What's your stance on healthcare in the United States?
In the comments section, tell me why and which candidate is best to handle healthcare policy.
I think the most important thing in choosing healthcare insurance is to pay more attention to it. Insurance is so important because it helps to be protected from very dangerous situations. I don't like it when my friends don't have it, and I always try to help them make their lives more comfortable. I think the second most important thing in choosing healthcare insurance is to choose very wise and careful insurance. Insurance can save your life if you're in an accident, which is also very expensive. That's why I am insured at [centerofadvancedwellness.com]. They offered me a great plan.
I like the idea of Medicare for All, to a certain point. Hospitalization and emergency care needs to be removed from the fee for service model of financing. As much as most people complain about the costs of a hospital stay, an ER visit, or an ambulance ride, keep this in mind: Most of those services are provided by non-profit organizations. The costs are not what it takes to care for you, the individual, but a portion of the overall operation of that service. As an example, an ER sees 150 patients one day, and 100 the next. They set the staffing and other resource levels at the higher number. So, the day where they only saw 100 patients, if they were to charge a straight fee for services provided, they wouldn't be able to pay for the expenses that occurred on the day with the less than capacity activity. Recognizing that institutional health care is different than continuing, on going, or tertiary health care (ie doctor visits, outpatient procedures, diagnostic testing, etc) is the key to making health care affordable.
So who should pay for institutional health care? Well, answer this: when you call 911 because your "she-Shed" is on fire, do you pay for the fire department to respond (most people don't...) When you call 911 because your neighbor is blasting Slayer, do you have to pay for the police to come and tell him to turn it down?. So why is it that when you call 911 because you're having a heart attack, you have to pay for that?
Good points. We don't pay the military out of pocket to keep us safe from threats, why would we pay the healthcare system to keep us safe from disease and injury?
@RoboGraham I hadn’t thought about it like that, but that is exactly my point!!
@Rignor Imagine having to pay army insurance to keep you safe from insurgents. "Well Sir, we'd like to kill those bastards for you but you're late on your premiums."
I am just glad some billionaire that owns hundreds of thousands of shares of Aetna gets to make money off my diabetes.
I'm glad that those billionaires might not be able to do that for much longer.
Not all Medicare for All proposals are the same. I have considered the idea of mandating that all health insurance companies be nonprofit, but... this doesn't actually get at pricing. Such a nonprofit mandate would have to extend to healthcare providers as well. This too is a problem with Medicare.
Even if both the insurance and the providers were nonprofit, healthcare is still very expensive and there would be many people unable to afford it.
By what objective criteria can anyone claim that our health care system is the best ?
These three (arguably the most important) argue against that claim :
a) cost
b) infant mortality
c) life expectancy
Given the cost, our outcomes (b,c) should be much better !
Cost or price? I think nobody has any idea what the actual costs are. I doubt health providers would be willing to release costs or have themselves audited by the government in order to make that determination.
@FearlessFly That appears to be about spending. That doesn't address the difference I'm talking about, cost versus price. Too much of the discourse on this issue is actually about price, but the word used is "cost." This was one of my main gripes about so-called healthcare reform that brought us the ACA, which one was more about healthcare insurance reform, and two pricing not cost. We're seeing the same problems now, although there is some talk about profits, which indirectly and barely touches on pricing, but most of the profits spoken of are in reference to insurance companies, not providers.
I believe we should have a national health care system. I also know there is no quick way to get there unless all of the businesses all at once said in 5 or 10 years we are through being health care providers. This was a stupid, stupid plan to begin with. Medicare for all sounds good, but unless the prices for it come down, it is not cheap. By the time you add all of the parts (A,B,C,D,E ,F...) and supplemental insurance, it gets pricey. As long as insurance companies are involved it will be expensive. For profit health care is immoral period. We are the only modern society with a for profit health care system on the planet. Right now fixing Obama Care and working our way toward a national health care system seems to be the only way to get there and the only way most Americans except at this time. IMO
At least as far as Sanders's plan is concerned, part of it is eliminating deductibles (which I have long argued probably cost more to administrate than they're worth) and co-pays.
@bingst Also, with a single payer system, there is much less need to pay billing experts. Hospitals must employ people simply to wrap their heads around the tangled mess of all the different companies and the varied plans, who covers what and how much. And the insurance companies take full advantage of this confusing situation to wriggle their way out of paying as much as possible. Having one sane single payer network would eliminate an extraordinary amount of administrative costs.