Obamacare written to deceive the public.

[Aractus]

Your claim was that he's "giving money to insurance companies" - how? I've not seen you defend this at all, as far as I know about the policy it is legislative, not budgetary. It aims to improve market conditions, not to increase government spending (although the increased spending is, as I've mentioned several times now, unavoidable).

Suppose I am a producer of Vegimite. I lobby my government to pass a law that says every citizen must buy my Vegimite or pay a stiff tax. To help the poor, taxes will be raised to give poor people subsidies to buy Vegimite. Now did they do this because Vegimite is good for citizens or did they do it because they were bought off by me to do it?

The lefties have good intentions. The problem with the lefties is they alley themselves with people who want to use their good intentions to pass laws for personal gain. The rank and file lefties are too stupid to see it.

Health Insurance is not healthcare. If you want people to have access to affordable healthcare...the solution is to produce affordable healthcare. Subsidizing unaffordable health care does not solve the problem.

No, you would not "produce affordable healthcare" you would have to introduce universal healthcare. Tell me, how would a minimum wage earner in the USA ever be able to afford cancer treatment costing over $120,000 on average? And that's just an average - treatment of childhood leukaemia can cost up to $800,000 , as was one such claim mentioned in that link. How are you going to make $800,000 leukaemia treatment "affordable" for everyone?

Subsidising unaffordable costs is, of course, how governments ensure that essential services can be provided to as many people as possible. You don't seem to grasp that fact.

Your analogy is stupid - the US government already subsidises pharmaceuticals and other things.

Guaranteeing that no one can be denied access to health insurance is a step in the right direction.

Ultimately, the only way you're going to bring the cost of health care down is by much tighter regulation. And to provide ways of reducing wastage, or duplicated services, etc. By that, for instance, there's something in Australia called ehealth and it hasn't really worked yet, it needs to be mandated - Denmark has had something similar since the 90's - essentially once implemented properly, once doctors etc. are forced to use it for their patients it means that your records can more easily be accessed both by the patient and by doctors and pharmacists. Patients will have the power to delete old records, however if the records are there it means an old x-ray for instance will be stored and accessible without having to do a duplicate one. It also reduces the cost of data management substantially overall. So that's one way of reducing the wastage of duplicated or inefficient services.

The total cost of healthcare in Australia is somewhere around 20% of GDP (I don't have the exact figure in front of me). In plain English, every year 1/5th or so of the entire economy is spent on healthcare. If only the sick and those with permanent medical illnesses were paying for it then there's no possible way that everyone could afford it. It's just not possible.

[Heywood]

No, you would not "produce affordable healthcare" you would have to introduce universal healthcare. Tell me, how would a minimum wage earner in the USA ever be able to afford cancer treatment costing over $120,000 on average? And that's just an average - treatment of childhood leukaemia can cost up to $800,000 , as was one such claim mentioned in that link. How are you going to make $800,000 leukaemia treatment "affordable" for everyone?

Suppose there is one clinic in town that treats Leukaemia and it charges $100,000 a year. The government can build a building, buy some medical equipment, train up some doctors and nurses, and open a second clinic in that town that charges nothing. Then your minimum wage earner doesn't have to worry about being able to afford the care.

The private clinic would need to reduce its cost and increase its quality to stay competitive. Some private clinics would go out of business as government clinics opened up......but not all would.

[The Grand Nudger]

Suppose there is one clinic in town that treats Leukaemia and it charges $100,000 a year. The government can build a building, buy some medical equipment, train up some doctors and nurses, and open a second clinic in that town that charges nothing. Then your minimum wage earner doesn't have to worry about being able to afford the care.

You mean, like the state health dept in town where my kids get all of their immunizations and checkups? The state dept in town that would coordinate any care my children needed (excluding emergency services.....for that I'd have to drive into a close -bigger- town where they have an ER with whom they already arranged provisions for treatment in advance - close -as in- a mile, course...I guess I could just call for an ambulance too, eh?). I did have to drive a couple of hours to get care for my daughters nerve damage and paralysis, also arranged for by the state (but free of cost anyway - St Judes/Shriners/UK Med is where it's at).

The private clinic would need to reduce its cost and increase its quality to stay competitive. Some private clinics would go out of business as government clinics opened up......but not all would.

-and yet, state health depts don't seem to have put private clinics out of business or pushed them into a competitive stance.

[Heywood]

You mean, like the state health dept in town where my kids get all of their immunizations and checkups? The state dept in town that would coordinate any care my children needed (excluding emergency services.....for that I'd have to drive into a close -bigger- town where they have an ER with whom they already arranged provisions for treatment in advance - close -as in- a mile, course...I guess I could just call for an ambulance too, eh?). I did have to drive a couple of hours to get care for my daughters nerve damage and paralysis, also arranged for by the state (but free of cost anyway - St Judes/Shriners/UK Med is where it's at).

The private clinic would need to reduce its cost and increase its quality to stay competitive. Some private clinics would go out of business as government clinics opened up......but not all would.

-and yet, state health depts don't seem to have put private clinics out of business or pushed them into a competitive stance.

The more "free" state medical care that is provided, the harder it will be for private clinics to exist. Build another free clinic that anyone can walk into and you take away some of the business from the private ones. Some would then close or be forced to become more efficient. At some point we would reach an equilibrium where we are largely happy with our state provided/free enterprise health care system. But we get to that equilibrium.....we get to that satisfying health care system by creating more healthcare.....not making our existing health care appear to be less expensive than it is. Healthcare is expensive because it is scarce. Lets make it abundant so everyone can afford what they want or need.

Private clinics could also contract with the government. But prices would be set by market forces and not by government fiat. If its cheaper to build another free state clinic than it is to pay what the private clinic is asking....build another clinic.

[The Grand Nudger]

The "free" bit only applies to the end consumer Heywood. People still get paid (and very often it's a private business that gets paid by contract with the health dept). The price of the service isn't actually nothing, so these private enterprises (who often do the actual service anyway) aren't competing over a damned thing - certainly not price (nor do they seem to be interested in doing so). If that was even remotely true, we'd be rioting by now. Government outcompeting private enterprise and crushing the little guy with their evil state health depts.

You don't have to tell me the narrative, I've heard it before. I'm just telling you that it doesn't seem to match up with what is happening here - in my experience. Money to pay for healthcare is scarce. I can find a doctor at any time of the day or night with no notice.

[Aractus]

The "free" bit only applies to the end consumer Heywood.

Exactly.

Of course the USA ultimately needs universal healthcare, but it also needs to regulate how much clinics can charge as well otherwise you still end up paying much more for medical services when compared with all other OECD countries.

If we agree, for argument's sake, that the cost of healthcare is around 20% of the economy, then you want to get as much as possible from that 20%. You don't want a system that costs 1/5th of your economy and yet is inaccessible to a proportion of your population. Every single person unable to access the healthcare they need is a person who is unable to contribute to their potential to the economy. So it weakens the economy overall. Then they become a burden on other required State funded services.

[YoungCapitalist]

Yep that is the Libertarian/republican argument. Revised history when everyone knows the "zit" is just bologna mashed potatoes.

You're fuckin clueless. The only thing fucking with "the other 2 classes" are government agencies such as the IRS. Obamacare does not grant free healthcare to the poor. In fact it forces them to buy their health care and if not they get fuckin fined. How does that help? I own a small business and I am required to supply all of my workers with healthcare. So you know what i did to afford it? I fuckin FIRED people. And so did all of my other fellow bussiness men bc we cant afford it. So now on top of no healthcare those people are unemployed. All you socialists hang on to is the narrative of "war on the poor". That was snatched out of thin air. How come the percentage of americans on government assistance went up nearly 30 percent under obamas policies? Its a little something called designed dependency. The government has made it more acceptable for able bodied people to sit home and collect my hard earned fuckin money while they party and pop out kids by the dozen. Capitalism is survival of the fittest. Its natural humanity. You get what you work for. And you dont get what you dont work for. If you want shit handed to you. Fly across the fuckin pond. Bc theyre economy is thriving in europe right? Get a fuckin clue. I own a small business so governmant regulations affect me directly. Im out here in the field. So take it from some1 who knows what the fuck their talking about. For you its an ideology but i deal with this shit daily

[A Theist]

The problem with the righties is that they have virtually no good intentions, and all of what they have is to benefit only themselves.

You're among the 37% minority of voters who approve of obamacare. The problem with you lefties is that you think your elitist minority handful has special entitlement rights to make all the decisions and to impose your will on everyone else, even if your side has to use con and deception to get your stuff past the American voters. The voters finally woke up after six years of obama and the democrats. In both the state wide and national elections the Republicans trounced the democrats in the mid-terms. The 56% majority of voters don't want obamacare.

[Aractus]

Capitalism is survival of the fittest.

I'm a capitalist. And I can tell you that is NOT the definition of capitalism. That's the definition of laissez faire - the rich prosper at the expense of the poor. It doesn't work. Improving the conditions and well-being of the poor improves the conditions for everyone, it reduces crime rates and leads to greater happiness and satisfaction in life for everyone. Reducing communicable disease among the poor reduces communicable disease among everyone including the rich.

Capitalism is primarily productivity based. It's based on the assumption that open market competition generally leads towards greater productivity.

[simplemoss]

What's the difference between laisseze fair and capitalism?