Germany is closest in that private insurance is still dominant, but even that is a single payer system.
Germany doesn't have a "single payer system".
You can disavow this history of ACA all you like, but the genesis of it was the Heritage Foundation.
And why do you keep repeating that? Republicans didn't vote for this crap. Democrats didn't alter their plans as part of a compromise with Republicans. The ACA is solely and exclusively the responsibility of Democrats.
Neither possibility covers the GOP in glory.
Again, who the fuck cares? The GOP has screwed up lots of things. However, they are not responsible in any way, shape, or form for the ACA. The ACA is a testament to Democratic incompetence and corruption. The people who have presented Obama as a candidate of "change and hope" and the Democrats as standing up for the rights and interests of the people and against corporations need to be reminded of that, constantly.
EVERYONE deserves to be able to get healthcare without going bankrupt.
Yes, everyone does; that can be provided at a small fraction of the costs and coverage of what the ACA requires. The ACA doesn't just provide healthcare coverage to everybody, it provides equal healthcare coverage to everybody: wide range of choice of doctors, easy access, low waiting times, lifestyle drugs, etc.
Fact is that we don't know yet whether this will be more expensive or not
Economics tells us that if you socialize costs and expand what is covered, people will consume more and costs go up, and that's what studies have shown. In addition, rates already have gone up as well for the vast majority of those whose coverage changed in response to ACA.
Or are you just bitching because *your* insurance went up?
My employer insulates me from that. But if I had the misfortune of having to get covered under the ACA, my rates would increase steeply.
Might be, but if it means that everyone has reasonable access to health insurance then that is a tradeoff I'm more than willing to make.
ACA isn't about providing "reasonable access to health insurance", that could be done much cheaper. ACA is a gigantic handout to drug companies and hospitals. And it's not going to cost a few extra bombers, it's going to cost huge numbers of jobs and wreck the economy.
I'd say almost half the price is a huge difference.
Well, it's largely proportional to per-capita GDP, so suppose people in the UK are also "very very poor", right?
But it's worse than that. In the UK we pay half but get a system that covers the entire population. You pay twice, and end up with something that *doesn't* cover the big swathe that don't have healthcare. You're paying more, and then still getting less.
The US already has a huge single payer system, covering the elderly, children, and the poor. That's in addition to a number of states offering various forms of universal coverage. So the idea that there are large numbers of involuntarily uninsured is bullshit.
Personally, I think it's perfectly fine for states to try to offer universal coverage. It isn't the job of the Federal government.
Oh fuck you you obviously know nothing about this country. It also sounds like you've been fed propaganda about the state of the NHS.
I think more importantly, you obviously know nothing about this country (like most Europeans), and you have been fed propaganda about life in the US, the same kind of bullshit about supposed cut-throat capitalism that Europeans have been fed for more than a century. Stop displaying your ignorance and actually learn something about the world outside your borders.
However, pretty much *all* those systems are single-payer,
Bullshit. Most European health care systems are not single payer. The shitty British system is the exception, not the rule. And countries like Germany that have studied the issue have rejected single payer as a poor alternative to their current systems. In addition, it is far from clear that even the British system is sustainable.
and radically cheaper to run than the American system, so what we can determine is that the American system as is is astonishingly inefficient
European health care systems aren't "radically cheaper to run"; they spend a bit more than half of what Americans spend per capita (and, of course, Europeans are generally poorer than Americans as well). Those savings are the result of strong government price controls, with the usual consequences: long waiting times, difficulty recruiting physicians, etc. Those kinds of price controls would be unacceptable to Americans and are politically impossible to put in place. Single payer wouldn't magically make them happen. It takes the kind of sheep-like population that the UK has to accept them.
Where do you get your knowledge of Europe from? Talk radio?
First hand experience. You, in contrast, seem to be the kind of moron who mistakes self-serving misinformation by US political groups for sound factual information.
Demonstrably untrue for most people, especially once you take the tax credits into account as long as you are comparing similar plans.
Being forced to pay excessive rates for bullshit coverage most pepole don't need is exactly what makes the current system much more expensive than what we had before.
The law is NOT written in a way that allows you to sign up after you get sick. Insurance companies aren't so stupid as to allow people to sign up once they are sick and the ACA was written with this in mind
Everyone would pay for it in general taxation. But that amount added to taxation would be only 40% of what American's pay for their health insurance.
The UK single payer system is no more efficient or cheaper than other European health insurance systems, many of which operate completely differently. Therefore, your assertion that the UK system magically results in cost control relative to private or other insurance systems is bullshit.
And the payments would be progressive (more paid by the rich, less or nothing paid by the poor).
Because the average healthcare consumer doesn't really have any choice, putting all the power in the hands of corporations.
The average healthcare consumer buying in the private market place had lots of choice pre-ACA. The problem pre-ACA was that insurance was frequently tied to employers because of tax law; that's what reform should have fixed.
I believe that happened. And now the corporations are bitching
The corporations aren't bitching at all; Obama handed them huge, guaranteed profits on a silver platter. And morons like you think this is some kind of big anti-corporate victory and are actually defending this crap.
This is another very good example why a single payer system is better. Is it any of your employers business if you are using contraceptives? I would say no - even if you are a nun.
First of all, many health care systems do not cover contraceptives to begin with. So what makes you think that a government-run system would automatically cover them? And why should it anyway? Why should I pay for your contraceptives?
With a single payer system only you and your doctor know what medical treatments you are using.
What planet are you from? With a single payer system, all your medical payments and treatments get kept in a single, nation-wide database, accessible by law enforcement, courts, tax agencies, retirement plans, and who knows what other nosy groups in the future. In addition, in a single payer system, "your doctor" isn't "your doctor", he is an employee of the health care system, with no autonomy and no separate interests; what kinds of decisions do you think "your doctor" is going to make and whose interests is he going to take into account?
The whole point of health "insurance" is to spread the costs out so that everybody who needs medicine can get it,
That's bullshit and has nothing to do with insurance. Insurance is something people buy in order to mitigate large, uncertain losses. It's a rational, individual decision whether to buy insurance. Making people pay for someone else's contraceptives, or viagra, or whatever isn't "insurance", it's a social welfare program in disguise.
Writing a health plan so that it excludes paying for particular medicines is antithetical to the goal of universal health coverage.
Good. "Universal health coverage" makes about as much sense as a "universal automobile", a "universal marriage", or a "universal phone". Different people have different preferences and needs, and forcing them to buy a single "universal" kind of item because Obama deems it the right thing is stupid. So, let's kill "universal health coverage", it's a bad idea.
The ACA started life on the right at the Heritage Foundatrion in 1989. It's a testament to how hard the right worked throughout the '90s and the aughts to drag the country their way that the ACA became centrist enough for Obama to latch onto it like a limpet
Stop making excuses for it. The ACA was pushed through by Obama and Democrats against massive opposition by Republicans. The fact that the Heritage Foundation had something vaguely like it doesn't make the Republicans responsible for this crap.
In fact, many European nations have health systems somewhat like the ACA, but not loaded with the corporate handouts and middle class handouts that Obama and the Democrats put into the ACA. That's why their health systems actually have better cost control than we do.
Hopefully, yes. Neither condoms, nor viagra, nor contraception, nor diet pills, nor cosmetic surgery, nor any of a large number of other lifestyle drugs or treatments should be covered by health insurance. You want them? You pay for them yourself.
European health insurance systems often don't cover contraception, so it's hard to see why this is so important in the US. In fact, it's hard to see why a regular, predictable expense like contraception should be covered by "insurance" at all.
You're right that single payer will lead to price setting and shortages, but that's self-limiting: sooner or later, people just augment it with a private market, so you end up with a poor public system providing minimal services and a thriving private system that anybody who can utilizes.
The ACA, in contrast, lacks any kind of cost control mechanisms, so under it health care will just expand until it causes our economy to die from it.
but there is no law that says,"Companies with more than N employees, must offer health insurance."
The US government distorts the health care market through tax breaks, strongly favoring employer-provided health care. Those tax breaks are an outrage and should have been abolished by any reasonable health insurance reform.
The reason why the ACA didn't move towards single-payer model (like most (yes, capitalist) countries) is that employers and insurance companies do not want that.
Of course: the ACA is one of the biggest government handouts to drug companies and insurance companies in a long time, thanks to the corporate cronies in the White House and among the Democrats in Congress.
But the idea that "most capitalist countries" have single payer is bullshit; most capitalist countries have regulated private insurance markets with some kind of mandate.
Make no mistake, the individual mandate, and no single payer is the Republican plan.
There's nothing wrong with an individual mandate in principle; lots of countries have that. It's Obama's and the Democrats' rotten implementation that's the problem, and their implementation was passed against unanimous Republican opposition.
ACA and the resulting crap is fully and exclusively Obama's and the Democrats' responsiblity.
You used to be able to get private insurance considerably cheaper than now with the ACA, so the situation has become much worse.
Of course, what you can do now is simply not bother to get coverage until you get sick, thereby raising insurance rates for privately insured individuals even more and making the situation even worse.
For some strange reason, the ACA did not fix this problem
This becomes much less strange when you start thinking of Obama as a good little corporate minion and the ACA as a gigantic handout to insurance and drug companies.
Sorry, I don't have a lot of sympathy here. If they get to weasel out of buying contraceptives on moral grounds, then I get to decide where my income tax money is spent on moral grounds. No special privileges.
If only people like you meant that. Unfortunately, you don't: you want larger and larger amounts of money taken away by the federal government and spent on corporate cronyism projects from health care to climate change to education.
Religious people can't simply leave it well enough alone, and just say "Well if you think contraception is wrong, just don't buy it."
I'm not religious, and I still don't see why I should pay for someone else's contraception. Even many European health plans often don't cover contraception.
This kind of thinking is wrong and needs to be abolished.
The kind of thinking that's wrong is that it is other people's responsibility to pay for your recreation.
When it comes to political decision making, I prefer someone who honestly says that he doesn't believe in evolution because he doesn't understand the evidence for it to someone who says that he believes in evolution because scientific experts have told him that it's true and doesn't want to look stupid.
Unfortunately, most respondents who believe in evolution fall into the latter category.
I am therefore not surprised that 1/3 of all Americans are so scarily ignorant that they have to rely on superstition to understand even the basics.
And I'm not surprised that you, as a product of European government indoctrination (which you told us you are), would simply assume without data or evidence, that the situation in Europe is better. In fact, actual data shows that adult science literacy in the US is generally better than in Europe.
The US approach reminds me of the Eurpoean dark ages, when cartographers used to write "Here Be Dragons" on parts of the map to avoid admitting that they didn't actually know what was there at all.
The European approach, the one you have evidently been brought up in, should remind you of the European Dark Ages, because it's still the same thing: the wealthy and powerful collude with the churches to decide what to teach peasants like you and keep you from questioning your masters.
I am originally from Europe and now living in the US. I have an 8 yr old son and am appalled at the low standard of education he is receiving here, even in supposedly top schools.
You only have yourself to blame for that: there are plenty of excellent schools that cater to any whim, ideology, and preference.
Or... just go back to Europe since you seem to prefer living in serfdom.
Before the gloating sets in, you have to put these numbers into perspective: a significant fraction of Europeans also do not believe in evolution; here is data from the UK:
In addition, although scientific literacy is low in both Europe and the US, American adults are generally better informed on science than European adults:
Many people used to live and work much closer together, so constant interaction and frequent little "neurochemical warm and fuzzies" are the norm for our species, just like for most primates and mammals.
Your suggestion that this constant reinforcement of relationships is something we should punish with electric shocks is perverse.
You said "Americans get less vacation than most of the free world." That's not a statement about SNAP recipients, it's about Americans. And it's a lousy comparison because Americans also get paid better.
Your statements and comparisons about SNAP are equally stupid. European nations don't have SNAP, and their unemployment and disability benefits are generally stingy.
And to top it all off you write nonsense like this: "When comparing incomes, it's only fair to factor in expenses that the Europeans don't have because it's covered out of their taxes." First of all, in many European countries, health and retirement need to be paid separately on top of already high taxes. And no matter whether it's called a tax or a contribution, Europeans pay for it, just like Americans do. Or do you think drug companies and doctors work for free in Europe?
You pick and choose benefits from across Europe that you like without properly accounting for the price people pay for them. Stop using fictions about Europe in order to justify your broken and destructive policies for the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Germany doesn't have a "single payer system".
And why do you keep repeating that? Republicans didn't vote for this crap. Democrats didn't alter their plans as part of a compromise with Republicans. The ACA is solely and exclusively the responsibility of Democrats.
Again, who the fuck cares? The GOP has screwed up lots of things. However, they are not responsible in any way, shape, or form for the ACA. The ACA is a testament to Democratic incompetence and corruption. The people who have presented Obama as a candidate of "change and hope" and the Democrats as standing up for the rights and interests of the people and against corporations need to be reminded of that, constantly.
Yes, everyone does; that can be provided at a small fraction of the costs and coverage of what the ACA requires. The ACA doesn't just provide healthcare coverage to everybody, it provides equal healthcare coverage to everybody: wide range of choice of doctors, easy access, low waiting times, lifestyle drugs, etc.
Economics tells us that if you socialize costs and expand what is covered, people will consume more and costs go up, and that's what studies have shown. In addition, rates already have gone up as well for the vast majority of those whose coverage changed in response to ACA.
My employer insulates me from that. But if I had the misfortune of having to get covered under the ACA, my rates would increase steeply.
ACA isn't about providing "reasonable access to health insurance", that could be done much cheaper. ACA is a gigantic handout to drug companies and hospitals. And it's not going to cost a few extra bombers, it's going to cost huge numbers of jobs and wreck the economy.
Well, it's largely proportional to per-capita GDP, so suppose people in the UK are also "very very poor", right?
The US already has a huge single payer system, covering the elderly, children, and the poor. That's in addition to a number of states offering various forms of universal coverage. So the idea that there are large numbers of involuntarily uninsured is bullshit.
Personally, I think it's perfectly fine for states to try to offer universal coverage. It isn't the job of the Federal government.
I think more importantly, you obviously know nothing about this country (like most Europeans), and you have been fed propaganda about life in the US, the same kind of bullshit about supposed cut-throat capitalism that Europeans have been fed for more than a century. Stop displaying your ignorance and actually learn something about the world outside your borders.
Bullshit. Most European health care systems are not single payer. The shitty British system is the exception, not the rule. And countries like Germany that have studied the issue have rejected single payer as a poor alternative to their current systems. In addition, it is far from clear that even the British system is sustainable.
European health care systems aren't "radically cheaper to run"; they spend a bit more than half of what Americans spend per capita (and, of course, Europeans are generally poorer than Americans as well). Those savings are the result of strong government price controls, with the usual consequences: long waiting times, difficulty recruiting physicians, etc. Those kinds of price controls would be unacceptable to Americans and are politically impossible to put in place. Single payer wouldn't magically make them happen. It takes the kind of sheep-like population that the UK has to accept them.
Yes, I am. Got a problem with that?
Ah, wonderful weasel words: "almost all ... partially", "majority", "up to".
No, you are wrong.
First hand experience. You, in contrast, seem to be the kind of moron who mistakes self-serving misinformation by US political groups for sound factual information.
Being forced to pay excessive rates for bullshit coverage most pepole don't need is exactly what makes the current system much more expensive than what we had before.
That's wishful thinking.
The UK single payer system is no more efficient or cheaper than other European health insurance systems, many of which operate completely differently. Therefore, your assertion that the UK system magically results in cost control relative to private or other insurance systems is bullshit.
And that's a good thing because...?
The average healthcare consumer buying in the private market place had lots of choice pre-ACA. The problem pre-ACA was that insurance was frequently tied to employers because of tax law; that's what reform should have fixed.
The corporations aren't bitching at all; Obama handed them huge, guaranteed profits on a silver platter. And morons like you think this is some kind of big anti-corporate victory and are actually defending this crap.
First of all, many health care systems do not cover contraceptives to begin with. So what makes you think that a government-run system would automatically cover them? And why should it anyway? Why should I pay for your contraceptives?
What planet are you from? With a single payer system, all your medical payments and treatments get kept in a single, nation-wide database, accessible by law enforcement, courts, tax agencies, retirement plans, and who knows what other nosy groups in the future. In addition, in a single payer system, "your doctor" isn't "your doctor", he is an employee of the health care system, with no autonomy and no separate interests; what kinds of decisions do you think "your doctor" is going to make and whose interests is he going to take into account?
That's bullshit and has nothing to do with insurance. Insurance is something people buy in order to mitigate large, uncertain losses. It's a rational, individual decision whether to buy insurance. Making people pay for someone else's contraceptives, or viagra, or whatever isn't "insurance", it's a social welfare program in disguise.
Good. "Universal health coverage" makes about as much sense as a "universal automobile", a "universal marriage", or a "universal phone". Different people have different preferences and needs, and forcing them to buy a single "universal" kind of item because Obama deems it the right thing is stupid. So, let's kill "universal health coverage", it's a bad idea.
Stop making excuses for it. The ACA was pushed through by Obama and Democrats against massive opposition by Republicans. The fact that the Heritage Foundation had something vaguely like it doesn't make the Republicans responsible for this crap.
In fact, many European nations have health systems somewhat like the ACA, but not loaded with the corporate handouts and middle class handouts that Obama and the Democrats put into the ACA. That's why their health systems actually have better cost control than we do.
Hopefully, yes. Neither condoms, nor viagra, nor contraception, nor diet pills, nor cosmetic surgery, nor any of a large number of other lifestyle drugs or treatments should be covered by health insurance. You want them? You pay for them yourself.
European health insurance systems often don't cover contraception, so it's hard to see why this is so important in the US. In fact, it's hard to see why a regular, predictable expense like contraception should be covered by "insurance" at all.
You're right that single payer will lead to price setting and shortages, but that's self-limiting: sooner or later, people just augment it with a private market, so you end up with a poor public system providing minimal services and a thriving private system that anybody who can utilizes.
The ACA, in contrast, lacks any kind of cost control mechanisms, so under it health care will just expand until it causes our economy to die from it.
The US government distorts the health care market through tax breaks, strongly favoring employer-provided health care. Those tax breaks are an outrage and should have been abolished by any reasonable health insurance reform.
Of course: the ACA is one of the biggest government handouts to drug companies and insurance companies in a long time, thanks to the corporate cronies in the White House and among the Democrats in Congress.
But the idea that "most capitalist countries" have single payer is bullshit; most capitalist countries have regulated private insurance markets with some kind of mandate.
There's nothing wrong with an individual mandate in principle; lots of countries have that. It's Obama's and the Democrats' rotten implementation that's the problem, and their implementation was passed against unanimous Republican opposition.
ACA and the resulting crap is fully and exclusively Obama's and the Democrats' responsiblity.
You used to be able to get private insurance considerably cheaper than now with the ACA, so the situation has become much worse.
Of course, what you can do now is simply not bother to get coverage until you get sick, thereby raising insurance rates for privately insured individuals even more and making the situation even worse.
This becomes much less strange when you start thinking of Obama as a good little corporate minion and the ACA as a gigantic handout to insurance and drug companies.
If only people like you meant that. Unfortunately, you don't: you want larger and larger amounts of money taken away by the federal government and spent on corporate cronyism projects from health care to climate change to education.
I'm not religious, and I still don't see why I should pay for someone else's contraception. Even many European health plans often don't cover contraception.
The kind of thinking that's wrong is that it is other people's responsibility to pay for your recreation.
You are hurting me: you are taking my money.
Yes, someone as scientifically illiterate as you would jump to that conclusion.
When it comes to political decision making, I prefer someone who honestly says that he doesn't believe in evolution because he doesn't understand the evidence for it to someone who says that he believes in evolution because scientific experts have told him that it's true and doesn't want to look stupid.
Unfortunately, most respondents who believe in evolution fall into the latter category.
And I'm not surprised that you, as a product of European government indoctrination (which you told us you are), would simply assume without data or evidence, that the situation in Europe is better. In fact, actual data shows that adult science literacy in the US is generally better than in Europe.
The European approach, the one you have evidently been brought up in, should remind you of the European Dark Ages, because it's still the same thing: the wealthy and powerful collude with the churches to decide what to teach peasants like you and keep you from questioning your masters.
You only have yourself to blame for that: there are plenty of excellent schools that cater to any whim, ideology, and preference.
Or... just go back to Europe since you seem to prefer living in serfdom.
Before the gloating sets in, you have to put these numbers into perspective: a significant fraction of Europeans also do not believe in evolution; here is data from the UK:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/feb/01/evolution-darwin-survey-creationism
In addition, although scientific literacy is low in both Europe and the US, American adults are generally better informed on science than European adults:
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-public/science-literacy-us-college-courses-really-count
Many people used to live and work much closer together, so constant interaction and frequent little "neurochemical warm and fuzzies" are the norm for our species, just like for most primates and mammals.
Your suggestion that this constant reinforcement of relationships is something we should punish with electric shocks is perverse.
You said "Americans get less vacation than most of the free world." That's not a statement about SNAP recipients, it's about Americans. And it's a lousy comparison because Americans also get paid better.
Your statements and comparisons about SNAP are equally stupid. European nations don't have SNAP, and their unemployment and disability benefits are generally stingy.
And to top it all off you write nonsense like this: "When comparing incomes, it's only fair to factor in expenses that the Europeans don't have because it's covered out of their taxes." First of all, in many European countries, health and retirement need to be paid separately on top of already high taxes. And no matter whether it's called a tax or a contribution, Europeans pay for it, just like Americans do. Or do you think drug companies and doctors work for free in Europe?
You pick and choose benefits from across Europe that you like without properly accounting for the price people pay for them. Stop using fictions about Europe in order to justify your broken and destructive policies for the US.