We have a bunch of threads on it, but what solution do you want? 1. Free Market - get rid of Obamacare, FDA, pretty much let the market chose 2. Quasi Free Market - Still have FDA but allow cross state insurance buying etc. 3. Pre Obamacare insurance - Pre existing condition, caps etc. 4. Obamacare 5. Single Payer 6. Other - Please explain
It should be a non-profit, single payer with supplemental private insurance, including prescription drugs. The cost/profit/greed issue needs to be addressed. Another problem is the transition. Employers who fund a significant % of health care for their employees are going to want to keep that money instead of converting it into salary for their employees that can be taxed to pay for single payer. For whatever reason, people have trouble envisioning the savings they receive by being taxed to pay for things they now pay out of pocket. They seem to prefer to pay much higher rates out of pocket rather than lower rates through taxes for health care costs that would be lowered by the government leveraging its patient base. They also don't understand how a small amount of funding for preventative care dramatically reduces costs for serious problems that occur later without it. All these conservative free market people cannot point to any major country in the world that fits that model. We're the only major country in the world that latches on to this fantasy that kills and bankrupts our citizens.
This has been discussed. Employers who provide lucrative health benefits do so not because they are generous, but either because of unions or enticing an employee to stay with them. You can be damn sure unions will make sure the employees get something back. Companies who use it as a mean to retain employees will have to immediately adjust or risk losing their employees to better employers.
they are going to pass this bill. At this point, no rational argument will sway them. Trump's endorsement of it, by saying this is better than the last, which was in turn the best ever plan, says everything. When we are laying hopes on rand Paul, you know you are in trouble.
In an ideal world we would have single payer. I'm very skeptical though we can get there anytime soon and even I have doubts about how well a US single payer system would be run. I will admit I have no good solutions from what I've seen though from all of the GOP proposals are much worse than the ACA.
We need about a year or two of bipartisan work to develop a healthcare system that will work - instead we will get a rushed cluster**** that will hurt everyone.
The free market will never be able to adjust course and suddenly become affordable enough for everyone to purchase it. Hospitals and doctors won't all the sudden cost less in the US. If you take away people's coverage they just use the ER as their primary doctor and die earlier without preventive care. We tried free market but it has failed and it's time to move to single payer and control costs through a baseline system.... like every other damn country with single payer or a likewise type of govt plan.
Single payer universal healthcare is the only rational option. Like @CometsWin said, people freak out when they hear higher taxes...but fail to realize they'd be paying significantly less over all. There's no logical reason that we are the only 1st world country without some sort of universal coverage. I'd be happy if they'd start with fixing the problems within the ACA and go from there. Wiping everything out and tossing tens of millions off of the list of insured is cruel, potentially devastating to the country and the economy, and immoral.
6. Kaiser Permanente But see: https://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2012/05/10/why-isnt-kaiser-less-expensive/ http://pnhp.org/blog/2013/06/13/why...-highest-premiums-in-the-california-exchange/ http://www.kaiserthrive.org/2012/10/04/kaiser-killed-my-dad-accidentally-on-purpose/
Everyone is focused on whether individuals pay for it, or whether through taxes the government pays for it. Neither of these attack the real problem regarding healthcare in America, the cost of healthcare and limited access to it by large portions of the country. When people are sick, they want to see a doctor. 40 Million Americans are 60+ miles away from the nearest doctors and unless one lives in large concentrated doctor areas like NY, Houston, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles; the wait time to see a doctor is now over 20 days! The doctors are so busy that instead of long term incremental care of patients, they just medicate everyone as they can quickly get to the next patient (volume = income for doctors) and patients feel like they've gotten something. So not only are doctors the highest paid in the world with long lines to see them, but to keep volume high they over prescribe medication. If we had a competitive market and a normalized supply of physicians they could be hired internally by large businesses and doctors would work to take care of people and not charge per service. That would also mean doctors would work in more group large practices like Mayo clinic etc. having more rules and efficiency. If doctors were larger and more natural in supply companies like Exxon would be able to hire internally and Wal-Mart and CVS would have doctors there. But the supply is not there and there is virtually 0 unemployment. Our physicians per 1,000 is the lowest of the developed world save Australia. So why is this? The US government has allowed outside groups American Medical Association and American Academy of Medical Colleges to control the supply of physicians for the last 80 years. They didn't allow new Medical Schools to be built in the US from the 1960's till the 1990's as they all have to be approved otherwise a doctor can't get a license. Then the AMA and AAMC went to congress to cut funding of Medical Residency Programs so the bottleneck is that only a limited number of doctors can complete their residency. This combined with the aging of the US population (more healthcare) and expansion of healthcare Obamacare (More healthcare) and the aging of the physicians population (less healthcare) has led to a decrease or stagnation in supply and a continued ratcheting up of demand. This is why healthcare is so expensive in this country. The Non Governmental licensing arms AMA, AAMC are basically trade unions that have skyrocketed the salaries of their members to the detriment of supply of healthcare and helped to put us in this healthcare disaster. Bring down the price of things and stop worrying about which pocket (personal versus taxes) it will come from and it will work itself out.
@Rocketman1981 everytime this conversation comes up, the "greed" label is applied to insurance companies. They are the big bad evil in this. Them and "big pharma" There is no solution, be it private or single payer, that will be more affordable if it doesn't involve hospitals, doctors, medical device resellers and lab/imaging services making less money. I know of a doctor who "oversees" a clinic, meaning she sees no patients but reviews a certain percentage of paperwork, and is billing up to $2000 a day to Medicare and Medicaid. That's legal and that's the government run insurance.
