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Originally Posted by clintjm
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Yes, but these countries have secondary health insurance. I am talking about primary health insurance. Secondary health insurance is purchased by people with the means to pay for, for example, a private room instead of sharing a room with another patient.
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Originally Posted by clintjm
To your point though, the United States is alone among developed nations in not having a universal health care system. Health care in the U.S. does, however, have significant publicly funded components. Medicare covers the elderly and disabled with a historical work record, Medicaid is available for some, but not all of the poor, and the State Children Health Insurance Program covers children of low-income families. The Veterans Health Administration directly provides health care to U.S. military veterans through a nationwide network of government hospitals; while active duty service members, retired service members and their dependents are eligible for benefits through TRICARE. Together, these tax-financed programs cover 27.8% of the population and make the government the largest health insurer in the nation.
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Yes, you are correct there.
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Originally Posted by clintjm
Your words: "unneeded industry"
Wrong.
So the "unneeded industry", Private Health Insurance, should be replaced with "government run Health Insurance" ONLY?
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No, I didn't say that. Certainly there is a place for private health insurance, as we see in in places where these is a desire for secondary insurance to bump up comforts or help cover costs.
But you can certainly see the benefits of a universal plan that covered everyone.
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Originally Posted by clintjm
Destroying the private health insurance industry is not the answer, which is the path this legislation is taking us on. At the same time the U.S. is writing themselves IOUs on a bill that initial CBO evaluation BEFORE the Docfix amendments and double counting hasn't been added in, and that obviously has fuzzy math (See my previous post in this thread with CNN Video on CBO).
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The private insurance system has grown to such massive sizes, I don't think it is possible or probable. But the CEOs of these corporations are going home with millions of dollars in bonuses, something that wouldn't happen if it was run by the government and not as a "for profit" entity.
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Originally Posted by clintjm
Again all for reform, but this bill isn't right in many ways, unsustainable, and will eventually break the working parts of the system. It doesn't address the root cause of the problem, not private health insurance companies, but health care costs.
You can not reshape the American system to be like the countries you write of without completely gutting the private and public insurance existing systems. Its simply not possible. Work with what you got without a trillion dollar price tag that still doesn't cover everyone, is unsustainable, and will eventually break not only the existing system, but also slowly losing what differs America from the rest of the world.
Before today, corporations and unions had to set up political action committees, filed separately with the IRS, that would receive donations; and they did. Unions and corporations spend millions of dollars on elections. Now however, the accounting firewall is gone, and big retail or the Service Employees International Union, for instance, can spend their corporate money directly on candidates.
I still didn't see how this bill helps you out personally in your struggling condition as you mentioned. As far as I can tell, this hurts small business and doesn't address the cost of personal premiums fees.
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The bill specifically helps small business by offering tax credits to cover the cost of insuring employees. For me personally, that is what I am investigating now, but if my insurance company decides to jack up my rate double digits again, I have other options.
And I agree the Supreme Court decision to give corporations human rights and to call money "free speech" is ridiculous.