 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
Do Any Candidates Have a Plan Other Than Insurance Paid by the Working Class to Cover Everyone?
Aside from actual costs to manage a medical facility, the invention of insurance has generated additional costs that have nothing to do with treating or preventing illness/childbirth.
Health care fees has become grossly inflated with expenses that have nothing to do with actual health: Cost of insurance coverage added to salaries and our taxes to cover national leaders completely: salaries and benefit packages for non-medical CEO and CFO’s and other personnel such as employees that specialize in filling out medical forms, applying for benefits, filing all the information, collections of payments; insurance company pays for fraud investigators, employees to find technicalities to not pay benefits, their CEO and CFO and all other employees.
My elderly dog needed jaw surgery: half was removed and it was wired. She stayed at the clinic getting IV fluid and medications for four days. Her bill was $395 (including tax and medications brought home). Had this been my mom, the hospital would be investigating the possibility of getting her home somehow in addition to charging her insurance, and any others she is eligible for them to sign up for, charging initially more than $20,000.00.
If a national plan is passed the above fees just guarantee beg business for insurance companies and hide it as a medical expense.
Has any candidate considered promoting health with tax incentives? How about a federal neutral health facility that is free to everyone and it only diagnosis’s health and illness using technology our tax money pays for. People could then seek health care if needed, if not they have a clean bill of health. This would help curb wrong diagnoses- the diagnosing practitioner gains nothing from illness or health. The money used for national insurance coverage now could be applied to these free facilities.
One more question: if we force employers to bare the cost of healthcare for everyone while import tax and easier globalization since 1994 signing of China Peace treaty, won’t all of our jobs/companies go off shore to avoid this expense?
The biggest problem in the US regarding medical insurance is that it is available through your employer and it varies in it’s quality. We should have a national health plan that is not attached to anyone’s employer and to fund it we should enact a 2% national sales tax. Simple.
Even though the insurance system creates layers of bureaucracy and adds costs, it’s an established infrastructure. More importantly, it’s an enormous industry with powerful and influential lobbyists that have contributed to the candidates’ plans for universal health care.
To migrate from an insurance-based health system to a federally-funded one would be as challenging as the Soviet Union changing from communism to capitalism.
While all 3 major Democratic Candidates–Clinton, Obama, and Edwards–have comprehensive healthcare proposals, they are all SINGLE PAYER proposals and not SINGLE PROVIDER proposals.
Your suggestion–a government run hospital–is an example of single provider healthcare, similar to the NHS in the UK.
The Democratic proposals leave in place private run hospitals. In these proposals, a new tax would be levied upon your employer. The money they’re paying the insurance companies would go to the Government, perhaps into Medicare. Then, Medicare would either pay hospitals for your care (cutting out the insurance companies) or they would pay insurance companies directly (just as your employer does now), depending on the proposal.
While it’s important to remember that we pay far more for healthcare than other industrialized nations, we do have the most capacity and most technologically advanced healthcare system in the world.
While some fringe candidates may propose a single provider system–similar to the way the VA works–I believe you won’t see that happen.
My personal belief, as a lifelong democrat, is that it will be best to keep hospitals privately run. This will reduce waste due to competition and it’s all but a proven fact that a company can respond quicker to changing market dynamics than the federal government can.
When most people deride a national healthcare policy in America, it’s important to note that they compare it to what’s happened in the UK and Canada, both of which are single provider systems which leave patients with a long wait for surgeries and procedures. Remind them that the proposal is merely for a SINGLE PAYER program, which will do nothing but lift a massive burden from the shoulders of business, making them more competitive in the global marketplace.