6 ms·

"Companies have also been pressed into serving as providers of health insurance. In a saner world, health insurance would be something that individuals buy for

by 100k 16y ago

"Companies have also been pressed into serving as providers of health insurance. In a saner world, health insurance would be something that individuals buy for themselves and their families, just as they do with auto insurance. Now, adding to the insanity, there is ObamaCare." Actually, in the saner world, companies don't have to worry about health insurance because it's provided by the government.

jambo 16y ago
paid for by ...
- forinti 16y ago
  ...society. If workers pay for it, there's less money to spend on other things (and they might not have the same bargaining power). If companies pay, they'll have less money to invest. If the government pays, it comes from everybody's taxes. You can't dissociate any player from the others. It should boil down to the question of finding the most efficient way for society overall.
  - jambo 16y ago
    "You can't dissociate any player from the others." Exactly. Companies will still have to worry about it, whether they pay for insurance directly or indirectly. "It should boil down to the question of finding the most efficient way for society overall." To what end? And as judged by whom? The majority?
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Companies will still have to worry about it the same amount that they worry about russian invasion or about the state of the pavement on the interstate. i.e., not much, yeah they pay for it through taxes, but it's not a business concern.
      - jambo 16y ago
        Taxes and the macroeconomy are business concerns.
  - natrius 16y ago
    Single-payer systems are the cheapest way to provide healthcare for a society. However, they necessarily fund the healthcare industry at a lower level than people would on their own. Some of these savings come from actual improvements in efficiency and the elimination of marketing costs, but the rest comes from the government using its monopsony power to drive down prices. Some see this as a feature, but I see it as a bug. It results in less investment going towards improvements in the field, which I think is undesirable. I think the healthcare bill that was passed was a good way of avoiding disrupting the healthcare market while still providing healthcare for everyone.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  by getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and by shrinking the DOD budget by say 30% (by cutting out things not needed to actually defend us), and by eliminating tax exemptions and loopholes for the rich and large corporations. By somehow reducing the spending done on the legal and financial professions, and by making companies pay more of the full share of the costs they impose on externalities like the environment and public health, and by numerous other possible changes to be more efficient economically. Like not having government debt so save money by not having to pay interest payments, etc.
jessriedel 16y ago
Or, alternatively, they don't have to worry about it because there is no health insurance tax deduction to force individuals to get insurance through their employer.
- jambo 16y ago
  There's still a huge group-bargaining incentive, although, I agree, it would be a move in the right direction.
  - lftl 16y ago
    There's not really any reason that individuals couldn't voluntarily band together to bargain collectively. Right now there just aren't that many people in the individual market to make it worthwhile.
    - whopa 16y ago
      Actually, health insurance companies refuse to insure a band of neighbors collectively since they deem the risk of insuring everyone in the same neighborhood too great, due to everyone being exposed to the same environment (power lines, contaminated water, etc.) A friend actually tried to get insured for him and 30 of his neighbors and that was the rejection reason given. So collective bargaining has to fall to a more spread out organization like an employer or a union, with all the politics therein, instead of closer knit locals, which tends to work out better. This is one reason I'm in favor of government health care: The profit motives of private health care favor denying care, since not paying out money is a good way to make money. So you have case where nobody will cover you for arbitrary reasons, or deny you payment due to a "pre-existing condition" or some other nonsense.
      - johngalt 16y ago
        I've never heard of homeowners insurance companies refusing to cover people in the same neighborhood. Why is it different? Would you favor the nationalization of all types of insurance or just medical? Doesn't auto-insurnace have the same evil profit motive?
orangecat 16y ago
Actually, in the saner world, companies don't have to worry about health insurance because it's provided by the government. Should the government also be providing even more necessary items like food, housing, and transportation?
- Ardit20 16y ago
  Transportation is more necessary than health? I mean if you ill I think you kinda stay in bed. But yeah, it should provide food and housing for those people who can not get either as it does in Britain and I am sure there too to some extent?
  - orangecat 16y ago
    it should provide food and housing for those people who can not get either Agreed. That's very different from paying the large majority of everyone's food and housing costs, which is what the left wants to do with health care.
    - Ardit20 16y ago
      Health and food are two different things. He said he pays $12,000 a year for health cover. There are people there who get $12,000 a year to live on. They can afford food quite fine, but if they get some health problem they would be in deep trouble. Life and death sort of trouble, which you hardly get with food in the west anyway. You only need a dollar to survive at the bare minimum. So food is not a problem. Nor is housing or transport. The latter are very different from health. You can afford very much not to travel. Walk instead. So too you can afford to not have your own house for a month but live at a friends house. Besides, the vast majority would not want to be provided a free house if they can afford it finely. But with health there is a matter of principle also. The same principle that each life is precious applies to it. A person should not be free to die because of money in such a rich and prosperous country. Also, there should not be a two tire system whereby the rich can afford first class health care and the poor just enough to get on with plenty of annoyances or worse die.
    - 16y ago
Aaronontheweb 16y ago
Or people just pay for healthcare themselves, like every other consumer service on Earth.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  Spoken like someone who has never had a parent have a health emergency and then get a bill for $200k for the hospital's services. Go free market! Yay capitalism! Every man, woman and child for themselves! Especially those little old ladies. If they can't afford to pay for a health service to save their life, that's just too bad. But thankfully every old woman is rich, or has rich children.
  - abalashov 16y ago
    Now, that's just unreasonable. Crazy figures like $200,000 are accounted for by the nightmarish public-private kleptocracy we have here. I challenge you to find someone who pays those kinds of princely sums, even for emergencies and very sophisticated procedures, in one of the numerous countries that has neither a socialised healthcare system, nor the catastrophe we have here in the US. In those places, people just go to the doctor and pay a basically affordable sum out of pocket.
    - mkramlich 16y ago
      We're in agreement actually. I was actually talking about specific and real cases that happen here in the US. Whereas in many Western European countries one doesn't have to worry about being handed some insanely high medical bill when a health emergency occurs. Their systems work more like how traditional insurance should. You pay more when things are going along normally, but when the shit hits the fan health-wise, you are neither denied medical care or handed a bill so high it wipes you out or have to spend the rest of your life paying. You get the care your body needs and don't have to worry about becoming financially devastated.
jamii 16y ago
This is what the USA looks like from socialist-land (aka Britain): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4 Whilst the idea of the government paying for healthcare may seem ridiculous to you it seems just as ridiculous to us that you might be ill and not be able to afford treatment.
shin_lao 16y ago
The huge problem they have in the USA is not that health care is private, it's that health is incredibly expansive.
- eru 16y ago
  It's also expensive.

by 100k 16y ago

jambo 16y ago

paid for by ...

forinti 16y ago
...society. If workers pay for it, there's less money to spend on other things (and they might not have the same bargaining power). If companies pay, they'll have less money to invest. If the government pays, it comes from everybody's taxes. You can't dissociate any player from the others. It should boil down to the question of finding the most efficient way for society overall.
- jambo 16y ago
  "You can't dissociate any player from the others." Exactly. Companies will still have to worry about it, whether they pay for insurance directly or indirectly. "It should boil down to the question of finding the most efficient way for society overall." To what end? And as judged by whom? The majority?
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Companies will still have to worry about it the same amount that they worry about russian invasion or about the state of the pavement on the interstate. i.e., not much, yeah they pay for it through taxes, but it's not a business concern.
    - jambo 16y ago
      Taxes and the macroeconomy are business concerns.
- natrius 16y ago
  Single-payer systems are the cheapest way to provide healthcare for a society. However, they necessarily fund the healthcare industry at a lower level than people would on their own. Some of these savings come from actual improvements in efficiency and the elimination of marketing costs, but the rest comes from the government using its monopsony power to drive down prices. Some see this as a feature, but I see it as a bug. It results in less investment going towards improvements in the field, which I think is undesirable. I think the healthcare bill that was passed was a good way of avoiding disrupting the healthcare market while still providing healthcare for everyone.
mkramlich 16y ago
by getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and by shrinking the DOD budget by say 30% (by cutting out things not needed to actually defend us), and by eliminating tax exemptions and loopholes for the rich and large corporations. By somehow reducing the spending done on the legal and financial professions, and by making companies pay more of the full share of the costs they impose on externalities like the environment and public health, and by numerous other possible changes to be more efficient economically. Like not having government debt so save money by not having to pay interest payments, etc.

jessriedel 16y ago

Or, alternatively, they don't have to worry about it because there is no health insurance tax deduction to force individuals to get insurance through their employer.

jambo 16y ago
There's still a huge group-bargaining incentive, although, I agree, it would be a move in the right direction.
- lftl 16y ago
  There's not really any reason that individuals couldn't voluntarily band together to bargain collectively. Right now there just aren't that many people in the individual market to make it worthwhile.
  - whopa 16y ago
    Actually, health insurance companies refuse to insure a band of neighbors collectively since they deem the risk of insuring everyone in the same neighborhood too great, due to everyone being exposed to the same environment (power lines, contaminated water, etc.) A friend actually tried to get insured for him and 30 of his neighbors and that was the rejection reason given. So collective bargaining has to fall to a more spread out organization like an employer or a union, with all the politics therein, instead of closer knit locals, which tends to work out better. This is one reason I'm in favor of government health care: The profit motives of private health care favor denying care, since not paying out money is a good way to make money. So you have case where nobody will cover you for arbitrary reasons, or deny you payment due to a "pre-existing condition" or some other nonsense.
    - johngalt 16y ago
      I've never heard of homeowners insurance companies refusing to cover people in the same neighborhood. Why is it different? Would you favor the nationalization of all types of insurance or just medical? Doesn't auto-insurnace have the same evil profit motive?

orangecat 16y ago

Actually, in the saner world, companies don't have to worry about health insurance because it's provided by the government. Should the government also be providing even more necessary items like food, housing, and transportation?

Ardit20 16y ago
Transportation is more necessary than health? I mean if you ill I think you kinda stay in bed. But yeah, it should provide food and housing for those people who can not get either as it does in Britain and I am sure there too to some extent?
- orangecat 16y ago
  it should provide food and housing for those people who can not get either Agreed. That's very different from paying the large majority of everyone's food and housing costs, which is what the left wants to do with health care.
  - Ardit20 16y ago
    Health and food are two different things. He said he pays $12,000 a year for health cover. There are people there who get $12,000 a year to live on. They can afford food quite fine, but if they get some health problem they would be in deep trouble. Life and death sort of trouble, which you hardly get with food in the west anyway. You only need a dollar to survive at the bare minimum. So food is not a problem. Nor is housing or transport. The latter are very different from health. You can afford very much not to travel. Walk instead. So too you can afford to not have your own house for a month but live at a friends house. Besides, the vast majority would not want to be provided a free house if they can afford it finely. But with health there is a matter of principle also. The same principle that each life is precious applies to it. A person should not be free to die because of money in such a rich and prosperous country. Also, there should not be a two tire system whereby the rich can afford first class health care and the poor just enough to get on with plenty of annoyances or worse die.
  - 16y ago

Aaronontheweb 16y ago

Or people just pay for healthcare themselves, like every other consumer service on Earth.

mkramlich 16y ago
Spoken like someone who has never had a parent have a health emergency and then get a bill for $200k for the hospital's services. Go free market! Yay capitalism! Every man, woman and child for themselves! Especially those little old ladies. If they can't afford to pay for a health service to save their life, that's just too bad. But thankfully every old woman is rich, or has rich children.
- abalashov 16y ago
  Now, that's just unreasonable. Crazy figures like $200,000 are accounted for by the nightmarish public-private kleptocracy we have here. I challenge you to find someone who pays those kinds of princely sums, even for emergencies and very sophisticated procedures, in one of the numerous countries that has neither a socialised healthcare system, nor the catastrophe we have here in the US. In those places, people just go to the doctor and pay a basically affordable sum out of pocket.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    We're in agreement actually. I was actually talking about specific and real cases that happen here in the US. Whereas in many Western European countries one doesn't have to worry about being handed some insanely high medical bill when a health emergency occurs. Their systems work more like how traditional insurance should. You pay more when things are going along normally, but when the shit hits the fan health-wise, you are neither denied medical care or handed a bill so high it wipes you out or have to spend the rest of your life paying. You get the care your body needs and don't have to worry about becoming financially devastated.

jamii 16y ago

This is what the USA looks like from socialist-land (aka Britain): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4 Whilst the idea of the government paying for healthcare may seem ridiculous to you it seems just as ridiculous to us that you might be ill and not be able to afford treatment.

shin_lao 16y ago

The huge problem they have in the USA is not that health care is private, it's that health is incredibly expansive.

eru 16y ago
It's also expensive.