Dec 27, 2012, 09:51 AM
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Dec 27, 2012, 10:09 AM
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We weren't talking about (Obama)Romneycare, we were talking about single payer UHC. Please read before you post. Plus, most educated people will not work for companies that do not give them health benefits, so yeah- they have to offer it. Do you do stand up? Are you here all week? |
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Dec 27, 2012, 10:23 AM
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 Oh jeez... so, let me get this straight... you HONESTLY think that UHC provides free healthcare to people? Freeing corporations from healthcare cost?Let me ask you then... who pays the doctors saving lives? Who pays the companies creating life-saving drugs? Who pays the hospitals? Who pays for the MRI machines and stethoscopes? Who pays for the real-estate and the infrastructure treatment requires? Spoiler alert - individuals and companies will still be paying the bills. Only in UHC it will be filtered through government (via taxation) first. Quote:
Companies pay employees compensation. This compensation is based on supply/demand economics of the workplace. (warning, imaginary and simplified numbers ahead, try to stay focused on the issue at hand) Imagine Sally is making $50,000/year + Healthcare Insurance at her salaried job. If Sally had to pay for her own insurance, it would cost her $10,000/year. So, since her employer is paying the insurance for her, her 'total compensation' is ~$60,000. Now, if instead her employer decided not to pay for her insurance, and instead pay her $65,000 salary... wouldn't this be a better deal for Sally? Sure it would! She'd pay her own insurance, and pocket the extra $5,000/year! So, if a 'smart person' tells you they wouldn't work for a company if they don't offer health insurance... I'd argue they probably aren't as smart as you think they are. The only reason this is happening less and less is that companies get a deal when they buy insurance in bulk, and so it might only cost a company $6,000 to buy a $10,000 policy. So, as a result it's cheaper for that company to buy Sally $10,000 worth of insurance for $6,000, than to pay her an extra $10,000 to buy it on her own. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 10:41 AM
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And under UHC it really would cost only a little more, as the US currently spends a lot of government money on healthcare already.
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If they have to tell you every day they are fair you can bet they arent, if they tell you they are balanced then you should know they are not - Don't Hurt me |
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Dec 27, 2012, 10:50 AM
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Dec 27, 2012, 11:11 AM
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Great discussion and tangent discussions as well. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 11:26 AM
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1st the company will never pay a fair enough portion of their savings back to Sally. 2nd the cost for Sally to buy an individual plan would be more costly than the "group plan" and group rated offered to her company. 3rd companies tend to offer items over and above just salary in the form of benefits to attract and retain folks over a longer term. In some fields these benefits are pretty much standard and necessary to be competitive for new talent. In my area of work, relocation is fully paid including movers and packing service, even for entry level. When competing for minimum wage jobs or workers benefits play a lessor role, but in professional or technical jobs benefits help decide where a potential new hire will work. A company that falls behind their sectors standard benefits may struggle to attract top talent in their particular field. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 12:53 PM
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Where did I ever say I was referring to Obamacare? My comments had nothing to do with Obamacare. That is something completely different. As you yourself noted, companies are being forced to pay for care. This is problematic because there are so many businesses that WANT to offer care, but CAN'T. How the other mandates will affect access to care and access to affordable care we don't know. Everyone has an opinion on the topic, but no one has fact. The only fact we know now is that Obamacare could have outcomes that could go either way, maybe even both ways. Take a look at who spends the most money on medical care per person. You will be surprised. As I said previously, I am not against any implementation, orchestration, or management theory. I'm open to a variety of suggestions. However, the need exists for some sort of comprehensive care at a national level. We already spend more than enough on healthcare to do this, and most data suggests it is beneficial to the nation. If you provide comprehensive preventive care to everyone, you reduce spending on chronic disease. Chronic disease accounts for more then 8.5 cents on every healthcare dime. This figure can be greatly reduced through a synergetic and holistic effort. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 12:57 PM
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Back to your irrelevant 3rd point... Steve Jobs worked for $1/year salary. Was this because he was ridiculously generous? Is this because he wasn't aware of his market value? Or instead, is it because he's quite smart and knew that his 'salary' was a meaningless number and that all that really mattered was his 'total compensation'? I'd wage a guess it was the latter. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 01:00 PM
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Dec 27, 2012, 01:21 PM
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For example, when you tax corporations, you're actually taxing citizens... this is because the corporate tax is simply added to the 'cost of goods' and charged back to the consumers plus interest. When you tax one segment of society, you tax them all. It's as simple as that. The problem I have with your earlier statements is that you make the current system out to me a 'disaster', while saying that UHC would be far better for companies which I find ridiculous considering one system has mandated expenditures, and the other has optional ones. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 01:38 PM
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One other point everyone is missing is why do companies provide healthcare to their employees in the first place? Because it is tax deductible. Why not remove that benefit and let individuals buy their own policy with their tax-free dollars? Policies would now be portable and give consumers incentive to shop around. Even the unemployed could get basic policies subsidized by the government.
The other change we need to make is increase the deductibles and therefore lower premiums. Consumers need skin in the game or they will overuse (abuse?) their health benefits. The pharma, insurance, etc lobbies would never allow this as they would lose the the free money that comes from the government subsidizing healthcare. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 04:39 PM
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You(re little example is pointless. In a UHC prices usualy are set in a range for docters/hospitals in the system . Dont you ever wonder why the USA pays twice as much on health care for a simular quality of care then every other western nation? Do you like paying double what others pay for the same? |
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Dec 27, 2012, 04:58 PM
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You sound like a shill for big business and not truly a progressive liberal. I provided real numbers of how much my salary would be increased without company sponsored health care. I noticed you had no real response to that as that is concrete facts for my company and many others that offer an opt out a cash back option for declining insurance. Last edited by Scrub175; Dec 27, 2012 at 05:14 PM. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 05:11 PM
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When economic benefit is given in tax breaks it equates to more profit potential that isn't passed to workers in salary or consumers in prices. So why not expect businesses to put in their share of tax. Let them pass that cost on to consumers until consumer fight back and not buy their products. Checks and balances. Right now there are none for corporations especially ones deemed to big to fail. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 05:20 PM
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Our current system is a massive failure on just about every level when it comes to services delivered and paid for. If our current system worked, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Now, you can stick your fingers in your ears all you want, but the bottom line is this: our system does not work- at all. You'd rather cling to ideology rather than pragmatism. That doesn't work well for anyone. |
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Dec 27, 2012, 05:30 PM
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If they have to tell you every day they are fair you can bet they arent, if they tell you they are balanced then you should know they are not - Don't Hurt me |
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Dec 27, 2012, 05:33 PM
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Dec 27, 2012, 06:40 PM
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But we are talking about standardized national care here, not the Obamacare mandates. Obamacare is an orange and UHC is a game of baseball...in other terms, they are far and away from each other. That is, corporations won't be financing health care. It's no longer in their hands, it's out of their hair, it's not coming out of their bottom line. Let's let the private sector be the private sector and not have to single-handedly take on saving the health of the nation (it's hard enough to turn a profit without that burden...) Rather than hitting them with more regulations like Obamacare will, relieve them of having to bother with this, of having to employ tons of people to organize the care (which is stupidly expensive), of having to subtract from wages to pay this in an anticipatory fashion that puts them and their people at risk. Papa John won't have to fire people because this is no longer his problem to deal with and he can go back to making pizza with 100% real cheese and those weird as peppers. If you support trickle-down economics, this is what you should be all about. Give the end consumer the decision on their medical care. Every nation in the world with UHC still has privatized medical care, and UHC in the US would almost surely operate through a system of subcontracting. You give the consumer more choice, more portability, and under trickle-down economics, more money as the company doesn't have to deal with this and they pass the savings on to employees. At the end of the day, it's more flexibility for the end consumer and encourages competition. If a hospital sucks, now you can go to one that doesn't have needles all over the floor because you are managing your care and your care isn't managing you. As of right now, much like how 'car drive you in Russia', 'managed care manage you in US'. Finally, have you looked at health in the United States compared to every other industrialized nation? It's hard to have an economy with so many sick, dying, or dead people. It's hard to run a business if you are paying for so many people on disability welfare. It's hard to run a company when your employees are always taking off because they or others they care for are sick. It's hard to run a company with a stupidly high corporate tax rate and if we continue on this path, it will absolutely go up (i.e.: Medicare and Medicaid, among others). As an FYI, the US has about the highest or the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Many European nations that we refer to as socialist states collect half the corporate tax rate collected in the US. We take a stupid amount of money from corporations ("You're doing a great job in this tough economy...now please give us our 40%. Thank you.")...if someone is looking to start a new business, who wants to have that much money taken for them??? On top of that, THEN they get to pay for healthcare and numerous other employee expenses that companies don't have to pay for in some other nations. Furthermore, many nations with a lower personal tax rate have good universal care. So our companies pay a lot, our people pay a lot, and we are getting ??????? People should be banging down the doors in DC screaming "WTF" at their elected officials. This shouldn't be a political issue, it should be a practical one where we ask "where the hell is the money going?", and "can we get a better return on what we pay?". Quote:
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Dec 28, 2012, 04:52 AM
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http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komitee_Kruisraketten_Nee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Greenham_Common Since then NATO has slowly slipped down the list of importance. There was a slight peak in the early 1990s with the Balkan war. But the real reason for NATO has long since gone, the old USSR has been replaced with Russia. Russia is now a major trading partner, and very major supplier of energy to the EU. But it was after 9/11 when somehow NATO troops from Europe ended up in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This was seen a a serious breach of their remit, as a consquence all European countries have cut their defense spending even more. This all would have happened without the crisis, the crisis here in the EU just made it go quicker.
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'You cannot undo history, but you can learn from it' Last edited by Happybunny; Dec 28, 2012 at 05:06 AM. |
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Dec 28, 2012, 07:16 AM
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 As we have seen, in this day and age the one thing that armed conflict is great at is spending tons of money. It's much more economically viable to have a trading partner rather than a military arms competition... |
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Dec 29, 2012, 01:24 AM
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Dec 29, 2012, 12:03 PM
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However, $1.5T is $500B more than the Federal Government is spending on HC today. Someone has to convince the population (not just the rich) that they have to pay higher taxes to achieve it. Yes, their current premiums would go away but no one wants taxes going up on the middle class AT ALL. I suppose we could cut defense to pay for it. No one is making this argument. Not even the Democrats. |
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Dec 29, 2012, 01:44 PM
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It shouldn't be that hard to explain.
Note: I chose 1/3 as an illustrative example based on the 15% to 10% of GDP calculation, not because I've done a comprehensive study of health care costs, nor because I have citable references to credible articles.Most people I know don't really care where their health-care payments go. It's all one big black box, and just shows up on a different line on their paycheck stub if it's for Federal taxes or Fubar Insurance Co. The only thing that matters is take-home pay, and if UHC manages to increase that while maintaining or even improving quality of care, they'd be for it. Some people might even choose to have more take-home pay if UHC had lower quality, simply because they'd have more in-pocket cash in order to buy supplemental insurance to cover the specific things they care about. I don't think the big problem would be with the recipients of universal health care, it would be with the health care providers, the insurance industry, and all the other groups that have a vested interest in the status quo. |
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