Not really, multiple people can have the same name in a city(if you want to be a pedantic ass about it). Besides, it was not a massive database dump of all public officials. Read the article, the affected were well known city officials.
Interesting theory, but the pay-stubs did not contain any personal information, just "Person X made $Y and received $Z in benefits this year", and only the higher up's salaries were published. So I think I'll go with your second theory.
By keeping it online and freely available at all times, there is a much smaller risk that it will be destroyed, and a much larger risk that it will be discovered. A corrupt politician now knows that he can bribe the county clerk and steal with impunity. Sure there is the possibility that a intrepid reporter will follow the paper trail to find the inconsistencies, landing him in jail. But those things don't happen very often, and if I were a corrupt politician I would disregard it.
Once a large infrastructure of data is placed online, there are many more people someone would need to bribe(IT admin, clerk, data inputer), and there are far more eyeballs watching, as any jackass with a perl script can find missing documents.
Fool proof? Hardly, but better than what you propose.
"Why? Because it was being abused. So now it's not universally available and publicly searchable on the internet. That doesn't mean the information still isn't "public". And before you say that the government's job should be to use technology to make access to such information easier, e.g., via putting on the internet, ask yourself if you'd want all information about you that is technically "public information" aggregated and made quickly and easily searchable by anyone on the internet on a whim, or if you'd rather that people have to actually have a legitimate need for specific pieces of information, and be willing to go through the processes to get it?"
Forms cannot be copyrighted. This is just a litigious local government with an overzealous lawyer.
And as an aside, commercial income does not invalidate fair use. The logical structure of the law is not clear, and only says that the purpose of use must be considered. If it were that iron clad, Governments and corporations could sue when the media releases leaked documents, as they are profiting off their "copyright".
No personal information was released other than name, salary, and received benefits. This is just a local government that is embarrassed by their ridiculously high administrative salaries.
See http://claremontca.blogspot.com/2007/09/labor-day_07.html .
Nice straw man, did you bother to actually look at what he scanned? There was no information about any of the things you mentioned(Except marital status, you could tell whether a girl was married by the Ms or Mrs.). All it had was a dollar amount of benefits given, Salary, and name.
My parents tried that one on me. I just kept the wires with me at all times, I lost one or two out of carelessness, but with enough planning, you can maintain a continuous stream of computer usage.
I'd advise against creating so much conflict over such trivial issues, save your anger for when the kid does something really stupid(like cocaine).
I'm sure, but we do have a rather large budget deficit at the moment. I'm not sure what the use of such an action would be, as MAD and large amounts of trade keep those type of enemies(the rich nations that super-cruising bombers would help against) at bay.
As much as I like the joke, we have too high an opinion of ourselves. If the Russians could take on Chenchens, welfare drones with hand guns are not going to be a problem.
"I wouldn't tax corporations for spending, only on income, revenue - expenses, tax. Corporations don't so much consume stuff like people do, their expenses or what they buy is or should be spent to create or increase profit. Of course, they'll also pay property tax on property they own. And a pollution tax, as would others."
Corporations should pay pollution taxes, property tax and etcetera, but I don't see why they can't just pay a consumption tax on their expenses. Whenever they hire someone, that would consumption, as would raw material purchase, excetera. And, once the profits go back to shareholders and are spent, the government gets another cut. I'm not sure if the income from this extra tax outweighs the economic benefit from refraining.
"Licenses cost money as does inspections therefore the license tax. A tax on fuel because vehicles use the roads. Two taxes cover and pay for different things. The sales tax is a consumption tax, versus the fuel tax which is for road maintenance and building."
If we only tax fuels, than trucks, who cause far more damage then cars(damage is proportional to weight cubed), do not get taxed more. It is best to directly tax what causes the expense: the weight and miles driven. Licenses cost money, but not much, so the driver license fee in place should do it.
"BS! I don't want anyone tracking me. There is absolutely no need for the government to where I go. And where government has the ability business will find a use."
It is computationally unfeasible to actually store everyone's detailed traffic history. And just to be safe, we can mandate a law that states that the government cannot store the data. You might then ask, how will they charge then? The computer will track you for a small amount of time(say 10 minutes), tally up the amount of money that the 10 minutes of driving cost, and then add that charge to your account. The driving record is then deleted. The Knapsack problem makes sure that it will be impossible to reconstruct driving history from the bill. Of course, this would be subject to the strictest oversight.
Why bother? The first effect would be the near-permanent abolition of traffic. More importantly, free transportation(to the user, the costs to society have been large) has been incredibly distorting to our economy, essentially acting as corporate welfare for large retail, trucking, and automobile companies. And somewhat more cynically, we would no longer have to subsidize public transportation, since we no longer have to "balance out the road subsidies".
"I like a pollution tax but I'm not sure how it could be setup. Wouldn't a pollution tax be double taxation though?"
I skimmed over the pollution tax idea. Let me flesh it out a bit more: Every year, the government would auction off a certain number of CO2 credits(the number ideally determined by a council of scientists) to the highest bidder. These credits are licenses to emit a certain amount of CO2, and they can be traded between individuals and firms. Polluters at the end of the year need to demonstrate to the EPA that they have bought carbon credits to cover all of their emissions. The advantage of this over a simple tax is that the limited amount of CO2 that we set aside will go to the most profitable source, as everyone else will be priced out. This means that we will suffer the least economic damage for the most CO2 reduction. We currently have similar systems in place for SO2 and other pollutants, and it is working rather well.
"Oh, I just realized also when I said property tax would be used for infrastructure, fuel tax already pays for roads, property tax should actually go to services rendered such as the fire department, police, and the courts."
Property taxes cannot be levied by the federal government, by the constitution. The consumption tax, carbon auctioning(some estimates say it will raise up to 300 billion a year), and road pricing, should generate plenty of money. So funding services out of the general budget would not be a problem.
"Same here, I'd have consumption and usage tax and get rid of income tax. People shouldn't be taxed on what they earn, only what they spend. When I say this I mean at the federal level, if state residents want an income tax let them tax it, but I'd rather not. The only income tax I'd have is a corporate tax. Because corporations allow their stockholders limited liability, the only liability stockholders have is the amount they bought stocks for, corporations should then be taxed.
Taxing corporations on their spending as well as on their income smacks of double taxation. Corporations should just be taxed on what they spend, the shareholders will be indirectly taxed by lower dividends. Not only that, but if we were the only industrialized first world nation without a corporate income tax, we would most likely attract massive amounts of business.
"Instead tax consumption and usage. A sales tax on vehicles as well as license taxes would pay for regulation and inspection of vehicles. A tax on fuel would pay for road building and maintenance. Local infrastructure is financed by property tax."
Again, seems a bit too much like double taxation. I would prefer that we institute some sort of road pricing scheme for public roads(Like what Germany is trying to implement with truckers). The basic idea is that cars are outfitted with GPS devices that charge them according to which road they use, with the per mile charge dependant on traffic and the size and weight of the car. The aim is to control congestion, not to raise revenue. A small surcharge per mile can cover road mantenence.
"There are enormous social and economic costs stemming from poor social services. Every _individual_ pays this social cost, directly or indirectly. We pay for prisons and policemen to house drug-addicts or the mentally-imbalanced who can't get proper access to treatment. We deal with beggars in the streets and roving gangs of young people who have nowhere better to go"
Beggars, drug addicts, and the mentally imbalanced do not become suffer because of the massive cost of health-care, see Medicaid. There are some societal benefits for health care, but why pay for them through insurance? Wouldn't healthcare vouchers do a better job?
Yes, education produces positive externalities. So the government should subsidize education. But I fail to see any reason why the government should administer educational facilities. Why not just give every kid an $8,000 voucher for schooling?
"People who reside in Japan must join either their employer's health insurance scheme or National Health Insurance, which is managed by the city, town or village."
The employer health insurance scheme is rather closely linked with the government, I was under the assumption that policy was just a form of corporate welfare for large Japanese companies (But I am not an expert on Japan, feel free to correct me).
"Even in China employers offer health insurance for their employees, though not to all."
Chinese workers spend many more hours at their employers than Americans do. I imagine that it would be in both parties interest to have a Doctor on staff at the workplace.
"Ok, I can see why employers, those who can afford it, will offer insurance. However employees can still get insurance from employers cheaper than they can on their own."
Sometimes that is true, sometimes it is not. As I said before, if that is what a company and employer wants to do, all the more power to them. I have the feeling that if it were not for our tax policies, very few corporations would choose to provide health-care.
"As for income tax and having to pay more if you get paid more by the employer, so you can get your own insurance, that's another matter. Personally I'd eliminate all personal earned income tax. Because corporations offer their owners, shareholder or stockholders, limited liability I'd require corporations to pay income tax. Problem solved."
I'm worried that this will tax lawyers can get around such policies using trivial financial engineering. If we can change tax policies, I would prefer a consumption tax.
"WOW! You've given me something to think about, I hadn't thought of it that way before. Combined with Medical Savings Accounts, one on a very short list of things Bush has proposed I like the other being to allow workers to privatize some of their social security, it could work. Of course if earned income weren't taxed MSAs and SS wouldn't be needed. I just hope I can remember what you said later, damaged memory."
Medical Savings accounts don't allow workers to spend the money that they don't use on health care. This prompts a desperate spree to spend every last cent of it, and a lot of underinvestment. But if you allow people to withdraw from such accounts, I would support it wholeheartedly. I am not opposed to social security privatization in principle, but the version Bush proposed was rather horrendous.
"So do I, if a person is responsible for paying for their own healthcare they will be more careful. Maybe not all but I'd hazard to guess many people would exercise more preventive healthcare, live a healthier lifestyle, and when needed would do more shopping for healthcare providers."
I'm glad we can agree on this point, it is the backbone of my argument.
"It's a per-capita cost. It would cost us more in a pure dollar amount, but at the same time, we have way more people to pay for it. As somebody else said, if the UK can afford it, we sure as hell can. Our per-capita income is about 40% higher than theirs --- we'll even feel the cost much less than they do."
Are you familiar with the concept of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale? The UK has a much denser population that the US does, so they need fewer hospitals in order to guarantee a certain level of coverage. The UK has much lower rates of obesity, entirely different demographics, and a smaller population. And a fundamentally different system of government administration (England lacks separation of powers and has much less lax liability laws; this makes civil administration massively cheaper and simpler). There are many reasons to believe that Americans would have to spend more money per capita then the British in order to get the same level of health care.
And for future reference, our per capita income is only 19% higher than theirs.
"Yes, because economics of scale mean that doing the same thing in a larger country is less efficient. Oh, wait."
Not all industries have economies of scale. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale . There are many reasons to believe that a universal health care system would be more expensive per capita in the US then in Britain.
"Today, people do opt out, mostly because they're to poor, too young, or too old to be able to afford employer provided health care, or they don't work and can't afford fronting the whole premium cost themselves."
The poor and old receive free health care from federal and state programs. Private insurance is very cheap for young people (I just ran a quick quote for myself, nonsmoking 16 year old full time college student, $603 per year). If they don't work, then either A) they are disabled, in which case the federal government foots the tab (And they get a nice social security stipend), or B) they do not want to work. If they don't want to work, and consequently they can't pay for things that they want, that is not my problem.
"However, when these people get sick or have an accident they don't suck it up, and they can't afford the cost out of pocket (if they could they'd have health insurance instead). Doctors and hospitals are compelled to help these people when something really bad happens, which invariably happens sooner than for those with health care due to the complete lack of preventative care."
This point has been very overblown; there are many free and low cost health care clinics that are happy to write prescriptions to antibiotics, beta blockers, and most of the other "preventive care" drugs that are mentioned. At this point, there exist generic versions of most of these drugs, so the costs involved are rather small, even for poor families (who have their costs covered by Medicaid anyway).
"So until opting out isn't an option, any health care system will experience the same failings as our current one."
There are fundamental issues with any insurance system. Until we drop the idea of health insurance all together, any health care system will face the same failings as our current one. Any honest doctor will agree.
As long as patients have no marginal incentive to conserve, they will not. I propose we give people the ability to save Y% of their income tax-free, but unlike current health saving accounts, people can spend it as they wish. It can be said that the poor don't have spare cash to save, so every year, the government can wire $X to every account. Something like Stafford loans could exist for those unable to pay large health care bills.
Under this plan, money not spent on health care can be spent by patients on other things, giving patients an incentive to control spending, while maintaining quality.
During World War Two, firms were experiencing labor shortages. The normal way of fixing a labor shortage, raising wages, was impossible because of wartime price controls. So the government allowed Companies to give workers health care tax free in lieu of wage increases. This little quirk is why you don't see such a policy in any other nation in the world.
There are certain benefits that are complimentary to work, that bring more happiness to the worker then it costs the company to provide to provide. Free food is sometimes an example of this, as is free parking, and sometimes even shuttle buses. In very rare cases, it makes sense to provide health-care as well (Flight attendants and nurses are a textbook example)
If a company chooses to pay with health insurance, and the worker agrees, then that is fine. But that is not why we see widespread employer provided health-care. Suppose that if instead of health-care, you were paid with money. You would then be taxed on this money, and you now have around 30% less money to spend on health care. But if you are given the health care directly through an employer, you are not taxed (because of WW2 era rules). Because of this, it makes overwhelming sense to buy your health care through your employer.
What is wrong with this? First, companies usually negotiate a single HMO or insurance company for all of their employees in exchange for some kickbacks. So these employees are stuck with a single insurance, and if they don't like it, competing companies are at a 30% disadvantage. So employer related health insurance companies have quite a bit of wiggle room in terms of service and price before hand. There are exceptions, like Google and American Airlines, but in general, most companies act in such a way.
This practice keeps insurance premiums artificially high and service artificially low, and worst of all, it prevents the proliferation of insurance companies, creating oligopoly markets.
We have two options to fix this: 1) Get rid of the tax loophole, so that people are taxed on the health care benefits they receive, or 2) Allow all health-care spending to be tax exempt. Personally, I prefer the first one, as the second one will distort demand for elective surgery, but I don't care very much either way, as long as one of them is done.
"Because employers pay premiums on insurance they offer employees said insurance should be cheaper than private insurance."
Private insurance, unless it is for a very high risk individual, costs much less than $10,000.
On an aside note, the entire concept of employer-provided health insurance is really a giant flaw in the system. Employers don't provide food, water, or housing, health care should not be any different.
"Why? A government-run system is working quite adequately for the UK, why couldn't it work for us?"
Libertarian objections aside, there are many good arguments that suggest that European governments are much more efficient at running state-run firms then the US is (I don't feel like repeating them, but if you are not familiar with them I could pull them up.), so the "it works for them, why not for us?" argument is not really very convincing.
I am not going to pretend that health-care is ready for free-market competition out of the box, but the same difficulties that plague health care providers today will not magically disappear from government involvement. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the government will handle the daunting complexity, extremely emotional and difficult trade-offs, and uninformed consumers any better than the market is currently.
It seems like it would be a much better use of time to craft regulations that would make health-care ready for free-market competition then it is to make fairytale assumptions about the competency of government. Banning price discrimination, forcing doctors to post their prices online, and eliminating the financial incentives we give to health insurance companies would go a long way toward bringing us to this point.
"As for taxes --- it's not like people in the UK are paying 60% of their income in taxes. Up to about $70,000, their income tax rate is actually a bit lower than ours, and their top rate of 40% isn't much higher than our top rate of 35%. This doesn't include VAT, but then again, the US statistics also don't include state taxes and sales taxes, or the cost of health insurance."
The tax burden of the VAT (and their higher gasoline tax) far outweighs any state or local tax in the nation, with the exception of rich billionaires who never spend their money and possibly parts of Long Island.
"The latter is substantial --- if you're making ~$100k, and your employer provides a health plan, they're paying about 10% of your salary in premiums."
Why does health insurance need to be income based? Based solely on demographics, I would expect the rich to pay lower premiums on average then the poor. Most employers allow health plans to be opted out of, and if the cost for private insurance outside of the company (which will definitely not be based on percentage of income) is lower than inside, and then I expect that they would jump out and do so.
"You might not see this cost directly, but it's a tax on you as much as if the government had taken it right out of your paycheck."
No it is not. Health insurance is voluntary, if I choose not to be covered and pay out of my pocket, I can keep that money. I do not have that option with taxes.
"Because France is so full of fatties?"
Obviously not, but this is relevant to my real concern. If their is a national health care system, then suddenly everyone else is responsible for my health choices. If I want to eat fatty foods, my neighbor will have to pay for that, and I will have to pay for his behavior. This will justify a host of unpleasant policies (Calorie taxes, exercise credits, etc.) that I would prefer my government not be involved in.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really, multiple people can have the same name in a city(if you want to be a pedantic ass about it). Besides, it was not a massive database dump of all public officials. Read the article, the affected were well known city officials.
I should have been specific, Government forms usually cannot be copyrighted. At the very least, they are "opt in".
Interesting theory, but the pay-stubs did not contain any personal information, just "Person X made $Y and received $Z in benefits this year", and only the higher up's salaries were published. So I think I'll go with your second theory.
Once a large infrastructure of data is placed online, there are many more people someone would need to bribe(IT admin, clerk, data inputer), and there are far more eyeballs watching, as any jackass with a perl script can find missing documents.
Fool proof? Hardly, but better than what you propose.
Please be more specific about "abuse".
And as an aside, commercial income does not invalidate fair use. The logical structure of the law is not clear, and only says that the purpose of use must be considered. If it were that iron clad, Governments and corporations could sue when the media releases leaked documents, as they are profiting off their "copyright".
No personal information was released other than name, salary, and received benefits. This is just a local government that is embarrassed by their ridiculously high administrative salaries. See http://claremontca.blogspot.com/2007/09/labor-day_07.html .
Nice straw man, did you bother to actually look at what he scanned? There was no information about any of the things you mentioned(Except marital status, you could tell whether a girl was married by the Ms or Mrs.). All it had was a dollar amount of benefits given, Salary, and name.
See http://claremontca.blogspot.com/2007/09/labor-day_07.html
I'd advise against creating so much conflict over such trivial issues, save your anger for when the kid does something really stupid(like cocaine).
I'm sure, but we do have a rather large budget deficit at the moment. I'm not sure what the use of such an action would be, as MAD and large amounts of trade keep those type of enemies(the rich nations that super-cruising bombers would help against) at bay.
As much as I like the joke, we have too high an opinion of ourselves. If the Russians could take on Chenchens, welfare drones with hand guns are not going to be a problem.
Agreed.
Do you actually want to occupy Iraq? Your plan does not seem to do much else.
Ok, so a sample self selected on the ability and will to kill, happens to be more violent than the norm. Surprised?
Corporations should pay pollution taxes, property tax and etcetera, but I don't see why they can't just pay a consumption tax on their expenses. Whenever they hire someone, that would consumption, as would raw material purchase, excetera. And, once the profits go back to shareholders and are spent, the government gets another cut. I'm not sure if the income from this extra tax outweighs the economic benefit from refraining.
"Licenses cost money as does inspections therefore the license tax. A tax on fuel because vehicles use the roads. Two taxes cover and pay for different things. The sales tax is a consumption tax, versus the fuel tax which is for road maintenance and building."
If we only tax fuels, than trucks, who cause far more damage then cars(damage is proportional to weight cubed), do not get taxed more. It is best to directly tax what causes the expense: the weight and miles driven. Licenses cost money, but not much, so the driver license fee in place should do it.
"BS! I don't want anyone tracking me. There is absolutely no need for the government to where I go. And where government has the ability business will find a use."
It is computationally unfeasible to actually store everyone's detailed traffic history. And just to be safe, we can mandate a law that states that the government cannot store the data. You might then ask, how will they charge then? The computer will track you for a small amount of time(say 10 minutes), tally up the amount of money that the 10 minutes of driving cost, and then add that charge to your account. The driving record is then deleted. The Knapsack problem makes sure that it will be impossible to reconstruct driving history from the bill. Of course, this would be subject to the strictest oversight.
Why bother? The first effect would be the near-permanent abolition of traffic. More importantly, free transportation(to the user, the costs to society have been large) has been incredibly distorting to our economy, essentially acting as corporate welfare for large retail, trucking, and automobile companies. And somewhat more cynically, we would no longer have to subsidize public transportation, since we no longer have to "balance out the road subsidies".
"I like a pollution tax but I'm not sure how it could be setup. Wouldn't a pollution tax be double taxation though?"
I skimmed over the pollution tax idea. Let me flesh it out a bit more: Every year, the government would auction off a certain number of CO2 credits(the number ideally determined by a council of scientists) to the highest bidder. These credits are licenses to emit a certain amount of CO2, and they can be traded between individuals and firms. Polluters at the end of the year need to demonstrate to the EPA that they have bought carbon credits to cover all of their emissions. The advantage of this over a simple tax is that the limited amount of CO2 that we set aside will go to the most profitable source, as everyone else will be priced out. This means that we will suffer the least economic damage for the most CO2 reduction. We currently have similar systems in place for SO2 and other pollutants, and it is working rather well.
"Oh, I just realized also when I said property tax would be used for infrastructure, fuel tax already pays for roads, property tax should actually go to services rendered such as the fire department, police, and the courts."
Property taxes cannot be levied by the federal government, by the constitution. The consumption tax, carbon auctioning(some estimates say it will raise up to 300 billion a year), and road pricing, should generate plenty of money. So funding services out of the general budget would not be a problem.
Taxing corporations on their spending as well as on their income smacks of double taxation. Corporations should just be taxed on what they spend, the shareholders will be indirectly taxed by lower dividends. Not only that, but if we were the only industrialized first world nation without a corporate income tax, we would most likely attract massive amounts of business.
"Instead tax consumption and usage. A sales tax on vehicles as well as license taxes would pay for regulation and inspection of vehicles. A tax on fuel would pay for road building and maintenance. Local infrastructure is financed by property tax."
Again, seems a bit too much like double taxation. I would prefer that we institute some sort of road pricing scheme for public roads(Like what Germany is trying to implement with truckers). The basic idea is that cars are outfitted with GPS devices that charge them according to which road they use, with the per mile charge dependant on traffic and the size and weight of the car. The aim is to control congestion, not to raise revenue. A small surcharge per mile can cover road mantenence.
A separate carbon tax can cover global warming.
Beggars, drug addicts, and the mentally imbalanced do not become suffer because of the massive cost of health-care, see Medicaid. There are some societal benefits for health care, but why pay for them through insurance? Wouldn't healthcare vouchers do a better job?
Yes, education produces positive externalities. So the government should subsidize education. But I fail to see any reason why the government should administer educational facilities. Why not just give every kid an $8,000 voucher for schooling?
The employer health insurance scheme is rather closely linked with the government, I was under the assumption that policy was just a form of corporate welfare for large Japanese companies (But I am not an expert on Japan, feel free to correct me).
"Even in China employers offer health insurance for their employees, though not to all."
Chinese workers spend many more hours at their employers than Americans do. I imagine that it would be in both parties interest to have a Doctor on staff at the workplace.
"Ok, I can see why employers, those who can afford it, will offer insurance. However employees can still get insurance from employers cheaper than they can on their own."
Sometimes that is true, sometimes it is not. As I said before, if that is what a company and employer wants to do, all the more power to them. I have the feeling that if it were not for our tax policies, very few corporations would choose to provide health-care.
"As for income tax and having to pay more if you get paid more by the employer, so you can get your own insurance, that's another matter. Personally I'd eliminate all personal earned income tax. Because corporations offer their owners, shareholder or stockholders, limited liability I'd require corporations to pay income tax. Problem solved."
I'm worried that this will tax lawyers can get around such policies using trivial financial engineering. If we can change tax policies, I would prefer a consumption tax.
"WOW! You've given me something to think about, I hadn't thought of it that way before. Combined with Medical Savings Accounts, one on a very short list of things Bush has proposed I like the other being to allow workers to privatize some of their social security, it could work. Of course if earned income weren't taxed MSAs and SS wouldn't be needed. I just hope I can remember what you said later, damaged memory."
Medical Savings accounts don't allow workers to spend the money that they don't use on health care. This prompts a desperate spree to spend every last cent of it, and a lot of underinvestment. But if you allow people to withdraw from such accounts, I would support it wholeheartedly. I am not opposed to social security privatization in principle, but the version Bush proposed was rather horrendous.
"So do I, if a person is responsible for paying for their own healthcare they will be more careful. Maybe not all but I'd hazard to guess many people would exercise more preventive healthcare, live a healthier lifestyle, and when needed would do more shopping for healthcare providers."
I'm glad we can agree on this point, it is the backbone of my argument.
Are you familiar with the concept of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale ? The UK has a much denser population that the US does, so they need fewer hospitals in order to guarantee a certain level of coverage. The UK has much lower rates of obesity, entirely different demographics, and a smaller population. And a fundamentally different system of government administration (England lacks separation of powers and has much less lax liability laws; this makes civil administration massively cheaper and simpler). There are many reasons to believe that Americans would have to spend more money per capita then the British in order to get the same level of health care.
And for future reference, our per capita income is only 19% higher than theirs.
Not all industries have economies of scale. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale . There are many reasons to believe that a universal health care system would be more expensive per capita in the US then in Britain.
The poor and old receive free health care from federal and state programs. Private insurance is very cheap for young people (I just ran a quick quote for myself, nonsmoking 16 year old full time college student, $603 per year). If they don't work, then either A) they are disabled, in which case the federal government foots the tab (And they get a nice social security stipend), or B) they do not want to work. If they don't want to work, and consequently they can't pay for things that they want, that is not my problem.
"However, when these people get sick or have an accident they don't suck it up, and they can't afford the cost out of pocket (if they could they'd have health insurance instead). Doctors and hospitals are compelled to help these people when something really bad happens, which invariably happens sooner than for those with health care due to the complete lack of preventative care."
This point has been very overblown; there are many free and low cost health care clinics that are happy to write prescriptions to antibiotics, beta blockers, and most of the other "preventive care" drugs that are mentioned. At this point, there exist generic versions of most of these drugs, so the costs involved are rather small, even for poor families (who have their costs covered by Medicaid anyway).
"So until opting out isn't an option, any health care system will experience the same failings as our current one."
There are fundamental issues with any insurance system. Until we drop the idea of health insurance all together, any health care system will face the same failings as our current one. Any honest doctor will agree.
As long as patients have no marginal incentive to conserve, they will not. I propose we give people the ability to save Y% of their income tax-free, but unlike current health saving accounts, people can spend it as they wish. It can be said that the poor don't have spare cash to save, so every year, the government can wire $X to every account. Something like Stafford loans could exist for those unable to pay large health care bills.
Under this plan, money not spent on health care can be spent by patients on other things, giving patients an incentive to control spending, while maintaining quality.
There are certain benefits that are complimentary to work, that bring more happiness to the worker then it costs the company to provide to provide. Free food is sometimes an example of this, as is free parking, and sometimes even shuttle buses. In very rare cases, it makes sense to provide health-care as well (Flight attendants and nurses are a textbook example)
If a company chooses to pay with health insurance, and the worker agrees, then that is fine. But that is not why we see widespread employer provided health-care. Suppose that if instead of health-care, you were paid with money. You would then be taxed on this money, and you now have around 30% less money to spend on health care. But if you are given the health care directly through an employer, you are not taxed (because of WW2 era rules). Because of this, it makes overwhelming sense to buy your health care through your employer.
What is wrong with this? First, companies usually negotiate a single HMO or insurance company for all of their employees in exchange for some kickbacks. So these employees are stuck with a single insurance, and if they don't like it, competing companies are at a 30% disadvantage. So employer related health insurance companies have quite a bit of wiggle room in terms of service and price before hand. There are exceptions, like Google and American Airlines, but in general, most companies act in such a way.
This practice keeps insurance premiums artificially high and service artificially low, and worst of all, it prevents the proliferation of insurance companies, creating oligopoly markets.
We have two options to fix this: 1) Get rid of the tax loophole, so that people are taxed on the health care benefits they receive, or 2) Allow all health-care spending to be tax exempt. Personally, I prefer the first one, as the second one will distort demand for elective surgery, but I don't care very much either way, as long as one of them is done.
By the way, I have issues with any 3rd party payment scheme, any honest doctor will agree. But I wrote a post about that http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=276175&cid=203 51513 and http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=276175&cid=203 51327 . Feel free to critique those as well.
Private insurance, unless it is for a very high risk individual, costs much less than $10,000.
On an aside note, the entire concept of employer-provided health insurance is really a giant flaw in the system. Employers don't provide food, water, or housing, health care should not be any different.
Libertarian objections aside, there are many good arguments that suggest that European governments are much more efficient at running state-run firms then the US is (I don't feel like repeating them, but if you are not familiar with them I could pull them up.), so the "it works for them, why not for us?" argument is not really very convincing.
I am not going to pretend that health-care is ready for free-market competition out of the box, but the same difficulties that plague health care providers today will not magically disappear from government involvement. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the government will handle the daunting complexity, extremely emotional and difficult trade-offs, and uninformed consumers any better than the market is currently.
It seems like it would be a much better use of time to craft regulations that would make health-care ready for free-market competition then it is to make fairytale assumptions about the competency of government. Banning price discrimination, forcing doctors to post their prices online, and eliminating the financial incentives we give to health insurance companies would go a long way toward bringing us to this point.
"As for taxes --- it's not like people in the UK are paying 60% of their income in taxes. Up to about $70,000, their income tax rate is actually a bit lower than ours, and their top rate of 40% isn't much higher than our top rate of 35%. This doesn't include VAT, but then again, the US statistics also don't include state taxes and sales taxes, or the cost of health insurance."
The tax burden of the VAT (and their higher gasoline tax) far outweighs any state or local tax in the nation, with the exception of rich billionaires who never spend their money and possibly parts of Long Island.
"The latter is substantial --- if you're making ~$100k, and your employer provides a health plan, they're paying about 10% of your salary in premiums."
Why does health insurance need to be income based? Based solely on demographics, I would expect the rich to pay lower premiums on average then the poor. Most employers allow health plans to be opted out of, and if the cost for private insurance outside of the company (which will definitely not be based on percentage of income) is lower than inside, and then I expect that they would jump out and do so.
"You might not see this cost directly, but it's a tax on you as much as if the government had taken it right out of your paycheck."
No it is not. Health insurance is voluntary, if I choose not to be covered and pay out of my pocket, I can keep that money. I do not have that option with taxes.
"Because France is so full of fatties?"
Obviously not, but this is relevant to my real concern. If their is a national health care system, then suddenly everyone else is responsible for my health choices. If I want to eat fatty foods, my neighbor will have to pay for that, and I will have to pay for his behavior. This will justify a host of unpleasant policies (Calorie taxes, exercise credits, etc.) that I would prefer my government not be involved in.