Sanders' single-payer push splits Democrats

onthebottom said:

... We pay doctors more like we pay all highly successful people more. We also have silly levels of capacity for convienience.
....

Click to expand...

People who can afford it, those with money and those working at a company that purchases a good plan benefit. Those without suffer. And no matter how much you like to pretend otherwise, those on medicare don't have the same level of access.

basketcase said:

People who can afford it, those with money and those working at a company that purchases a good plan benefit. Those without suffer. And no matter how much you like to pretend otherwise, those on medicare don't have the same level of access.

Click to expand...

While those who don't qualify for medicare or medicaid have even less. And drive America's overly-costly outcome stats into the basement.

The real question is why the US doesn't go for better outcomes with more money in everyone's pocket — except maybe some doctors and hospital corporations — by simply importing a proven working model from any one of a number of countries where people are healthier and live longer.

The savings could finance a considerable tax-refund, or programs to build hospitals in under-serviced areas or to train more doctors, nurse-practitioners and mid-wives. Or what ever. It wouldn't cost a cent more, and fewer babies would die.

Just takes political will. Not a GOP quality, apparently

onthebottom said:

Many do, mine do.

Click to expand...

Because we work for employers big enough that they can get a good plan for their employees. Self employed people, and employees of small businesses, cannot get those kinda of plans for anything close to the premiums we and our employers get.

Corporate plans in the US are generally quite good.

But it sucks for everyone else.

A good solution would be to automatically extend Medicare to everyone not covered by a corporate plan. Keep your plan. Let people in small businesses pool together into a big enough population that they can get good coverage.

Also replace COBRA with automatic migration to the Medicare plan if you lose your job.

People can be charged a premium. A good way to do that would be to impose a healthcare tax on everyone but grant tax credits for premiums paid to a private plan so that effectively it's no new tax on you if you already pay the premium through work but otherwise everyone's automatically included.

Medicare then becomes a baseline and your employer can provide you with a better, premium plan as a perk.

Roughly speaking, fuji, you have described how our healthcare plan was brought in. We were required to pay premiums directly if we didn't have a payroll or group plan, but they were deductible at tax time, and that got everyone on the same minimal footing.

Those without the means could apply for premium assistance. Employers continued to use good insurance to attract and keep employees. With everyone covered and cash moving, it was straightforward accounting to see what it all cost. Eventually it was obvious that simply eliminating separate premiums and rolling those same amounts into taxes would save everyone time trouble and paperwork, without infringing anyone's ability to buy or offer a better plan. And because all that was known to be in the works, but over an extended period, the insurance industry and its employees adjusted without too much turmoil.