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Single Payer

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Clarissa

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I support “Medicare for all” if it’s allowed to exist alongside the system that is currently in place. So if people – meaning, anybody at all, with no qualifications – want to use state-funded Medicare, they should. And those who want to continue in the current system (meaning me), should be free to do that. 

This is radically different from the sucky Canadian system where you are forced to use the stupid state-owned healthcare. 

I never know if people mean the system I just described or the idiotic Canadian healthcare when they say “single payer.” 

21 responses to “Single Payer”

  1. Dreidel Avatar
    Dreidel

    The problem with “Medicare for all” is that it can’t be funded unless ALL pay for it, whether they want its services or not.

    That’s the problem with Obamacare now. It — along with Social Security and the current Medicare for old people like me, and the Medicaid state/federal program that Obama vastly expanded — are going to run out of money in the not-too-distant future, unless either 1) the benefits are cut way back (not politically possible in a democracy where politicians who don’t deliver can be voted out of office), or 2) taxes are increased on EVERYBODY who pays taxes, including the sacrosanct “middle class.”

    Delusional liberals can chant “tax the rich” all they want. But if the government took every dime that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have, all their loot wouldn’t sustain the current U. S. $18.5 TRILLION GDP for very long. Bankrupt the billionaires, and the economic beast will still have to be fed, and will come back to the little people for blood.

    You don’t have to be religious to want to hold up a cross and keep the socialist vampires at bay.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Of course, it should be paid for by everybody’s taxes. Quite a bit of tax revenue can be liberated by restructuring the government and making it smaller. For instance, reducing the waste and the administrative bloat in Pentagon.

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  2. el Avatar
    el

    \ The problem with “Medicare for all” is that it can’t be funded unless ALL pay for it, whether they want its services or not.

    +1

    I am for a system, similar to what we have in Israel:

    \ Health care in Israel is universal and participation in a medical insurance plan is compulsory. All Israeli citizens are entitled to basic health care as a fundamental right. The Israeli healthcare system is based on the National Health Insurance Law of 1995, which mandates all citizens resident in the country to join one of four official health insurance organizations, known as Kupot Holim (קופת חולים – “Sick Funds”) which are run as not-for-profit organizations and are prohibited by law from denying any Israeli citizen membership. Israelis can increase their medical coverage and improve their options by purchasing private health insurance. In a survey of 48 countries in 2013, Israel’s health system was ranked fourth in the world in terms of efficiency, and in 2014 it ranked seventh out of 51. In 2015, Israel was ranked sixth-healthiest country in the world by Bloomberg rankings and ranked eighth in terms of life expectancy.

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  3. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    Single payer can only work if everyone contributes something.

    Of course if those who are willing and able wish to purchase additional private coverage then they should be allowed to but single payer will collapse of those with private insurance can opt out of it.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      When you really need something, money can always be found. My question is not about money but about the preferable system.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        The preferable system is one that lets people opt out of state run treatment in favor of private treatment if they so desire (but not opt out of contributing to the state run system).

        A healthcare system is not like a bridge, where the right spot in the river is found and the bridge is built over it and then only requires routine maintenance. It’s a delicate balancing act that requires constaint oversight and adjustment so it’s not choosing A or B (part of the problem in both the US and Canada) but about balancing selected features from A with selected features of B (and the necessary ratio will change over time).

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        1. AnonP Avatar
          AnonP

          That’s how it works in several European countries: Sweden, Ireland, Germany, Slovenia, Austria, etc.


          https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.js

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            I haven’t experienced the quality of their care, so I can’t fruitfully discuss.

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      2. David P. Bellamy Avatar
        David P. Bellamy

        When you really need something, money can always be found.

        This is simply not true. Could you find a half million dollars a month if drug companies charged that much for something you needed?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I would pay $500 a month to a psychoanalyst instead. The goal should be health, not just drugs, right?

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          1. el Avatar
            el

            \ I would pay $500 a month to a psychoanalyst instead.

            Tell that to a person who needs a costy operation. For instance, a heart defect.

            I believe you a psychoanalyst can be great, but it’s not an answer to everything and not a reason why other health care is not needed if you use a psychoanalyst.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              I’m trying to show David what happens when you move this discussion from the level of collective decisions to that of private individual choices.

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              1. David P. Bellamy Avatar
                David P. Bellamy

                I’m trying to show David what happens when you move this discussion from the level of collective decisions to that of private individual choices.

                Sorry, I thought you had moved to the level of individual choices when you wrote: “When you really need something, money can always be found.” My point was that this, as stated, is not true.

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              2. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                I wasn’t addressing you personally. It’s a way of speaking that, in this case, was addressed to the American people.

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  4. Z Avatar
    Z

    Oregon, without very high taxes, has single payer. You go virtually anywhere and 80-90% of your cost is paid or reimbursed, with some things being free. Very straightforward and not the headache we have here, where doctor A is on Plan 1, but doctor B only on plan 2, etc., and the Medicaid doctors are swamped, but the cosmetic surgeons desperate for clients, and so on.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I’m not at all afraid of taxes. My worry is more about ending up in a Canadian-style system where unless you have sawed off your leg and are aboyt to bleed out to death, you don’t get care. No preventative care, no patient choice on procedures, horrible care for pregnancy, and the feeling of complete desperation because there are no options.

      No emergency care for non lethal conditions either.

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      1. Z Avatar
        Z

        I wasn’t entirely pleased with Danish care when I lived there, but it might have been a problem of the town.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          People say that in Canada, healthcare is great in small towns and villages. But in Montreal, it’s a dog eat dog world.

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  5. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    American Health Care Tragedies Are Taking Over Crowdfunding

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-12/america-s-health-care-crisis-is-a-gold-mine-for-crowdfunding

    Begging online to strangers to pay for one’s medical expenses is now a 2 billion dollar industry. America Is Already Great vol. 249564. Is there any problem that the free market can’t solve?

    Liked by 1 person

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  6. Z Avatar
    Z

    Louisiana’s charity hospital system, until destroyed by Jindal, didn’t seem to be too bad in principal. Anyone could go to the charity hospitals, and those who could just pay or who had insurance, could go to private hospitals. For some things the charity hospitals were actually better, and if I understand right you were to pay if you could. I don’t understand enough about it — or about Brazil, where there was also in the old days a version of this. Once I went to a charity hospital there for something, because they were right up the street, and they seemed quite good. I was impressed that they would take me as a foreigner but it was we-take-anyone.

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    1. Z Avatar
      Z

      *principle, above. I swear that was auto-correct.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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