Hmm You want me to pay for what?

Lord Skimper wrote:Fix your system basic human rights and care for everyone for everything considered medically necessary for life. Free Emergency and end of life care. Free medically necessary drugs. Ie: Cancer drugs or aids drugs or whatnot drugs. If you die without it it costs you nothing.

Free being paid for by taxes. Free to you at point of admittance and discharge.

Voluntary procedures you pay for or have your private health insurance pay.

Your body quits it is covered. You want a different body you pay.

Unlike Canada having a two tier system option. If you pay you get better service, like in England. Faster service, you pay for everything but that's why you have private insurance.

Free service includes free family / walkin doctors service. Tax paid for. Like what all military people get.

Of course in Canada we don't extend free medical to visitors nor illegals, nor refugees. Basic care for emergencies yes. But if you have MS and you snuck across the border from the USA, too bad. Or the various foreign worker programmes have some restrictions.

Your USA problem is the basics are not covered for everyone which makes the poor hate the rich. In Canada the guy in the next bed isn't paying anything, outside taxes, like you. Your all in the same boat same room same costs. He a millionaire, your a hundred aire. We don't have a 99% 1% problem like you. Also our businesses don't pay most medical insurance, some sometimes but not all.

1. Basic body stops working care paid for.
2. Doctors visits paid for, not feeling well go to the doctor.
3. Necessary to get back to healthy care paid for.
4. Maintainence for health paid for, might have limits.

Extra coverage (may have / pay for extra coverage for this)

You pay for acupuncture
Massage for a stiff neck
Dentist
Plastic surgery
Contraception
Glasses / laser ...
Some drugs.

The problem with the first part is those most in need of financial help to get insurance/medical aid, don't always want to pay for it.They want someone else to foot the bill and they don't want to pay for anyone else. They want everything free and to stick the bill on people wealthier than they are. Pay for part of it themselves? Hell no. In fact many want lower or no taxes, while taxing the wealthy even more (while ignoring that the wealthy pay the majority of things like income taxes) IE, they want their cake, and pie and to eat it all, then walk out leaving the bill with someone else.

Here it isn't the wealthy that pays the most tax, but the middle class. The wealthy generally find enough loopholes to pay very little.
Mind you those most in need of financial help to get insurance/medical aid, almost always can't pay for it, so a compassionate wealthy society should provide it. Don't be selfish.

Zakharra wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:Fix your system basic human rights and care for everyone for everything considered medically necessary for life. Free Emergency and end of life care. Free medically necessary drugs. Ie: Cancer drugs or aids drugs or whatnot drugs. If you die without it it costs you nothing.

Free being paid for by taxes. Free to you at point of admittance and discharge.

Voluntary procedures you pay for or have your private health insurance pay.

Your body quits it is covered. You want a different body you pay.

Unlike Canada having a two tier system option. If you pay you get better service, like in England. Faster service, you pay for everything but that's why you have private insurance.

Free service includes free family / walkin doctors service. Tax paid for. Like what all military people get.

Of course in Canada we don't extend free medical to visitors nor illegals, nor refugees. Basic care for emergencies yes. But if you have MS and you snuck across the border from the USA, too bad. Or the various foreign worker programmes have some restrictions.

Your USA problem is the basics are not covered for everyone which makes the poor hate the rich. In Canada the guy in the next bed isn't paying anything, outside taxes, like you. Your all in the same boat same room same costs. He a millionaire, your a hundred aire. We don't have a 99% 1% problem like you. Also our businesses don't pay most medical insurance, some sometimes but not all.

1. Basic body stops working care paid for.
2. Doctors visits paid for, not feeling well go to the doctor.
3. Necessary to get back to healthy care paid for.
4. Maintainence for health paid for, might have limits.

Extra coverage (may have / pay for extra coverage for this)

You pay for acupuncture
Massage for a stiff neck
Dentist
Plastic surgery
Contraception
Glasses / laser ...
Some drugs.

The problem with the first part is those most in need of financial help to get insurance/medical aid, don't always want to pay for it.They want someone else to foot the bill and they don't want to pay for anyone else. They want everything free and to stick the bill on people wealthier than they are. Pay for part of it themselves? Hell no. In fact many want lower or no taxes, while taxing the wealthy even more (while ignoring that the wealthy pay the majority of things like income taxes) IE, they want their cake, and pie and to eat it all, then walk out leaving the bill with someone else.

Daryl wrote:Here it isn't the wealthy that pays the most tax, but the middle class. The wealthy generally find enough loopholes to pay very little.
Mind you those most in need of financial help to get insurance/medical aid, almost always can't pay for it, so a compassionate wealthy society should provide it. Don't be selfish.

As a percentage of earned income per person, the wealthy can pay less, but as a percentage of income taxes paid to the government (local, state and federal), the wealthy pay far more than any other class. The wealthy pay the majority of income taxes, something like 10% of the wealthiest people paying 70-80% of all income tax. If the wealthy paid the rates other people thought they should pay (I've seen some people on other forums that think that paying up to 90% of all income for the wealthiest is fair), the percentage of the total take would be slanted much heavier to the wealthy paying the majority of income tax.

Zakharra wrote:

Daryl wrote:Here it isn't the wealthy that pays the most tax, but the middle class. The wealthy generally find enough loopholes to pay very little.
Mind you those most in need of financial help to get insurance/medical aid, almost always can't pay for it, so a compassionate wealthy society should provide it. Don't be selfish.

As a percentage of earned income per person, the wealthy can pay less, but as a percentage of income taxes paid to the government (local, state and federal), the wealthy pay far more than any other class. The wealthy pay the majority of income taxes, something like 10% of the wealthiest people paying 70-80% of all income tax. If the wealthy paid the rates other people thought they should pay (I've seen some people on other forums that think that paying up to 90% of all income for the wealthiest is fair), the percentage of the total take would be slanted much heavier to the wealthy paying the majority of income tax.

Nicely stated. I would add that by providing an incentive for people to get benefits of an expansive government without actually paying for it themselves, incentives are created for those individuals to vote more benefits that others pay for. Everyone should contribute something towards supporting government.

The key discussion point is how to reduce the incentives to expand unnecessary government social support services. Providing incentives to increase relative benefits while reducing relative costs would do the exact opposite.

A Historical quote on the subject:



Poker

PeterZ wrote:

As a percentage of earned income per person, the wealthy can pay less, but as a percentage of income taxes paid to the government (local, state and federal), the wealthy pay far more than any other class. The wealthy pay the majority of income taxes, something like 10% of the wealthiest people paying 70-80% of all income tax. If the wealthy paid the rates other people thought they should pay (I've seen some people on other forums that think that paying up to 90% of all income for the wealthiest is fair), the percentage of the total take would be slanted much heavier to the wealthy paying the majority of income tax.

Nicely stated. I would add that by providing an incentive for people to get benefits of an expansive government without actually paying for it themselves, incentives are created for those individuals to vote more benefits that others pay for. Everyone should contribute something towards supporting government.

The key discussion point is how to reduce the incentives to expand unnecessary government social support services. Providing incentives to increase relative benefits while reducing relative costs would do the exact opposite.[/quote]


Keep in mind that the wealthiest pay a lower overall tax rate because the portion of their total income that they pay Social Security Tax on is limited along with their potential benefits.

Keep in mind that Social Security was originally intended to be a Federally managed and guaranteed retirement system with individual contributions and benefits isolated so that it is notba wealth transfer program.

Latest poll numbers - have you personally been helped or hurt by Obamacare.

27% hurt
16% helped
57% neutral

So Obamacare as implemented has hurt almost twice as many people as it has helped. Not exactly a success.

And things are likely to get worse in 2016 when the insurance company guarantee is phased out. (The guarantee is that the government will pay the a significant part of difference between $ collected as premiums and $ paid out for care, if for example more unhealthy people sign up than were planned for statistically). So in 2016 companies are less likely to take risk and more likely to hike premiums to cover all contingencies. And there will be fewer loss leader programs, like what is currently going on (insurance companies in year 1 are deliberately under pricing the policies to whatever regulators will let them get away with to gain market share. The default Obamacare option is just to renew what insurance you have not to reinvestigate the marketplace. And most people have been do so without going through the significant trouble of the marketplace. So once the insurance company's get their market share they raise rates, knowing that 1. Few people will bother to change even with the higher rates and 2. If they calculate poorly and take losses the government will reimburse them for a significant portion [though not all] of those losses. So their risk is very limited. In 2016 that changes however and the companies would have to take on the full risk of those loss leader policies making is much less likely that they will be offered.)

namelessfly wrote:The point is that the US already had an extremely effective healthcare system based on employer financed insurance with Medicaire to insure the high risk elderly and Medicaid to fund the indigent. I myself was enrolled in a government organized high risk insurance pool. Itcost me $1,000 per month for a high deductible, but I had insurance.

You´re kidding right?

US healthcare system runs at about twice the cost, with roughly similar average quality to the system here.

TWICE the cost. With a low end of quality that is depressingly poor.

Withfew exceptions, the only people who had no insurance at all were illegal aliens.

That´s not what statistics say.

I (as all citizens here) am covered automatically for any urgent serious problems by our overall Medicare system, which also pays for all GP visits. This system is fully funded by a 1% levy on wages.
I have further elected to take out private health insurance for everything which costs $250 a month.

A big expense for our systems is the high cost of drugs until the patents run out (sorry Biochem but I disagree strongly with you on this). Sure they have to recoup their development costs and turn a decent profit for shareholders, but deliberately charging twenty times production costs for a life saving drug right up to the patent expiry, which costs the lives of many poor people internationally is inexcusable.

Tenshinai wrote:

namelessfly wrote:The point is that the US already had an extremely effective healthcare system based on employer financed insurance with Medicaire to insure the high risk elderly and Medicaid to fund the indigent. I myself was enrolled in a government organized high risk insurance pool. Itcost me $1,000 per month for a high deductible, but I had insurance.

You´re kidding right?

US healthcare system runs at about twice the cost, with roughly similar average quality to the system here.

TWICE the cost. With a low end of quality that is depressingly poor.

Withfew exceptions, the only people who had no insurance at all were illegal aliens.

That´s not what statistics say.

namelessfly wrote:The point is that the US already had an extremely effective healthcare system based on employer financed insurance with Medicaire to insure the high risk elderly and Medicaid to fund the indigent. I myself was enrolled in a government organized high risk insurance pool. Itcost me $1,000 per month for a high deductible, but I had insurance.


You´re kidding right?

US healthcare system runs at about twice the cost, with roughly similar average quality to the system here.

TWICE the cost. With a low end of quality that is depressingly poor

Pre-Obamacare about 85% of the population was insured.

Looking at averages is misleading to the situation. The USA has some of the best medical care in the world for those who can afford it i.e. the insured 85% plus rich foreigners who pay out of pocket. For the 15% uninsured we have some of the worst healthcare in the developed world. When looking at averages you are lumping the 2 groups together and the 15% pulls down the average of the rest.

A similar situation is seen with costs. That 2x cost is driven by a tiny percentage of patients that cost absolutely horrendous amounts to treat: very premature babies, people in their last year of life etc etc.

So if you are developing a policy and you look at averages as a guide you will diagnose the WRONG problems with the system, which is part of the problem with Obamacare. Diagnosing the quality problem correctly, 85% have excellent quality care, 15% have poor quality care leads to a logical conclusion of leave the 85% alone fix things for the 15%. But Obamacare made the mistake of trying to fix the whole system instead of focusing on the problem area. As a result, this boondoggle more people have been harmed than helped. Personally, my family now has worse insurance for a lot more money - so we are in the harmed category.

On the costs side it is customary to treat here where other countries do not. And those tiny percentage of cases drive a large amount of the unnecessary costs. The reasons are complex: legal (Doctors don't want to be sued), emotional on the part of families, religious, etc. And because the reasons are complex there isn't a simple solution. However, there are things that could help. Tort reform would be a good place to start. Of course that would require congress to quit taking so many bribes (sorry campaign contributions) from the trial lawyers association.

Withfew exceptions, the only people who had no insurance at all were illegal aliens.


That´s not what statistics say.

You're correct here. That 15% does not include illegal aliens. However illegal aliens without insurance are a significant cost driver in border states. Perhaps the US government should just add up the per country expenses we get stuck with and send a bill to their home countries. But somehow I doubt most of them would pay it.

A big expense for our systems is the high cost of drugs until the patents run out (sorry Biochem but I disagree strongly with you on this). Sure they have to recoup their development costs and turn a decent profit for shareholders, but deliberately charging twenty times production costs for a life saving drug right up to the patent expiry, which costs the lives of many poor people internationally is inexcusable.

I'll agree the drug companies are run by sociopaths. Unfortunately no one else has been successful in developing drugs. The sociopaths are in it for the money and if they don't get the money, they'll invest in something else and let the drug companies go bankrupt. This is in fact what is happening. The ROI (return on investment) isn't what it used to be considering the risks they are taking and so they are getting out.

Pharmaceutical companies are downsizing R&D with a chainsaw. You don't really see it yet because they still have drugs in the pipelines but they are drastically cutting R&D.

And to make it worse innovative new drugs cost a lot more to develop and are exponentially more difficult to develop so fewer and fewer of the new drugs are truly innovative.

Bill Gates is spending a lot of money trying to cure malaria and TB but even he doesn't have enough money to replace the greedy sociopaths. In any case if you can come up with a way to get R&D done in this high risk environment without the sociopaths, great. But in the short term we may be stuck with them.