alright so heres the deal: in my government class, we are doing our own political campaign thing. of course, the two major parties are democratic and republican. however my friend and i realized we didnt accurately fit into either of those categories cause our whole thing is we think they should try to come together and compromise and make decisions that [most]everyone can agree on. so we started our own political party: The Peace Party. right now, our assignment is to prepare for a debate and we are given a list of issues that we have to cover. most of our parties main issues are not what we are being forced to cover. and one of them in particular, i dont know very much about: healthcare. i looked it up but im very very very confused as to what it is i will be debating about healthcare. if anyone knows anything about the healthcare situation and can explain it in very small and simple words i will be forever grateful. thank you!
currently, the u.s. is the only industrialized nation that doesn't ensure all of its citizens have health care coverage. obama and the dems want to change this, the republicans do not. i don't think it gets any simpler than that.
how do they plan to make sure that everyone gets healthcare? like how would it be payed for? [and thank you for the response btw ]
i dunno, probably taxes. the republicans are the ones keeping the bill from becoming law because they want to know where the money's gonna come from. ironically though the u.s. government already spends more on health care than any other UN nation. you're welcome.
whoa. interesting. i read something about making generic prescription drugs more available and then putting a higher tax on the brand name drugs or something like that.. i might have read that wrong it was really confusing..
Generic drugs are the ones that have had their "copyright" expire. If they put higher taxes on formulary drugs, it would only hurt the people who need the still-protected drugs, since there are no generic forms available. One of the Obama/Dem ideas was to somehow fine or punish people for not having insurance. I see this as hurting the people who are already hurting. If a person can't afford health insurance, how can they afford to be penalized for not having it? A national heathcare system is probaby a good idea, but as you suggest, it does have to be paid for. Repubs are all about people keeping the money they earn and keeping those who don't earn money from living off of those who do. They take a pretty hard stand against what they view as freeloaders - and I'm sure that we all realize that wherever there is a program to lend assistance, there are plenty of people who try to take advantage of it. Naturally, the cost of national healthcare would be shouldered by the working class and the taxes that they would have to pay to support it. The US is already trillions of dollars in debt, with social security failing and foreign coutries buying up our debt. The taxpayers are already pretty heavily burdened (at least, the middle to lower class taxpayers are.) On the other hand, A national healthcare system is really the only way to insure standard healthcare for everyone. It does seem to work pretty well for the countries that have it, aside from occasionally having to wait longer to see a doctor for less serious conditions - but that's a simple triage situation. When people from the US go to Canada for health care, you know it must have something better to offer. The real arguing point about national healthcare is, how do we get there from here, without causing even more economic stress for the people that have to pay for government programs. Even though Orwell's "Animal Farm" was a treatise on communism, I think it relates, in many ways, to the US government. Snowball and Napoleon fit the two parties, Republican and Democrat, that endlessly fight and plot against each other. Boxer, the workhorse, is a good analogy for the taxpayers, as he eventually succumbs to his increasing burden. Even the eventual reconfigurations of Law#7: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" is kind of relevant. I would gladly trade what I pay for insurance per year, in exchange for the same amount in taxation with free health care. Probably everyone would agree to that. If the government could make that amount of money cover the cost of national healthcare, everyone would more readily hop on board. The problem is, a lot of people think it's going to end up costing them more than they are already paying for health care, in the long run.
ah wow this was helpful. thank you. question though, how would they decide how much to tax people? like you said people think they will be paying more than they already do, why/how is that assumed? i heard that its kinda like socialism because the rich would be taxed more or something. does this mean they will take a set amount of income and if you make above or below that it decides what you will pay?
Well, this is the rub. No one can say how much it will cost. As with many public services, sponsored by either the Democrats or the Republicans, the plan is put into action with no real understanding of the cost. That's why our income taxes, which didn't even exist until the Civil War, keep increasing, percentage-wise, over the years, until the middle class is now paying almost half of its annual income in taxes (income taxes, sales tax, property tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, luxury tax, gas tax, tobacco tax, alcohol tax. You name it, there's a tax for it). Our taxation system is literally a form of socialism, at this point. Regardless of how we justify it, if we have low income earners paying no income tax, middle earners paying a 15-25% tax rate, and top earners paying 35% tax rate, that's pure and simple redistribution of weath. The rich pay a premium and the poor take advantage of the social programs, like welfare, foodstamps, housing assistance, etc. that the extra taxation pays for. Whether you believe this is justafiable and reasonable, or not, it is the way things run at the moment. I assume that there is some way to figure the national annual health cost, but the figures would represent a typical year under the private insurers that we have right now. No one knows what the effect of free public health care would be on the annual cost. Certainly many, many people who were previously unemployed and/or under-insured, and who typically wouldn't go to the doctor, will now do so whenever they need to. Surely, there will be some who will go every time they have a sniffle, when previously they would have made do with an aspirin. This will assuredly cause the annual heath care cost to rise significantly from pre-national healthcare costs. The potential rise could increase the required tax burden significantly, in order to keep it viable. This is what many people are afraid of. But it's the middle and lower middle classes who fear it most, because ultimately they would be the people who make enough money to pay taxes to support it, but don't make enough to easily afford the increased burden that would result from under-estimating the healthcare costs. Some people feel that the cost is intentionally under-estimated, so as to make the idea more appealing to the public. "Oh look, we can have free health care and it will cost us very little!" Two years later, when the real bill comes due, it could be a nasty but irreversable surprise.
so they dont even know how much it will cost? it shouldnt even be an issue to discuss yet then. knowing how much something is gonna cost is kinda important. im sure theres some way to get a rough estimate of how much it would cost before throwing the idea out to the public? i think its a good idea to ensure that everyone has healthcare i just think they ought to know the costs first and have a plan as to how much everyone would be paying. thank you for explaining it. i really appreciate it.
You're welcome. As far as knowing what it will cost, there is no way that they could. It hasn't been done here, before. Who could know how many extra visits will be generated, once there is no cost associated with seeing the dr.? That doesn't mean that there won't be some kind of estimate presented... but it will most likely be significantly less that the real cost. After the first year, the gov't may realize that they lost money on the deal. The second year will be the one where the taxes go up significantly.
why do people have to take advantage of these kinds of systems? cause this could be a really good thing. :/ this makes me really sad...
There are two kinds of taking advantage. One is the advantage that is supposed to be taken. When people need it, they should use it; that's what it's there for. The other is the unfair advantage that some people will take, like filing fraudulent welfare claims. Some people would abuse a national healthcare system by constantly going to doctors for things that they used to simply ride out - like a cold or an ache or pain. Some people will try to abuse it in a criminal way; say, trying to get pain meds to sell on the black market. Some people will view free healthcare as their right to use in any way they wish. People deceive themselves into believing it's okay to bilk the system, because the victim appears to be only a heartless corporation. Unfortunately, the victims are the people who have to pay continually increasing costs. The HMO's started out being a pretty good deal, too, but it went bad quickly. When people understood that they would never see a bill from the doctor, they began to go for any and every little ache and pain. The HMO's, having to pay for that kind of coverage, had to raise the cost of the insurance and apply "co-pays" to office visits and meds, as well as limit the kinds of care they would cover. Either that, or go out of business. This was a prime example of how the original estimates fell far short of the kind of bills people would run up when the service seemed to be free. It's never really free, though. Someone has to pay for it. Hopefully, under a national healthcare system, the triage will weed these people out and make them wait longer than they're willing to get service. This may be what initially gave national healthcare a bad rep in Canada; there were likely many people going who didn't really need to see a doctor, so were made to wait until the people who did need it were taken care of. The rumors spread that national healthcare causes long waits. Maybe the long wait is only for the people who try to see the doctor when they should simply take a couple of aspirin, drink fluids, and get some rest. Whatever happens, you can be reasonably sure that it's going to cost more than people expect in the beginning. I just hope it won't be more than we can bear. The economy is fragile enough, at the moment.
everyone should just do their job for the good of society and we should just get rid of the money system all together. this would solve all the problems cause then there would be no economy to fall apart and we would have no need for a healthcare system. i just wish people would work this way. it would be perfect.
Unfortunately, not everyone is that industrious. People have been the same since the beginning of time. Some see the good in being productive and some would rather reap the rewards without lending a hand. Aesop explained it 2600 years ago, in The Ant And The Grasshopper fable. The Little Red Hen story dates back to the 1800's. It's important to remember that money is the product of an economy, not the other way around. Before there was a monetary system, people bartered. It was a little more complicated than taking out your wallet and paying at the counter, but it still depended on people who were industrious enough to create or obtain something worth trading. Even in those ancient days, some people worked and some people begged. The utopian dream, while a nice thought, is something that can never truly be... at least not in this world.
