Quote:Where is this pure free market utopia, the model upon which this guarantee of success is built?
They never actually mean a free market they just mean protection for big business and none for the consumer. The cynic in me thinks maybe the people profiting out of this awful system may make donations to his favourite politicians...
Thats just silly. A government monopoly is never going to be as efficent as options for the consumer providing positive market pressure. Its just not possible.
Not to mention the fact that frankly you posted a bogus article, i must say.
Quote:Thats just silly. A government monopoly is never going to be as efficent as options for the consumer providing positive market pressure. Its just not possible.
Not to mention the fact that frankly you posted a bogus article, i must say.
What are you on about. It was just one person's view on the difference in health care. Are opinions bogus?
Why do British people spend less on health and have better outcomes, If they have the least efficient model?
Quote:Thats just silly. A government monopoly is never going to be as efficent as options for the consumer providing positive market pressure. Its just not possible.
So friggin' do both. There's room for a private sector and a public market, and both sides are too stupid to put two and two together.
Quote:So friggin' do both. There's room for a private sector and a public market, and both sides are too stupid to put two and two together.
That's basically what happens in Australia it works pretty well. A lot of people now are ditching their private health due to it being poor value compared to the public system. Competition is good eh...
Quote:That's basically what happens in Australia it works pretty well. A lot of people now are ditching their private health due to it being poor value compared to the public system. Competition is good eh...
I don't think that the public market should be allowed to undercut the private market. To compete, yes, but not to undermine. I actually like Obamacare's income-based subsidies to make healthcare more affordable, and I don't mind paying taxes towards subsidies. What I hate is how it was implemented with a heavy hand, penalties (!) for people who don't have insurance, and what appears to have been a wink-nudge agreement that the big insurers could bail as soon as Obama left office.
Basically, in principle I like the ACA, but it was clearly a rushed, half-aced plan designed to pass Congress by a hair, not something designed to be a long-term solution.
The problem is private struggles to compete because it can't make the efficiencies to offset the money lost to shareholders. Probably because they can't drive down doctors and medical staff wages. If I need to go to the hospital for emergency I'm off to the public one, no bill shock potential. The only real benefit is quicker wait times for non life threatening surgery in private.
Quote:The problem is private struggles to compete because it can't make the efficiencies to offset the money lost to shareholders. Probably because they can't drive down doctors and medical staff wages. If I need to go to the hospital for emergency I'm off to the public one, no bill shock potential. The only real benefit is quicker wait times for non life threatening surgery in private.
Do you have any idea how healthcare is priced here?
Quote:Do you have any idea how healthcare is priced here?
Yes it looks more expensive than here for comparable private cover. Also what others have quoted...comparisons are also easy to Google. I pay less tax and get healthcare thrown in! Not a bad deal. But enjoy the war machine.
Quote:Where is this pure free market utopia, the model upon which this guarantee of success is built?
Not where, when.
Say 1960. Before Medicare became a major corruption on the system. Admittedly medical science had not advanced nearly as far back then, but patients without insurance got excellent doctors with state of the art (at the time) treatments for less than the cost of co-pays today. And there were no hoops to navigate, no forms to fill out, no insurance companies to tell you what treatments and drugs were covered and what weren't.
If you were poor most doctors would cut you some slack on the fee. Once Medicare was entrenched physicians could no longer base their charges on the financial ability of the patient. A doctor who accepted Medicare patients had to charge every other patient the same amount. Soon the insurance companies adopted the same rule.
Quote:Yes it looks more expensive than here for comparable private cover. Also what others have quoted...comparisons are also easy to Google. I pay less tax and get healthcare thrown in! Not a bad deal. But enjoy the war machine.
Cmon now, how are the prices set in America?
Quote:I don't think that the public market should be allowed to undercut the private market. To compete, yes, but not to undermine. I actually like Obamacare's income-based subsidies to make healthcare more affordable, and I don't mind paying taxes towards subsidies.
Subsidies don't make anything more affordable. In fact, they artificially increase demand, relieve the producer from external market pressure and actually increase cots over time.
What I hate is how it was implemented with a heavy hand, penalties (!) for people who don't have insurance, and what appears to have been a wink-nudge agreement that the big insurers could bail as soon as Obama left office.
You just said you don't mind paying a tax towards the subsidies and now you're complaining about the main tax driver for the subsidies. Sounds like you should make up your mind.
Basically, in principle I like the ACA, but it was clearly a rushed, half-aced plan designed to pass Congress by a hair, not something designed to be a long-term solution.
In short you heard the word affordable and the liberal parts of your heart started going pitter patter.
Subsidies don't make things cheaper, they're just a way to transfer cost. BIG DIFFERENCE.
And as to your above point about public markets, you have medicaid, medicare, S chip, SS disability and 3k per child income tax credit for the working class. We really needed a whole other 2 thousand page entitlement?
but hey, they said the word affordable so that must be good right?
Quote:In short you heard the word affordable and the liberal parts of your heart started going pitter patter.
Subsidies don't make things cheaper, they're just a way to transfer cost. BIG DIFFERENCE.
And as to your above point about public markets, you have medicaid, medicare, S chip, SS disability and 3k per child income tax credit for the working class. We really needed a whole other 2 thousand page entitlement?
but hey, they said the word affordable so that must be good right?
How about we tear up the tax code and put in a flat tax or (even better) a consumption-based tax system, then repurpose the IRS as an agency purely responsible for enforcing subsidy compliance and making sure that one kid isn't passed around a neighborhood every March so the entire block can claim a child credit?
dammit. There you go being all sensible again. I'll send you a cruz 16 button in the mail. Welcome to the team.
Quote:In short you heard the word affordable and the liberal parts of your heart started going pitter patter.
Subsidies don't make things cheaper, they're just a way to transfer cost. BIG DIFFERENCE.
For accuracy's sake, it was not named Affordable for the government, it means affordable for those unable to afford health coverage prior to the ACA, of which there were plenty.
For accuracys sake, where does the government get money? Taxation. Where do taxes come from? The pricate financial markets. Where else do they get money? Borrowing it. What does that do to currency? Devalue it. In a general macro sense subsidies just transfer cost not eliminate it and even those that receive them are affected.
Moreover, the underlying product has become more expensive due to increased demand. This is manifest in higher premiums and otherworldly deductibles. So in a specific macro sense subsidies havent actually made the product itself more affordable.
In an ancillary sense, just having to comply with the 2k pages of gobbldy gook takes more resources on the part of health care providers and insurers. What does that mean? Its more expensive.
So in short, yes the government is giving subsidies to some people to buy a product that costs more than when the program started and offers less in the way of benefits because your deductible is cost prohibitive.
Now thats change you can beleive in!
Quote:For accuracys sake, where does the government get money? Taxation. Where do taxes come from? The pricate financial markets. Where else do they get money? Borrowing it. What does that do to currency? Devalue it. In a general macro sense subsidies just transfer cost not eliminate it and even those that receive them are affected.
Moreover, the underlying product has become more expensive due to increased demand. This is manifest in higher premiums and otherworldly deductibles. So in a specific macro sense subsidies havent actually made the product itself more affordable.
In an ancillary sense, just having to comply with the 2k pages of gobbldy gook takes more resources on the part of health care providers and insurers. What does that mean? Its more expensive.
So in short, yes the government is giving subsidies to some people to buy a product that costs more than when the program started and offers less in the way of benefits because your deductible is cost prohibitive.
Now thats change you can beleive in!
Ok, but that does not have anything to do with my post.
Last paragraph roller. Im here for you.
I really don't find it fare at all that if I made just a bit less I could qualify for like $300 to $400 in subsidies, but because I'm just barely over some line I can't qualify for squat. This means I'd have to pay out $750 for the cheapest plan available with a $2000 deductible for the both of us, and that plan requires you to only use their hospitals and facilities. At the very least the Bourgeoisie deserves some of that subsidy money, and I'm not even the Bourgeoisie... I'm just somewhere a hair above the poverty level scraping paycheck to paycheck just to pay most of my bills. ...and yet I get NO subsidies. Tell me how this is affordable? So instead I'm forced to take one of those limited benefit packages that could easily screw me in the long run, and I can expect a $1000 fine on top of this because I'm not about to pay an extra $50 per month for absolutely nothing. How is this affordable?
Also, why is there no rule against what this insurance company is doing. That is, they know full well that people will pay extra just to avoid a fine, so they make you so you have to buy this additional package if you want to avoid it. In other words, they're using the government fine as leverage to pull off what truly is a scam here, and I can still expect to be fined by my government for not being willingly scammed.
I really do miss the days when instead of the government giving me a $1000 fine, they were giving me and my wife $1200 out of the blue just for being American citizens. Reports were that the influx of money went a long ways toward spurring the overall economy and things were looking good pretty darn good. Now we're being scammed by companies abusing governmental policy involving fines for citizens, and the national debt is 8x higher than those good old days.
Wait wait. You must be mistaken. It was named the AFFORDABLE CARE ACT so we must be better off right?