The claim that there’s a war on business and the rich is what’s bullshit. It could be much more accurately described as an attempt at increasing the fairness of the tax burden.
I assume you realize that businesses pay tax on their profits, so the matter of overhead seems quite irrelevant to me. Hire an additional worker means less profit and thus less taxes. I don’t follow the complaint.
So you’re saying that Dems want to tax gross revenue rather than the profit margin? That is indeed a bad policy.
You do realize that the ‘entire world’ isn’t actually in a UHC system, right (even if you meant ‘single payer’ here not all countries are that either)? In fact, my WAG is most aren’t, even in Europe. But, if you have a site demonstrating that the US is the ONLY (hell, I’ll go along with ‘major’ or ‘superpower’) country without UHC, feel free to provide a list of all the rest that have it while we don’t. I’m pretty confident that your hyperbole is misplaced.
As to the OP, I do think that eventually, the Republicans will be there IF the majority of the population is on board. Look how the political lines have shifted in just the last 100 years, and compare and contrast where we are on a host of issues as opposed to where we were 100 or even 50 years ago.
Republicans DID back a form with the Massachusetts plan under Governor Romney, a plan built out by the right wing think tank AEI.
So there is a part of the Republican party that would support something in theory.
I think they might back a minimal health coverage plan, with the right to purchase premium, white glove care for the ultra rich as needed to keep the support of their constituency.
I expect he meant “developed world”, “First World” or “Western world”. All of which, except the US, have UHT, but not necessarily single payer. I think you got those confused.
All countries in western Europe for example has UHC, and most in the East. I think the main exception is FYROM or something ex-Jugoslav. So do a large number of countries not traditionally considered “First World”. India and China are both putting a lot of effort into getting UHC up and running.
I think the main countries with UHC but not single payer are the Bismarck-system nations, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. Could be more that Im unaware of.
You should take a look at the map in the wiki article, “List of countries with universal health care.”
It shows all of Europe, Russia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Canada with UHC, along with a few other countries here and there.
Sp you’re right, saying “all the world” is hyperbole.
But if you say “all industrialised countries except India, China and the US”, it’s a pretty good approximation.
I think the question really depends on understanding what the objection to universal health care is. Saying that the rest of the world does it, or that it will be cheaper, etc. doesn’t address that.
For many Republicans, the objection to universal health care is that they do not believe that is the proper role of the federal government. It doesn’t matter if it’s cheaper, it doesn’t matter if other people do it. It’s a principled objection and it doesn’t get defeated by identifying those things, even if they are true.
I think a better approach is to identify the weaknesses in the capitalistic healthcare market, how healthcare operates differently than other markets, focus on negative externalities created by healthcare markets as applied, and the idea that it is a valid role of government to intercede in the case of these undesirable externalities. I think that’s an argument that can be persuasive even to libertarians, much less Republicans.
You realize that his isn’t theory. There are other countries all over the world that tried it both ways and Universal health care resulted in lower health care costs and better health care outcomes. There are arguments for keeping the current overpriced system (our inflated health care costs means that the health care industry devotes more resources to things like diabetes and fewer resources to whatever health care issues that disproportionately affect the Swedes) but there is no way that we have anything approaching the most cost efficient health care system
It’s funny, but the US is on that list too (though they do say we don’t have UHC, they go on with some caveats…and if you read through a lot of the other ones you’ll see similar things). That’s the thing…they are defining it so broadly that everything is UHC. Grim Render might have it right though…maybe it’s me who is confusing single payer systems with UHC. A lot of those on your list here are hybrid or provide some SERVICES ‘universally’, but so does the US…if you are 65 or older you have UHC services. I noticed China is on your list too. The devil is in the details and what people actually mean when they think of UHC (which seems to be that everyone gets all the care they need from the government…which, again, I don’t believe ‘most’ of even the major powers do, let alone The World™, with the US in some sort of healthcare wasteland).
If we eventually actually pass universal health care, then within a decade, not only will all Republicans be in favor of it, but they’ll always have been in favor of it. Getting rid of it will become just as much of a “third rail of politics” as Social Security and Medicare are now.
Yes, this is right, and it also helped to convert me to notice that our current health care system is FAR from a free market already. It’s just a historical accident that in the US, health insurance has been linked to employment - this is a direct result of the federal government instituting wage and price controls in WWII. Employers found that they could offer health insurance to get around the restrictions, and once that was put in place, it was hard to get rid of, even though it makes little sense. Then the government cemented that weird system further by mandating health insurance coverage as something standard for full-time jobs. We try to patch that system with government assistance for those who don’t have jobs, but it’s a broken system, and it’s the government that broke it.
Add to that fact that there are things a free market isn’t very good at. Is that person OK with having a free market, and saying that someone’s daughter will just need to die since her parents didn’t freely buy the right kind of insurance when they had the chance?
Some personal friends of mine had a daughter suddenly go into liver failure on a trip, and THEN they found out that the insurance they had didn’t cover what she had. It was a financial as well as medical ordeal - they ended up testifying to Congress in the lead-up to passing the ACA a few years ago.
If you are a free-market hard liner, you would have to tell these parents too bad about their daughter.
In general, western UHC systems work on the basis that residents have the right to all medically necessary healthcare. This does not include vanity surgery or second opinions, but there is normally private healthcare for things like that. (reconstructive plastic surgery** is **included). There are exceptions, for example the French system.
There is no intuitive reason not to cover everything. If you come to healthcare from an American perspective it can be hard to wrap your head around, but healthcare is very much a "High fixed cost, low variable cost" thing. It costs a lot of money to build and equip a hospital and educate staff etc, but once set up, the cost of providing healthcare per unit is very low. Despite the bills the US ones provide:)
In some cases, not covering everything could be more expensive since you’d incur additional gatekeeping costs.
An analogy I am growing fonder of is that most other western nations provide healthcare like they and the US, provide basic education.
I am sorry XT, but yes providing universal healthcare to all residents is very much the norm in the developed world, much like basic education.
[QUOTE=Grim Render]
I am sorry XT, but yes providing universal healthcare to all residents is very much the norm in the developed world, much like basic education.
[/QUOTE]
I’m equally sorry, but I think that ‘universal healthcare’ means different things in different countries…and in many cases it doesn’t mean that all citizens ‘have the right to all medically necessary healthcare’. China, who is on that list doesn’t have that. France has a hybrid system, as you noted. The UK certainly has a UHC system and is the model, and I think that most ‘developed’ nations do have a mix of coverages that can be construed as ‘universal healthcare’…but that the yardstick is different as to what that actually means from nation to nation. If you want to prove to me otherwise then I’m all ears…show me that all (or even most) ‘developed’ nations ‘have the right to all medically necessary healthcare’, and that ‘all medically necessary healthcare’ has some sort of universal yardstick that they all follow the same way. Heck, just show me that every other ‘developed’ nation give basic care to all their citizens all the time and I’ll happily concede the point.
That said, I’m not arguing whether the US SHOULD go this route or not (I think we should), or even if we will…eventually. I already said we probably will. I’ve come to the conclusion over the last 5 or so years that the US needs to go this route, but that like a lot of things it’s not going to be like how other countries did this, and that pointing out that other countries have it really isn’t a very good argument to most Americans…what will finally decide this is cost and the continued degradation of our own system as it becomes more and more dysfunctional.
I don’t actually see China on that list? India and the US are, as countries that are transitioning to UHC, but specifically called out as not having it.
I am sorry, XT but I am getting the impression this is not your best subject. I am not sure if you understand how extraordinary your claims are. Yes, every developed country bar the US has UHC. Yes, things are covered.
I live in Europe. I have a European health card. When I travel, I count as a citizen of the UK, France or wherever if I need to seek healthcare. So do my family, friends, workmates, their workmates, etc. None of us have ever considered that something might not be covered. That would be…alien. Medieval.
While there are exceptions, saying that covering medically necessarily issues are not covered is an extraordinary claim.
I’ll come back to this later because I am late for meeting friends, but I really feel the onus is on you to support that.
That last is unquantifiable, especially considering that someone really more concerned with their own pocketbook would say the same thing to look politically correct. It’s an objection, sure, but I wouldn’t call it principled without looking at the motives behind it.
Then do you approve of the government regulating drug pricing? Clearly that upward spiral is a negative externality; it’s a major contributor to increasing health care costs and has been shown not to be amenable to the competitive model.
No, it’s not my best subject. I’ve traveled in Europe quite a bit, though not recently, and I know that the care is more universal than here…but Europe isn’t the entire world, or even all of the ‘developed’ world (they just think they are :p). My understanding, though, is that some medical services are ‘universal’ in that the government pays for them, some are ‘universal’ in that they are there if you pay for them (or have private insurance that covers them), and that this varies from country to country in what is or isn’t covered ‘universally’. Not everything is. In a way, some things are ‘universally’ covered in the US…if you go to a hospital for a serious issue it’s covered even if you don’t have insurance. For preventative care, though, that often isn’t covered unless you have insurance…and I think that’s a key difference. These are some of the reasons Americans pay so much more per capita for healthcare, and why I’ve come around to the idea of some sort of single payer system for our own UHC type thing.
I’ll keep an open mind on what you are saying, though…obviously even though I’ve traveled a lot my perceptions are American wrt this subject. One thing I’ve already learned from what you said is that your healthcare crosses borders…I didn’t know that, at least not wrt ‘universal’ care. I never really thought about how this would work in the EU or Eurozone, so that’s good to know. I know a bit about individual countries healthcare in Europe (the UK, France, Germany, some of the Scandinavian countries, Spain and Italy mostly)…enough to know that they all do things differently. I will admit that in all those examples they get more for less than we do.
I disagree. The right opposes UHC for a wide range of reasons, but I’d wager anti-statism and dislike of outsiders plays a big role. FDR wanted to do UHC in the 1940s, but southern democrats didn’t want it because they felt it would lead to black people getting into white hospitals. At the end of the day, there are enough white people who become filled with rage at the idea of paying taxes so a black person or latino can visit a doctor, or enough middle class and working class people filled with rage at the idea of paying taxes so a poor person can get medical care that it won’t happen anytime soon. We can dress it up, but America is filled with racial and class divisions that always come up whenever the social safety net is discussed.
The ACA was a giveaway to the rich in some ways. It had a few taxes, but it was written to be friendly enough to the insurance industry, pharma, hospital industry, etc. that they all came out in favor of the bill. Now they are fighting to keep the bill. So getting the rich on board isn’t the problem, if that was the problem then conservatives would support the ACA.
We may not be using the term externality in the same way. Even if we were, it’s a necessary condition, but not sufficient in and of itself. I don’t generally approve of regulating drug, or any other pricing.
Then I presume you believe that one shouldn’t be able to copyright or otherwise prevent other manufacturers from selling generic versions of drugs, since that’s another example of government regulation and a substantial part of the reason why the market for medicinal drugs is completely screwed?