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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (8646)	8/24/2009 1:25:00 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 42652

I don't see a way to lower cost without including virtually everyone and spreading the risk. Does "spreading the risk" lower overall cost? That 16% of GDP you are so worried about -- do you think spreading the risk will lower it? If you go from covering 90-95% of people, where we are today, to covering 95-97% of people (the best we can aspire to do), will the percentage of GDP fall? If so, why?

To: Road Walker who wrote (8646)	8/24/2009 7:07:24 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Too many people would get the pay raise and decide on a large screen TV instead of a health care program. I see. You were connecting that with the pay raise in lieu of insurance. I can see requiring those who get an allotment in their pay in lieu of insurance to spend at least some of it on insurance or give up the allotment, at least for a transition period. But that's not the same as requiring everyone to have insurance. Those who are currently employed by a company that doesn't pay for insurance aren't going to get a raise and probably don't earn enough to buy insurance given that those companies are small businesses or cheap. I don't see a way to lower cost without including virtually everyone and spreading the risk. First of all, you already have a lowered policy cost from the competition across states and otherwise. Second, it depends on whether you're talking about policy cost to the consumer or total US spending. For policy cost, see above. If the folks who don't buy insurance are the healthy ones, then they wouldn't be using the system anyway so there would be no impact either way on total health care spending.