Is the only viable alternative to the Affordable Care Act single-payer?

Wrong. What was the "status quo" was unsustainable. Which of the "multiple alternatives" do you support?

Are they airy-fairy ideological fancies or are they actual, extant plans that provide quality care to everyone at half the cost?

 

No its not. There are lots of choices but clearly the one you like is to now include Illegal Aliens (not undocumented workers) into a state run insurance program and have others cover the giant cost of supplementing their insurance.

My choice would be to require a federally approved identification card to have a job. Do this and those that broke the law will leave back to their own country where they are legal residents. I then would grant millions of new visa's to those that will enter the country legally and grant them government issued IDs to allow them to work.

 

Here's just one of several real, Republican-endorsed, national plans that covers every citizen at far lower cost:

Is it superior to the Affordable Care Act?



.

 

Good for you. How does that affect 48 million Americans, most working, who are not covered?

Which "choice" is yours?

 

Private delivery, public insurance, because private care is better. But public insurance only up to a certain threshold - as Britain learned (and Canada knows but refuses to change), you cannot pay all the expenses or you'll go bankrupt, there has to be a cutoff point above which it's out of pocket.

People hate this kind of "two-tier" system up here but it's just because they're spiteful and jealous.

 

It would eliminate billions of dollars of losses for doctors and hospitals and the vast saving from that would reduce costs ten fold.

 

Is that a joke post? The Government can't even implement Obama care, their own idea and now through some wave of a magic wand they are supposed to be full capable of running our whole health care system? They can't even run a health care system (Medicare) for about 50 million people without $60 billion to $90 billion in fraud or $1800 in fraud per insured per year. Somehow we are supposed to believe they can handle a system 6 times bigger?

 

The workable alternative is to repeal ObamaTax - lock, stock, and barrel.

The Republic was doing OK in 2006.

 

Oh, a "nut uh" response? Well, let me elevate myself to your level: nut, it is too!

You're not fooling anyone, we all know how partisan you are and that you've been in for single payer from the start - and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But saying that it is the ONLY viable alternative is either willful ignorance or sheer stupidity. You know there are other viable alternatives, just not ones that you like.

 

Do you have any actual evidence of that, or is merely more unsubstantiated dogma to promote your agenda?

 

Incrementally lowering the eligibility age for Medicare.

No, reverting to the untenable situation - 48 million uninsured, healthcare cost twice that of advance nations where everyone is covered, and a $250 billion annual subsidy from the taxpayer to sustain employer-administered plans is the joke.

Do you just kvetch, or do you have an alternate reform programme to offer?

 

Thats been tried 45 times by the right and you failed. You are not going to get rid of obamacare like that or lump it. Its the law of the land thats been successful through several court challenges was upheld by right leaning Scotus and a govt shutdown and 3 or 4 episodes of Ted Cruz soiling his bloomers on the senate floor. You have lost that fight, get used to it youre not going to change it.
The country at this point would be better served trying to make it work and be the best it can be for all americans.

 

You are an ideologue, and are in a tizzy over my pragmatic approach. I advocate what has been proven to work best.

On your part, apparently, because I never made such a claim. I merely pointed to the data, and asked if single-payer was the only viable alternative.

If you can cite any nation that covers everyone at half the cost that conforms to your ideological notions, please share it with us. (No make-believe, please.)

 

Also self employed. What happened to your rates under obamacare? Those of your employees? Exactly why it should be repealed and back to sanity. In addition you now subsidize a bunch of people with taxes who also had their rate bump.

If you want costs to go down, increase the supply of medicine by loosening regulations. When you force down costs artificially or by refusing to pay for cutting edge high expense medicine then you get care shortages. We have the greatest medical care system in the world in terms of quality. That is nothing to scoff at.

 

Where did you get that one?

Pretending that the US delivers the best quality healthcare to the citizenry, even at twice the price, is absurd. Quite a number of nations do it better. Mindlessly chanting, "We're #1!" solves nothing.

Put aside the ideological dogma, accept the data, and adopt a pragmatic approach that takes advantage of extant paradigms that actually yield better results at far lower cost.


(I am a self-employed, sole proprietor at present, and am not subsidized by the taxpayer as are all employer-administered plans.)

 

"Thats been tried 45 times by the right and you failed."

Taxcutter says:
It took a long time and a lot of failures to get rid of slavery and Jim Crow, but we got rid of them (although Affirmative Action replaced Jim Crow).

 

Yeah, right, that's why medical care in the USA costs twice what it does per person than in any other industrialized nation.

- - - Updated - - -

As a leftist, I just want you to know that I hope affirmative action is SMASHED AND DESTROYED!

 

"...I hope affirmative action is SMASHED AND DESTROYED!"

Taxcutter says:
Excellent! We agree.

 

Yeah ... Poor old Batty Natty with all of his intellect doesn't seem to be able to call it what it is.

"Single Payer" ... "Universal Healthcare" ... "General Welfare and the Good of All" ... I wish the Progressive Liberals were just honest enough to sell their ideas with a smidgen of forthright interpretation.
It is a "Tax" ... Call it a "Tax" ... Love it as a "Tax" ... A quit saying that it will lower healthcare costs for everyone when it does nothing more that cost some people more to pay for other people's healthcare.

I mean buying other people cars ... Wouldn't lower the price of cars ... Buying other people houses ... Wouldn't lower the cost of houses ... and Healthcare is no different.
Even if it did lower the cost of cars, houses and healthcare ... Buying stuff for other people doesn't lower the amount we are spending by any means.

Taxing the American People to pay for other people's Healthcare does make Healthcare cheaper for freeloaders ... But that is what Tax Greedy Progressive Liberals are all about.

 

It's not an alternative.

The world alternative implies that there might be another option.

There is no option, single payer is the way to go, period.

And we already have such a system in place.

Medicare, which currently covers over 50 million people.

The obvious solution is to expand it to cover everyone.

And we've got a bill in congress that will do that.

All that needs to be done is to pass it, and implement it.

http://www.pnhp.org/publications/united-states-national-health-care-act-hr-676

It's really frustrating to have a problem that has reached crisis proportions and to have a quick and easy solution ready to go, only to have it blocked by greedy special interests and ignorance.

 

Actually the cost are quite similar it's just that some of the costs aren't monetary and some of those are things that sane people would cheerfully trade almost any amount of money to avoid...

 

The average cost of a family policy is now over $16,000.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/health-insurance-premiums.aspx

$16000 bucks a year to the Health Insurance Companies.

I would much rather be paying taxes to the government and have them take care of it than fork over 16K a year to some rapacious price gouging corporation.

Every fricking developed country in the world has proven that it is much cheaper and more efficient to do it that way.

So Hell yeah!

Raise my taxes and throw the Health Insurance Companies under the bus.

 

Single Payer Plus is the way to go. There should be a way for the rich or extremely desperate and quite wealthy to be piggie and get ahead of the line by going to private clinics/hospitals, as long as they pay their share into a Single Payer system first. This way the rich won't whine too much about the healthcare they are getting and everyone else will get a reduced cost for their healthcare (because currently about 17.6% of GDP is spent on private and public healthcare in the USA, compared to an average of 12.4% in OECD countries).



In the United States:

There are fewer physicians per person than in most other OECD countries. In 2010, for instance, the U.S. had 2.4 practicing physicians per 1,000 people -- well below below the OECD average of 3.1.

The number of hospital beds in the U.S. was 2.6 per 1,000 population in 2009, lower than the OECD average of 3.4 beds.

Life expectancy at birth increased by almost nine years between 1960 and 2010, but that's less than the increase of over 15 years in Japan and over 11 years on average in OECD countries. The average American now lives 78.7 years in 2010, more than one year below the average of 79.8 years.

There's a bright side, to be sure. The U.S. leads the world in health care research and cancer treatment, for instance. The five-year survival rate for breast cancer is higher in the U.S. than in other OECD countries and survival from colorectal cancer is also among the best, according to the group.

France and Japan demonstrate that it is possible to have cost-containment at the same time as paying physicians using similar tools to those used in the U.S. There are three key things that stand out when you compare these countries to the U.S.:

They use a common fee schedule so that hospitals, doctors and health services are paid similar rates for most of the patients they see. In the U.S., how much a health care service gets paid depends on the kind of insurance a patient has. This means that health care services can choose patients who have an insurance policy that pays them more generously than other patients who have lower-paying insurers, such as Medicaid.

They are flexible in responding if they think certain costs are exceeding what they budgeted for. In Japan, if spending in a specific area seems to be growing faster than projected, they lower fees for that area. Similarly, in France an organization called CNMATS closely monitors spending across all kinds of services and if they see a particular area is growing faster than they expected (or deem it in the public interest), they can intervene by lowering the price for that service. These countries also supplement lowering fees with other tools. For example, they monitor how many generic drugs a physician is prescribing and can send someone from the insurance fund to visit physicians' offices to encourage them to use cheaper generic drugs where appropriate. In comparison, U.S. payment rates are much less flexible. They are often statutory and Medicare cannot change the rates without approval by Congress. This makes the system very inflexible for cost containment.

There are few methods for controlling rising costs in private insurance in the U.S. In running their business, private health insurers continually face a choice between asking health care providers to contain their costs or passing on higher costs to patients in higher premiums. Many of them find it hard to do the former.

 

Did you spend the $16k on Insurance or actual Healthcare ... Paying out of pocket can be a lot cheaper than Insurance?
If people just bought Catastrophic Healthcare plans to cover major illnesses and injury ... They would find that Healthcare is less expensive than Insurance.

How is paying $15k more in taxes annually ... Going to be cheaper for me if it lowers my annual doctor's bill by $50?

 

If you buy everything but the kitchen sink insurance it will cost you more. The more you want covered the more it will cost. Try getting a kidney transplant in France if you are older than 62 or dialysis if you are older then 67. They have lower infant mortality rates because they have fewer infants and more abortions.

The life expectancy is slightly longer beause they have far lower immigration rates especially from third world countries. And thier illegal immigrant rate is almost nil. Because unlike us they actually enforce thier borders.