Even though Dems had control of White House and Congress, their majority in the Senate was still less than the 60 needed to break Republican filibusters, so yeah, there was no way single payer was going to happen.
The political calculation was to start with RomneyCare - already a conservative leaning Heritage Foundation solution, and allow Republicans to offer amendments with the understanding they would vote to approve the final bill with bipartisan support. Of course when the time came the entire GOP voted no.
Just like Mitchy promised.
“Just Say No to Obama”.
With healthcare
With SCOTUS appointment
With…with…with…
So why (oh why)
didn’t Congress believe him?
I’ve got citizenship in three 1st-world countries, all of which have universal healthcare. I spend more time each year worrying about my cell phone plan than I do about health coverage. Which is as it should be. The last thing I need when facing a medical crisis is wondering if there’s a loophole in my coverage.
No, ACA is much better than the shitfest that was the so-called Heritagecare (which Republicans based their various proposals on). The only reason people claim it’s the same is because Heritage also proposed an individual mandate. But a mandate merely pushes people to get insurance, it doesn’t actually say anything about the meat and bones of legislation. You have to ask what does it mandate you to get? Heritage proposed a mandate merely for catastrophic health insurance, which is very cheap but therefore utterly crap. ACA mandates decent insurance and if people can’t afford it then the government will subsidize a person’t health insurance until it’s affordable, even free for the poorest.There were also other things that made Heritagecare horrible, such as offloading a lot of the health costs from employers to employees. Typical Republican policy proposal, give businesses a break, don’t raise taxes and let God sort out the dead.
It’s actually private insurance companies that created the problem in the first place. They have a perverse incentive to keep hospital costs high while their buying power affords them a steep discount. It both forces to try to get insurance any way possible to get access to the lower costs and keeps greater amounts of money flowing into their coffers as they can only keep a percentage of total health care costs for their own profit taking.
A government single payer system doesn’t have those perverse incentives. With a government that has to answer to the people, they should want the best health outcomes for the most reasonable price, instead of trying to gouge the system for maximum profits.
Like clockwork. It would be one thing if we were the first country to have to figure this out… but as it stands we are the last developed nation that still refuses to acknowledge reality.
Sales taxes disproportionally impact working-class people who need to spend most of their income on actually buying stuff instead of letting most of their money sit in bank accounts, stocks and other investments.
A sales tax has several advantages. Because it is paid by all, including unauthorized immigrants, all can be included in the benefits. A sales tax is simple and transparent and broad-based. Social Security is so popular in part because it is funded by a dedicated tax that everyone pays. Imported products are subjected to a sales tax just as much as domestically produced products vs a payroll tax or income tax that would burden domestically produced products only.
Sales tax is highly regressive – poor people pay a larger percentage of their income in sales tax. It’s a disaster for people on fixed incomes and the unemployed. Administering it imposes large burdens on merchants and the government. By contrast, a proper income tax is levied only on people with demonstrated ability to pay, has low administrative costs, and can be tuned to the desirable point on the regressive / flat / progressive spectrum.
The hospital charged $106,000 but then had to write off all but $1100 because of their “in-network” contract. That’s a ridiculous state of affairs, but the insurance wasn’t milked.
You see, it costs the hospital $1,100. Which, with your insurance, they will get, within 60 days.
But if you don’t have insurance, you didn’t negotiate. And who (other than the hospital) can put a price on your life? You see, they need to make that $1,100 back; but some patients couldn’t pay that. So they know that with cash patients, about 10% will pay, the rest won’t. So they ask you to pay 10x their rate, to cover the other 9 people who won’t pay.
Of course, you probably can’t pay that. $110,000 is more assets than most people have. So the cost is really “everything”; which is what they will take until you declare bankruptcy and the court gives them the rest.
In America, we do have single payer health care. Indian Health Service. It came at a price. Genocide, theft of land, destruction of livestock, seizure of resources, marching Navajos to a concentration camp, the Trail of Tears, forcing many into schools designed to strip traditions. It does seem to be the only treaty USG has “sort of” held with Natives.
The 638 program allows tribes to take their allocated funds and run their own health centers, which sounds great, but isn’t necessarily. In one way, it allows USG to distance itself from its responsibility by allowing tribes autonomy. The result is often tainted by their need to rely on dishonest grifters (who runs the casino industry, eh) to gain revenue. The racetrack built by San Felipe Pueblo is but one example.
Indians (yes, many who are not urbanized use the term proudly) are mostly ignored by those who strive for racial equality, and that’s sad. At least they have free health care, chronically underfunded by Bipartisan disregard for decades. Only caring staff and steady supply of new physicians looking to erase student debt keep this going as well as it has.
A move to the “real world” of health care has shown me how appalling our system really is, not only as a patient, but in my workplace.
Profits have NO place in something that should be considered a basic human right.
Much of what I do insulates and protects patients from costs, preventing medical bankruptcies stemming from the excessive cost of "specialty’ drugs, ie the ones that work best. I think we all deserve single payer care, but establishment members of both parties are on the take. Until that changes, either enough people support the few candidates who walk the walk here, or enough take seriously the idea of voting third party so that it stops being mocked as a fringe idea or simply blamed when piss-poor candidates lose by slim margins.
