It's better to avoid the most massive spending mistake in the history of humanity. The more government has been involved the worse the health care system has become. It's a direct correlation, and causal. Worse outcome than other nations and we used to have, and higher costs. The expense of complying with the existing single payer scams drive doctors out of that system (refuse to see medicare patients). All you are going to end up doing is to give the politburo an even more obscene amount of control over the people. The government is already so big that it isn't run well and can't control its costs. No government social program has lived up to its promised expenses or savings - ObamaCare is a case in point.
The benefits illegal immigrants get is a separate issue from whether we should have benefits at all to disproportionately help our poorer citizens.
I don't think Denny really understands what "far left" means. Of course, why should that be the one thing he understands?
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_myths_singlepayer_facts.php Facts about National Health Insurance (NHI) You Might Not Know The health care delivery system remains private. As opposed to a national health service, where the government employs doctors, in a national health insurance system, the government is billed, but doctors remain in private practice. A national health insurance program could save approximately $150 billion on paperwork alone. Because of the administrative complexities in our current system, over 25% of every health care dollar goes to marketing, billing, utilization review, and other forms of waste. A single-payer system could reduce administrative costs greatly. Most businesses would save money. Because a single-payer system is more efficient than our current system, health care costs are less, and therefore, businesses save money. In Canada, the three major auto manufacturers (Ford, GM, and Daimler-Chrysler) have all publicly endorsed Canada’s single-payer health system from a business and financial standpoint. In the United States, Ford pays more for its workers health insurance than it does for the steel to make its cars. Under NHI, your insurance doesn’t depend on your job. Whether you’re a student, professor, or working part-time raising children, you’re provided with care. Not only does this lead to a healthier population, but it’s also beneficial from an economic standpoint: workers are less-tied to their employers, and those that dislike their current positions can find new work (where they would be happier and most likely more productive and efficient). Myths about National Health Insurance (NHI) The government would dictate how physicians practice medicine. In countries with a national health insurance system, physicians are rarely questioned about their medical practices (and usually only in cases of expected fraud). Compare it to today’s system, where doctors routinely have to ask an insurance company permission to perform procedures, prescribe certain medications, or run certain tests to help their patients. Waits for services would be extremely long. Again, in countries with NHI, urgent care is always provided immediately. Other countries do experience some waits for elective procedures (like cataract removal), but maintaining the US’s same level of health expenditures (twice as much as the next-highest country), waits would be much shorter or even non-existent. People will overutilize the system. Most estimates do indicate that there would be some increased utilization of the system (mostly from the 42 million people that are currently uninsured and therefore not receiving adequate health care), however the staggering savings from a single-payer system would easily compensate for this. (And remember, doctors still control most health care utilization. Patients don’t receive prescriptions or tests because they want them; they receive them because their doctors have deemed them appropriate.) Government programs are wasteful and inefficient. Some are better than others, just as some businesses are better than others. Just to name a few of the most successful and helpful: the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and Social Security. Even consider Medicare, the government program for the elderly; its overhead is approximately 3%, while in private insurance companies, overhead and profits add up to 15-25%.
I can post links too but you'll hate on them: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money Lingering uncertainty about the fate of the Affordable Care Act has spurred the California legislature to consider adoption of a statewide single-payer health care system. Sometimes described as Medicare for all, single-payer is a system in which a public agency handles health care financing while the delivery of care remains largely in private hands. Discussions of the California measure have stalled, however, in the wake of preliminary estimates pegging the cost of the program as greater than the entire state government budget. Similar cost concerns derailed single-payer proposals in Colorado and Vermont. Voters need to understand that this cost objection is specious. That’s because, as experience in many countries has demonstrated, the total cost of providing health coverage under the single-payer approach is actually substantially lower than under the current system in the United States. It is a bedrock economic principle that if we can find a way to do something more efficiently, it’s possible for everyone to come out ahead. By analogy, suppose that your state’s government took over road maintenance from the county governments within it, in the process reducing total maintenance costs by 30 percent. Your state taxes would obviously have to go up under this arrangement. But if roads would be as well maintained as before, would that be a reason to oppose the move? Clearly not, since the resulting cost savings would reduce your county taxes by more than your state taxes went up. Likewise, it makes no sense to oppose single-payer on the grounds that it would require additional tax revenue. In each case, the resulting gains in efficiency would leave you with greater effective purchasing power than before. Total costs are lower under single-payer systems for several reasons. One is that administrative costs average only about 2 percent of total expenses under a single-payer program like Medicare, less than one-sixth the corresponding percentage for many private insurers. Single-payer systems also spend virtually nothing on competitive advertising, which can account for more than 15 percent of total expenses for private insurers. The most important source of cost savings under single-payer is that large government entities are able to negotiate much more favorable terms with service providers. In 2012, for example, the average cost of coronary bypass surgery was more than $73,000 in the United States but less than $23,000 in France. Despite this evidence, respected commentators continue to cite costs as a reason to doubt that single-payer can succeed in the United States. A recent Washington Post editorial, for example, ominously predicted that budget realities would dampen enthusiasm for single-payer, noting that the per capita expenditures under existing single-payer programs in the United States were much higher than those in other countries. But this comparison is misleading. In most other countries, single-payer covers the whole population, most of which has only minimal health needs. In contrast, single-payer components of the United States system disproportionately cover population subgroups with the heaviest medical needs: older people (Medicare), the poor and disabled (Medicaid) and returned service personnel (Department of Veterans Affairs). In short, the evidence is clear that single-payer delivers quality care at significantly lower cost than the current American hybrid system. It thus makes no sense to reject single-payer on the grounds that it would require higher tax revenues. That’s true, of course, but it’s an irrelevant objection. In addition to being far cheaper, single-payer would also defuse the powerful political objections to the Affordable Care Act’s participation mandate. Polls consistently show that large majorities want people with pre-existing conditions to be able to obtain health coverage at affordable rates. But that goal cannot be achieved unless healthy people are required to join the insured pool. Officials in the Obama administration tried, largely in vain, to explain why the program’s insurance exchanges would collapse in the absence of the participation mandate. But the logic of the underlying argument is actually very simple. Most people seem able to grasp it if you ask them what would happen if the government required companies to sell fire insurance at affordable rates to people whose houses had already burned down. No home insurer could remain in business if each policy it sold required it to replace a house costing several hundred thousand dollars. Similarly, no health insurer could remain in business if each of its policy holders generated many thousands of dollars in health care reimbursements each month. That’s why the lack of a mandate in the alternative plans under consideration means that millions of people with pre-existing conditions will become uninsurable if repeal efforts are successful. An underappreciated advantage of the single-payer approach is that it sidesteps the mandate objection by paying to cover everyone out of tax revenue. Of course, having to pay taxes is itself a mandate of a sort, but it’s one the electorate has largely come to terms with. Apart from fringe groups that denounce all taxation as theft, most people understand that our entire system would collapse if tax payments were purely voluntary. The Affordable Care Act is an inefficient system that was adopted only because its architects believed, plausibly, that the more efficient single-payer approach would not be politically achievable in 2009. But single-payer now enjoys significantly higher support than it did then, and is actually strongly favored by voters in some states. Solid majorities nationwide now favor expansion of the existing single-payer elements of our current system, such as Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid cuts proposed in Congress have been roundly criticized. Perhaps it’s time to go further: Individual states and, eventually, the entire country, can save money and improve services by embracing single-payer health care.
In December 2014, Vermont canceled its plan for single-payer healthcare.[63] Vermont passed legislation in 2011 creating Green Mountain Care.[95] When Governor Peter Shumlin signed the bill into law, Vermont became the first state to functionally have a single-payer health care system.[96] While the bill is considered a single-payer bill, private insurers can continue to operate in the state indefinitely, meaning it does not fit the strict definition of single-payer. Representative Mark Larson, the initial sponsor of the bill, has described Green Mountain Care's provisions "as close as we can get [to single-payer] at the state level."[97][98] Vermont abandoned the plan in 2014, citing costs and tax increases as too high to implement.[99]
You boys have been voting to eliminate my choices. Choice is pretty well gone now. I think you all deserve to be aware of the effects. It does shed light on the path you all want.
What the fuck are you talking about? Just recently you said your doctor order tests but you didn't like the wait it would take to have those tests done. I asked you what tests. You told me you didn't know. I said you should call your doctor's nurse and ask what tests. You didn't like that and complained about Obama. Then you wanted people to call their congressmen to get more money for your guberment healthcare. Then you complained more about waiting. Finally.... finally you say your doctor ordered an EKG. The average price of an EKG is $50. $50. So you would rather put your health in jeopardy and complain instead of pulling $50 out of your pocket and paying to have an EKG done. Those are the health care choices you are making.
You're the one repeating that fact like it means something. If we're talking Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan or some other shit hole countries that's not really applicable. Let's see your list.
Well, check out how well Oregon's Oregon healthcare plan covers cancer. The bottom line is they do dictate what to do. I have been posting about waiting for the VA. That is run by the Government you know. Check out the wait times in Canada, UK Most large Business would not save money. They self insure with costs as low as half the price of commercial insurance for their employees. I think it would be wounderful if small employers had a way to join so they could be collectively self insure and save also. That might be the biggest help to more people than anything that could be done. Just need a little help from the Federal government to enable the possibility. So this list is not facts, it is propaganda.
