I've watched the last two democrat debates and they love to talk and talk and talk about their health care plans. They don't really seem to be able to explain them well in a debate forum but I'm sure that if they were down it writing, which they probably are on their websites, they would be a bit more understandable. I had what I consider to be an epiphany on the issue this morning.

See, I don't like nationalized or socialized healthcare since they are definitely flawed systems. It might be free for everybody but you can also die waiting. The American way of doing it seems to be cost prohibitive for many people. It seems to me that Obama and Hillary are at least focusing on the right area (not that McCain wouldn't, I'm just referring to recent debates) which is health insurance.

Now, many of you are going to be disgusted by what I am about to propose but you have to keep an open mind and consider some facts that I will use to support my idea. Here it is.

Health insurance companies should pay no federal taxes.

There it is. In order to understand why I think this would improve the current situation you have to understand these facts. All business look at their taxes as an expense. A cost of doing business. The must budget for them and ensure that the income covers the expense. That means the expense of paying the tax is indirectly passed on to every policy holder when they pay their premiums. Eliminating the tax will directly result in lower premiums for all. Lower premiums means more people will be able to afford coverage. Not imposing governmental mandates means people do not lose choice.

Assumptions I make (which means I think I am right but have not researched nor do I KNOW are correct). I believe that the cost of instituting government subsidized insurance and health care would be greater than the diminished revenue brought in by eliminating the tax. I also understand that some laws and regulations would need to be drafted with regards to the types of policies available, legal actions permitted, etc. Obviously nobody here is an expert in the field so we have to base our theories on our ideology, wisdom, and assumptions.

I would also say that if health care is a right, why should government profit from the practice of healthcare? Now that I pose the question, I wonder if the tax break should also be extended to the actual healthcare providers to further reduce cost and, yes, I think that it should.

Now, I am not so naive to think that anything remotely similar to this would have a snowball's chance in hell of ever being enacted. But it should.

This wouldn't solve anything. They'd just make more money off it, rather than lower prices.

Also, you'd still have the (IMO far more serious) issue of bullcrap rules such as "pre-existing conditions". Forget affording coverage, what about when the companies simply refuse to cover you straight up, regardless of the price?

Also, I was under the impression that health care providers like hospitals already have massive tax cuts?

Solution? Kill everyone, then they can't complain

This argument has been used before with regards to other things but I don't believe history bares this out. One simply must look at the airline industry to find out about price wars. I simply don't agree but, like I said, some additional laws or regulations would certainly be drafted. That beyond our scope. What is not beyond our scope is what philosophical changes or program one might believe would lead to a better system.

give more money to rich healthy people, that'll save the poor sick people.

Airports don't get tax cuts nor are they in any way interfacing with the government other than the FAA. Try again.

End the war, fund universal healthcare. Not that it'd be a short route, but it's the one we should take--we'd be trading down in debt and trading up in international credibility. Win/win.

But all most republicans (I said republicans, not conservatives for a reason) see is "OH NOES THAT MEANS THAT WE HAVE TO PAY MORE TAXES", when there's an easy solution to that--which I already explained.

I wasn't trying anything. I didn't say anyone in the airline industry got tax cuts. But the fact remains that competing companies lower rates compared to their competition to attract customers.



Ending one war to fund health care is a stupid position. Do we then end health care when the next war comes along? "International credibility" should not be a factor in providing health care. Adopting a faulty universal health care system which will add to the debt and gain us "international credibility"? Come on now, the purpose of the thread is to propose your solution to the issue.



What is that, never engage in war? I'm not sure what your reason for the distinction between Republicans and Conservatives are unless it is that not all Republicans are conservative and that conservatives are even more likely to be against universal health care.

Again, please post your ideas or when you decide to pigeon hole mine, please offer your alternative.

Before talking about a national health care plan, I'd like to see some kind of limitations or regulations put on medical malpractice suits. The sheer legal expenses are insane. I also think there is something very wrong with a large portion of medicine being for profit.

i think the initial costs of a universal health care system would be huge but once it's in place the US could go back to spending trillions on imposing themselves on others for control and profit. and they would have more healthy people to send to do their bidding.

but i digress.
i'm a huge fan of universal health care. it's benefits far outweigh it's problems (like so called wait times). i'm speaking as a relatively healthy father of 2 healthy tweens with a mostly healthy extended family living in the burbs.

the fact is that most americans can not afford the astronomical costs of emergency health care and the limits insurance companies impose.
an example of an ontarian,
i can truly go anywhere in canada and go to any hospital and be looked at by any doctor and it'll still be paid for. no one hospital or doctor is off any list. i can be hiking in northern ontario and fall off a cliff. i can be picked up by a helicopter and taken to the closest hospital for emergency care. 3 days later i can be transported by air or ground to a larger facility in toronto (for example) and stay there for 18 months while i learn to walk again and they put my head back together. the only thing i'll have to pay for is the prescription drugs if i need any. it'll cost the tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars but we all know we have the same coverage if something happens to any of us. car crashes, fires, disease... no worries or stress about how and where we'll get the money to pay for these things.
you can't put a dollar figure on that. and our 'extra' taxes can easily be compared to paying $370/mo. for a family of four (what i was paying in sacramento in 1998) for insurance.

i care about my family and my neighbours and the people in my community. my tax dollars pay for the health care of all of them and when i see one of them suffering medically and they're going for treatment i know i'm helping. it's an american thing to see your neighbours suffering and you look at them and shrug your shoulders and say "that's sad but too bad you can't afford it." we care about each other and we put our money where our mouths are. it's worth every cent.

twenty-two thousand dollars to have a sliver of metal removed from an eye? the same thing happened to me and it cost $0. twenty-six hundred dollars deductible for for an appendectomy that was covered. what?!? i'm not a car. what deductible?

there's no question a healthy less stressed population that is already over-burdened with debt is a more productive happier population.

in some form or another the US needs universal health care. there will always be complaints and/or problems but it has to happen. it absolutely amazes me that 300M americans still allow the health care system there to operate the way it does. unfortunately the rich in america control policy and reform and they can pay for health care and they truly do not care about those that suffer. that's an obvious fact proven by looking at the "best health care (if you're a multi millionaire) in the world".

the US just has to do it and quit analyzing the hell out of it and debating it.

oh and, i listened to a podcast, futures in biotech on the twit netcast network, and the guest spoke about gene mapping and health insurance.
he said mapping someone's genes and knowing what they may be predispositioned for will help them focus care and make it less expensive for the insurance companies.
there's some law tabled at the moment, backed by the insurance companies, that says you can't genetically discriminate same as you can't racially discriminate.
i'm sure there's some politics behind it but that's the basis of it.

Insurance doesn't. They don't streamline the system, or press doctors to lower fees, in fact there's a long long chain of inefficiencies. Why? They all make money, why change the formula?




1) Ending one war...it needs to be ended as is. People are pushing for it (the majority of Americans) and honestly, there's nothing we can do. And the next war shouldn't be anything except a major war (Korea's backing down, Iran's been quiet) and shouldn't happen for a while if we act intelligently. By then I'm sure we'll have figured a way for it to fit into the budget--not rock bottoming interest rates so people who buy houses they can't actually afford and then having them default on their loans is a start.
2) International credibility's just a bonus.
3) That is my solution, and your only credible argument hasn't been fully explored, so I suggest on point 1.


Neo-republicans aren't conservatives (at least on expenditure issues), thus the distinction. And ending a war in which all we do is generally ramp up our induction for the army/air force/marines/navy so that your average joe can join the army, go to Iraq, and have a decent fear for his life/kill helpless innocents sounds like a good idea to me. We need to trim the military a bit and get a decent amount of our troops out of Iraq.

Oh, and we should finally say "**** the middle east" and stop buying our poppies from afghanistan/the like and just switch to fully homegrown or synthesized opiates, and really push to find alternatives. Pain relief shouldn't be euphoric, it shouldn't be highly addictive, and it shouldn't be easier to get than a blowjob at a bar on a friday night. At the very least, we should try to limit how easy it is to get mu-opioid receptor drugs (morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl, etc). And yes, this DOES relate to our expenditures--if our government controlled opiate production alone, we'd not only save billions a year, but stop funding the ****ing other side of the "war" we fight.

I think they need to do something about the malpractice suits. That's tricky and I don't know what specifically they would do since there are people who genuinely deserve compensation for medical mistakes and they have to be able to get it, but all of the stupid crap drives up the price of malpractice insurance which drives up the cost of health care itself.

We also need to lower the cost of pharmaceuticals and ban them from advertising to the public.

And some sort of partial subsidization of health care to lower the costs but a) That gets to be tricky ground and b) we're already in so much debt, there's no way we could justify that. We would need to raise taxes like crazy, which would be a hard bill to pass.

So let me get this straight, Yosh. End the current war but channel the DoD funding to universal health care? Is that the plan, basically?

Total amount of money spent on the war to date is estimated around $500 billion dollars. That translates to an average of about $125 billion per year.

Total amount spent on health care in America in 2005 (its gone up since then), about $2 trillion dollars.

I fail to see how stopping the war in Iraq is going to fund universal health care.

This is due to private practices mostly. While I agree, in general, private practice is going to be more efficient, for health care you're looking at a system where doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies all profit more out of screwing the consumer instead of providing what they want at an affordable cost. Why? Everyone needs health insurance.

Now you bring the government in and the first thing they're gonna do is clean it up, but add a bunch of paperwork. The government, if it were to go through with this, would be pressed to spend the LEAST amount of money possible so first thing they'd do is cutback. Why do you need to pay 300 dollars just to GO to the doctor? Why are emergency room visits 1000 dollars to walk through the door? Etc etc.

Also, you have to take into consideration what role prescription medicines played in that--most universal healthcare systems don't include prescriptions and I think that's the most intelligent route.


More or less, with some more minor stipulations, but basically so. Taxes would still get raised, but you'd end up with free health care. I'm also for socialized Universities but there's no way to justify that kind of expenditure in the budget as is unless we just say "**** it" and go socialist.

Dude, you have a serious misunderstanding of how government spends money. It will be worse when the government pays for it. Ask anyone who works for the government about the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse. I guarantee you that all of us government employees on this forum will have numerous examples. I could go on far more but you are naive if you think the government will reduce cost.

First, I know of no government program where they have ever even attempted to spend the least amount of money, and everytime you try to have any sort of cutback in a government program, you get all the employee's and benefactors of that program complaining, as well as on many occasions congress itself. Cutting back on healthcare? Yeah, I can already see the public outcry that will happen on that.

Second, you pay so much right now for health care because doctors are not only extremely specialized workers but also massively in debt and need to pay that off from all the training they have been doing. Combine that with the ridiculous amounts that they have to spend on insurance, and you end up with expensive visits to the doctor.

So if we remove the n% government tax on too much money, we've got too much money minus n%. Fantastic savings! Now everyone can get an artificial limb for their paraplegic son.

And you make an excellent point. Having to wait for healthcare is horrible, people with terminal illnesses will just die. You shouldn't help a percentage of those people because those others might start getting hope that they'll survive. Everyone should just realize that their family can't afford their life. That's a better idea.

Every time someone gets sick we should send them to Michael Moore

He will know what to do

Kirb, can you post a little more plainly what you think about my idea because I am interested in your opinion of it. Remember, my goals (mainly) are to 1) keep government out of it as much as possible because I believe that government screws most things up and 2) dramatically reduce the cost to the consumer.

Hahaha America can't have universal health care because making poor people healthy is communism.

nah, you are just upset that your healthcare is swamped with suicide victims.

That would be the morgue, hotshot.

No one goes to the morgue right away.

They do if they're dead

The solution to all debates is that you stop arguing.

Why do opponents of nationalized health care always seem to bring up wait times like they're some kind of trump card? As if we in the U.S. are morally superior for pricing a segment of the population out of the system completely so the rest don't have to wait in line? It's absurd and shameful.

Simple. America rejoins us as one of our colonies and if they can learn not to waste perfectly good tea, we'll share the secrets of the NHS with you.
You can't say we're not generous!

i agree with Michael MacFarlane. what's all this about wait times? it's not like you go to the hospital and wait 36 hours for stitches or 12 hours for a cast for a bad break. where do americans get this information? the rich policy makers spewing propaganda.
and as far as wait times go for medical equipment, is there one MRI machine for every ten americans or something so they can get in one 10 minutes after they walk into an emergency waiting room without notice? and how much does that cost? $40K? $50K? i can wait for 60 days max or 3 days max or 12 hours max depending on urgency and it costs me nothing. nothing people.

Guys, come on, there is a middle road between total 'communist' systems of healthcare and totally privatized systems, you know.

A lot of people here keep bringing up the British example of why socialized healthcare is a bad idea, but it's a very extreme example.

I live in the Netherlands, and I must say our healthcare system is really good.

Health insurance is obligatory for everyone. Depending on your income, you can choose from several packages that cover healthcare costs. The difference between a cheap package and an expensive package is that a cheap package will cover most costs, but there are limits on how many times per year a treatment will be refunded, and for some expensive treatments you will have to pay a certain percentage as 'own risk'. But basically you can get any treatment with the basic package. If you don't want these limitations you can get a more expensive package. People who don't have insurance get fined. But even when you're poor you should be able to afford it since the government subsidizes a percentage of your insurance fee if you're on a minimal income. Those who have an 'own risk' in their package get a partial refund at the end of the year if they didn't exceed a certain limit in costs. There are a lot of insurance companies, and people can shop around and take a package from the company that suits their needs best. You can change insurance every year.

There are government clinics and private clinics. There are practically no waiting times for treatments and operations since the government funds the community hospitals out of the health tax that everyone pays for. Waiting times apply for very unique treatments and operations only, and they could be worse. Private clinics are more expensive, and they may help you quicker in some cases, but that doesn't mean the treatment you get there is better. In fact, research has shown that the quality of treatments in community hospitals is often better than in private clinics, since a lot of private clinics tend to maximize their profits by prescribing unnecessarily expensive medicine that people often don't even need, and doing expensive operations where simpler and cheaper treatments would suffice. In government funded clinics and hospitals there is more control on the quality of treatments and the correctness of procedures.

It's an affordable system, for both the government and the people, and the quality of healthcare is good.

The trouble with health care is that everyone is screwing everyone. Doctors are screwing insurance companies with stupidly high prices, insurance companies are screwing consumers with stupidly high premiums and consumers are screwing doctors and insurance companies with retarded high pay out law suits simply because modern medicine couldn't help them.

Pharmaceuticals are in cahoots with insurance companies by charges exactly the deductible for everything, and consumers are screwing pharmaceuticals by buying generics as soon as they come out which often puts the pharmaceuticals in a bind to offset the cost of R&D.

It's a really bad system. Fixing the courts so that you don't have situations where idiots where away with retarded amounts of money just because they're too fat to be properly treated would go a long way to fixing it though. If we remove that from the equation it becomes a lot more clear whether we're just getting screwed or not. That will make regulation of the market easier, so all we have left to do is find some way to make sure everyone can get access to at least basic health care.

I don't understand what's so bad about the system, i've had nothing but good experiences.

When I was ill last year, I went to a doctor they said i'd need to go to hospital. They called the ambulence and it was a non-emergency call so I waited a mere 30 minutes for the ambulence to arrive, there was a lot of traffic on the roads so it took another 20 minutes to get to the hospital (not allowed to use sirens if it's not an emergency).

From there I was triaged almost immediately and given a cubicle to wait for a doctor, I was waiting for 15 minutes and then a doctor came along and gave me a blood test and took my vitals. An hour later I was in the observation ward with my own bed and a drip in my arm.

There were nurses around 24x7 and they were very friendly, once I was allowed to eat again I got free food and drink, prescription meds were also free since they were made up whilst I was in hospital.

After a day or so I was moved to a different ward whilst I waited for the meds to make me well enough to go home, my ward had a fantastic view overlooking parliament. When I was allowed to go I was given 2 weeks worth of prescription meds for free and a 2 followup appointments were made.

At no point was I given a bill because this is all covered by a perfectly acceptable percentage of my taxes.

Also, ultrasounds feel awesome.

The Swedsh model is the solution to your problems.

But the Swedes are commies

The only long waits you really hear about A+E anyway, because thats where the majority of people end up, I'm sure you can usually stand to wait about 2 hours for a broken finger or something.

Apart from that, organ transplants but that isn't the fault of the NHS, thats the fact that they're aren't enough donors.

Yes, that's pretty much the way it works in the Netherlands, except since a few years we have a bit more freedom on how much we want to pay for it.

When we made the transition to the new system, insurance fees doubled or tripled, though. But like I said, this is compensated for people with low to average wages. Medicines and treatments themselves, are not extremely expensive either. Although I wouldn't want to pay for an operation by myself. I have the most expensive package, but it's still very affordable with compensation. I can send all my bills to my insurance and I get 100% returns most of the time. I see the bills, and I'm glad I don't have to pay for them. What I pay for insurance per year is but a fraction of the total of my dentist bills.

[EDIT]Also, I can go see my doctor as often as I want, and I never have to pay for medicine at the apothecary. Not even if they would be medicines for chronic disease.

So, I agree Detty, yay for socialized healthcare!

Insurance companies are still incredibly inefficient and bogged down in far more beurocracy than a nationalised system because they spend so much time in conflict and lawsuits with customers over coverage. Giving the insurance companies a tax break will only give them a slight relief from rising healthcare costs, but it won't change anything.

There is something inherently wrong with the system. You need to change the system of healthcare, not just free up more money to plough into a business model that doesn't work.

The inherent problem with insurance companies are that the population selects the company. The concept of insurance companies relies on the idea that out of 1000 people that buy insurance, most of them will stay healthy and well which will pay for the few people that get ill. A nationalised system is precisely this idea too, just there is one 'company' for the entire nation. When everyone is covered and the sample of 1000 people is essentially random, this idea holds. The money that you pay into insurance does not go into paying for your healthcare, it pays for everyone else's (and everyone else pays for you). If the vast majority of people stay healthy for a long time, there will be enough money in the company to pay for the few that fall ill and this concept will work.

However, with a privatised system the reasonably healthy people will choose not to be covered. This means that the 1000 people covered will be disproportionately ill people and there will not be enough money in the company to pay for them. The only possible result is rising healthcare costs for the disproportionately ill, and the disproportionately ill are the disproportionately poor that cannot afford the rising healthcare costs. The only possible result is people dying.
Clearly, the system doesn't work. Having everyone covered and funding the coverage by taxation is the only way to generate enough money to fund the system. It might seem 'unfair' that the healthy people are paying for the healthcare of the unwell, but the point is that you do not know when you will fall ill. You don't know if you are a 'healthy' person or not, even if you are healthy now you cannot be certain that you won't fall terribly ill in later life (and privatised insurance companies are based on precisely the same idea, the healthy people pay for the ill). If you do, and you cannot personally fund your own healthcare, a nationalised system is the only way you can be covered.
With privatised healthcare, you may think you are healthy and take the risk not paying for insurance (which is quite a risk in itself). With nationalised healthcare, you don't have to.

Yeah, but then it isn't a free market system, so the overall quality goes down to some degree, and either gets underfunded or the doctors start hosing the government. If it's underfunded, there won't be enough doctors, and if it's overfunded, it just makes the almost impossible task of paying for it all the worse. Besides there are enough jerk doctors as it is. We need more choice, not less.

Another problem with health care being nationalized, is that everyone will start thinking they deserve the most expensive possible procedure that medical science has to offer, even if it's the result of stupid lifestyle choices.

On the other hand we can't have people dieing in the streets because they can't afford basic medical care, either. I mean, it's the most efficient way, but it's hardly moral.



Wait- what? That's not the case at all.

I think by ignoring posts with quotes you get a much more rational page.

I think there's some good points brought up on this page that could make the health care system right now, while we make inroads for a more permanent national health care system; specifically, the idea of banning pharmaceutical advertisements, capping malpractice suits, and the like.

There's probably a middle ground, somewhere. But all those middle grounds tend to be "pay and you get better service", "don't pay and you get taken care of, but not to the fullest extent possible."

I don't think that's much of a solution, it creates this class issue where the rich get taken care of better, which just shouldn't be there in the most industrialized, succesful nation on Earth when it comes to healthcare.

In Canada, the overwhelming majority of people who see their doctors are visiting them for no real reason. Fully-public healthcare rewards hypochondriacs. On the other hand, fully-privatized healthcare only rewards people with more money than they know what to do with - and the American system of overwhelming corruption and price collusion is a pretty good example of why Adam Smith should have done a little more work on the whole idea of capitalism.

The answer is somewhere between. I know for a fact that the American system can't take being overloaded by all of the maladies and obesity-related afflictions of the underclass, but I also don't think the system should be run by sociopathic murderers who kill little girls because organ transplants are too expensive even though her family pays for full coverage. Maybe the solution is to execute the directors and claim evaluators at every HMO? That's what I'd do, but I've been known to be extreme.