Health Insurance Deductibles Up 212 Percent Since 2008

It will happen. It's a question of when. How much more financial pain will we inflict on ourselves before we kill off private insurance. Our economy will collapse if we don't, and if it does, we deserve it.

 

The whole thing has turned into a feedback loop. As the number of uninsured and as (more significantly by number) the number of underinsured have risen, this rise has caused medical costs to increase (to account for indigent care and defaults on medical debt).

Medical costs go up due to indigent care, driving up insurance premiums. Insurance premiums go up, causing more to be uninsured and underinsured....and therefore increasing indigent care costs.

And round and round it goes...

 

Less than a quarter of that is healthcare. How much are you shelling out for Medicaid and Medicare right now? Plus your insurance premium?

Again - if you can't bring yourself to do the basic math, you deserve to get screwed. You're what the Republicans call a useful idiot. AKA: their base. Claiming to be a libertarian means you're more ideologically driven than the Evangelicals, and will reliably vote against your own interests if properly triggered...

 

Insure everyone, do away with premiums and pay for it with payroll taxes. Like FICA, even minimum wage workers cannot avoid them. In addition, remove the income cap for FICA, and apply it to ALL earned income, not just the first $128,000.

 

Here in the US we have the same stuff as Canadians do, with the exception of single payer and a few other laws, but our taxes are way lower. That is all there is to it man. Slice it any way you want.

 

You really think the economy will collapse if we don't go single payer? I have always heard economists are always wrong, but that takes the cake my friend.

 

A step in the right direction, but the cost is currently so high that the insurance premium will be a week's-plus salary for those making under $20/hr. Agreed on the income cap for FICA. ALL earned income. OBVIOUSLY. Duh... I mean, seriously, it's just mathematics, people....

 

You mean, again? While one can easily point at housing costs and nefarious activity for causes the last crash, the mercurial rise of medical costs compared to wages is a factor that cannot be ignored. #1 cause of bankruptcy, now, and at the time of the last crash. It causes economic insecurity and has slashed consumer spending power.

 

Which is why it's paid through a payroll tax. Like SS and Medicare (which would be combined under single-payer), it would be calculated as a percentage of income, not a flat rate. The trade-off is you're combining Medicare, Medicaid, VA and everyone else into one program, and trading employer premiums with payroll taxes and employer matching contributions as under the current FICA system.

 

I will give you this. Convince the neo-cons to stop interfering in the affairs of the rest of the world, drastically cut the military industrial complex, end the war on drugs, release non-violent drug offenders, and see how the money looks after that. Hell, we could probably do expanded medicaid then.

I actually think medicaid may get expanded under Trump, but it depends on how Congressional elections turn out. If it is a blue wave, then Trump will start negotiating. He is not loyal to the Republican'ts. Once he sees that his reelection is in jeopardy he will start negotiating with the blue dogs.
just my prediction....

 

Well, Obamacare's solution is the individual mandate, expanding Medicaid, and adding subsidies to help poorer people voluntarily buy health insurance to make sure nearly everyone has health insurance. Republicans eliminated the individual mandate and rolled much of the expanded Medicaid and subsidies back from what was intended while keeping the protections for pre-existing conditions. 80% of Republicans support protections for people with pre-existing conditions and 66% are again charging these people more.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...f-both-parties-support-obamacare-pre-existing

 

In addition, I like a transaction fee on stock trades that Bernie proposed in lieu of an increase in capital gains taxes. The fee would go directly into the healthcare fund, like the SS part of FICA goes into the SS Trust Fund. This way, Wall Street profits and losses are irrelevant - the money comes from the individual transactions themselves. Just two cents per share traded could net about $72 million in revenue per trading day, or about $18.1 billion per year.

 

Can't disagree with that. We need to cut the military by at least 25 percent - at least $175 billion per year - and tell the Pentagon to take a lesson from Russia and work smarter. I'd love to see it cut by half. Our posture should be defensive, not interventionist. The nuclear triad is sufficient to keep us safe from invasion or direct attack, the age of the American Hegemony needs to end, before it ends us.

Right there with you on the drug war and mass incarceration of non-violent offenders. I like what California is doing there, with expunging the records of non-violent marijuana convictions.

Trump needs a loyal opposition congress to keep him in line. You're right - when faced with solid opposition that he can't bluff, he deflates and negotiates. The worst thing for him is a Republican congress, because there is nothing there for him to fear, and therefore, no reason to put on the brakes. Democrats having and willing to use subpoena power on his ass will likely change his attitude quickly.

 

Here is what seems like a rational discussion of the topic from back in January.

 

See? There are points we can agree on... lol

 

Which would stifle the wages of lower earners, unless it is a progressive tax, as there is a floor to basic cost of insurance and to basic cost of living. But you'tr ptobably ahead of me on that one.

Okay, that sounds good.

 

I think a lot of meaning gets lost in translation here.

 

It would have to be made progressive. That's actually how most other countries with single payer do it. It would probably be messy as hell initially, like the first few years of Medicare were, but it will stabilize if we don't have one political party actively trying to sabotage it. In the end, it would be far less of a burden on individuals and the nation as a whole with better outcomes than we have now.

 

I did not say we should increase SNAP subsidies. It should be reduced over time to prevent creating dependence. Limiting benefits to healthy foods was proposed, but Pepsi Co lobbied against it. A simple search on who is in charge of the FDA will show the conflict of interest that has resulted in record medical costs and record levels of illness.

 

Barely
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/canadians-may-pay-more-taxes-than-americans-but-theres-a-catch.html

Yes this was for 2010
For 2017 the tax burden was
US - 31.7%
Canada - 31.4%
though this analysis may not calculate our taxes the same way (you fund many things via payroll whereas we use a VAT (our GST))

And that's just for healthcare. We also enjoy mandatory sick days/vacation days, Maternity Leave, plus our educational costs are lower then yours.

 

Good for yall. Im happy for you. But, there is a report in another thread I posted that gives starkly different numbers.

For a Canadian family making 83k per year, they pay 35k in total taxes.

https://globalnews.ca/news/3691159/canada-taxes-incomes-fraser-institute/
Average Canadians pay 42.5 per cent of their income in taxes: report

 

That's because its the Fraser Institute. They are a RW "Think Tank" that used to put out good info, but have degenerated into partisan BS over the years like this (https://www.straight.com/article-240556/fraser-institute-spins-facts)

This study incorporates every single tax that exists in Canada for individuals and simply divides by the working population.

Here is the actual report
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/canadian-consumer-tax-index-2017.pdf

First: not all business taxation is passed on to the consumers. Price points only go so high before people stop purchasing, so if the price point is lower then the necessary cost to cover said taxation, then the cost isn't passed on.

Also, not every province pays those specific taxes (for example, Alberta doesn't have a Provincial Sales Tax, so therefor our tax burden wouldn't be accurately reflected in this)

 

I hear ya. I still believe we should actually try letting free markets and competition into the HC industry before we go all in with our government as our HC provider.

 

You already do. The problem is that the lack of transparency, coupled with the way the insurance component is structured into the system, means that Hospitals will charge way more then a procedure will cost, knowing that even if the Insurance Company won't pay all of it, they will likely settle for less (yet way more then the cost of the procedure).

http://www.uta.fi/yky/en/studies/di...search/index/cost efficiency and coverage.pdf

 

As long as we allow politicians to control healthcare in our country via bribes and kickbacks and the promise of lucrative jobs when they leave office we will never ever have competitive healthcare in our country.