The Republican Thread

[StrangeSox]

The point remains that one party could hold the other party hostage during a negotation, and/or both parties could simply agree, to lower funding which would end up resulting in you not getting X treatment you may need. This is already happening although not with life/death care.

 

But in this country today, millions of people could be without any healthcare at all, millions more would not have any without Medicare and Medicaid (and other programs like SCHIP), and most of the rest of us could be in a pretty s***ty healthcare situation today if our bosses decided to fire us on a whim. The non-governmental alternative, abandonment of the employer-based health insurance system, would leave millions more uninsured than we have now because unsubsidized individual plans are pretty ridiculously expensive.

 

edit: and even for those of us with health insurance, private insurance companies motivated by profit and not social welfare get to decide whether your treatment or doctor or facility is covered and how hard they're going to fight to deny your claims. Every objection along these lines to a socialized health care system already exists in the private system.

Edited October 23, 2013 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

That'd be another huge problem. Accurate billing and corruption would be a nightmare.

 

Would billing be more or less of a nightmare going to a single source versus having to go to multiple different providers with dozens of different plans and options?

[Jenksismyhero]

But in this country today, millions of people could be without any healthcare at all, millions more would not have any without Medicare and Medicaid (and other programs like SCHIP), and most of the rest of us could be in a pretty s***ty healthcare situation today if our bosses decided to fire us on a whim. The non-governmental alternative, abandonment of the employer-based health insurance system, would leave millions more uninsured than we have now because unsubsidized individual plans are pretty ridiculously expensive.

 

edit: and even for those of us with health insurance, private insurance companies motivated by profit and not social welfare get to decide whether your treatment or doctor or facility is covered and how hard they're going to fight to deny your claims. Every objection along these lines to a socialized health care system already exists in the private system.

 

At least with the private insurance model you have options - you can buy into a higher plan if you know that you're eventually going to have heart disease issues or obesity or whatever because of your family. You can plan for that. I did that with my kid. My wife and I paid for a better insurance plan because we knew we would be starting a family, so guess what, we paid a little more and got better coverage. I don't get that option when the only person paying my bills is the government.

[Jenksismyhero]

Would billing be more or less of a nightmare going to a single source versus having to go to multiple different providers with dozens of different plans and options?

 

When it's the government dealing with 300 million people, absolutely. Medicare is a nightmare to deal with, and I only do it from the legal side. I've heard horror stories from doctors bout the fights they have to have just to get paid for services they rendered 6 months ago.

 

The biggest driving force in our economy is a company wanting your business/wanting to not lose your business. The government does not have that concern.

[StrangeSox]

At least with the private insurance model you have options - you can buy into a higher plan if you know that you're eventually going to have heart disease issues or obesity or whatever because of your family. You can plan for that. I did that with my kid. My wife and I paid for a better insurance plan because we knew we would be starting a family, so guess what, we paid a little more and got better coverage. I don't get that option when the only person paying my bills is the government.

 

I don't know how many countries completely forbid private insurance (or private care if they've nationalized care e.g. NHS), but I'm not aware of any that do. If you have the means, you can always pay for luxury items. But everyone is still guaranteed health care access as a baseline.

 

Tens of millions of Americans can't just buy into more expensive plans--they might not be able to afford any plan at all. Certainly, those covered by the (partial, thanks CJ Roberts!) Medicaid expansion certainly couldn't. The people who are going to rely on the Obamacare subsidies to close the gap and get affordable insurance can't.

[StrangeSox]

When it's the government dealing with 300 million people, absolutely. Medicare is a nightmare to deal with, and I only do it from the legal side. I've heard horror stories from doctors bout the fights they have to have just to get paid for services they rendered 6 months ago.

 

The biggest driving force in our economy is a company wanting your business/wanting to not lose your business. The government does not have that concern.

But literally every other part of the civilized world doesn't have our clusterf*** of a system and typically gets just-as-good-if-not-better healthcare for substantially cheaper and with comparable or better wait times (even if you exclude the infinite wait times for people without health care access). Even if the current Medicare system is less than ideal, there is no reason to assume that a Medicare-for-all expansion could not include improvements to the billing process.

Edited October 23, 2013 by StrangeSox

[Texsox]

Why are you assuming birthers are Republicans? I seem to remember that coming very loudly from the Hillary camp back in the day. And it's not the birthers you have to worry about, its all the lame-ass Dems that wanna have a 'gotcha' moment who will be complaining the loudest, but not realizing that most people just don't care.

 

I am assuming that Republicans will vote in the Republican primaries and will be his biggest supporters for President. I could be wrong.

 

 

[Texsox]

I figured you'd go for the "it's just a big number to scare you!" response.

 

And include Medicaid all you want, that's a gigantic f***ing number. Goes along with the 90 MILLION able bodied people in this country not working right now. So glad we got an extra 5 people insured in ObamaCare before focusing on that number.

 

Where are you getting that 90 million number from?

 

308 million Americans at the last census.

75 million under 18

34 million over 65

9 million disabled and drawing benefits

5 million stay at home parents

185 million remaining

 

 

90 MILLION seems like a too big number. I've seen estimates ranging from 150 million to 160 million Americans are working. Leaving around 30 million who may be described as able bodied not worknig.

 

 

[Jenksismyhero]

But literally every other part of the civilized world doesn't have our clusterf*** of a system and typically gets just-as-good-if-not-better healthcare for substantially cheaper and with comparable or better wait times (even if you exclude the infinite wait times for people without health care access). Even if the current Medicare system is less than ideal, there is no reason to assume that a Medicare-for-all expansion could not include improvements to the billing process.

 

You can't look at it as a clean slate. We have an existing medicare system that is heavily flawed. We're not going to simply scrap entire departments and processes to create something new like other countries have, we're going to just expand the current system.

 

Name me an efficiently operated government branch/department. One that actually works within budget and to a decent level of satisfaction. It's incredibly rare, if not non-existent (I can't think of one, maybe the National Park Service?). I'm not sure why you would think a medicare-for-all type system would be any different.

[Jenksismyhero]

Where are you getting that 90 million number from?

 

From the Bureau of Big Numbers That Are Intended to Scare People But Are Actually Not Scary (aka Labor Statistics)

 

http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/10/22/more-...orce-new-record

 

 

[StrangeSox]

I think many government branches work well. Perfect? No. I think some, especially social welfare ones like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, have worked extraordinarily well. I see no reason to believe that an expansion of Medicare to all Americans would be some gigantic, disastrous thing. We also don't need a clean slate or to scrap entire departments to address whatever issues there are with Medicare.

 

If you believe that basically any government program is inherently doomed to failure, well, yeah, you're going to support market-based solutions even if we have plenty of real-world examples of effective government health access programs and plenty of real-world examples of the failures of our system. Hell, you don't even necessarily need to go to a single-payer system, you could do something more like Germany or the Netherlands. But absent any kind of government program (including the tax incentives our employers get to provide you and I with insurance), health care access for tens of millions, maybe even a majority if you dump Medicare and Medicaid because they're so terrible, will be non-existent.

[Texsox]

From the Bureau of Big Numbers That Are Intended to Scare People But Are Actually Not Scary (aka Labor Statistics)

 

http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/10/22/more-...orce-new-record

 

Interesting. 16 and above. See what you think about the numbers I posted above. I counted 18 to 65, subtracted out disabled and stay at home (by choice) parents.

[StrangeSox]

From the Bureau of Big Numbers That Are Intended to Scare People But Are Actually Not Scary (aka Labor Statistics)

 

http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/10/22/more-...orce-new-record

That 90 million number includes an awful lot of non-able-bodied people.

[cabiness42]

Interesting. 16 and above. See what you think about the numbers I posted above. I counted 18 to 65, subtracted out disabled and stay at home (by choice) parents.

 

I think that article was a fancy way of saying that a lot of people have retired.

[StrangeSox]

I also don't know why BLS numbers are supposedly intentionally scary?

[cabiness42]

I also don't know why BLS numbers are supposedly intentionally scary?

 

We add in some 'scary' in October for Halloween.

[Jenksismyhero]

I also don't know why BLS numbers are supposedly intentionally scary?

 

I was playing the role of Balta, where any big number has no meaning other than to scare people out of context.

Edited October 23, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

You are literally the Bogey Man and Frankenstein's Monster combined

[Jenksismyhero]

Here's the trend since 1990 (older graph, obviously still trending upwards):

 

 

Not good. But man i'm glad poor people can now pay just a little instead of nothing to get their free healthcare.

Edited October 23, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[Jenksismyhero]

Interesting. 16 and above. See what you think about the numbers I posted above. I counted 18 to 65, subtracted out disabled and stay at home (by choice) parents.

 

Lots of people work from 16-18. Not working at home by choice is, obviously a choice. But yes, that number shouldn't include the disabled and/or I shouldn't have used the phrase able-bodied. The vast majority of that figure are though, obviously.

[StrangeSox]

Here's the trend since 1990 (older graph, obviously still trending upwards):

 

 

Not good. But man i'm glad poor people can now pay just a little instead of nothing to get their free healthcare.

Uh yeah we should expect a pretty constant increase in the total number of "people not in the labor force" as our population grows.

 

 

You could point out instead that the labor force participation rate is down. That's a much more meaningful number than just the total. Which, again, isn't 90 million unemployed able-bodied people. It's every person 16 and over who isn't employed for whatever reason.

[StrangeSox]

related to the government-provided health care access, Kaiser has a paper on Medicaid's impact if you're interested.

 

http://kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/what-i...n-the-evidence/

[Cknolls]

The exchanges are one portion that is not working very well (at the federal level, I think most of the states that designed their own are doing okay). Many other parts have been implemented for a while (pre-existing conditions, coverage until 26, abolition of lifetime caps, Medicaid expansion) and are working fine.

 

Every 26 yr old on their parents insurance is one more person not subsidizing this boondoggle.

[Cknolls]

That 90 million number includes an awful lot of non-able-bodied people.

Right they are receiving SSI.....before you post a response......it is said in jest

Edited October 24, 2013 by Cknolls

[StrangeSox]

if you have to explain your joke...