Holy #### people, stop replying to this guy. Do you really think you are going to engage him in a honest debate. It's all just spam, spam, and more spam...including the people replying.
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Well thankfully Obamacare is finished, just like his legacy, and we will see if the Republicans can pass a Bill to help out families like mine find insurance that is affordable again.
The way I understand it is Insurance can be compared to Phone carriers. If we only had one or two options available then a monopoly is created and prices will remain high. When competition is introduced, prices decrease. In Obamacares case he was handing out free phones with free plans to people that don't work and making everyone else on the network pay for this.
I've always wanted to ask an American these questions:
When you were growing up, you probably had several toy cars: police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, and tanks. Why is one of these treated differently from the others? Do you need to buy private police insurance to ensure you aren't robbed? Do you need to need to pay for military insurance in case you get bombed?
Why are Americans okay with taxpayers paying for the local fire department? For the police? For the military? If you applied the same logic as you did to health care, all these services should be privatized and competing with each other. These are no different from health care if you think about it. Everybody needs fire protection, they need policing, they need national defense. Everyone needs health care.
The basic functional basis of capitalism is that it only works when both parties are free to walk away from the transaction and make a rational decision to choose an alternative if they don't like the deal in front of them. This creates a free market, it creates competition, it creates innovation. For the fire department analogy - when your house is burning down, you can't say "no, the guys from Station No. 9 are cheaper, I'll call them for a quote." How would you feel if a fire truck pulled up, put out the fire, then told you now have an $80,000 bill to pay for all the guys to show up and the water they used? Isn't it better if everybody pays a tiny bit of taxes for the city to hire and run a local fire department in case anyone needs it? That's single-payer.
When it comes to healthcare, it is impossible for a person to walk away from the deal - the alternative being sickness and death. Private medical care, private insurers, HMOs, etc. can all collude to drive up costs, administrative fees, and create a behemoth of a money-pit industry that people can not in any rational sense walk away from.
"Sorry, you're having a heart-attack? Due to overhead and contracts, the ambulance ride is $2000, the surgery is $52,000, and the el-cheapo Verizon type plan you chose only covers part of this so you get to declare bankruptcy, have your life ruined, and die in poverty. Would you like to die now or later?"
For those that don't get screwed for life because of an emergency, the reality is, that for many people who can't afford the every-day care, they do walk away from help and when the issue becomes chronic and prohibitively expensive, it puts an even greater burden on the system. Think of it as not taking your car in to service because you couldn't afford the service plan and by the time you really need to fix it, you have to swap the whole transmission or buy a bus pass for life.
The next time an American complains that single-payer healthcare is them paying for other sick people, I need to ask them why are they okay paying for the military which defends other people, for paying to put out other people's fires, for paying for policing other people's neighborhoods. There is no difference between those services and healthcare. Single payer healthcare is the same thing - it's about reducing the burden of costs on everyone by providing blanket coverage for everyone and taking out the profit-making motive from the process.
Police, fire, emergency services, and the military are definitely not embroiled with accusations of socialism or communism. In fact, they are probably one of the biggest capitalist industries in the United States. There are millions of suppliers to police departments, trillions of dollars in defense contracting etc. If Americans really care about capitalism and making big bucks and exporting products to the rest of the world, why not think of health care as the same thing? All the suppliers and contractors and research companies already exist. It's just the stupid idea of insurance and selfish people thinking that they don't want to pay for other people's medications and surgeries that is the problem.
TLDR: police, fire, & military are already "single-payer" systems and are basic necessities and no different from health care. "Y'all" will need it one day. Why are Americans blind to this fact?
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 03-21-2017 at 04:39 PM.
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Because people are stupid and a "mandate" for insurance makes it a tax. And taxes are bad because America is about bootstraps and hard work dammit. If I want the best health care I'll pay for it and if I don't want any I won't buy any. I have a tenuous grasp of how health services and costs work so I'm pretty staunch in this belief.
Now if you'll excuse me I have a Big Gulp and a Value Meal to finish.
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America's unwavering belief in superiority is turning out to be the perfect shield for GOP lawmakers to hide behind to justify an otherwise politically suicidal position.
America's unwavering belief in superiority is turning out to be the perfect shield for GOP lawmakers to hide behind to justify an otherwise politically suicidal position.
Holy #### people, stop replying to this guy. Do you really think you are going to engage him in a honest debate. It's all just spam, spam, and more spam...including the people replying.
No. We've almost changed his mind, just a little bit more.
Repeal Obamacare taxes this year: Now the bill would eliminate Obamacare's taxes on wealthy individuals, insurers, prescription drug makers and others this year instead of in 2018. It would also delay the start of the Cadillac tax on generous employer plans in 2026, instead of 2025.
Ban excess tax credits from going into Health Savings Accounts: Enrollees whose tax credits exceed the cost of their premiums will no longer be able to put the additional funds in Health Savings Accounts. Some conservatives were concerned these funds could be used to pay for abortions.
Add work requirement to Medicaid: States would now have the option of requiring able-bodied Medicaid recipients to work, participate in job training programs or do community service. Pregnant women, children under the age of 19, single parents of children under age six and single parents of children with disabilities are exempt.
I haven't really chimed in on this thread at all other than just reading and following it. Everybody has their own opinion's on this very highly sensitive matter but when it comes to health care, I find Canadians and American's have a very highly different fundamental understanding of how health care works in each country and on both sides of the boarder an ample amount of "smugness"
1) Canada doesn't have socialist healthcare and medicine like a lot of people think, generally speaking Canadian citizens and residents have publicly funded health insurance paid for by their home provinces. Many aspects of our healthcare system are private enterprise and private business's who just happen to bill a government entity for insured services.
2) The Affordable Care Act, AKA "Obamacare" was an expansion of a variety of existing programs such as Medicaid with other aspects such as an individual mandate (fancy term for government requirement to purchase insurance), programs to help the healthcare system improve and modernize in the hope of reducing costs and preventing expensive problems down the road.
3) Many of the promises that the Democrats promised were going to occur, such as the ability to keep your existing doctor, premiums were going to be really affordable without large inflationary premium hikes and others, have NOT been met. Democrats and people who were/are hard core supporters of this bill NEED to recognize this. This isn't all rose coloured (colored for our US friends) glasses like some people think. One of the reasons for the issues mentioned above is that fact that this bill was watered down as much as possible to try and get the needed votes to pass from both sides of the political spectrum. Other predictions such as many employers moving staff to part-time to get out of specific pieces of this bill have happened a lot more than people would care to admit.
4) The changes that the Republican lead branches of the US government are proposing are trying to deal with some of the challenges with Obamacare and others while keeping some of the popular aspects of the plan such as the pre-existing condition clause. While the Paul Ryan style plan may eliminate the "tax" for people who don't meet the individual mandate, it does allow insurance companies to pretty much screw you in every which way premium wise up to 30% annually in increases if you happen to ever lose continuous coverage. Ask yourself which option would be better for your average low income or hard-working middle-class American living in the rustbelt? A hardcore Donald Trump fan may not be too interested in the sky high premiums associated with a lapse in coverage if they lose their high paying automaker job to Mexico if Donald Trump doesn't follow through with his election promise of taxing auto imports for 30%.
5) Canadians do have universal access to insured healthcare services and the level of care we get can vary greatly. Our professionals are very well trained from some of the best medical schools in the world, including many in the US. My biggest issue with our system is the level of money being spent without getting the results we should be or are striving for. Alberta is spending over $2.5 million dollars an hour on healthcare in this province yet a lot of the metrics they we are looking to improve, are not. I do recall reading the papers not THAT long ago where Alberta's budget was approx $1 million an hour in expenses and we were talking about the same issues. Think about that for a moment.
When the system in Canada does fail Canadians, and it does so regulary, we have very LIMITED options to try and deal with that using 3rd party services or putting our own resources to work.
Ask yourself, how many of us CPers would forfeit some of the cost associated with our beloved Calgary Flames in return to potentially get access and service as soon as possible for a child recently diagnosed with cancer??
There is no right answer when it comes to this topic and there are horror stories on both sides of the Canada and US border. I am not an expert on these matters but I pride myself on being well informed as much as possible and I am not naive to think everything on either side is the cat's ass.
Sorry about the long post.
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Why are presidents allowed to push things like this well past their terms?
For example, having the "cadillac tax" come in in 2018 originally in a Republican government, and then now the Repubs pushing it to 2026 in a (hopefully) Democratic government is pretty ridiculous to me.
It seems like everyone just kicks the can down the road. It's actually quite demoralizing.
Ask yourself, how many of us CPers would forfeit some of the cost associated with our beloved Calgary Flames in return to potentially get access and service as soon as possible for a child recently diagnosed with cancer??
Granted, I may be wrong on a wide scale since this is strictly based off personal experience, but doesn't our system work on a priority basis? A child diagnosed with cancer in my experience gets treatment as soon as possible, while a hip replacement might take months to fix.
I think patients with a potentially fatal condition get in and get treatment quite quickly.
Diagnostic tech in Canada can have long wait times. Once you have cancer treatment is fairly quick. Diagnostics waits can be bypassed using private or US services which may or may not be ethical.
In general Canada's refusal to have a two tier system is as ridiculous as the US refusal to have a public system. The two tiered systems in Europe deliver a better value.
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Diagnostic tech in Canada can have long wait times. Once you have cancer treatment is fairly quick. Diagnostics waits can be bypassed using private or US services which may or may not be ethical.
In general Canada's refusal to have a two tier system is as ridiculous as the US refusal to have a public system. The two tiered systems in Europe deliver a better value.
Hmmmmm, that's an interesting take. I have a sibling who was seen by their dentist and a questionable mass was discovered. They were referenced to an oncologist and the diagnosis was confirmed. Surgery and treatment was a week later. Whole thing took two and a half weeks. In the US they would be dead because they could not afford insurance nor the treatment. Much prefer the queue based system.
I've always wanted to ask an American these questions:
... For the fire department analogy - when your house is burning down, you can't say "no, the guys from Station No. 9 are cheaper, I'll call them for a quote." How would you feel if a fire truck pulled up, put out the fire, then told you now have an $80,000 bill to pay for all the guys to show up and the water they used? Isn't it better if everybody pays a tiny bit of taxes for the city to hire and run a local fire department in case anyone needs it? That's single-payer.
...
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