Absolutely agree (speaking as a single payer advocate). But I’d rather not peg reimbursement to current Medicare rates, and I’m totally willing to endure a huge disruption in health care delivery because I think it’s already broken enough to be worth replacing, so from my point of view that’s something that needs to be recognized and managed, and not a reason for inaction.
Certainly worthy of image memes!
perhaps you’ve misunderstood them and left off the explicit “single payer” off the front of your quoted clause, and you’ve taken free to mean without cost to anyone, where it clearly means ‘free to the consumer at the point of sale’ which is accurate - since under a single payer system we’ve payed it forward.
You know about paying things forward, right?
Based on the parlous state of the Medicare trust fund, there is gonna be a lot of paying back that needs to take place before the paying forward can get under way.
‘Paying back’ is an action, not a noun, and so can’t have a need.
Who is it that needs paying back? Oh, we do? Huh, funny that, almost looks like someone is standing there with a bullhorn spreading nonsense and looking for a handout… or else they’re gonna use their bullhorn to accuse everyone else of looking for a handout.
Healthcare for profit is antisocial.
Demand it all you like.
If only everyone was forced to work for food, then we could take measurements on the losses of them not going in early for treatment and getting the other workers sick and the kind of effects that has on output. Personally, I just love taking days off from doing productive or fun things to wait around in a sterile environment to get prodded and stuck with needles. If we should do anything, it should be to punish those have hard to diagnose diseases, because it’s expensive. Death to your grandparents.
Yesterday afternoon, back went out. This morning, every five minutes, it felt like someone was twisting my spine with a pipe wrench. Got in to see the Dr., who prescribed muscle relaxants and some megadoses of ibuprofen, and followup physical therapy. Able to function mostly normally now. Also bit the bullet and told Dr. go ahead and put me on the chart for my neglected exams, once this is better.
I pay the monthly and copays, but thank you insurance that lets me go to the doctor for stuff like this.
So you’re being pedantic.
But just so you know, “it’s not really free” always sounds like the “ALL lives matter” argument against universal health care-- an oblique attempt to dismiss the idea.
There are a lot of American people, they don’t all want the same thing, and the real problem is politicians and pundits reducing the argument to little soundbites like “it’s not really free” and “why should I pay for someone else’s healthcare?” and “it’s the first step towards communism!”
I already pay for health care. I have no issue with paying the same amount or even more if it means everyone gets coverage. I’m the “American people” too.
The copays are not usually that big a deal. If there’s a $25 copay to see a doctor or a $10 copay to get a prescription, that might put some people off, but what’s more important are the deductibles and limits and other fine print.
You may go in expecting to pay your $25 copay but end up with an $8000 bill, and since your insurance has an $8000 deductible, they won’t pay any of it. If that happens in December and you have to go back for a followup in January, expecting another $25 copay, you could get another $8000 bill because it’s a new year and the deductible has reset. Now you’re $16,000 in debt even with your good insurance with the manageable $25 copay.
Then say you get another bill, maybe $10,000 for a dose of tylenol and the paper cup they handed it to you in or something ridiculous like that. But your insurance company has a limit on how much total they have to pay out for that thing, so you’re stuck with the bill. And all the while, you’re still paying 15-30% of your income or so to the insurance company. Only now you’re sick, so you have to take leave from your job and therefore lose your insurance…
It’s an industry designed in detail to prey on people continually and drop them in their time of greatest need.
#DisapppintedInBB
American healthcare is broken. The only solution is single-payer. As a Canadian-raised writer, Cory knows and has fought for this. Unfortunately America is full of right wing profit-over-people types and would never spring for the Canadian way.
Maybe instead of raising the Department of Defense budget by $100B? Maybe not giving tax breaks to corporations that make trillions?
There’s plenty of ways to get funds for public necessities like healthcare, but republicans sure as hell refuse to do them out of some sociopathic need for people to suffer.
I found the article I was thinking of, it’s from 2013:
The way I read it it seems to be talking about actual costs paid, but I know that I’m not an expert and I best that American healthcare costs are even more complicated than even I imagine them to be.
So I happen to work in a field that allows me to converse with 1%ers on a casual basis, and was speaking with a medical center tycoon based in a poor city in Michigan. I asked him how business was, and he said “Excellent, these depressed areas are a goldmine.” I then went on to ask his take on socialized healthcare… in response he used the pro-capital cliche of the lazy, unemployed beneficiary of my hard earned tax dollars. I didn’t point out the irony of his willingness to condemn the depressed, then exploit them, as both are clearly good for business.
The correct response would be to vomit on his shoes.
In his defense, I still accepted his money.
Depends on how much of the health care bill that would cover. Single payer in California alone was estimated to cover $400 billion.
The purpose of the tax system should be to raise money, not to reward one industry or business model over another. I’m completely on board with one standard corporate tax rate on corporate profits, no loopholes allowed.
Hey folks, here’s how conservatives lie.
Start with a true statement: “The program could cost $400B.”
Then completely ignore the $200B that is already supplied for this part of the budget:
www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-first-fiscal-analysis-of-single-payer-1495475434-htmlstory.html
A total cost of $400 billion per year to cover all healthcare and administrative costs.
Of that, $200 billion of existing federal, state and local funds could be repurposed to go toward the single-payer system.
Also, the $400B is based on models that have no connection to reality. Every place with a single payer system pays less per capita than the US does for it’s non-single-payer system. Thinking that single payer will cost more than the current system seems “obvious” but there’s nothing from actual reality to support it.
I know a lot of so-called conservatives who are convinced that their social security and their Medicare could be saved from default if only the government would stop “wasting money” on other things.
Most of the things they think are “waste” turn out to be things that they don’t like.
In general, saying “let’s pay for this program by cutting spending on things I don’t like” is bullshit.
Ooooor some things actually are more important than others and when our military budget outpaces half of the rest of the world combined we could scale it back to provide healthcare for our citizens?
Spouting generalities is bullshit too.
That’s because the rest of the world combined yells for American troops every time a war gets started. I can sure as hell live without that.
