The US Healthcare Mass Debate

[Jason]

Keep it private. Keep it safe.

[Joe]

Public, private, or hybrid, I'm not picky. The current system is bleeding people dry.

Robert Samuelson's latest op-ed, Where did our raises go? To health care., is a good case in point:

A strong and growing economy is, by the textbook, supposed to put upward pressure on wages as companies bid for more workers and employees shop around for higher pay. All sorts of plausible theories have been advanced to explain why this doesn’t seem to be happening.

Demographics are cited. Well-paid baby boom workers are retiring and being replaced by lower-paid millennials; this drags down average wages. Or the Great Recession left workers and employers with psychological scars. Workers are more concerned with job security. They are leery of pressing for big wage increases, just as companies are leery of providing them. Mismeasurement of wages is another theory.

All these explanations may matter, but a major contributor — perhaps the major contributor — may lie elsewhere: health costs. Money once reserved for wage increases is now diverted to pay for employer-provided health insurance. A new study provides stunning estimates: For the bottom 60 percent of U.S. workers, wage gains have been completely wiped out by contributions for employer-provided health insurance.

“For many workers, rising health insurance premiums were eating up every last cent of their pay increases and more,” the study said. This affects how “people buy houses, save for retirement, launch their children into adulthood and otherwise try to get ahead in life.”

That rings true in my personal experience, and the trends don't look good. I'm holding on for Medicare, and have a good chance of making it, but a lot of younger people aren't so lucky.

Something needs to change, and our politicians are gridlocked. It's not a good situation, to say the least.

[Tero]

Our farmers are losing healthcare as rural hospitals close. It should be a major issue in our senator race, but very little has been in the press. Farmers can't use Obamacare well, as their income varies too much year to year. Some years they are too wealthy to get anything.

Out here, nobody is pushing Medicare for all as it is too hard to get in with that, for a Democrat. Out here the mentality is "yeah, give us the federal money but don't give us any government office." Just send it to their account I guess!

[Joe]

We've got a Democrat pushing Medicare for all running for Governor. The Republican doesn't really have a plan for health insurance, but thinks the State ACA exchange is unsustainable.

Given that I'm buying insurance through that exchange soon, I guess I'll have to vote for the Democrat. I don't see a chance in hell he'll get the Medicare for all, but he'll probably support the insurance exchange better than the Republican.

[Tero]

We had a single insurer running our state ACA plans in 2018. I only need it one more year, or 5 months of it. My wife needs it longer.

[Tero]

Barack Obama Endorses “Medicare for All”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... -good.html

[Brian Peacock]

Trump care allows selling insurance that...might let you see a doctor...or something

Proposed regulations out Tuesday from the Health and Human Services department allow health insurers to sell so-called "short-term" policies that can last up to 12 months. The plans don't have to meet the Affordable Care Act's consumer protections, or offer a robust benefit package.

That means short-term policies will come with lower premiums. The administration is hoping that will help several million consumers who buy individual plans but aren't eligible for subsidies under the Obama health care law.

Critics say short-term policies will draw healthy people away from the health law's insurance markets, potentially making them less stable and raising subsidy costs for taxpayers.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/trumps- ... -cost.html

An insurers dream: insured only up to the point where you make a claim.

[Tero]

Death panels will save Medicare!
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2 ... are-000689

[Tero]

Socialist healthcare! Trump op-ed.

It would cost an astonishing $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years.

This is indeed the result of a study on the program’s cost. The $32.6 trillion breaks down to about the same as what the US currently spends annually on healthcare. In 2016, the US spent $3.3 trillion on healthcare.

https://qz.com/1419434/donald-trumps-us ... -and-lies/

[Tero]

Republicans Are Going to Attack Medicare for All By Trying to Scare the Hell Out of Old Folks

Seniors might not seem like the most obvious target for an anti–single payer campaign. They don’t exactly have the most to gain from a new federal insurance program. But given that they already enjoy government health care, they also don’t have a ton to lose (aside from the choice of enrolling in Medicare Advantage plans, which are privately run). Right now, most progressive policy wonks are worrying about how Democrats can sell single payer, or a version of it, to Americans who don’t want to give up their employer-based insurance or who don’t want to pay higher taxes. Trump’s op-ed barely bothers talking to those groups. It only nods a couple times to the fact that Sanders-style single payer would ban most private coverage, largely to underscore the idea that Democrats (who, it should be noted, haven’t all signed on to single payer) are Maduro-esque commies.

But terrifying loss-averse elderly voters over health care has worked for Republicans before, and there’s reason to think it could work again. Throughout 2009 and 2010, talk of death panels and cuts to Medicare (which, in fact, were mostly just reductions in excess insurer payments) helped mobilize resistance to Obamacare. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” may have become a liberal punchline, but that didn’t make it any less of a real sentiment. Today, Americans over 65 have the dimmest view of socialism among any age group, and some polling suggests they’re the most likely to oppose single payer. (Other surveys have found otherwise.) There’s every reason to assume Republicans will at least attempt to frighten aging baby boomers into believing Democrats are about to sell them out, in order to provide free health care for Mexican immigrants. And I mean that literally. Taking a page from the European right, which regularly casts immigrants as a drain on the welfare state, Trump’s op-ed argues that Democrats want to end immigration enforcement, so that “millions more would cross our borders illegally and take advantage of health care paid for by American taxpayers.”

https://slate.com/business/2018/10/trum ... r-all.html

We need the death panels, otherwise babyboomers hooked up to machines will drain the funds.

[Tero]

Right now, private insurers — who donate to both parties — profit off our sickness by cutting corners and passing the costs along to us at every opportunity. The top four health insurance companies made $60 billion in profits between 2009-15, while their executives took home between $20-$66 million each year. Medicare for All would redirect that money toward its intended purpose: the provision of healthcare.

But despite saving trillions, funding Medicare for All will still require taxing the rich to guarantee care for workers, who typically spend 10 to 15 percent of theirs. It will also put an end to the $260 billion in tax giveaways we currently hand to corporations so they can “afford” to insure their workers.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/t ... du9NEbVsSs

[laklak]

Question on the tax giveaway - corporations are allowed to deduct the cost of their health care contributions from income. Why is that bad? Isn't that a legitimate cost of doing business? Companies deduct wages paid from taxable income, in fact they deduct all sorts of operating costs as well as capital expenditures (the latter usually on an amortized basis). This is very basic accounting, I don't see how it's a "giveaway".

On the other side of the coin, employees are allowed to deduct their premium cost from income Now, that is definitely unfair. I'm not allowed to deduct MY health care premiums, why should they be allowed to do so simply because they're corporate drones?

[Tero]

It funnels the money to healthcare given by businesses. The people that work for franchises...supercuts, food and other service jobs...do not get the Corporate plan because the franchise owner is not part of the Corporate world, like McDonalds: some are corporate, some are franchises.

This divides the country in two: good plans and bad plans. Corporations of 5000 or more employees get the good plans. once you are disabled in some manner they pay for the salary some months. After that you are left with no income and no insurance than the Cobra plan. No subsidy by Corporation for the Cobra. They only carry over 90% healthy employees who use insurance very little.

[laklak]

OK, but I still don't see how that is a tax "giveaway". If a corporation is large enough to offer subsidized health insurance why shouldn't it be a cost of doing business, like wages paid or cleaning supplies or any other recurring expense? It's not like this is anything new, the biggest reason I stayed in CorpWorld for as long as I did was what they used to call 'fringe benefits'. Health care, 401K, paid time off, etc. Once I went private I lost all those goodies. It's the same reason people want gummint jobs - it ain't the salary, it's the benefits. You work for a big corporation or the gummint and you get nice benefits, the downside is you're a mindless drone who does what they're told to do. The less autonomy you have the better the benefits.

I can see a valid argument that the cost of healthcare premiums should be deductible for everyone, whether self-employed, retired, unemployed, whatever. But calling standard accounting practice a "giveaway" is a bit ridiculous.

[Tero]

If I buy Obamacare, I’ve been taxed on the money I use to buy it. Nither corporate employers or employyes pay tax on the money they use to buy healthcare. It is pre tax money.