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I am a college student working part time and thus, I cannot afford health insurance.
Am I doing something wrong? Would it be 'bad' for the government to provide me with basic health insurance?
Also, its mostly the right wing nuts who are delaying progress. Watch the live political channels sometime and pay special attention to how Republicans constantly throw wrenches that have nothing to do with healthcare to slow progress down. People call Americans 'idiots', but its really the minority who are messing it up for everyone.
Its really depressing to know that my health and even life are at risk because big companies care more about money than the service they provide.
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On September 30 2009 10:09 DrainX wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2009 09:50 Foucault wrote:
I don't like the idea of richer people paying much more than less rich people. I mean of course it depends on how you got your wealth but if you worked hard for it I don't think you want to fork it over just like that.
I don't see how this is relevant to my question or the topic. + Show Spoiler + I would however argue that capitalism itself and its inherent distribution of wealth is as much a construct as any form of redistribution added on top of it. I don't think someone is entitled to the money they earn before taxes just because capitalism has originally distributed it that way. Wealth only exists within society and is only created by cooperation. Unless you were born in the forest alone and never interacted with another person, you owe your success partly to society. Also I don't see how a system that gives the richest 1% of the population a majority of the wealth can be considered good for society or efficient in any way if not combined with something else.
I'm not saying capitalism is good and I was arguing based on the fact that the western world has a capitalistic system. The notion of owing your success to society is an argument that largely depends on which political ideas you think should be dominant in society. Surely everyone depends on society in many ways but you could also say that socialism is a political construct and exactly how much you owe or should owe to society is very relative. Some of the richest people in america also own huge companies, which in turn employ many people, so just looking at individual wealth doesn't necessarily give you a valid picture of how effective a society is.
I'm not saying capitalism is the best system but I'm taking a very realist approach to this. And I definately prefer capitalism to a socialist, collectivistic society where the the interest of the group replaces individualism.
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Say no to public healthcare please, it won't solve any problems at all.
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I really like your elaborate reason to say no to public healthcare, Kiarip. It was inspiring and definitely turned around my opinion on what I think of it. In fact, I haven't been in touch with it too much, but thanks to you I really know what's going on and why one shouldn't support it.
What I hear on the media doesn't sound too bad in my book, but then again I don't know enough really do have a true opinion on it.
It is surprising tho, it seems like every American gets clairaudient as soon as someone drops the S-bomb, it's like moving a lever in their brains. And its even more surprising that Americans still fear the socialist system, even though it is proven to be not functional (or at least not not the way people approached it until now).
However it looks to me that the real issue is abandoned and parties fight with the fear and hope of Americans.
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^ Dude. What is it supposed to accomplish?
Give Healthcare to everyone by raising the taxes? How is that good?
Obviously, most of it is going to come out of the pockets of rich, and these are in fact the steps that lead to the dreaded "socioeconomic equality," but forget about that I'll argue that some other day. It's just the type of stuff that drives all capitalist investors overseas, which is just what we need in these economic times right?
How about instead of trying to bandage the problem out the pockets of the rich, we actually look at the real problem here. Why is insurance so expensive? Are insurance companies making huge profits? No they're not, if they were they could make even more money by cutting the rates, and insuring a huge part of America which is currently uninsured for the most part.
The real problem is the civil court system, and it needs to be reworked. That's where all these ridiculously high costs of healthcare come from. If a doctor makes a mistake he gets sued for money than he could possibly have (hence the extremely high malpractice insurance) instead of a regulated un-inflated compensation/fine/license suspension/jail sentence (like it should be.) Same goes for the pharmaceutical system. It's broken, because a HUGE COMPANY can be sued BROKE by a handful of cases which should have ended in a regulated compensation, and punishment for individuals that were at fault.
What the hell does public healthcare solve? It just plunges the nation into a deeper national debt, feeds the useless bureaucracy, and reduces the already abysmal bargaining power that people have in this matter.
edit:
I'm generally really tame and impartial on such political issues, mainly due to being a total pessimist about these things, but it's pretty obvious that the Libertarians have the more or less correct stand on this issue.
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On October 03 2009 13:12 Kiarip wrote:
Obviously, most of it is going to come out of the pockets of rich, and these are in fact the steps that lead to the dreaded "socioeconomic equality," but forget about that I'll argue that some other day. It's just the type of stuff that drives all capitalist investors overseas, which is just what we need in these economic times right?
It's also coming out of the pockets of our current children and our future children. Our current children because the primary benefactors of a universal health care system will be the retiring baby boomer generation...paid by taxes of working individuals. Future children because every public sector dollar spent is at the expense of a private sector dollar; a public sector dollar will always be more inefficient versus a dollar which would otherwise be used to grow the economy better.
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On September 30 2009 09:29 TheFeared wrote:
If the state were to pay for their own health care, who would pay for it? More taxes? Middle class?
The US has more people uninsured for healthcare than Canada does people (living here).
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On October 03 2009 13:12 Kiarip wrote:
The real problem is the civil court system, and it needs to be reworked. That's where all these ridiculously high costs of healthcare come from. If a doctor makes a mistake he gets sued for money than he could possibly have (hence the extremely high malpractice insurance) instead of a regulated un-inflated compensation/fine/license suspension/jail sentence (like it should be.) Same goes for the pharmaceutical system. It's broken, because a HUGE COMPANY can be sued BROKE by a handful of cases which should have ended in a regulated compensation, and punishment for individuals that were at fault.
You are completely wrong. Every estimate of the total costs associated with malpractice in terms of total health care expenditure I've seen has fallen under 2%.
I'm tired of all this libertarian, free-market wankery - last I checked, Taiwan's public health plan had the lowest overhead costs of any system, and it's government run. Private insurance has higher administrative costs than public options. You can keep repeating your stupid axioms, but empirical evidence runs contrary to your assertions. I got news for you: Any large organization is subject to bureaucratic inefficiencies. This includes private health insurance companies.
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On October 03 2009 19:51 Underwhelmed wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2009 13:12 Kiarip wrote:
The real problem is the civil court system, and it needs to be reworked. That's where all these ridiculously high costs of healthcare come from. If a doctor makes a mistake he gets sued for money than he could possibly have (hence the extremely high malpractice insurance) instead of a regulated un-inflated compensation/fine/license suspension/jail sentence (like it should be.) Same goes for the pharmaceutical system. It's broken, because a HUGE COMPANY can be sued BROKE by a handful of cases which should have ended in a regulated compensation, and punishment for individuals that were at fault.
You are completely wrong. Every estimate of the total costs associated with malpractice in terms of total health care expenditure I've seen has fallen under 2%. I'm tired of all this libertarian, free-market wankery - last I checked, Taiwan's public health plan had the lowest overhead costs of any system, and it's government run. Private insurance has higher administrative costs than public options. You can keep repeating your stupid axioms, but empirical evidence runs contrary to your assertions. I got news for you: Any large organization is subject to bureaucratic inefficiencies. This includes private health insurance companies.
And a large government such as the US one will always have moer bureaucratic inefficiencies than a a large organization, what's your point?
As for the malpractice expenditure, it may be directly responsible for only 2% of the cost, but every other expense of pharmaceutical companies is related to the company's risk due to the risk of failure of its products, and a large portion of that is tied to the legal fees, and compensations involved in the civil court cases.
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I'm all for universal healthcare in the U.S. It works great in Europe and Canada, and they seem to be quite content even though they have large taxes.
It works great? How do you think limited medical resources get allocated amongst the population when it's free at the point of consumption? What sort of incentives do you think this creates towards medical staff when it comes to patient treatment? The government budget allocated towards nation healthcare is not unlimited. And no, many people are not content with the large taxes, which is why wealth management institutions are so popular and many of the rich like to leave the country.
My question is why nobody considers a completely private system. Perhaps because this would involve fixing the judicial system such that everyone and their mother isn't filing lawsuits and especially medical/malpractice lawsuits all the time. Hopefully it would also involve a complete overhaul of the ridiculous medical school and licensing system in this country. There is a lot of potential wealth (read: jobs/opportunities) that gets completely stifled by the ridiculous bureaucracy of the government/FDA/hospitals/insurance companies. The end result is that the consumer--those who need healthcare (EVERYONE!)--loses, and loses badly.
I'm in agreement that the system is horrendous and needs to be changed, I simply think the president wants to change it in the wrong direction.
I think the bureacracy is a serious problem. The AMA also happens to do an excellent job of keeping many willing people out of the medical profession and thus their wages high. It should be illegal to sell/promote false services or goods, but not to practice medicine without a license as long as you make it clear. The choice, ultimately, is the patient's.
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Not gonna argue with your links, you brought evidence but I disagree with the method it was acquired.
Most efficient in the world? Maybe cheapest. But they are still borrowing money from banks in order to fund this, and their healthcare is relatively subpar overall.
Also Taiwan is a pretty small country, so the obviously the bureaucratical inefficiencies are not on the same scale there as they are in the US.
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If you have evidence that the majority of expenses stem from costs associated with malpractice, feel free to present it.
Lowest overhead costs = efficiency. You could argue about various methods to measure efficiency, but I think you'll find it hard pressed to argue Taiwan's system is less efficient than privatized health care in the US, where administrative costs run about 15-20+%.
As for the accusation of "subpar", Taiwan has a slightly lower infant mortality rate than the US, and just slightly lower total life expectancy. There are other statistics I haven't looked up, but if you investigate I'm sure they'll be comparable to any other industrialized nation.
Most importantly, Taiwan's system covers nearly 100% of the population - in the US, nearly 20% is uninsured, and that doesn't include the percentage that is underinsured. Despite your implication that their system is somehow unsustainable, Taiwan's per capita expense is much, much lower than the US'. Invariably people will point out that the US has the most advanced treatment in cancer, AIDS, etc, which I suppose has an element of truth to it. However, what good is this advanced treatment if only a small subsection of the population is able to afford it? You can't just focus on the peak performance of the system, you have to examine how it averages across the population.
By the way, thanks for conceding that it is size that determines the amount of bureaucracy, not some magical "government" switch.
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Healthcare is needed, especially in a country that is considered a superpower should have that luxury, no? I think instead of trying to find a source to pay off the healthcare, America needs to find a way to reduce the costs of healthcare. One could start by reducing the salary of doctors (they get paid too much)
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EPT
