Everybody knows how bad it is. Everyone wants to change it. But I don't see how it can change as long as both parties are on the payroll
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/unitedhealth-group/recipien...
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/unitedhealth-group/recipien...
Unfortunately, it’s easy for them to create conditions to perpetuate and widen the American political schisms. And they’ve convinced both sides the common historical solutions (nationalism, limited democracy, religion) are for low IQ bigots. Things are likely too far gone.
That does not look to me like both sides are at fault and we need to think of it differently. That looks to me like Democrats are imperfect but largely aligned with what I want, whereas Republicans are resolutely in opposition.
"Give me universal health care...but don't increase my taxes!...and don't take away my current insurance plan!"
Every year for 10 years, reduce the age of eligibility by 1 year. At N+10, it will cover 55+.
For the next 10 years, reduce the age of eligibility by 2 years per year. At N+20, it will cover 35+.
You can also set up Medicaid to cover all children in a similar way (after all, most children have no income, so should qualify if judged on personal income rather than family income). Set a date and if you're born after that date, you get medicaid until you're 20.
At year N+20, there will be a 15 year gap for young people. Which is hopefully time enough for them to earn enough social security credits to qualify for Medicare.
And yes, medicare and medicaid taxes would have to go up. But private healthcare premiums should go down.
Rolling it out over 20 years allows for adjustments to be made as things go along. Criteria based on years is for simplicity... A better method would be increasing eligible population by 1% the first year, 1.1% the second, and so on until you're done.
If people really don't want to just pay for it socialized. Just make it possible to self pay for medicare at more ages; this is something that seniors without enough social security credits can already do. Again modulating the eligible age over time to allow for a transition without overwelming the system.
Yeah, why not? The US already spends more tax dollars per person in healthcare. The excess gets funneled to the insurance companies. There's no reason why we can't implement universal healthcare without increasing taxes.
Civil disobeyance is nothing new. The fact that is is so little pronounced currently is probably a signal that there has been alignment for quite a while.
Bit when politicians do not take their jobs seriously, change finds other ways.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/16/joe-lieberman-...
Obama campaigned for Joe Lieberman afterwards as an independent against Ned Lamont, who had won the Democratic primary. Lieberman tanked the public option for the Democrats, and Obama was paying his debt.
Democrats would have paid the price at the polls for getting rid of the public option. Lieberman took the hit for the rest of them; he was the cheapest, because he already publicly held right-wing positions. If they had needed another vote, they would have had to find another Democrat to risk their political career to do it. Probably with a cushy lobbyist job at a health insurer after getting voted out.
I don't know a single person who ENJOYS going to the doctor, or needing medical treatment.
What are you on about?
Everyone knows Americans pay the most for medical treatment, but the life expectancy is not that high. If you know your behavior isn't good for you, but you can't stop yourself, well, that's an addiction.
But many people don't, because visiting a primary care / walk-in clinic / urgent care is expensive, so they ignore it, until it becomes un-ignorable. Now it's an ER visit.
Sure.
> If you know your behavior isn't good for you
This doesn't follow. Our healthcare system might be worse than some but that does not imply it's bad for you. That same logic would imply getting punched in the face is good for you because it's better than getting shot.
Well, if you have that mindset, then you'll never achieve anything better, will you? It's not necessarily bad for us, so we'll just keep doing it.
It's like the people who vote for the same set of loser politicians every 4 years and then complain that nothing ever changes.
I was thinking about condensing my thoughts into a post, but I'll make one point on the issue of premiums. In the article, it says the cost of insuring a family of four is $25,000 a year. That sounds accurate to me.
I know from experience (being self-employed for a period of time and having to figure this all out myself) that if your family is healthy, you can replace all 4 full-term plans with 4 short-term plans and pay about $4,000 a year for the same coverage. The only difference, really, is that your insurance coverage ends after one year and you have to apply for it again. This used to be seen as risky, but with the ACA, someone will always be forced to insure you. So, it's not the same anymore.
That's not even all we could collectively do to solve this problem. Just imagine if all the healthy people in America just did that. I know, there aren't many healthy Americans left. And a lot of people have health insurance as part of their benefits package.
But many of those people are paying their dependents' insurance out of pocket. So, someone on a full-term plan could switch all his dependents to short-term and save about $5k per year per person. And it doesn't cause any noticeable difference to someone's coverage.
Imagine if only 1 million healthy Americans went from full-term to short-term. The health insurance industry would lose 5 billion dollars of income a year. That's not huge for a $500B industry, but it's not nothing. Corporate America sits up and starts paying attention to what's going on at ANY loss of revenue.
This is not insurance advice, but just thinking out loud. Verify everything yourself, but my point is that there's a lot everyday Americans could do to hurt these companies in their wallets. We just need to come together, share ideas, and trust ourselves and each other more than nameless, faceless companies.
Here's a goalpost for you: a healthy person should not spend more than $2,000 a year, total, on any health care related expenses. Even that number is ridiculous. But it's probably about half of what people are paying. If we all focused on that, and helped each other achieve that totally achievable goal, we'd change a lot about this rotten system.