Every modern nation in the world has government paid healthcare for all citizens. Even Russia has this. Worrying about paying medical bills or the loss of income due to monthly premiums is a huge concern for tens of millions of Americans. should we join the rest of the Western world and have Medicare for all? bear in mind that adding $15-$30 co-pays for doctor appointments and $100 co-pays for ambulances and hospitalization would greatly reduce costs.
Interestingly, this is a good poll with reasonable options. I voted for NO, lets go back to how it was.
why? why do the peope of the EU, Russia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, China, Canada, Australia, have a right to low-cost or free healthcare but we do not?
Look, IF there is a private sector for that public healthcare has to compete with, then it wont work. You need to either fully privatise or fully publicise or else it just simply wont economically work out well for anyone. That being said, Medicare kinda goes in between this. While technically a "socialist" government service, its private competition is why it exists. Therefore, I would say that Medicare is ok, and really doesn't have to be abolished, but it could definitely be improved and we should really try to make a system where the government either fully takes control of healthcare, like the police force, or it stays in the hands of corporations. Ethically, you cant put a price on someone's life. So I lean more towards a system where the government takes control of healthcare so its universal.
many nations have a private element to health insurance, while maintaining a public single payer system for example, they have Medicare for all just for primary care but require everyone to purchase or get through their job, hospitalization/emergency coverage.
Medicare for all? Someone has to pay. How about VA Healthcare for all. What has the government ever done well?
well, yes Mexico would probably screw it up. but Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Israel, seem to do a decent job with running a national health insurance plan
There is a middle road. An example is Belgium (and most European countries do a variation of the same, but I only know first hand from Belgium, since I have been under the "old" system in the US for 30 + years, and I have been under the Belgian system for the last 2 years). What Belgium does is a BASIC Universal health care, controlled by the government and paid for by employers (and employees) taxes. Then people decide which PRIVATE health care providers (called Mutuelles) to supplement their basic (mandatory) government health care. To give you a concrete idea, my husband and I (both over 65, but it would be actually a little cheaper if we were a young family) pay every month about $20.00 for the basic, and about $70.00 for the supplement (top of the line supplemental coverage, including private hospital room, and doctors/specialist reimbursed up to 300 % of the basic fee allowed by the government). So, for the two of us (I am 65, and my husband is 76) we pay UNDER $200.00 per month, and this include dental, partial contribution to a fitness club, even ⅔ of the price of hearing aids. With this coverage (which is very standard), we pay $25 co-payment when we see our primary care physician, and then the "private supplemental insurance" reimburses us $21 of that amount. . . leaving us with a net cost of $4 for a regular visit! There is no additional cost for covering children. And. . .Just in case that old silliness comes back about "letting old people die" or "long wait lines," I want to say that my sister is 84 years old, her husband is 91 years old, and they both receive EXCELLENT coverage. In fact, my brother in law who was feeling sick last week obtained an urology appointment AND a cardiology appointment for THE NEXT DAY.
Sometimes their even denied the care. You cant be serious. What do you think the big stink is with the VA? You want the VA system for all ?
Yes, and to some extend, they have begun to exist in the US for people on medicare (which covers 80% of the care) who ALSO choose to subscribe to a Medicare supplemental PRIVATE insurance. However, it is obvious that medicare is a LOT LESS costly (although they cover the end of life, so they cover the more expensive medical care at 80%) since medicare covers 80% of the bill for about $120 per month. . .while the supplemental private insurance only covers 20% of that bill. . .but cost anything from $50.00 to $250.00 per month, depending on the type of coverage! Again, this is based on my own concrete experience living in the US: My husband supplemental insurance covering only 20% of the bills cost us $235.00 per month! Anyone with a smitten of mathematic ability and those who love "investments" should realise that investing in medicare is a lot less costly than investing in private supplemental insurance!
We can't have things like this because the political right in this country would rather blow trillions on the military industrial complex and tax cuts for the rich. That, and because there's too much profit in sickness and death. Capitalism screws quite a few people in this regard.
It sounds good on paper, and it works for other countries, but we have a very big problem; we're too big. It functions well in small, dense countries, but in larger countries, such as Canada, it creates massive wait times; even in emergency rooms, they often have to wait three hours for an actual doctor. The US, quite frankly, is just too big for this sort of thing to be efficient. The less you incentivize only going to the doctor for routine check-ups and serious injuries, the more things get inefficient and clogged with the frivolous. Besides, disregarding basic impracticality, it's completely against the basic philosophy of minimal government. Making the healthy pay for the sick, and be legally required to do so on penalty of jail time, is completely antithetical to the idea of having liberty as a priority.
Canadians love their health care system. Try to get elected dog catcher if you say you are going to touch it. LOL
Take it a step further and do away with the medical parts of the VA altogether, and put them on Medicare. This would eliminate waiting for treatment at a VA facility, and give vets access to any doctor or facility that accepts Medicare. Don't wait for Medicare for all, do it now. We owe these vets at least that much.
Err, no. I live in a Australia where we have Medicare in place and you can wait upto 2 hours to even be assessed in an emergency ward, longer if you go to your local GP. The quality of service is often poor and the system is very costly. Our health budget is blowing out quite considerably each year. The cost of seeing a GP is around $100. Unfortunately not everyone is a medical professional and as such medical advice is a limited resource. These days, so many visits to the hospital emergency ward for trivial things like colds or flu. Or in some cases just to get a medical certificate to have a couple of day off work. There needs to be a some form of dis-incentive for people not to go to the emergency ward or local doctor, i.e some cost (whether its monetary or in other forms) to the patient.
Current system is no good. If socialized medicine wont fly then go back to the old system. Rich people don't like socialized med. OK, no prob. Rich pay for the rich doctors. The test of us get socialized med. If we don't like it then we can become rich. Reality...No socialized med for the USA. Hillary gets in it is Obamacare. Trump gets in, and it is revoke Obamcare and replace it with tax credits so you can buy unusable, unaffordable phantom heath insurance.
Medicare for all sounds great. Too bad the monstrosity of Obamacare has destroyed and denigrated the very idea of socialized healthcare without providing it. Obamacare is what people are going to associate with the concept of universal healthcare for decades to come, can't really blame them for rejecting it.
