Health Care..I Don't Get It?

[fencesitter]

I don't understand why Universal Health Care is a debatable issue, it should be a non-issue, an accepted right, a return for your tax dollars. Outside of the insurance companies, who can be against this and certainly insurance companies could adjust without hemmoraging? What company wouldn't trade a tax increase in lieu of providing health benefits to it's employees? Even a massive tax increase would be cheaper than paying insurance premiums and the cost of administration, and I don't see a massive tax increase if the plan is implimented without the insurance and drug companies trying to make profits from a gov't sponsord program. Whenever there's a Union contract dispute and threatened strike it's usually over health benefits. Layoffs? rising health care costs. Outsourcing? cost of providing benefits. Wouldn't a program of universal health insurance make all these things a lot less draining on our capitalist system? Then there's the cost of treating people without insurance who would have gone for care earlier if the fear of finiancial ruin wasn't in their face. Don't we want a healthier and more productive population? The gov't could provide basic health insurance and the insurance companies could offer supplimental policies, they do it with medicare, everyone can win. I don't get it.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. It's simple

Because the extra $1.50 that everyone would pay in taxes for it would signal the apocalypse for conservatives. And like you said, Republicans have to take care of their special interests. The two are different, and though they have different reasons, both Repugs and Conservatives hate this idea.

[Gothic Sponge]

2. NO!

We can't pay taxes for health care, because the repugs would get mad if the money went towards saving lives and not towards weapons to kill.

[fencesitter]

4. Bbbbut, but, but

If I'm a business owner, and probably a republican, I would gladly pay 2000.00 more in taxes if I could eliminate my 25,000. health premium bill and do away with the paperwork and administration costs.

[terryg11]

3. also, if we have univrsal health coverage

then employees aren't shelling out that extra twenty to two hundred dollars a week!! that they are now, unless they opt for a more expensive plan. Duh, that's better than any tax break. Also might save the employers some cash, depending on how the system is set up

[ComerPerro]

5. This is one of the things that pisses me off most about conservatives

Tell them you are "spending" (by issuing a refund and cutting revenues) billions of dollars to give the wealthiest Americans a huge chunk of money so they can invest it and become even richer, tell them that you are going to spend untold billions of dollars in an unjustified war, tell them you are going to spend millions of dollars to promote marriage (between a man and woman only), or tell them that you are going to spend several billion to teach abstainance-only sex education; and they are completely fine with that.

But try teling them that you want to spend a few million to better fund education. Tell them that you want to have the National Endowment for the Arts provide $100,000 to an organization, tell them that you want to spend $5 billion on health care; they will be up in arms complaining about wasteful spending and how their hard earned money (which is usually "earned" by manipulating wealth) on "big government".


Hypocritical assholes.

[AG78]

6. It should be

But everything in life is nothing more than a commodity. The air we breathe is a commodity.

There are 6 billion people on this planet, and that number continues to increase. At this point, life is pretty cheap. Not that it wasn't before, and I'm talking in the big picture sense. Even with the smallest amount of health care, we're living longer. It's now a global economy, and that's where the insane number of people comes into play.

Health care, education, housing, etc, etc, should all be something that is your right from the day you're born, especially in the richest country humans have ever known. But there's a reason that they're not.

[doc03]

7. Tax payers already pay for (not) having health care

If a person has no job or a job with no benefits and no assets the government steps in a pays the bills. If you work all your life and maybe have a home and some financial assets when you retire, If you get sick use up your Medicare you then sign up for Medicaid and loose everything you worked for. Then the government steps in a pays the bills. People without insurance don't go to a doctor until they
absolutely have to. Isn't it cheaper to change the oil in your car every 3000 miles then wait for the engine to blow up then have it rebuilt?

[fencesitter]

9. One of my points exactly.

That happened to my folks. They were of medicare entitlement age and supplemented their coverage with private insurance. They both got sick, mom required long term nursing care, lost their supplemental insurance because they couldn't afford the premiums, and medicare won't cover long term care untill you are completely bankrupt. When they passed away, Dad first, Mom a year later, they had depleted their entire estate. I didn't have to pay that "death tax" on their estate after all.

[doc03]

14. Same here

My father was in and out of the hospital for 7 years before his death.
When he passed away my mother lost everything and has been living in a rent assisted apartment for the last 14 years. My next door neighbor is 87 years old, his wife was in long term care for 8 years all of his property will go to the government for Medicaid when he dies.

[YNGW]

8. My main concern is...

... having the government with access to my medical records on an ongoing basis. That bothers me greatly.

Also the government running anything is often a fluke. Twice I've been in foreign countries with universal healthcare and both times they were a nightmare. In England, my wife was injured and was taken to a state run hospital. The room she was put in was totally filthy and as I explored other rooms in the facility the whole place was filthy. I asked my friend who met us at the hospital if we could do anything, if this was normal and he said all the state hospitals were like that. I immediately contacted the proper people and had her moved to a private hospital.

In Canada, my son was having trouble breathing and the ambulance went to four hospitals before they found one who was admitting patients into the emergency room. It was scary.

[duhneece]

10. Does anyone have experience with Israel's health care services?

Since the US pays for the Israeli's citizens universal health care, who can tell me about theirs?

[myomy]

11. Don't forget , these programs need to be properly funded.

Thatcher made huge cuts before she left her job.

[YNGW]

13. Yeah.

>these programs need to be properly funded

And what's the guarantee of that? I have no doubt that if costs get too high, health care might be rationed out. There's a lot to consider.

[doc03]

17. Insurance companies are a nightmare too

Can anyone explain this, a couple years ago a drug store had a cholesterol and PSA blood screening. If you didn't have insurance
they charged $20, I turned it in on my insurance. A few weeks later
I received confirmation they paid out $220 for the test.

[cryofan]

12. tying affordable healthcare to a job gives owners/investors leverage

....over the workers. Because healthcare is basically unaffordable outside of the job, this ties workers to their jobs much more. THat gives owners and investors more leverage.

[Tracer]

15. Health Care. I Don't Get It Either.

None. Nada. Zilch.

Why?

I'm self-employed and simply cannot afford $5,000 per year for the coverage.

There was an interested idea in the The Atlantic last month, suggesting compulsory health insurance based on income. It pointed out that people are already used to compulsory insurance (cars, homes).

What the downside to this idea is, I don't know.

[YNGW]

16. Let me ask you...

... I am also self-employed. Are you aware of any group policies for self-emplyed people, I mean where self-employed people can all act as though they are one business? I'm not, and I'm wondering why someone hasn't packaged a policy like that.

[Tracer]

18. YNGW —

Yes, there are groups that purchase healthcare. But there are cautions too. One group I investigated required that you join their group (at several hundred dollars per year) and then I couldn't even get a quote for HI out of them.

There is a government program here in Massachusetts that purports to pay 1/2 of health insurance for certain qualifying businesses. It's quite complicated, and I'm not real sure that I could even pay the 1/2 price — as I struggle to pay my property taxes of $5,500 per year.

[fencesitter]

19. Self employed too.

I buy through a small biz association that offers group rates. Goes up each year, more out of pocket copays, and now I just don't know if I can keep up with the premiums. I get real basic coverage. One of the problems is that premiums are based on demographics. A nationwide association cannot get the same group rate for all its members. Someone in South Dakota will pay a much different rate that someone in Pennsylvania where I am. PA has a large elderly population so rates are high.

[StopThief]

20. You're right.

nfm