass done in Canada. They almost killed a friend of mine’s father with surgery delays. He had 2 heart attacks waiting on it.
Translation if you’re an able bodied young adult and poor you’re screwed.
Apparently not since nearly 1 out 6 Americans lack health coverage.
minor nitpick but population density is responsible for that. 1/4 the US population in an area the size of Michigan.
explain how I’m “whining”. If you can’t. I think I’d be justified in asking you to just to stick to the facts. Cause that appears to be “agree with me or leave” and surely you’re not that immature.
If good ol’ American health care is so easily available why didn’t he just come down and get some of that?
Which ones? If you have the chance to list any places where some of DSeid’s bullet points are implemented, I’d be interested.
Incomplete info can be worse than no info, careful there.
In Spain for example, one of the first things the current Socialist government did is pass a new and quite draconian anti-smoking law, which forbids smoking in any workplaces. You can’t have a “smoking room” in the office any more… like in the US, people have to go out to the street, which has led to grumblings that “oh, ok, so if I’m taking good care of my lungs I get 2 15-min breaks and if I’m a smoker I get to spend half the day outside? Oh, that’s nice!”
Restaurants below a certain size must be non-smoking. Over a certain size, they can be completely non-smoking or have separate areas (they must be physically separated and the ventilation set up so that the smoke from the smoking area doesn’t go to the non-smoking). Bars below a certain size have to decide whether they’re smoking or non (many bars polled their customers); over a certain size, they must have separate smoking and non-smoking areas. Some bars were only a little bit over the limit and what they did was build a Pladur partition reducing their area (“areas” covered include only the general customer area, not bathrooms, kitchens or storage rooms).
One of the consequences of the new driving license “with points” and of extensive campaigns from DMV has been that people drink less in restaurants; this doesn’t affect the real heavy drinkers (after all, a vodka puts you over the limit, so why not have two), but people are a lot more likely to ask for one glass of wine than for one bottle; many drivers have found that it’s easier for them to just not drink wine with the meal than to say “ok, I’ll have wine but only one glass and no herbal afterward.” Many restaurants that didn’t use to offer wine by the glass now do. Some are starting to offer the possibility to open “your” bottle (this is for people who eat there often, of course) and keep it for next time, or to BYOB.
The funny thing about this one is that the DMV campaigns have been there forever, but somehow the new license and hearing about people losing it in two days (one count of speeding real high, one count of reckless driving, two counts of alcohol) have shaken the masses. When the new license went in, one of my coworkers at the time, who is one of those guys who consider anything below 150km/h “slow” just gave up the wheel if there was someone else available. And good thing, he got two counts of “holyshit high speeding” on the first weekend that ate up half his points. If the alky-meter had beeped, he would have lost his license for 6 months.
So on one hand less than you said and on the other more.
Everyone has a choice. It’s just that too many people are buying designer clothes and digital cable and going out to eat every day instead of buying health insurance. There’s already a program for people who are extremely poor, and poor families in PA at least can get their kids covered for free. People choose to have luxuries over health insurance. Then they bitch and moan that they can’t afford health insurance.
I pay about 250$ a month for my insurance, for just me. Personally I think if you can’t afford kids, and that includes health insurance for them, don’t have any.
And I think that they chose poorly, and that’s not my fault nor my problem.
And the taxes are just magically going to go down despite the fact that the government starts shelling out even more money to provide long waiting lists and less options than I’ve got now? There’s no way that’s going to be saving me any money, and no, getting crappier health insurace and not being able to get what I have now is not an incentive.
I don’t want someone else deciding what health insurace I have. I don’t want someone else paying for it.
Actually, it makes me like your system even less. I’d prefer a system that’s a lot more like car insurance, where it’s required by law, but it doesn’t cover things like oil changes and annual inspections.
I don’t want socialized health insurance because there’s no upshot for me at all.
The catsixs are unreachable.
Facts are immaterial to dogma.
Poor? Don’t have kids. You make $30K a year and a family plan costs $7K … ah you must be buying designer jeans and Starbucks every day. The uninsured going to the ER is not my problem … nah, the fact that that expensive care that too often never gets paid for gets passed onto all the rest of us in our hospital bills instead isn’t my problem, if it was it would have that item on my hospital bill. There is no way another model could cost less and I’ll just keep my fingers in my ears and say “LALALA” to anyone who provides the cites that America has healthcare costs worse than other industrialized nations with worse measurable outcomes.
There’s no problem here and America’s businesss community is not the least concerned about how the costs of the employer-provided healthcare insurance model is handicapping their international competitiveness. Move along now.
I’m barely out of bed and haven’t read the thread. But coincidentally – you know how you have bizarre thoughts in the wee hours when you’re about to wake up? – this morning I thought, ‘The Republicans should really be pushing for NHC. Everyone would have an NHC card, presumably with encoded information, and it could be a good tool for tracking people and gathering information on them. Hey, terrists get sick, too!’ Just one of those strange, cynical waking thoughts.
Anyway, everyone already knows I think we should have NHC so I have nothing to add. Maybe after I wake up…
Yep, to me this is the heart of the matter. Even middle-sized companies struggle with this problem. I like the idea of helping the working poor. I am really aboard to remove business from the burden of doing what most of the first world considers the government’s job.
More small businesses will mean a lot more jobs and probably a lot more jobs that are enjoyable to work at. Maybe we could even keep some manufacturing jobs in the country.
Jim
What are the current options in this scenario?
You have a job with insurance coverage. You’re a single person who is not a senior, living in an apartment or perhaps you have a house and mortgage. Then you lose your job.
You’ve been making, say, $35,000 before taxes. Call it $25,000 after taxes and deductions. $2,083/month. A one-bedroom apartment in L.A is, say, $1,200/month. $883/month remaining. Utilities (gas, phone, electricity) cost $60/month. $823 remaining. There is no public transportation in L.A. to speak of, so you pretty much need to have a car. You spend $125/month for gas and $75/month for insurance. $623. You’ve got to eat. Let’s say a healthy diet costs $300/month. $323 left. So that covers food, housing and transportation. You can save your $323/month for retirement, or you can spend it on entertainment, or you can do something else with it. Your health insurance has been covered by your payroll deductions.
Upon becoming unemployed you could opt for COBRA. But let’s say COBRA costs $450/month. How will you pay that with your remaining $323? Oh, wait. you don’t have $323. You’re using your unemployment insurance. Instead of $2,083/month, now you’re getting $750/month – that you’ll have to pay taxes on later. You’re wondering how you’re going to pay for your rent. You’re wondering if anyone will rent you even an efficiency apartment when you don’t have a job. You’re trying like mad to find a job that will pay your expenses. How are you going to pay for COBRA? How are you going to pay for any insurance? Even if you’ve saved money, how long will it last? Now how long will it last if you have to pay an insurance premium?
Health coverage needs to be transportable and independent of employment, and it needs to be inexpensive enough that people can get treatment even if they don’t make a lot of money. Going to an emergency room when you run out of medication for [insert your condition here] places an undue burden on emergency rooms. Free clinics are often overworked and understaffed. I personally know people who have been refused medication because of prejudice. Basically it’s like this: ‘If you’re too poor to go to a real doctor, then you’re probably a drug addict. You say you’re in pain from [insert condition], but we all know that you’re going to abuse the drugs if we let you have them.’ (Note that this is anecdotal based on people I know.)
It would be better to have NHC so that people will get the treatment they need, instead of a million different schemes based on employment or social status.
That’s true a lot more than you might think. A lot of people just chose not to make health insurance a priority. Here is a report by the state of Maryland that Renob posted the other day indicating that 33% of the uninsured in Maryland make more than $44,000/year. At some point you have to say “Hey, wait a minute here” when people claim that they “can’t afford” health insurance.
Let’s remember that some people can’t get private health insurance. My father lost his job a while back and was trying to get coverage. He’s had a LOT of health problems in the past. The insurance companies just didn’t want to touch him. You know that first page of the insurance form that asks if you’ve had any of the following horrific problems? Yeah, lots of checks there. He got another job, so it’s all fine now, but he has to make sure that he can get employer-sponsored coverage until he’s old enough to qualify for whatever it is that old folks qualify for these days.
I know you fear the possibility that socialized medicine would cause you to may as much (if not more) for worse coverage, but what are the facts that prove to you that is an unavoidable outcome? It seems to me that it is at least conceivable that a system could be devised where a certain base level of medical care was universal and funded by taxation, but that also allowed people with means the option of purchasing supplemental coverage.
Is anyone aware of the true economic effects nationalization/socialization would have? Currently there are thousands if not millions of people employed by competing insurance companies, and by health care providers to deal with complexities of insurance. If coverage were “simplified” it doesn’t seem to me that all of these folk would find positions in the new system. I tend to be suspicious of our economy’s ability to absorb such workers.
In addition to the employees, a bunch of people make money of the insurance companies profits. What effect would socialization have on the markets, individual savings and net worth, etc?
I think catsix has a very valid point. I would love to see numbers (which would be impossible to compile) showing how many of the not-insured people genuinely can’t afford it, and how many don’t get it because they don’t consider it a necessity, and don’t make it a priority. Many people have a lot of trouble considering something a necessity when they don’t forsee a reason ever to need it, and while I understand this, it doesn’t make everyone else responsible for their short-sightedness. And catsix’s concern is completely fair…she HAS made it a priority. Since she has, shouldn’t she have the choice to have the healthcare she wants, and not be dragged down into an inferior system because of people who don’t make it a priority?
I think health care should be like any other social program…a safety net which one can avail themselves of if they can show a genuine need for the help, and always always the program should have the ultimate goal of helping the person become self-sufficient as quickly as possible.
It seems the argument so far seems to be concentrated on “let’s not help those that may well be able to help themselves”. (Except **Dinsdale ** who raises an interesting point of displaced workers from the insurance field.)
Would anyone care to address the benefits to business? Please look at it from that side and think about how much it would benefit small businesses and even larger companies attempting to compete in the international market.
Jim
Here’s a Census Bureau Press Release:
which includes the following:
. (I posted this in one of the other threads on this.) If being uninsured was primarily by choice, you wouldn’t see this ethnic breakdown. Certainly young, healthy people might choose to not buy insurance, since it is on average not a good deal for them. They are part of the problem - not in the sense of suffering the lack of insurance, but in not contributing to fund those people who do need it. Remember, they’ll need it also given time.
Given the ethnic breakdown of the uninsured I’d expect far more of the uninsured can’t afford it rather than choose not to buy it. Any data to the contrary?