Majority of Americans Support Free Healthcare

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Very clever! If I replied in the typical autistic-who-can’t-avoid-being-bound-by-logic way, I’d have to waste a long time writing a long dissertation about how opportunistic it is to single out Jews and the Holocaust, when the same criterion applies to everyone else who has ever suffered from any calamity, and even then you’d probably succeed at making me look like a Nazi sympathizer.

But I know better than that now! Screw logic! Stop putting words in my mouth!

One of the problems with American Healthcare is how inflated the prices have become due to the insurance industry. Let's say a simple doctors office visit in a country that has no such thing as health insurance costs $25 and to have your appendix out it costs $900.

Now an insurance company comes along and says you know $900 is kind of a lot of money to have to pay it ones. What if you're in some horrible accident and you need a lot of surgeries and hospital stays? By our health insurance for $15 per month and we'll pay 50% of your medical bills after you pay $50 out of pocket.

This it first seems like a good deal, but here's what happens.

You go to the doctors not just two times in one year but let's say three times. The third time, your health insurance company has to pay half of your $25 bill, but they don't want to. They leverage their customer pool and they say to the doctor's office, hey we have this many subscribers in your area. We can send a lot of them your way but we refuse to pay $14.50 per visit for them. How about we pay $10 per visit for then and call it even.

In fact every time the insurance company gets the bill from the doctor's office for one of their subscribers they try to negotiate it down lower and lower. The doctor's office can't afford to lose all the subscribers that the insurance company sends their way but the doctor's office also needs to be able to make enough money to stay in business. So what did they do? They actually raised their list price from $25 to $50 with the expectation that the insurance company will negotiate back down to $25.

The doctor's office has to hire additional staff to process all of the insurance paperwork so they must raise their rates again. This time they raise their rates to $100 with the expectation that the insurance company will negotiate it down to $50.

At this point the patient is paying the $25 they would have paid before the insurance company ever came along, and the doctor's office has $25 in expenses per visit that they didn't have before the insurance company came along.

Recently I had a doctor's office visit and they forgot to bill my insurance and sent the entire bill to me. A simple office visit was $600.

They charge this price because this is the price that is the base point for negotiating with the insurance companies. When it was free processed and sent to my insurance company they negotiated it down to less than half, paid their share and left the rest to me.

I paid about 55 to $60 out of pocket for this visit. This is about what I would expect to pay at this point in time in a country where health insurance just didn't exist at all.

You might say well hey $55 to $60 is reasonable for a doctor's office visit, and I would agree, only I have a monthly insurance premium of $600 on top of that.

I can't get rid of the health insurance company now because medical prices are so greatly inflated to accomodate the insurance companies that I would not be able to absorb the cost of even a simple, routine surgery if I needed one. Got $900 appendectomy is now between $27,000 and $100,000 depending on the hospital and has it at. And as an individual I don't have the leverage needed to significantly negotiate down the prices like insurance companies can.

Pet health insurance still relatively uncommon here. It costs about $60 for a vet visit and about $70 for blood work. My healthcare provider charges $600 for that same blood work. The insurance company negotiates down pays their share and I still pay $70 out of pocket for it, but on top of my $600 premium.

If pet health insurance becomes mainstream, people are soon going to be paying $4,000 for things that initially cost $500 before pet health insurance.

I think the idea is that health care is covered the same way as we have public schools, police, firefighters, roads, roadwork, streetlights, sidewalks, military, prisons etc etc. The same way it is in many other first world countries.

I'm guessing the problem for America doing the same is that in those other countries the health care system never became the greedy racket it is in the US.

As SH90 pointed out, Universal Healthcare is not free. It's not perfect, either. But taxpayer funded healthcare here in Canada delivers an acceptable-ish level of service at a reasonable price. Our per capita spending is lower than in the USA, and I believe our citizens are also healthier, so we get a better value for our healthcare dollars spent, too.

Ding ding ding.

Know what doctors recently did with their raise in one Eastern Canadian Province? They collectively petitioned the government to take the money they were going to give them a raise with and hire more desperately needed nurses and support staff with it instead, so they can deliver better quality care. Canadian medical culture is dramatically different from the one of massive self interest and greed that's so pervasive in American healthcare.

American politicians are owned by corporate interests, lobbyists, and PAC's. Their hands are tied.

But American Billionaires can go ahead and buck the system.

I hope these guys create something workable for their own employees, and that it then becomes a model for more/all Americans.

http://time.com/money/5124642/warren-bu ... nce-costs/

I'm glad that Warren Buffet is so generous.

Of course, we need to remember that Buffet is the exception and not the rule. Most billionaires are far more cruel than Buffet is.

Even Buffet admits "The is a class war and my class is winning."

Don't worry. The Trumptards are working to fix all of those things, by charging for them. They keep converting more and more free roads to toll roads. Eventually Americans won't be able to leave their homes without paying the all great conservatives for the privilege of walking out their front door.

^ At least I can swim!

I wouldn’t count on the ocean remaining unowned indefinitely. After all, privatizing it is the way to solve once and for all the problem of pollution. And the same goes for the atmosphere. Besides, once you have to pay for every breath of air, all the problems of poverty will be solved very quickly

The title is not accurate.

The article: "A new poll found 59% of Americans support a "national Medicare-for-all plan."

People on Medicare have to pay a monthly insurance premium, and co-pays.
https://www.medicare.gov/your-medicare- ... lance.html

The polling never asked whether it should be completely free of cost.

That sounds like much of the premise of the Mars government in TOTAL RECALL.

Medicare can only be "for all" if it is free, since some Americans are dirt poor.

Not at all: if it’s owned by the government, it’s not privatized.



It can be for all if it stops being true that some Americans are dirt poor. Guess what’s the most economical way to achieve that

My mother is disabled and receives Medicare/Medicaid.

If some rich person can't afford another ivory back-scratcher because of it, I'm okay with that.



Well, I only make about $15,000 a year, and I'm not going to let you, or anyone else, kill me over it, so, there's that minor complication.

But the rich person may not be okay with being robbed, and they probably have more guns than you do, or can hire them, so there’s that minor complication.



Who said anything about killing? There’s a big difference between killing and letting die. You don’t have to get your hands dirty with the former when the latter is enough.