"Who's gonna pay for Medicare for all?" is either stupid or disingenuous

It is your numbers that don't make sense. You say total personal income is 19 trillion. Could be. But you didn't say how much personal income the 1% make. Nor did you figure in the 9% between them and the bottom 90%, nor did you provide evidence of any of the numbers. Your truth is no better than mine.

 

It protects policy holders from expenses that could ruin their lives.

 

But no matter how you cut it- whether we say single person or 300 million people, the number remains one-to-one. Me caring for myself or 300 million caring for themselves in some kind of group- does not reduce the need for care, does not increase the number you can look to for payment- but there is a factor. IF I'm the one paying for me- it is in my best interests to do all I can to control the expense. If "someone else" is going to pay for me, that incentive diminishes. Your idea of co-pays for bad choices is kind of the same thing, just more complicated to qualify and control. Therein lies the big problem; when people take care of themselves, they generally do well. When they put their welfare in someone else's hands, they generally do poorly and find that those "other hands" don't particularly give a damn.

We need to take the abuse out of the process, and I think that starts with the aspect of liability becoming a gold mining industry for tort lawyers. If you watch TV these days, you realize that half the ads seem to be from lawyers looking for anybody they can use as the cause for a lawsuit against some manufacturer of a drug, device, or something they can say caused injury. It's a plague. Start by having the party who loses pay all the legal bills- and when I say "party", I mean the lawyer who files the suit, not his client.

 

These are choices that countries make.

NONE of these countries spends what we do on healthcare. So, even if you could prove we are marginally better, it's still a ridiculous coparison.

What you would need to show is that these countries could not approach our healthcare even if they spend the stupendous sums that we do spend.

And, let's remember:
- our future system can still allow commercial insurance for features not covered by the state system. Other countries do that. So can we.

- these other countries are taking care of ALL their citizens, while we do not. Besides the economic implications, that is a disgusting position to be in when we make claims of equlity, the value of individual citizens, etc.

 

Please show how that has negatively limpacted the systems in other countries.

ALL first world countries face this same issue. Yet, every one of them pays far less than do we.

If you can't do this, then why should anyone believe you have identified a problem??

 

But citizens themselves determine how "valuable" they are. Yes, all life has value because all life has the potential to amount to something- but it is the individual that determines what that is. It makes no more sense to support those who refuse to support themselves than it does to put rotten vegetables in the soup because they are vegetables. All they learn is that sure enough, other people were put here to carry their water for them.

Feeling sorry for those who make their way by living off others isn't kindness or righteousness- just stupidity.

 

In the US consumers spend on health care. In countries with socialized medicine governments spend on healthcare.

In the US there are ~ 13 million people who legitimately cannot afford healthcare insurance. And the reason for this is due to mandated coverages from the various states in which they live.

 

Governments spend less on healthcare because they ration healthcare. Healthcare consumers do not ration healthcare expenses on themselves.

 

Lets start with the lawyers- the people who drive most of the costs, the defensive medicine costs, and drive the cost of our medical
care. Japan has 7 lawyers per 100,000 people. England is second in the world- with 83 per 100,000, or twelve times what Japan needs. America however has 287, more than triple that of England. Medical tort, or legal suit for alleged damages, are the driving element in all those ads you see for lawyers on TV, which now comes close to half the television commercial time. NO country in the world comes close to us in the predisposition to sue the medical professions. All countries in the world DO NOT face that issue, or anything like it. Where do you think the money for the lawyers, the settlements, the court costs, and all that advertising come from? From medical insurance premiums. Your premiums, as well as those of the doctors and hospitals- whose insurance cost is of course built into your insurance cost through their bills

We already know we have a problem- what needs to be recognized is why, so we can fix the right thing. Regardless of insuring 100 or 100 million people, until the costs become relevant to the services rendered instead of the threat of liability lawsuits, things will not get better.

 

LOL. Yes, there are suicides who don't value their own lives. And, there are some who get off on torturing themselves.

But, suggesting THAT is what Americans are suffering from is about as ridiculous as any excuse I've ever hears.

Good lord!!

 

In the US, we have for-profit insurance dedicated to maximizing profit.

And, the idea that insurance companies want to sell products to all citizens is absolutely false.

How do we know?

We know, because we tried that. And, insurance companies had NO interest.

Our healthcare coverage law INCREASED the number insured.

 

The profit margins are ~ 3%. And the competition reduces prices via networks with negotiated rates.

of course insurance companies want to sell policies to all people.

All ObamaCare did was increase Medicaid. That’s nothing to write home about. BTW the bronze policies were like having no insurance at all. The deductibles and out of pocket maximums were ridiculously high.

 

As you point out, the systems of other countries have pretty much solved this issue.

The most you can argue is that our system has not.

 

The "networks with negotiated rates" thing is failing.

The problem is that customers don't want to be denied at the hospital, they want choice, and they hate it when they get surprise bills that are a feature of narrow networks. People want freeom of choice and no surprises.

The result is that insurance companies are broadening their networks, making it a less powerful feature.

When I buy insurance I contact various providers and ask what insurance is accepted. The answer I get is that essentially all are accepted. (I have only checked out insurance that customers rate as good being good.)

And NO, insurace companies are purely and totally motivated by profit. Shareholders in these companies aren't interested in lowering profits.

Selling to a wider audience CAN help in some circumstances, but IN NO CASE is selling to everyone a near term profit strategy.

And, we know what insurance companies will do - because we tried that!!!

 

People who don't value their lives are common. They hold you responsible for them, so they don't have to. When you accept that, give them a hand-out- you confirm their belief and dependence. You have not helped them- you have kept them down. You have HARMED them.

Their are people who are down temporarily, who would be independent if they could and are trying.... and we help them. We give them a hand-up.

Those who commit suicide or abuse themselves are much less common- and some may be just disgusted with society not making them happy. Others are mentally ill or disturbed- and we help them.

There is a big difference between a hand-up and hand-out. You seem to have no idea of what that is.

You don't encourage people without motivation to become motivated by serving them breakfast in bed... or do you?

 

I don't even slightly agree with your premise here.

There certainly are people who for a variet of reasons don't do all the things that are advisable in order to maintain good health.

But, suggesting THAT is an excuse for ignoring their healthcare needs is just plain not acceptable.

NO first wold country does that.

In Matthew 25:31- Jesus says that people who behave as you suggest are going to hell - even if they accepted who he is.

 

Other countries never let things get this way in the first place. They didn't create the problem, so they neither have it or need to solve it. Not comparable. This is our problem from the ground up.

 

Per obama state of the union address:

Just prior to President Obama's 2014 State of the Union Address, media[7] reported that the top wealthiest 1% possess 40% of the nation's wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%; similarly, but later, the media reported, the "richest 1 percent in the United States now own more additional income than the bottom 90 percent".[8] The gap between the top 10% and the middle class is over 1,000%; that increases another 1,000% for the top 1%. The average employee "needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour."[9] Although different from income inequality, the two are related. In Inequality for All—a 2013 documentary with Robert Reich in which he argued that income inequality is the defining issue for the United States—Reich states that 95% of economic gains went to the top 1% net worth (HNWI) since 2009 when the recovery allegedly started.[10] More recently, in 2017, an Oxfam study found that eight rich people, six of them Americans, own as much combined wealth as half the human race.[11][12][13]

For total US income https://www.statista.com/statistics/216756/us-personal-income/ it says 17.7 for 2018 but by 2020 is was to be 19 bill.

 

I don't see any reason for the healthcare solutions of other countries to be inapplicable.

Yes, they have been doing it for a while.

But, that just means that we have MANY working models of how we could be decidedly better off.

We can examine and compare these systems in forming our own.

They did it. So can we.

 

Funny how everyone draws a line that limits their perception- the only difference is where.
Helping someone live a miserable life seems unacceptable to me, and many others. Perhaps I just believe in the strength and potential of the human spirit more than you do. Men should encourage others to be all they are capable of, not to waste themselves. I think we all have that potential- you obviously don't.

 

If wealth were a finite commodity, we could argue that the wealthy are taking an unfair share- but it's not. There is as much wealth available to you as you are willing to work for. Thus, taking what others have earned in the name of equality is simply theft, as it always was. It's punishment for them not being generous in the way we think they should be with their own money.

 

Companies are interested in market share. Our system before ObamaCare was great. It needed a few reforms such as tort reform, buying across state lines, Medicaid managed exclusively by the respective states, ... ObamaCare is a disaster.

 

Some people take the position that they are their brother's keeper, no matter what. Others take the position that if my "brother" is dumb enough to pull my wagon for me, why should I do it?
There are times to help people, there are times to say you must help them learn help themselves. But there is never a time when knowing the difference is not important.
It's simple. When you are adult and reasonably fit, you need to stand on your own feet- and feed yourself. If you don't hunt, you don't eat- until the motivation of hunger changes your point of view. That never happens if you are a person without pride, and there is always some fool who is willing to spend the fruits of his labor to feed you while you sit on your ass- so he can tell himself he is "righteous". Such people seem to have to buy "righteousness" to allow them to think it will keep them of hell. No matter how much damage they do to others.

 

And ~ 10,000,000 pay their own medical bills and another ~ 10,000,000 mostly younger individuals would rather go skiing than pay healthcare insurance premiums knowing that no emergency room will turn them away.

 

Yes. The idea is to help those in the USA live something significantly better than a miserable life.

And, that requires healthcare.

Pushing healthcare out of reach is NOT A HELP. It causes time lost on the job, human suffering, bankruptcy and other forms of suffering.

What the HELL makes you think that denying someone healthcare is a HELP???