ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Warren Dew]

(01-15-2017, 11:05 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-15-2017, 10:59 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-15-2017, 08:23 PM)Odin Wrote:

(01-15-2017, 10:56 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-14-2017, 11:03 PM)Odin Wrote: A lot of people already get insurance through their employer and those people don't want to pay the higher taxes needed for a single payer system. It's "I've got mine, fuck you".

More like, "I'd rather keep paying for my efficient private insurance than pay more for an inferior public monopoly like the VA or NHS."

Medicare as it currently exists can't even survive retirement of the full baby boom; even now, it has gotten sufficiently inadequate that supplemental insurance is pretty much required.

I have to agree with David, here, Medicare is vastly superior to private insurance. Your ideology is blinding you, Warren.

More likely yours is blinding you.

I dunno, Warren, the experience of other developed nations seems to suggest that, in the absence of a genuinely free market system (which would likely raise its own issues, albeit not the same ones), some form of universal insurance* would probably be cheaper and provide at least as good outcomes.

* An actual public monopoly along the lines cited by you (VA, NHS, etc.), less so.

Three points here.

First, perhaps the main reason they are cheaper is that alll the drug research is paid for by us, and they only pay the costs of manufacture.  Legalizing reimportation of drugs would fix that, making them pay their fair share of the research costs, and reducing the share we have to pay.

Second, their systems aren't like Medicare.  The most successful of the European systems, which is questionably more cost effective than our private insurance system after adjusting for drug prices mentioned above, essentially has the government paying for private insurance selected by the individual, and not paying the providers directly.  So the idea that Medicare for all is the way to go is highly questionable.

Third, if we're going to have a major revamp of the system, why not move to a genuinely free market system, or at least closer to it?