Arkansans sue to block Medicaid work rule.
The more people you talk to, from all walks of life, the more you run into people who know the system is broken and want it fixed. If, and this will never happen of course, the GOP and Dems could agree on some plan of national health care I think you would see people embrace it. As long as it lowered costs, you could still see your old doctor and taxes werenât raised to pay for it.
I donât see how you can have any kind of universal system without raising taxes. The providers need to get paid regardless of who is doing the paying. If you remove the private payers â single payer â then you have to raise taxes to replace what they would have paid. If you go to a multi-payer universal system, like Germanyâs for example, and you want it to be truly universal, you need the government to pay for those who canât afford to pay for a private plan and this is a heftier government amount than you currently have under Medicare/Medicaid. Not nearly as big a tax increase as single payer to be sure, but still some increase would be required.
I agree, you will have to raise taxes to get it done. And you might be able to just raise corporate taxes to do it, or taxes on the uber wealthy. But just like people buy into GOP tax cuts as being great for them they always see tax increases as being bad for them, even when they are not directly targeted by either.
Yes, it comes back into many people not realizing the true cost of their healthcare. How much they are paying, or their jobs arenât paying, for it.
If, for example, it was done at a corporate level it would probably be best. Because the reality is that if companies could drop paying for health insurance in lieu of paying the tax for it, everyone comes out the same or ahead.
Raising taxes on the uber wealthy wonât generate anywhere near the amount required and raising corporate taxes just encourages more corporations to move offshore.
Telling corporations that they can pay an additional X% tax in return for not having to pay/administer healthcare plans for their employees would almost certainly be jumped at by most, I imagine. I know my company would relish the opportunity to drop all the red tape associated with making sure everyone is covered, trying to find the best deal on coverage, doing all the âopen seasonâ work, etc.
Even better if itâs a choice, right? Offer your employees a health plan that meets these parameters, OR pay this amount in taxes per employee work-hour.
The thing about Germanyâs model that Obamacare does not copy is that health insurance rates are a percent of income rather than a fixed charge. People with high incomes pay more for health insurance and subsidize the low income earners. In our current model, for Medicare as well as regular health insurance, people with high incomes pay a much lower share of their income for health than people with low incomes.
I feel like what would really help is some kind of law that forced companies to reveal how much they paid for an employeeâs health care during the pay period. Put it on the pay stub, alongside the employeeâs contribution.
People donât realize just how much their work health insurance actually costs, and how their employers are covering the costs.
That would also help in some case (in some weird universe) where we do get single-payer health insurance, and then people start wondering why their pay may have went down.
Every company Iâve had health coverage through has done this. Most people outside of upper management or HR still donât notice or appreciate it.
Yup. Its about the equivalent of a second mortgage for a family of four.
I completely agree that this is desirable. However, itâs very different than simply slapping a higher income tax rate on the wealthy.
Itâs also not the end of the world paying higher taxes especially if the return is no longer worrying about health care insurance (or hell, even waiting around for the inevitable bills, often times months and months after a procedure. Itâs infuriating.)
Edit: I mean everyone, not just the wealthy.
I have seen the Carpenters Union here in California struggle with health insurance. I am sure most unions would love to get rid of the problems supplying health insurance incurs.
I believe one reason Obamacare was so disliked is that people didnât have any idea how much their employer based insurance cost, and when employers finally started asking them to pay something (or a larger something) they believed it was because of ACA. They had no idea employers for years have had to eat health care cost increases of 5-15% a year.
A lot of the issues in the US also have to do with the insane costs of insurance priced healthcare. Healthcare organizations charge insurances inflated rates over the non-insured rates, because they can. Because insurance can eat the cost and increase the premiums year over year.
The money is being gobbled up in the middle. We could do a lot to slow down the rapid price increases of healthcare with some regulations
In 2009, a lumbar spine MRI costed 160$ in Japan, and over 1700$ in the U.S.
Because the Japanese government fixes prices that can be charged for many healthcare services.
The current system in the U.S. is unsustainable, costs will continue to increase, premiums will continue to rise, if we donât do anything. Pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment companies, and everyone else can charge us more for the same medicine and equipment than other countries, because they just can.
I think everyone agrees with this.
Here is another article explaining the massive amount of waste in costs that the US Healthcare system is dealing with.
Administrative costs, meanwhile, accounted for 8 percent of the GDP in the U.S. For the other countries, they ranged from 1 percent to 3 percent. Health care professionals in America also reported a higher level of âadministrative burden.â A survey showed that a significant portion of doctors call the time they lose to issues surrounding insurance claims and reporting clinical data a major problem.
Dealing with insurance companies is costing us at least 5% more of our total GDP in spending than other countries. I have friends that are doctors and pharmacists, and they complain about this the most. They donât have degrees in hospital billing, or insurance coverages or claims, but they often have to deal with issues on a daily basis. That is time lost that could be used on care.
A good thing? With all of that money, at least we are getting some of the best care in the world, but due to the issues with costs and insurance, there are many people missing out on that excellent care, which makes it pointless.