So how is Bernie going to get them to do that

You probably live in a city. I don't. I have a completely different concept because of that. Where I live we have a lot of freedom. It changes your perspective.

 

Cities regulate only what is within their city limits. Outside city limits is pretty much up to you and the county.

 

Fair enough. We have a county sheriff to handle law enforcement. The county does road maintenance. There is a volunteer FD in a nearby village but I don't know if it is government funded or not. There aren't any other government services here. I can do what I want to do with my land without interference from anybody. Since I can't see my neighbors they can do what they want with theirs with no interference from me.

I'm familiar with city life. Many years ago I lived in a high rise apartment building in the near north side of Chicago. I don't miss it.

 

Yep free stuff you are getting!
Bet you dont feel like its free! Neither do I given I pay for it too

 

I don't agree with medicare-for-all at this point, but Bernie certainly isn't pretending it's free. It's going to be expensive and taxes are going to go up on a whole lot of people, which Bernie has admitted many times.

 

Nothing is ever free. The only thing that ever changes is how the cost are assessed

 

You need to look into the other nations thing. One easy way is to compare the cost of drugs- In Italy, insulin- $17. Same type and amount of insulin in the US- $360.

When you have a system that is out of balance, be it a business or the cost of health care- Only a fool tries to solve it by continuing to keep ahead of insane spiraling costs.
The right approach is to find out what is causing the imbalance, and fix that issue. When you do, the costs come back to where they should be.

Obviously there is such an issue here with our drug costs as well as all health care expenses. It's not the cost of making the drugs, nor the salary of medical professionals that makes our health care cost so crazy. In fact it has nothing to do with either one. In America- we have allowed laws to pass that have enabled a massive industry.... Run by lawyers. Tort law. Or better described- the abuse of Tort law.
Watch TV for an evening, and it should be clear- because you will see legal firms, and companies that do nothing but seek people to become plaintiffs, telling you that if you developed anything after taking or using anything, somebody owes you money. You are entitled, you deserve.... And when they aren't suing for procedures, they are suing drug makers, or anything they can make sound financially attractive. Have you used talcum powder in the past, and later been diagnosed with cancer? Call now!

It's not even necessary to have a valid claim. When a lawyer threatens to sue a hospital or Ob/GYN, the sheer cost of defense to prove the claim is invalid can be tens of thousands, or more-in some cases, hundreds of thousands, and so they settle; which will be writing off the bill and making a cash settlement payment. The lawyer get around half of that money. The insurance company providing the liability coverage for the defendant pays the bills- and then raises premiums to those health care providers to recover what they pay out. The health care providers must then recover that in their charges- to your insurance company... which then recovers them from you, in your premiums. It covers all aspects of health care costs. Drugs, made by the same company but sold in different nations, vary widely in costs. Reason? the liability insurance costs that are built into the price of the drugs is related to the laws and legal losses in the country where they are sold. Thus the identical drug, coming off the same production line, sells at dramatically different prices depending only on the country it is sold in. Tylenol in the hospital- $15. Why? They must use every avenue they can find to raise the revenue for insurance premiums.

For an Ob/GYN (baby doctor) in the US, the annual liability insurance cost can be as nuch as $200,000 per year. If it's a very busy doctor, there will be about 100 births per year. That means that before the bill for actual services are included, the doc must factor $2000 to cover the liability insurance. Then the hospital will have insurance costs added to. Bottom line- The lawyers cash in. In some countries, the party who loses such a lawsuit pays the expenses for both sides. Not here- lawyers can use the imposing of defense costs to extort a settlement, that never goes to court..... but does wind up in our health insurance premiums.

This was not always so- but at one point, we had laws against "Ambulance Chasing", the practice of lawyers talking people into lawsuits for profit. They were not allowed to advertise openly. Some smart lawyer found a way to get around that, and ever since- the tort industry has been thriving, and your medical expenses exploding.

All nations have lawyers, and lawsuits for damages. However, the regulations that control how that can be done, along with the character of the population has a lot to do with unwarranted litigation. Just count the lawyers, and you can see the direct connection of how their promoting litigation has impacted our health care costs.

Japan- has 7 lawyers per 100,000 people.
The British are much more inclined to sue than almost all other nations. They have 83 lawyers per 100,000 people. They are second in the world.
America of course- is first. WE HAVE 287.

 

Wrong. The United States accounts for more than half of the new drugs that come out onto the market. That means the US produces more drugs than EVERY other nation combined.

The other countries are able to engage in socialized medicine because they leech off the back of the US’ R&D. Without the United States and it’s citizens paying high prices for drugs, the number of new drugs to hit the market would drastically decline.

And not just drugs but new procedures, medical technologies and essentially every other medical advancement.

 

25 billion is a significant sum of the german defense budget. For comparison sake, Germany spends just 49 billion. Thus we are providing about 50% of their defense.

 

You expect doctors to take a pay cut so you can afford their expertise and skills?

Everybody gets a trophy amiright?

 

Yet.... you desire the same doctors, equipment, and healthcare processes, only... cheaper.

The issue you have isnt with the quality or delivery of service but the availability and the cost. And for some reason, you feel validated to demand it at an rate you feel it should be offered expecting everybody else to make adjustments to accommodate your desires. Right?

 

We have great healthcare for perhaps the top 20 percent of Americans who can afford this great Healthcare.

The problem with Healthcare is the middle man or the for profit insurance companies that profit from being the middle man.

Health and life for all is so important that turning it into profits for middle men is immoral and obscene in any moral civilization .

It is a matter of moral principle. It seems these atheistic European nations are more morally principled than our Christian nation.

I have no problem with the govt replacing the collector of premiums in place of the for profit insurance. Just so long as the govt does not run the providers of the care .. That must remain in the private sector given what the govt has done with VA Healthcare .

Getting profit out of handling the premiums is common sense.

 

Government has no wealth, and therefore anything it promises to one for free, it must confiscate from another by force.

This is not promoting the general welfare, because it is not equally beneficial to all.

 

The problem with healthcare is that it is overpriced. Basically the healthcare, drug, and and their middlemen are overcharging people and earning massive wages and huge corporate profits. Individual procedures in America cost a lot more than in other countries. We have a lot of examples of people paying thousands of dollars for simple visits in the ER, Tylenol costing $35 in hospitals, and life-saving drugs costing hundreds of dollars per pill. This is because healthcare has low price elasticity. In essence, as prices go up, demand only drop a little. This problem needs to be fixed somehow if we are to ever have affordable healthcare.

 

Doctors in the US earn far more than in other developed nations. Part of the reason for this is how much they pay in malpractice insurance and how much time and money they have to spend in medical school. We also have a doctor shortage and doctors tend to be over-worked. A shortage of doctors from these factors lead to shy-high wages = sky-high costs. The best solution for this is the help students afford medical school (and fix malpractice lawsuits). We will have a lot more doctors graduating, doctors won't be over-worked anymore, and their wages will decrease, and we will save money. They will still earn a crazy amount, just not as crazy.

 

25 billion is for all our bases around the world, not just Germany. I don't know the exact figure for Germany. Maybe it is 5 billion or something. As a comparison, Germans spend 400 billion on healthcare.

 

Right and then you get to be operated on by the guy who should be running your local home improvement store. No thanks

They get paid better than everyone else because they’re better than most others. You cap doctor pay. I’ll offer that doctor to come to my country and not cap his pay. He can still help as many people as he want and make as much as his services will allow. Where do you think he’s going to go?

So instead of having the top 100 docs in your country and being operated on by the number 30 doctor in the world, I’ll have them and you can get brain surgery from the number 300 doc in the world. Good luck.

 

Be careful. Like too many cooks spoil the broth, too much reality destroys the fantasy.

 

No, what I am saying is to make medical school affordable so that less wealthy people can become doctors. Medical school will still be just as rigorous. Fixing the doctor shortage doesn't mean we will all be killed in surgery by a guy with an IQ of 60.

But all skilled professionals are better than everyone else at what they do. Doctors earn several times as much as other skilled professionals. What I am proposing is lets make it financially easier for people to become doctors and fix the doctor shortage that we have, and see what the market naturally does to their wages. Doctors often work crazy hours that burns them out quickly and often reduces their quality of work.

 

Well, if NATO were to fall apart, everyone would get nukes for protection. The Germany Green Party wouldn't be able to stop that then.

 

We ration healthcare too. We ration with prices. We also ration with limits in insurance policies. Every product and industry has some kind of rationing. What would you do to make our healthcare system better?

 

The best solution to this is for our hypothetical public insurance to negotiate the prices they will pay for procedures with hospitals and drug companies. If these negotiations break down, then the hospital won't be covered or won't be completely covered by the public insurance. People will need private insurance or pay out of pocket to get full coverage for that provider. Thats kind of how insurance companies already do that. Or the government can contract out to a private insurance company to do this for them.

 

The government doesn't micromanage our whole system. Our system isn't government run.

 

Well other developed nations managed to maintain half the costs of our system, so I guess in real life its actually possible. One way to do this is to make preventative care cheap, so that health conditions get fixed early before they get serious and expensive. Also limiting how much drug companies can charge for life-saving drugs is another thing they do.

 

Don't bet on it. The greens control the balance of power. They prefer clean coal to nuclear power.