Repub Congress obivously won't fix health care like this, but it makes sense.
- Thread starter anon_xl72qcu5isp39
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"Hospitals and practitioners could set up entities that write their own insurance." What are those entities if they're not insurance companies?
On the whole it sounds like an idea that should be tried. Just eliminate the one entity that gums up the works on everything it seeks to oversee: the government.
I confess I am unfamiliar with Somalia's economic system. Do they have a fully functioning free market? Private property?
Totally free market. Yes, they have property. Someone may knock you in the head and take it, but they have property.
LOL, Insurance company's profits from premiums are regulated by the government. The billions in Insurance company profits the average person sees come from insurance companies investing the premiums they receive. What you see as big profits comes from investments not higher premiums. What has the stock market done over the last few years? You think there might be some correlation?
So, set up private insurance companies to underwrite the costs of providing healthcare? Brilliant! You should go forth and spread this novel idea.
I have a much easier to implement strategy that is 99.99% guaranteed to:
- have rapid and long-term benefits for hundreds of millions of Americans
- dramatically reduce the demand for healthcare
- PERMANENTLY LOWER our healthcare costs
- Free up doctor time, so doctors can spend more time with individual patients
This strategy:
1. Persuade Americans to eat more vegetables and leafy greens
2. Reduce the average American's sugar intake by 90%
3. Persuade Americans to perform a mixture of exercises 120 minutes per week (strength training, high intensity intervals, brisk walking)
4. Encourage people to get seven hours of sleep per day (with no cell phones in their bedroom)
5. Legalize marijuana, while banning cigarettes
6. Deport the people who created the fat acceptance movement to Somalia
This strategy is 99.9% likely to lower insurance costs forever, improve individual American health, and make American healthcare great again.
The answer is simple: universal health care. Now, there are numerous ways to obtain this. We could follow the example of Australia for example (which Trump has already praised) or we could follow some other model that may be more suited to our own needs. However, a universal health care system (be it a single-payer system or a modified single-payer system) is what we need and I believe, what we will eventually have.
Until we have that, we are also going to continue to see political grandstanding regarding this issue.
Until we have that, we are also going to continue to see political grandstanding regarding this issue.
While I support legalizing marijuana (as well as ending the so-called "War on Drugs"), why would you ban cigarettes? I understand the health concerns associated with cigarettes (as with any drug), but wouldn't banning cigarettes just create more problems?
People are going to still want their cigarettes.
From a true libertarian perspective, I'm generally for not banning things. (So in theory, yes)
But if we truly want better healthcare, lower healthcare costs, and a healthier population -- cigarettes (legal poison) should not be in the equation.
Reducing demand for healthcare is by far the most important (and most simple) way to solve our healthcare problems. Almost none of the retards in either political party (who are working for the same people) want to address this simple fact.
Cigarettes are still killing a staggering 480k Americans per year (see below), and causing many millions more people (sick from them) to drain our resources / waste Doctor time because of their monumentally dumb decision to poison themselves.
If we ban cigarettes (drain on resources), deport illegals (drain on resources), and get people healthier (using my simple and affordable recommendations above) -- our healthcare 'problems' could be resolved in two years. (Because demand for healthcare would plummet)
And we would be richer, safer and less stressed.
Cigarette death and illness stats: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/
I understand that the absence of cigarettes would help lead to a healthier population, but again, attempting to ban cigarettes is only going to create a whole other set of problems. It would just create problems that would, as you keep noting, be a drain on our resources.
Educational programs and directing other resources in an attempt to get people to stop smoking? Sure. Banning cigarettes in hopes that it will save us money? Bad idea.
You're calling for universal healthcare and for keeping cigarettes legal -- so you're asking everyone to pay for smokers monumentally bad decision making (and to wait longer in line for their own healthcare, because of smokers draining resources).
It's like you're trying to have it both ways.
Would you be up for universal healthcare for non-smokers only? (As a compromise - smokers could have their own special healthcare clinics)
The 'problems' from banning cigarettes (not necessarily prosecuting people for them - figuring out a way to do it creatively, i.e. making cigs hard to get) --- would be dwarfed by the massive benefits (and cost savings) across all other levels of society.
After a few years, almost nobody would miss cigarettes....
Are you going to try to ban alcohol again too? I am assuming you know the health care costs related to alcohol as well, correct?
You want to legalize marijuana...what about the negative health effects that marijuana has? Would we eventually have to ban marijuana again?
http://www.alcoholpolicymd.com/alcohol_and_health/costs.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects.htm
I am not trying to have it both ways. I am being realistic.
Whenever we try to ban a drug, we end up spending billions of dollars enforcing such a ban that usually fails. We have banned plenty of drugs, and yet there is still a demand for those drugs. We tried prohibition of alcohol and everyone saw how that worked out.
Again, educational programs aimed at getting less people to smoke and quite smoking? Sure. But banning cigarettes would just end up creating a whole other set of problems.
My fantasy is that the feds have a universal policy that has those elements in it. It would be at cost, cheap, and the pool of insureds would be responsible people that don't have to share risk with deliberately unhealthy people. Cut out the huge insurers and have the feds issue the policy at cost. Between cutting out the mafia/middle man and having a responsible pool of insureds the health care costs would have to be reigned in. At least, that's my armchair opinion/assertion of fact.
If a private insurer can match the collective of healthy taxpayers' own coverage, great, kudos to the free market. If the private market can't match it, that's fine too.
I don't think we have to ban anything -- I just don't want to participate in underwriting health insurance for someone that smokes tobacco. Just have non-coverage or higher premiums for smokers. They can smoke to their heart's content.
Exactly, there are other options, including incentives to quit smoking (which, btw, the ACA has).
Banning cigarettes though would just be a bad option IMO.
Again, you're completely right about prohibition always failing.
But cigarettes are uniquely bad (and still extremely widespread - even following decades of anti-cig promotions, many millions of Americans still smoke).
Marijuana's 'negative health effects' are a tiny microdot compared to cigarettes (or even sugar).
I'm up for discussing some sort of universal healthcare (amongst people who take steps to promote good health), but smokers can't be a part of it.
Smokers would wreck any universal healthcare system for everyone else, base on their own destructive choice.
But cigarettes are uniquely bad (and still extremely widespread - even following decades of anti-cig promotions, many millions of Americans still smoke).
Marijuana's 'negative health effects' are a tiny microdot compared to cigarettes (or even sugar).
I'm up for discussing some sort of universal healthcare (amongst people who take steps to promote good health), but smokers can't be a part of it.
Smokers would wreck any universal healthcare system for everyone else, base on their own destructive choice.
My fantasy is that the feds have a universal policy that has those elements in it. It would be at cost, cheap, and the pool of insureds would be responsible people that don't have to share risk with deliberately unhealthy people. Cut out the huge insurers and have the feds issue the policy at cost. Between cutting out the mafia/middle man and having a responsible pool of insureds the health care costs would have to be reigned in. At least, that's my armchair opinion/assertion of fact.
If a private insurer can match the collective of healthy taxpayers' own coverage, great, kudos to the free market. If the private market can't match it, that's fine too.
I don't think we have to ban anything -- I just don't want to participate in underwriting health insurance for someone that smokes tobacco. Just have non-coverage or higher premiums for smokers. They can smoke to their heart's content.
Here's the flaw with your thinking, IMO. You assume that having profit overhead means that the insurers are more expensive than the government. The fact is, this same pool run by the government will cost more than it will cost 'for-profit' insurers, because insurers are motivated to keep costs down. Just look at the government today. Even where waste and redundancy is identified, you can't get any real action to eliminate it. And to wrap it up, I direct you to exhibit A: The VA is the government's attempt at a single-payer, at cost, health care strategy for its veterans. And by most accounts, it is some of the worst available health care in the country. Its also excessively bureaucratic, wasteful, and corrupt, just like most other government organizations.
Not at all true. Medicare has lower costs, both for care and for administration than private insurers. You constantly conflate facts with talking out of your ass.
I'm a fan of single payer, but it would have to be funded by risk based premiums and would require oversight to ensure the shit hole federal government didn't go straight VA on our asses. The payment part would be like Medicare and Medicaid, but the payments would have to cover actual costs plus a performance based incentive program as Medicare and Medicaid fall short these days, sometimes ridiculously. Hospitals that currently serve high Medicare and Medicaid populations are closing which really hurts rural access to hospitals even if they are only a tertiary care center. It would need a sufficient copayment structure to keep it from the abuse that is widespread in the Medicaid program.
If I had my way...
If I had my way...
