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

To: skinowski who wrote (24267)	7/19/2012 11:51:16 AM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Respond to of 42652

One of the features of ObamCare which was supposed to give coverage to additional millions of people was the proposed expansion of Medicaid. If I understand correctly, this part was nixed by the Supreme Court. The expansion still exists, and some states will presumably sign up for it. What was nixed was much of the ability of the feds to pressure states to sign up for it. It also appears that several States may opt against voluntary expansion. This means two possibilities: a) that millions of people will not get insurance, or b) the government will need to come up with (huge) additional funds to sweeten the deal for the States. Even if you get b, or if the Supreme Court had allowed the feds to make all Medicaid funds depend on accepting the expansion, you still would get a (or millions of people uninsured), the law was never going to cover everyone, not even if you ignore the parts of it that work against its proclaimed aim of expanding coverage. It's a mess. The only predictable outcome is that numbers of government employees and bureaucrats will go much higher. That and the number of private sector employees needed to comply with, or avoid, or game the system.

To: skinowski who wrote (24267)	7/19/2012 12:20:02 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

>> The only predictable outcome is that numbers of government employees and bureaucrats will go much higher. One really wonders whether the people who engineered this mess really even believed it would be workable. It is a very cynical view, but it seems to me that anyone looking at this train wreck should have seen it coming, and one really has to question the motivations of persons who drafted this legislation. I cannot imagine someone doing this and believing it would do anything other than wreck a system that, while imperfect, at least functioned.

To: skinowski who wrote (24267)	7/20/2012 11:00:07 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

It is questionable whether the roots of Obamacare can be ripped out enough that it does not ruin what was once the greatest nation on earth.

To: skinowski who wrote (24267)	7/21/2012 1:27:14 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

While searching for another post, I stumbled on to this post I made a few years back, dealing with two of the issues often raised by supporters of socialized health care. All the millions (30, 40, 50 million whatever, uninsured, and comparative health care rankings) -------- but 46 million americans dont have coverage. Many of that are wealthy enough to afford insurance. Many of that group are eligible for publicly subsidized or provided insurance but just haven't signed up. Only a minority are really uninsured not by choice, and its not like they are totally without health care either. --- Whatever the exact numbers are, all the categories I mentioned obviously exist. You don't need any complex analysis to know that some people are eligible for government insurance but haven't applied for it. Its also a well established fact that many people who could afford insurance (esp. younger people) choose not to buy it. The only question is the exact numbers, but obviously "47 million uninsured" includes many people that could easily get insurance. While I don't have the exact numbers I can give you some idea of the size of the group that is uninsured by choice. "The Census Bureau reports that 18 million of the uninsured have annual household income of more than $50,000, which puts them in the top half of the income distribution. About a quarter of the uninsured have been offered employer-provided insurance but declined coverage." nytimes.com. Message 24023951 "Bundorf and Mark Pauly, the health economist at Wharton who was her thesis adviser, found that as much as three-quarters of the uninsured population may be able to afford its own insurance." gregmankiw.blogspot.com Some data for one state (Massachusetts) "Some 20% of the state's uninsured population qualified for Medicaid but had never signed up... ...Another 40% of the uninsured were earning enough to buy insurance but had chosen not to do so." gregmankiw.blogspot.com Message 24316393 ----- As for the WHO rankings, they are pretty bogus WHO's Fooling Who? The World Health Organization's Problematic Ranking of Health Care Systems cato.org agoraphilia.blogspot.com agoraphilia.blogspot.com agoraphilia.blogspot.com agoraphilia.blogspot.com Why the U.S. Ranks Low on WHO's Health-Care Study realclearpolitics.com Morocco has better healthcare than the US. WHO are you kidding? medicalprogresstoday.com "If you want to know the value of X, then actually measuring X is better than measuring the average of X and Y, an Z. Cato clearly showed that WHO is doing the later. Or to skip the variables, Cato showed that WHO is not measuring the quality of the health care system, but the quality of health care, plus the amount that the country lives up to what WHO thinks is its potential for quality health care, plus the equality of health care (and remember improving health care for some but not for others can make the equality worse, which hurts your score even though it improves your health care system). And if people in some countries have healthier habits than other countries the health care system is blamed as if it had or should have control over people's decisions in life. They also showed that with the uncertainty levels WHO itself claims the US could be anywhere from near the best to near the worst out of the developed countries." Message 24361299 Message 24836997