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[Angle]

CREEPING SOCIALISM AND THE DEATH OF AMERICA

but no seriously, that's very interesting and completely visible. and unlikely to see any kind of change.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Dutchling]

thats so tru man

[mainiac]

Lemme know if this is behind a paywall, but evidently research suggests that it'd be about $100,000,000,000 cheaper to have universal health care in the US than the system we have now, due to administrative overhead.

Stop trying to take mah jerb away.

[FearfulJesuit]

An eagle named "bloated bureaucracy" landed on the IV stand and shed a single tear on the X-Ray machine.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

cheaper for whom?

[misko27]

100 billion dollars a year is a small price to pay for freedom.

But that's one sixth of what we spend on the military. We could increase military spending 14% with those savings! That's a whole lot more military. We could start giving DARPA blank checks again!

There's currently a stand-off in Congress between the Defense Hawks and the Deficit Hawks. The Deficit Hawks want to cut spending and the Defense Hawks want Military spending raised to pre-austerity levels. Universal Healthcare would make the math work.

[mainiac]

We could start giving DARPA blank checks again!

Ironically right now if Congress gave the Pentagon a blank check it would actually save us money.  A fuckton of money.  Between the earmarked procurements that the military doesn't want and the facilities that are marked for closure that Congress keeps voting to keep open it's a lot of money.

[Bauglir]

cheaper for whom?

Society in general. They're costs that have to be paid as part of insurance payments, which drive up premiums, or which have to be recouped through whatever government funding the hospital happens to be getting, which drives up taxes.

Obviously the people working these jobs would have to find some other line of work, so ultimately the money being used to pay them will still get spent somehow, but you have to realize that whatever else they'd do would almost have to be more productive than what they're already doing. Which is stopping people from getting health care. That is the only function the current system serves relative to universal health care.

[Lord Shonus]

The difference is that, to the average person, those costs are hidden. Any given insurer contributes so little a percentage of the money, and passes on so little a percentage of that percentage to an individual customer, that you can't look at your insurance payment and say "this $20 a month goes to pay hospital workers that work to deny treatment." If we went to a state insurance system or state-run healthcare system (both have good and bad points), the costs are borne by a single institution, and there will be highly paid attack dogs eager and willing to show you just how much YOU spend to treat THAT FAT GUY OVER THERE's diabetes, or THAT SMOKER's chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. Changing would be a net benefit financially, but it would be easy to make it look otherwise.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Honestly, this whole universal healthcare thing was just a whole lot of new infrastructure that wasn't needed. There were a relatively small percentage of americans that didn't qualify for either medicare or medicaid (there are others, but to simplify things) and weren't on their own insurance and instead of trying to pass legislation providing healthcare for that specific demographic, the democrats went full white knight and introduced this whole mess of a bill called the Affordable Care Act (which is the same as Obamacare for those foreign forumites, or who are otherwise unaware.) Now, it's created such a debacle for people on whether to sign up or not and it's seriously impeding the ability of some doctors to effectively care for patients. Hell, many people decided they'd rather just pay the penalty fee for not being on the new AFA plans at all.

Not to mention that the health insurance market was a HUGE one that employed millions of people (we are a service based industry anyways) and is now in a bit of a rock and a hard place, and subsequently, on somewhat of a decline. No one in that business is happy AT ALL, and I can say that most of my family (both nucleic and extended) has had affordable healthcare for all or most of their lives before the AFA. Now, to put that in perspective, I am neither rich nor poor, so take it how you will.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this, I truly do believe that congress would have one a better job if they had just dealt with the problem rather than creating a massive, blanket campaign for universal healthcare. A lot of people always say, "Oh, look how great it is in other countries like Canada!" to which I always reply, "Ya, look at the population size there. The logistics are significantly less of a burden on the bureaucracy." There are a slew of other problems, but i'm not really acquainted with the specifics of the bill well enough to discuss them. Also, recently we've been hearing less and less about the AFA. It's difficult to tell if that's just American media being cutthroat with their news cycles or if many of the problems have been fixed/became not-a-problems.

EDIT: @Baugsy: Wait, so is that article for or against Universal healthcare? Seems against it to me?

[Angle]

Basides - Those lazy bums don't deserve healthcare.

_/sarcasm

[mainiac]

snip

So of the three central reasons for the ACA, you only touched on one.  You deride as unnecessary the provisions that address the reasons you dont mention.

[SalmonGod]

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this, I truly do believe that congress would have one a better job if they had just dealt with the problem rather than creating a massive, blanket campaign for universal healthcare. A lot of people always say, "Oh, look how great it is in other countries like Canada!" to which I always reply, "Ya, look at the population size there. The logistics are significantly less of a burden on the bureaucracy."

I think your logic is working in reverse there.  The whole point is that universal healthcare requires less bureaucracy to operate.

Plus, if you want to talk about the root of the problem, it's that operating for profit in the medicine / health service industries creates conflicts of interest.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

snip

So of the three central reasons for the ACA, you only touched on one.  You deride as unnecessary the provisions that address the reasons you dont mention.

Ugh, whoops. I just wrote AFA a bunch of times didn't I? Goddamnit.

Anyways, I REALLY don't know. What reasons? Somehow avoiding free riders? Not making the government the sole payer for care? Like, don't take this as snark, I just really don't see the problems.

EDIT: @SalmonGod: As I understand it the ACA is less bureaucracy and expense for the government than if they provided and payed for all the care directly. Also, as I understand economics, competition in the health service industry is good for prices. I would agree that it probable also creates so called "conflicts of interest", but they are regulated at least nominally by the Gov't.