https://morningconsult.com/2021/03/24/medicare-for-all-publi...
Medicare is a system by which (currently, a subset) of Americans may select[0] either publicly subsidized private health plans or a purely-public[1] option.
The difference between this and the ACA plus a public option is...not that much.
[0] well, except for many Medicare/Medicaid dual-eligibles, for which a single plan (often fully-publicly-subsized private) covering both programs is selected for them by their state.
[1] actually administered by regional private contractors under federal rules.
and 70 percent support a public option. 55% is a majority.
Most of the world disagrees with what you put here and performs better than the US.
My comprise would be let the states implement socialized medicine. My hunch is that with within a few years every economically productive person in those states would move states within 2-3 years. The tax burden and lack of choice in health care would be a no brainer to leave. Most people think socialized medicine will fix everything overnight put don’t think about what rights they are takin away from individuals to achieve their goals.
For a few, the quality is amazing, but even Cuba does better at keeping its people healthy than we do.
Cuba regularly contributes to medicine same as we do and doctors are a national export, recognized around the world.
And just what is an "economically productive" person?
You do realize those numbers come from tons of other people, who work hard and too many of whom have no meaningful access to that quality medicine?
No, probably not.
Finally, there is how health care is funded, who has access, and how care, medicine is delivered.
Socialized medicine is the VA, and that is not what Medicare is.
Medicare is funding health care, not socialized medicine.
It is hard to consider your other points given these basic misalignments.
Health care in the US is an increasingly brutal, over the top expensive mess.
Frankly, a quick look at why they want a public option is exactly why they would easily support Medicare for All.
Nobody loves their health care insurance company. And where they may be stoic to positive, it is only because they are insulated from the mess, or just have not actually had to receive significant care of any kind.
Tons of people, myself included, have seen serious financial ruin, and in my case it boiled down to basically trading my home and financial future for my spouse.
We got past it, but will never see the future I worked very hard for.
Health insurance companies do not actually add any value. Most of the developed world understands this, and how a market approach for primary care conflicts with fixing sick people.
Right now the priority is making money, not fixing people, and it shows.
More people experience it, or know someone who has every day. I make damn sure to educate others any time, any day, any place.
Once people actually experience Medicare, they love it. I have watched even the most staunch advocates for our current system age in and then change their tune.
There are exceptions, and those people buy Medicare Advantage plans and often seek help getting back to plain old Medicare, which is very difficult, by design. Ever wonder why that is?
Legalizing weed doesn't get into anyone's pocket.
And make no mistake: there are some big names in the battle agains marijuana [1]
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/oct/22...
1.8 million voters over the age of 55 age out every year, and election cycles are every two years. We’ll get there eventually (on Medicare for All and marijuana legalization), it’s just a matter of time. Until then, keep knocking it out at the state level. [2]
[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/20...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._j...
There's even federally mandated shower flow rate [1]. Just leave this shit up to the states.
[1] https://www.waterpik.com/shower-head/blog/shower-head-gpm/#:....
I absolutely hate this state rights argument. I for one would gladly support repealing the words the states from the tenth amendment.
States don’t have magical rights. People have rights.
I have a feeling anyone who supports “state rights” would also support the idea of “separate but equal”.
Please do not associate yourself with the hypocrites who are all for state rights until California wants to regulate automobile emissions.
People have rights. And the most straightforward way to cater for these rights is to split people into groups. If 90% of people in Alabama don't want weed legalized, don't force it upon them. Save the vigor for what's really important.
Nothing. Ideally it would be at the federal level so California wouldn't have to do it though.
> If 90% of people in Alabama don't want weed legalized, don't force it upon them.
No. The hypothetical ninety percent of people in Alabama have no right to restrict the rights of the other ten percent. It doesn't affect them. They should stay out of it.
My castle - my rules.
I have close to 100% right to restrict smoking in my home.
I have close to 0% right to restrict smoking on the whole planet.
The boundary is somewhere in between.
The federal government should say things like this is the baseline - you can go one way on it but not the other. Personally, I want more of this, not less. For instance, I want a federal land/property tax that local governments can’t just make go away in a race to the bottom.
I want a federal ban on capital punishment. Meaning no jurisdiction within these United States should have the legal authority to give capital punishment.
Devolving power lower doesn’t solve any problem. It is seriously scary if you’re a minority. And you don’t have to be black or gay to be a minority, you could just be the wrong denomination of Christianity.
From what I’ve read, we used to demonize everyone from the Irish, the Germans, the Italians. Nobody is safe from the tyranny of the majority and the more you devolve power to a local level, the more these problems will grow larger.
Personally the whole point of government is to protect the individual from the whims of the masses. If I want to smoke weed (I don’t but just an example), the rest of the town shouldn’t be able to tell what I can do. What if fifty one percent of a town decides it wants to be “whites only”?
Congress itself is mostly too dysfunctional to micromanage on that level.
from your link, some states can set lower.
| To conserve resources and save money, some state and local governments mandate even lower GPM flow rates than the federal regulation.
| Examples of national and local regulations include:
| * New York City and the state of Colorado require a maximum of 2.0 GPM
| * California, Washington, and Hawaii require a maximum of 1.8 GPM
would you have states set a min flow rate?
Neither party had total control. Now everything gets fillibustered. You only get around it with 2/3 majority or if you can turn it into a budget-related bill and get it through budget reconciliation.
The Democrats have a majority now and did in 2010. They haven’t even attempted to pass marijuana legalization. I have my theories as to why but they certainly have nothing to do with gerrymandering.
> Key Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), said Tuesday they would work to repeal federal prohibitions on marijuana cultivation and use, vowing to make progress on an issue that has growing public support but still faces sharp objections from most Republicans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress-schumer-mar...
The Senate is split 50-50. It's fair to say one half of that is more strongly opposed to it than the other since their states even rejected the Medicaid expansion accompanying Obamacare.
So it sounds like the Senate is doing a poor job of representing the people. Which leads to the obvious question: why have a Senate at all?
Hypothetically if you had only two states, one with 20 people and the other with 20 million (entirely feasible with the Constitution), would it be useful to given them both 2 Senators each? Would the federal government's laws and actions faithfully represent how the people in the nation actually feel?
This isn't a hypothetical concern. See the laws on marijuana for why "representation for states" isn't ideal. For further evidence, see action on climate change.
That's true for maybe the first 13 colonies. The subsequent states were largely formed by settlers from the first 13 and they just wanted their land to be a state in their country. For them, the constitution was kind of a take-it-or-leave-it deal.
Could not figure out what DPC is, besides that it's a new innovative way of patients and doctors working together for their mutual benefit with no obvious drawbacks.
The Primary Care (the PC in DPC) part refers to normal day-to-day health needs typically offered by general practitioners. Things like regular checkups, cuts and scrapes, lab work, typical vaccinations, etc etc. You already think about PC healthcare as a 'service', but you pay your insurance company (with your employer watching in for some reason) to pay the doctor for you. That adds a lot of overhead, more than one might think.
So DPC is where you pay for primary care by subscribing Directly (that's the D) to the doctor by paying a regular, fixed-price subscription to them. Typically $50-$100/mo, the doctor mentioned above charges $75/mo. Receive care as frequently as needed, with no copays, by any means, with reasonable prices for more specialized services like x-rays ($25), and an affordable in-house pharmacy for generic medications. Their office negotiates direct rates for lab work and can get a 95% discount (!) in some cases according to the doctor in the video.
Now there are some caveats, as per usual.
The biggest is that this strategy is specifically for Primary Care, not hospitalizations and other specialized or emergency health services. For those perhaps health insurance can still provide value. But that's the original purpose of insurance in the first place: covering unexpected large expenses. And that's the key: Primary Care is neither an unexpected nor large expense -- it's regular maintenance, more like an oil change; are you paying your insurance company to pay your mechanic to perform oil changes on your car? Unlikely, and it sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare on the face. Yet somehow this is business as usual for healthcare in the US.
TLDR Medicare > Tricare (DoD) > private employer healthcare > nothing
Rest assured: hospitals in Washington, DC will never be short of personnel, out of supplies or, god forbid, overcrowded.
I can easily say, "having private insurance in American, frankly, its not that good."
Proposals I've previously heard: Medicare for All, Medicare for Children, Medicare reduced age, a public-private option, improved transparency in costs (i.e. a menu), pin costs to Medicare + X%, allow insurance companies to operate across state lines, better subsidize preventative medicine, force clinicians to be able to speak to costs (similar to dentists/chiropractic/optometrists/dermatologist), reduce patent length or add a maximum return on investment to patents (e.g. 10x or 100x R&D costs?), etc.
Literally any of these would be an improvement. Please tell all of your representatives (regardless of politics) to fucking execute on any of them so things improve at least a bit from where it is now.
Frankly, I wish Congress had to live under Indian Health Service for a couple of years. If the US is incapable of getting decent health care for 2% of the population its obligated to provide for, then I don't see how it gets better adding the other 98%.