ObamaCare
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Klingsor
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Well, if you're serious, why stop at healthcare? Aren't you tired of paying for other people's schools and roads and bridges and libraries and parks and police forces and fire departments? Shouldn't they all just pay for those things themselves, if they can afford it, and go without if they can't?
What are you, some kind of socialist?
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Klingsor
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B_underguy1
Experimental Member
All but ignored in the multitude of media coverage about the ACA and its problems, Vermont has become the first state in the union to pass a single-payer universal health care law for its residents. It has a snappy slogan: Everybody in, nobody out.
The system will be fully operational by 2017, funded by Medicare, Medicaid, federal money for the ACA given to Vermont, and a slight increase in taxes. Everyone will be able to go to any doctor or hospital in the state free of charge. No plans to figure out, no insurance forms to sweat over, no gotchas.
Estimated to save 25%
Dr. William Hsaio, the Harvard health care economist who helped craft health systems in seven countries, was Vermonts adviser. He estimates that Vermont will save 25 percent per capita over the current system in administrative costs and other savings. Employers will suddenly be free to give raises to their employees instead of paying for increasingly expensive health benefits. All hospitals and health-care providers in Vermont will be nonprofit. Medicare recipients will no longer need to wade through an inch-thick book to choose supplemental plans and sort out other complex options in their Medicare enrollment.
As health-insurance problems keep arising, Vermont offers a ray of hope | MinnPost
The system will be fully operational by 2017, funded by Medicare, Medicaid, federal money for the ACA given to Vermont, and a slight increase in taxes. Everyone will be able to go to any doctor or hospital in the state free of charge. No plans to figure out, no insurance forms to sweat over, no gotchas.
Estimated to save 25%
Dr. William Hsaio, the Harvard health care economist who helped craft health systems in seven countries, was Vermonts adviser. He estimates that Vermont will save 25 percent per capita over the current system in administrative costs and other savings. Employers will suddenly be free to give raises to their employees instead of paying for increasingly expensive health benefits. All hospitals and health-care providers in Vermont will be nonprofit. Medicare recipients will no longer need to wade through an inch-thick book to choose supplemental plans and sort out other complex options in their Medicare enrollment.
As health-insurance problems keep arising, Vermont offers a ray of hope | MinnPost
If you believe in Freedom of Choice, then I should be permitted to decline all public assistance provided I don't have to pay into the system. I will pay cash. That's the choice I want to make. Maybe I'll regret it later, but I am an adult of sound mind, and I want to make my choice.
The ACA takes that choice away from me.
What I am saying is that my grandparents lived into their 90's. My parents are in their 80's and are extremely mobile and active, and haven't spent a day in the ER or the hospital. Longevity runs on both sides for me. With those kind of pot odds, I am certain I'd pay more into the system then get our of it, so shouldn't it be my choice not to play?
I would gladly sign away all my rights for public assistance if I was given exemption not to pay into the system. I cannot take my wealth with me, so why save it?
If I had a lesser pedigree, maybe I'd choose to buy something. But at least it WOULD BE MY CHOICE!
Not being an asshole here, but you do actually have a choice. You could not buy the healthcare and just pay the penalty. Considering the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate on the basis that the penalty for noncompliance was deemed a tax, this is merely you choosing to accept an increase in taxes as opposed to buying health insurance. In fact, the exact wording of the bill means that all the IRS can do is decrease your refund; there are no penalties whatsoever if you don't have one. You could just ask for there to be no deductions taken out of your paycheck, then pay anything you owe manually come April 15th.
So do you not want to get insurance and you make so little money that you can't rearrange it in order to not qualify for a refund? Then yes, in that case you have no choice. But if you do meet that particular set of circumstances, you probably qualify for Medicaid. If you make over that amount but would have qualified if your state expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, but your state didn't, then you're explicitly exempt under the law.
So really, this is just a slight raise in taxes (1%, scaling up to 2.5% in 2016), and it's one that with some fairly unoriginal restructuring of your finances with a W-4 form, you can completely and legally evade. What is your main concern here?
I'm really happy to see this. I had said before with the insurance companies that if they continued to be jerks, they would bring socialized medicine down on their own heads. Hopefully, once the system is up and fully operational in Vermont, people can start looking at it and making logical comparisons, rather than trusting the propagandized comparisons to the "failed" systems in the UK or Canada. That 25% figure will probably get much higher if a majority of the country gets on board.
B_underguy1
Experimental Member
Whatever failures the systems in the UK, Canada (and Australia) are suffering are caused by the push to privatise and to contracting services out to private providers.
The ideologues are wrecking the systems by design. It's the neoliberal modus operandi.
slurper_la
Superior Member
The U.S. Health Care System Is Terrible, In 1 Enraging Chart
The U.S. Health Care System Is Terrible, In 1 Enraging Chart
The U.S. Health Care System Is Terrible, In 1 Enraging Chart
B_underguy1
Experimental Member
Right now it's environmental wackos holding up infrastructure repair. It takes 18 months to get approval for power grid right of ways in Germany. It takes 14 years in the US.
B_underguy1
Experimental Member
There is a $2 trillion + need for upgrades and repairs to existing infrastructure, according to the engineering bodies.
That is not anything to do with the greens. That is a lack of political will to spend the money at the federal level i.e. right wing politicians.
Yeah, that was one of the programs that Obama briefly touched on near the beginning of his first term. He was overhauling government buildings in order to make them more modern and energy efficient. In addition to long term savings, he also talked about the jobs it would create in the short term to renovate or completely rebuild the structures. I only remember it because he defended the project with pretty much unassailable logic and made the opposition look kinda stupid for criticizing it.
The price tag on that was just a couple hundred billion though, a far cry from the $2 trillion you're quoting here. Is it just stuff on the federal level in that estimate, or would the states need to get on board too?
B_underguy1
Experimental Member
Obama baulked on the stimulus needed. Christina Romer, who is a conservative economist, proposed a $1.8T stimulus bill and was shot down by Obama to a $787B package that was half tax cuts, which are less effective than direct spending.
It was too little and too short.
The states (as users of the currency) are revenue constrained and suffering from the recession, so they need direct federal funding to carry out the work needed.
The $2T estimate was 3 or 4 years ago, so it's probably much higher by now.
