Raise taxes or ration health care? Why single-payer won't work in California. Yet

Sacramento Bee ^ | March 13, 2018 | Angela Hart

[artichokegrower]

Betty Doumas-Toto's health insurance premium rose nearly 48 percent in January, to $800 per month for an Affordable Care Act plan. She and her husband are both Los Angeles freelancers in the film industry and are draining their savings trying to keep up with their monthly payments.

[artichokegrower]

A Pomona mother of five named Claudia, who is undocumented, can't get health insurance because of her immigration status. She's losing her hearing, but can't afford tests a doctor ordered because the costs are too high.

So an illegal alien mother of five anchor babies is complaining that the residents of California won't provide her with free health care. What will happen when the citizens of Mexico, Central America and South America hear is that all you have to do is get across that border and you have free health care?

[Wuli]

“She and her husband are both Los Angeles freelancers in the film industry and are draining their savings trying to keep up with their monthly payments.”

Oh Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo; and they probably voted for Obama and applauded Obamacare - which is why their “Obamacare” premiums have gone up so much. They WANTED more government messing with health insurance markets, and they got it, and now their crying and blaming the health insurance companies.

[Thom Pain]

Raise taxes or AND ration health care? Why single-payer won't work in California. Yet EVER!

[poinq]

The reality is that we don’t have a choice between taxes and better health care. There is no reason why health care needs to cost so much. We should be able to get far better health care for far less. Its just our system does not allow people to choose. If people had the ability to choose vendors. And let those vendors charge an insurance plan with prices that were up front. People would do the right thing. Right now prices are hidden. And people rarely have a choice. even among insurance providers.

[miss marmelstein]

Mine went up to 2000 a month in Jan. ‘17

[Vendome]

A Pomona mother of five named Claudia, who is undocumented, can’t get health insurance because of her immigration status. She’s losing her hearing, but can’t afford tests a doctor ordered because the costs are too high.

I’ll bet she has a number of Apple product in her house and name brand clothing but, can’t afford $150 for a hearing test?

[youngidiot]

“I’m already paying 700 bucks a month for a policy. I’d rather have it be to a state system because the state is not going to have a big profit motive,” Seki said. “I’ve tried private insurance this long, and it’s not working. Single-payer wouldn’t be perfect, but at least it’d be controlled by a government entity with some public oversight and not a giant corporation.”

________

God Almighty, what an ignorant b*tch. We don’t have to speculate, “single payer” is being tried the world over and it results in high costs and rationed care. And she sees “profit motive” as some kind of unnecessary evil. Absurd.

[Vendome]

Take a vacation to Mexico and get your hearing tested:
https://psmag.com/economics/medical-tourism-is-booming-in-mexico

Gotta pretty cheap compared to the USA

[artichokegrower]

Wait till the senior citizens of California hear that the state is going to confiscate their Medicare to put the funds into the single payer pool. I have paid 50 years into Medicare and will pay $3,600 in Medicare taxes this year alone. Now my contributions will be pooled with someone sneaking across the border tonight so we can have the same quality of health care.

[alloysteel]

You cannot raise taxes enough to avoid eventually rationing health care.

Health care, in whatever form, is a scarce and often poorly utilized resource. The number of practitioners is just too few to adequately hold the hand of every head cold sufferer and sprained joint caused by self-induced foolishness. And to scatter and dissipate those few resources in such manner leaves that much less available for a real crisis, an epidemic of some mutated infectious agent, or the ravages of a serious life-threatening condition, by injury or extreme conditions.

Price has always been an effective rationing factor, when the individual is responsible for the costs. There is strong incentive then to take more economically sound steps for the preservation of one’s own health, and not to cast everything on the shoulders of others.

Some 95% of all human suffering is, in some way or another, self-induced.

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[Pelham]

Whatever Mexico wants, Mexico gets, courtesy of California’s One Party state government.

And no, that is not exaggeration.

[lurk]

The state of CA is spending tens of billions of Fed money on social programs.

If they seceded they would have to print their own currency and pay for all of this pork with that new currency.

The only way they could do this would be to tax everyone many times more than current rates.

What could go wrong?

[goldstategop]

The fly in the ointment: a single payer health care system would cost $400 billion, twice the sum of CA’s state budget.

And even the state’s Far Left Democrats are unwilling to enact the extremely oppressive level of taxes need to fund it.

If single payer can’t make it in Blue CA, its not going to find acceptance anywhere else in the country.

Free health care comes with a huge price tag,

[Delta 21]

Because you simply haven’t taken enough of other people’s money to pay for it.

[momincombatboots]

There is,precisely one reason healthcare costs so much. The insurance companies. They deny care, deny my rx if it is a single day early, raise my taxable premioums every year.
Ever seen an insurer resus anyone? No.
Get insurers out of health care.

[SES1066]

Single-payer wouldn’t be perfect, but at least it’d be controlled by a government entity with some public oversight and not a giant corporation.

IRS & Social inSecurity. Your Honor, I rest my case.

[catnipman]

article is full of deliberate lies:

Lie 1: “fueled by uncontrolled prices in America’s market-driven system.”

current medical system is the furtherest thing possible from an actual free market system.

Lies 2 & 3: “The Trump administration, meanwhile, is working to dismantle Obamacare and undo regulations put in place under former President Barack Obama aimed at controlling costs”

2. The singular one-size-fits-all, gold-plated Obamacare-mandated policy IS the reason premiums are soaring out of control.

3. Trump is trying to ABOLISH the one-size-fits-all obamacare policy in an attempt at allowing some OTHER types of much more affordable policies.

[Jeff Chandler]

She and her husband are both Los Angeles freelancers in the film industry

Translation: they work in a restaurant.

[i_robot73]

>
>>
The reality is that we don’t have a choice between taxes and better health care. There is no reason why health care needs to cost so much. We should be able to get far better health care for far less. Its just our system does not allow people to choose. If people had the ability to choose vendors. And let those vendors charge an insurance plan with prices that were up front. People would do the right thing. Right now prices are hidden. And people rarely have a choice. even among insurance providers.
>>
There is,precisely one reason healthcare costs so much. The insurance companies. They deny care, deny my rx if it is a single day early, raise my taxable premiums every year.
Ever seen an insurer resus anyone? No.
Get insurers out of health care.
>

It’s a multi-prong fix:

- Get GOVT out of meddling in the Free Market (kill X# birds w/ one stone); kill the welfare state in any/all forms.
- Remove 3rd party pay (IE: like car insurance, ‘owned’ and PAID by the policy holder). Whatever tax benefits employers currently enjoy, should be open to the policy owner.
- Open HSAs for all. H’Care costs (down to band-aids) should be pre-tax.
- Up front costs for ALL Rx\procedures\devices\etc.

I don’t recall my parents griping re: taking to the doctor. It was ‘pay @ window’ and you knew the $$ before seeing the doc.