Universal Health Care
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This is a question for the Conservatives, Republicans, Trump followers, Alt-Right, or anyone else on the right side of the economic spectrum:
Right now, if you come home and see your house was robbed, you can call the police. They come, take your statement, and investigate. You do not have to directly pay them anything.
If they find the criminal and arrest him, you still do not have to pay them anything. The police patrol the streets as a preventative measure to stop crime- again, you do not have to pay them anything directly.
You pay them indirectly, through taxes. We all do, collectively. We all pay taxes that goes to benefit the police, and at the federal level the FBI, because they benefit us all as a nation.
If your house is burning, the fire department comes and puts out the fire. They do not get your "fire Insurance" first. They do not give you an invoice after. They are paid collectively, by the government, through our taxes.
I do not see many conservatives wanting police and fire departments to be in the private sector as a pay per use service.
Yet, for some reason, they consider medical care to be different. In all three cases (crime, fire, medical), an emergency happens, and people need help. It is not a luxury, it is a necessity. In all three cases, people require preventative measures to help stop emergencies from happening.
In all three cases, it is to the benefit of all of us to handle these problems as fast and as early as possible- fire leaps from house to house, crime happens in waves, and illnesses spread.
It is simply logical, it just makes SENSE, to anyone who bothers to think about this issue that we NEED Single-Payer Universal Health Care coverage. Yes, Obamacare has problems, Trumps idea was worse, and nobody is bringing up the VA. There are plenty of nations with successful single-payer health care systems for us to emulate, instead of going back to what we had before Obamacare- which was the WORST health care system in the developed world.
So, please tell me- what is the rational argument AGAINST having a Single-Payer Universal Health Care program?
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I believe everyone should have the right for medical care (healthcare should be universal), however I'm not sure if single payer is the best way to get there.
I live in Canada and we have single-payer healthcare. Private care is not an option for most services, but prescription & dental is not covered by the government, so you either need a plan or pay out of pocket. Healthcare is funded through general taxation, but many people need to pay annual health premiums on top of the taxes they already pay.
Right now, our single-payer system costs provinces about half of their annual budget, meaning that all the other services - education, social services, housing, infrastructure, policing, etc - have to be budgeted with the other half, and there's a lot of tension between multiple levels of government over funding. To me, it's just very inefficient to spend half of the budget in healthcare when it's just a fraction of the general well-being of the individual. I think eventually Canada will be forced to adopt a two-tier system. IMO the hybrid or multi-payer systems in the UK, Australia, France or Germany seem to fare better in terms of cost and delivery of service.
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Also, I just noticed one of the options in your poll is "No, we need Insurance companies to derive profit from our pain, and drive costs up!"
Price gauging can happen regardless if the system is public or private. This is more a matter of enacting price control measures. Governments tend to have more bargaining power due to volume, but that's not always the case.
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Australia has had universal health care for over 40 years and it is doing well.. it has its' moments, just like any system. We can pay for extra cover, which is kind of a buffer for what our "medicare" provides. The most notable difference is that our Universal Healthcare has waiting lists for non emergency stuff.
Price wise, we pay a calculated amount for medical, in our taxes. We then can pay extra on a regular basis to a private health cover company - which is calculated on marital status, age etc - tbh it is extremely low compared to the US - but then not all US people pay for their insurance (?)
There are a few things that need fixing - the price of our "buffer" known as Private Health Cover is gradually increasing and people, obviously do not like that. It is also all over the place on what it covers and how much etc. With our universal healthcare, Dental, physio, podiatry and a few other things are not covered - except for certain groups/situations e.g. pensioners, but, as an example, if your podiatrist says you need an operation on your foot, that is covered but a general visit/in house consultation is not
There are a few other things that need tweaking but I guess the biggest thing - in my opinion - is the waiting lists in public hospitals
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Obamacare is not Health Care. It is a TAX. I believe the Supreme Court said that. Trump's plan of Healthcare Savings Plans is much better because you don't actually lose the money you invest each year and it just ads up, which is particularly good when you are young and healthy. Under Obamacare, it's gotten so expensive that nobody can afford it. It will implode. I've known doctors who hated it so much they moved out of the country. Insurance was started by the King of Spain (or England) can't remember, when ships were being decimated by the High Seas, and the King needed to promote trade, so he opted a plan that would allow them to go into the sea without the full risk. This is NOT insurance, period. Obamacare is a total disaster, and again, not insurance. It's a tax. And why should I have to pay for illegal immigrants to have FREE healthcare. Just look at California, a total disaster, hospitals being shut down constantly because of it.
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The UK has an NHS and it's falling apart, despite throwing tons of cash at it.
You need private health insurance if you want to be seen within a reasonable amount of time. If I didn't have private insurance, I would have been dead back at the end of 2008.
I have permanent nerve damage in both my hands because my, then, GP refused to refer me. After 20 month of this, he went on vacation and his replacement referred me.
I have sciatica and I have no idea when I'll see a specialist, since I no longer have private insurance. I have to take several pain pills every day and inject muscle relaxer into several spots on my leg 6 times a day (and even at night).
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I think eventually Canada will be forced to adopt a two-tier system. IMO the hybrid or multi-payer systems in the UK, Australia, France or Germany seem to fare better in terms of cost and delivery of service.
Agreed - I think though the issue with some of the countries, where the hybrid is happening, is the creep is happening - meaning the balance of the hybrid is out of whack, so people feel paying for health via taxes is useless
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The UK has an NHS and it's falling apart, despite throwing tons of cash at it.
You need private health insurance if you want to be seen within a reasonable amount of time. If I didn't have private insurance, I would have been dead back at the end of 2008.
I have permanent nerve damage in both my hands because my, then, GP refused to refer me. After 20 month of this, he went on vacation and his replacement referred me.
I have sciatica and I have no idea when I'll see a specialist, since I no longer have private insurance. I have to take several pain pills every day and inject muscle relaxer into several spots on my leg 6 times a day (and even at night).
Australia is the same issue - but it has not hit things so drastically, yet. I say yet, because I fear we are going the same way.
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mhorndisk, you did not read anything I wrote, or address anything I wrote. All you did is repeat standard right-wing propaganda.
raphjd, if it was not for Obamacare, I would be dead right now, since insurance companies would not accept people with pre-existing conditions.
And you also did not address what I wrote.
Police and fire are emergency services, paid by taxes. Why not medical care?
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I don't need private fire or police insurance to get them to help when needed.
NHS systems are failing all over the world. They are extreme money pits that bleed the tax payers dry.
Think about it.
Under the NHS, you pay extremely high taxes and you still need medical insurance.
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I don't need private fire or police insurance to get them to help when needed.
That did not answer the question, it simply stated the current reality of the system, followed by your talking points, showing you missed the point.
THINK about the topic before replying.
Should the police and fire departments be privatized, and people have to pay for them on a case by case basis?
Or, does it make more sense that we ALL pay for them collectively, in our taxes, even if we never need them?So, why not, for example, Ambulances? Why do we have to pay for an ambulance to take us to the hospital?
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How sad, another one demanding people do exactly what they demand.
Liberals sure have 'tude.
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I have lived all my life in countries with various forms of "single payer" healthcare systems. The point I would make is that there is huge diversity between different systems. Americans sometimes speak of "single payer" systems as though they are all the same. But in fact they are very different: France and the UK, for instance, both have a "single payer" model but it works in very different ways. The one thing that virtually all of these systems have in common is that they are more economically efficient than the American model, which even under Obamacare seems to represent the worst of both worlds: limited coverage, sub-optimal outcomes and maximum cost.
Really the argument you should be having is not simply whether you want a government-operated model, but what sort of government-operated model is likely to best meet the needs and desires of Americans.
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I don't need private fire or police insurance to get them to help when needed.
NHS systems are failing all over the world. They are extreme money pits that bleed the tax payers dry.
Think about it.
Under the NHS, you pay extremely high taxes and you still need medical insurance.
Fair enough but the insurance system in the US was failing long before ObamaCare. It's a money pit that bleeds the middle class dry. Think about it. Under insurance you pay extremely high premiums and deductibles and we still have worse health outcomes than most other developed countries.
