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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (240868)	12/31/2013 10:16:33 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541604

I also said we have never put to the test how broad the support is for the Medicare/Medicaid programs by giving people the choice to opt out of them via cancelling their withholding. The only way these programs actually work is if the vast majority of people participate in them, healthy or not. If given the choice of opting out, many healthy people who that they can just opt in if they get sick or require hospitalization for some reason will opt out until they have the need. Until that need arises, they are paying for someone else's misfortune. Every other developed country works on some variant of this model, and somehow everyone in those countries pay their premiums. Some people may bitch because of some shortcoming or another in their system (gosh, ya think every system has some shortcomings?), but at least they don't have a couple of million people declaring bankruptcy for medical reasons or fear that that might happen to them and at least they don't have runaway costs in their medical sector and have care that is affordable when they pay their monthly fee. Our employer based model is an historical accident. Every country that has studied the matter has opted to choose a non-employer based system of one sort or another. The only reason we support this system is that it is the one we have and people are always biased to what they have and "know" (whether they actually know it or not!). You seem to be pretending that there is actually a reason for this bias on the part of Americans, and that is just nonsense. It is a crazy system that no one would adopt (or has adopted!) if they were starting from scratch.

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (240868)	12/31/2013 11:10:32 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541604

I didn't say that---you must have inferred it. Well, you did but I've got far more important things to do this morning than chase down that quote from our rather lengthy back and forths. It's enough for you to admit that such a statement, were you to have made it, would be wrong. That will do. I also said we have never put to the test how broad the support is for the Medicare/Medicaid programs by giving people the choice to opt out of them via cancelling their withholding. Whether that would be wise or not, is one question. I agree with Sam's response later on in which he argues employer based healthcare insurance was both an accident and a mistake. And not practiced, best I've read, outside the US. At least in major developed countries. Where you are wrong is by inferring from this statement, that support for such programs is low. I've given the evidence offered by sitting politicians opposed to such programs but unwilling to try to end them. Not much more can be said. As Bowles makes clear in the cited interview we're doomed because of demographics unless we adopt some measures to hold down spending on entitlements. Bowles is simply wrong because he chooses to ignore two things. In the case of Social Security the effects of increasing the cap. And in the case of Medicare the effects of the cost control measures in the ACA. And, as is his political bias, he completely ignores the alternative of Medicare for everyone and its impact on costs. It's not demographics that is the problem, it's the failure of folk like Bowles to consider the full range of options. It's the narrow mindedness of that sort of policy person that keeps the Reps notion of no tax increases alive. And "dooms" us, as you say.