Find someone who doesn't need healthcare and then let's talk.
So you don't want employers to pick coverage but you are comfortable with the gov't choosing it? You somehow think that the gov't will cut less corners than the insurance companies? Sure, that is why most established doctors will not accept medicaid patients. The Gov't pays terribly.
Yes, that's correct. I want our elected officials managing our healthcare instead of unelected capitalists who care nothing for patients and only want to make a buck.
Insurance companies aren't cutting corners. They are simply making a great profit and ripping us off (providing a low value service). As I pointed out above, we are paying enough to cover everyone, but we have 47 million uninsured. I just want what we are paying for, like other people who live in industrialized countries. True, a gov't system isn't perfect either, but as they systems in other countries have proven (unless Americans are somehow less able to manage than other countries) we can get better care for less paid into the system.
Most physicians are less than fond private insurance companies as well (for cutting reimbursables, etc.). In fact, many physicians are advocating a single payer system. There are many physicians who do take Medicare and are doing fine. Medicaid does pay poorly. These system are taking care of many of the sickest and most needy patients and they can't discriminate against unhealthy or even healthy patients who don't meet their height/weight stats exactly. These systems do not insure your average healthy 20 year-old. So your complaint is a little like saying that a surgeon who takes difficult cases must be a bad physician compared to a physician who has better outcomes on average but takes on a more balanced load of difficult and simple cases.
So with 'socialized heathcare' what will happen is that the overhead will become so high that the Gov't will cut costs wherever it can. Quality will become crap and compensation will be near nothing. So doctors will preferentially accept people who still pay for their health insurance so they can get compensated. Yeah, I agree that is a very equitable system.
Actually, I'm advocating a single payer system, not 'socialized healthcare' where physicians are employees of the state (under my proposed system physicians would be private). Your guess is not backed up by the facts. We are the only industrialized country that doesn't have a single payer system and pretty much every other countries is spending less on healthcare than we are and getting better results. So you can imagine monsters if you want to. When you are ready to return to reality, you'll find that you are advocating a monster.
The one good thing about this system is that doctors can finally unionize and strike which before was illegal.
There are several good things. 1. If our experience is similar to Canada's, physician pay would go up (at least initially until it would go back to current inflation-adjusted levels). 2. Malpractice insurance /claims could be improved (as in the Canadian system). 3. Our population's health would improve. 4. Physicians would have more consistent paperwork requirements, which would provide for better automation and potentially less paperwork. 5. Our healthcare expenditures would go down.
For step 3- I will agree to make it illegal for insurance to discriminate when you can control people's eating habits. People should not be allowed to eat what they want. The Govt should stop them. Really what we should do is give all of our freedom to the gov't and let them choose, oh wait that's precisely what you are proposing...
Yeah sure, and let's privatize the police and military so that anyone can pay them off. Let's get rid of public schools so that people like you can go out and get a job instead of wasting tax payer dollars spent on medical schools. Public roads. Nah. Let's let Brown & root buy land and charge us however much toll they want. This next mile is going to cost you $159.95.
You must not know this but the Gov't is actually by far the worst to deal with. The paper work needed is absurd. Moving to a gov't run system will actually decrease the time a doc has to see patients.
Yes, gov't paperwork sucks. However, they don't discriminate against you and they cost less. Sign me up.
Walmart is notorious for terrible coverage. They have taken a lot of flack recently...so you picked a very non-representative example. Also, 25K in a year is a ****load of medical expense. Perhaps 1 in 1000 will have bills that high.
Walmart's coverage is actually above the norm. Most Americans are employed by small businesses, most of which have worse coverage than what Wal-Mart offers.
Once everybody is covered the only real reason people would buy insurance is to get better service, coverage and benefits. You add 47 million more people to systems that are already failing (medicare/ medicaid) and you will have total collapse.
Yeah, just like every other industrialized countries health care system has collapsed -- not. In fact, our health care system is basically collapsing as our nation's health slips further and further behind that of other countries and as millions get improper care or are bankrupted by it.
