Nurses Applaud CalCare Bill
The single-payer proposal has CalCare Nurses Applauding.
Renewing its commitment to the larger fight for health care justice, the California Nurses Association (CNA) is pleased to sponsor Assembly Bill 1400 (Kalra), the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act (CalCare), which would guarantee comprehensive, high-quality health care to all California residents as a human right. The establishment of the CalCare program is an improved Medicare for All-type health care system.
Sponsored by CNA and authored by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, AB 1400 will ensure that all Californians, regardless of employment, income, immigration status, race, gender, or any other considerations, can get the health care they need, free at the point of service.
Californians overwhelmingly support the transition to a single-payer health care system: 57 percent of all Californians supported replacing private insurance with guaranteed coverage provided by the government
Coverage Q&A
Q: What’s Covered?
A: Traditional medical services, dental care, prescription drug coverage, long-term care, and mental health and substance use treatment for everyone at point of service.
There will be no copays or deductibles. It’s all totally “free”.
Pressure on Governor Gavin Newsom
The New Single-Payer Bill Intensifies Newsom’s Political Peril.
A group of Democratic state lawmakers introduced legislation Friday to create a single-payer health care system to cover all Californians, immediately defining the biggest health policy debate of the year and putting enormous political pressure on Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Democratic governor faces the increasingly likely prospect of a Republican-driven recall election later this year. The single-payer bill adds to his political peril from the left if he doesn’t express support, and from the right if he does.
While the measure does not assign a price tag to the overhaul, a separate single-payer bill that failed in 2017 would have cost an estimated $400 billion each year.
The introduction of a single-payer proposal this year forces Newsom into a delicate position. The first-term governor, who said he supported the creation of a state-based single-payer health care system when he ran for governor in 2018, has since distanced himself, expressing doubt that California can embark on such a massive transformation on its own.
How Do We Pay For This Free Stuff?
No one seems to have an answer except Ash Kalra who claims the system will pay for itself after rerouting federal dollars for Medicare, Medicaid and other programs into CalCare.
The system would eventually cost less, he said, because it would simplify health care financing, end for-profit care and cut out private middlemen.
With the government (taxpayers) paying every bill, what forces are holding down any costs (nurses, beds, doctors, drugs, operations, etc.)?
What forces prevent unnecessary procedures?
This bill is fiscal madness.
Where is This Bill Headed?
Likely nowhere, but we are talking about California so it’s impossible to rule this out.
Mish
“California Nurses Sponsor a Bill Mandating Free Healthcare for Everyone”
Nurses support a bill mandating they work for free?
Sigh, I hope people don’t get the idea that ‘single-payer healthcare’ = ‘free unlimited health care for everyone’.
I live in a country with single payer (Taiwan), and it is completely awesome. The cost is reasonable and the healthcare is excellent; I have experienced none of the long waiting times or other horror stories I hear about from other single payer countries.
But, it is not unlimited free health care. I pay a monthly premium (less than US$200 for my family of 4, imagine that). There’s a co-pay for any doctor visit, typically less than $10. Depending on the medicine or tests or whatever, I may end up paying 20-30 bucks or so, rarely more. I recently had a surgery to remove part of my thyroid, stayed in the hospital for 3 nights — cost to me, beyond National Health Insurance coverage, was about US$1500; fortunately I have another layer of insurance through my work which covered most of that. The hospitals/clinics get extra subsidies from the government to supplement what patients pay. Doctors don’t make out like they do in the US but they do just fine.
I don’t like to see single payer conflated with free unlimited healthcare for all. I strongly support the former but not the latter, I live in the real world where things cost money and other people’s time/effort is not something owed to me as a ‘human right’.
There is nothing so expensive as that which is free.
Physicians for a National Health Program published a great model for a single payer health care system in 1989.
One gov’t agency would re-imburse Drs. and Hospitals directly. Payments would not be going to insurance companies first. This alone would save about 20% of the $4 Trillion a year we spend.
Hospitals would have budgets. They would be much more efficient, with less need for administration the takes up about 1/3 of health costs.
There would be uniform fee schedules for physicians. They would be salaried, like at Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic. Physicians there aren’t involved with administration and insurance issues. Those two institutions run incredibly efficiently and provide the highest level of health care. They are models that should be replicated nationwide.
Negotiate drug prices. No extending patents with slight changes.
Administrative cost is about 1/3 of health care cost. Eliminating insurance companies that siphon off about $1 Trillion a year would be a good start.
Eliminating insurance companies would also remove the in-network system, where your insurance company only wants you to receive care from certain providers. That limits competition which politicians always talk about maximizing, but never do.
Single payer would also break the employer based health care problem. People lose their job and they lose health insurance too.
This model was created over 30 years ago. It would improve health care, if health care was administered more like the Cleveland and Mayo models. It would save trillions of dollars just thru the efficiency of removing insurance companies, increasing competition, lowering administrative expense of armies of people squabbling with insurance companies over payment for services. It would break the employer-insurance link. Finally, it would create more jobs, if more people received adequate care.
The money is already here to pay for it. It could just be spent a lot more efficiently thru the above plan. But that never happens because some of that Trillion the insurance companies get, they spend on lobbying. They don’t want the gravy train to end.
To ever fix this, for the whole country, involves getting most of this lobbying money out of politics. It is massively corrupt and promotes ever greater inequality in this country.
But that is another whole issue to deal with.
Insurance companies paid their merchants of doubt to DESTROY the support this decent plan might have otherwise gotten…..that’s the main reason we don’t have single payer. People are dumb….and easily manipulated….especially old people, who all vote.
What is good for the regular people never comes up in these decisions….it’s all about the money, and who gets to carve off the biggest slice of healthcare dollar profit.
You would think that companies would go for removing heath care costs from their bottom line. They could have that with a single buyer or single payer system. If they wanted they could even give additional benefits to attract and keep good employees but they don’t seem to care about it. It’s a mystery to me why.
No mystery….single payer only needs one company. Right now, here, Medicare is pieced off to more than 60 providers…to provide some comparison.
When we had single payer here for Medicaid, it was Ross Perot’s EDS that processed the claims and wrote the checks.
I think it’s ironic that most conservatives who liked him never thought much about the fact that most of his money was made providing middle-man services for the welfare state. I never even heard it mentioned when he ran for POTUS, as best as I can remember.
My view is that in general, health care should be free for everyone regardless of ability to pay. By free I mean that everyone foots the bill via taxes. However, the main problem that arises with this is the level of cover’. It’s all very well giving everyone free access to GP appoints for example because the cost is fairly equal for all participants over their lifetime. However, for specialist expensive treatment the situation changes. Take an extreme example in which a miracle drug comes on to the market for something at $1million per tablet. If this is offered to all with no consideration of cost the system breaks down. Therefore I think it’s very important with free health at the point of entry systems to specify exactly what is covered, and review it on a regular basis to balance cost of new treatments with likely demand.
I miss the edit function
In a free for everyone health care system a million dollar a pill miracle drug would not be offered because free for all does not mean the laws of economics are ignored. The last year of life for the elderly accounts for 30% of the nation’s health care expenditures. It would be nice to compare that to other countries but I haven’t found the data yet. If free healthcare systems are better (define better) then we could understand the real efficiency of the US system.
Well I suppose the theory is that “the free for all does not mean the laws of economics are ignored” but what tends to happen is a constant clamour for more money. There’s never enough. As I say I’m in favour of it but a blank cheque causes constant problems because all services are affected as opposed to just the the few new expensive or difficult ones. Take Covid as an example, a new condition that needs dealing with, our health service diverts all resources or most of them to dealing with it and others procedures are seriously delayed or cancelled. Correctly in my view but nevertheless a choice was made. This sort of thing happens constantly one way or another so a decision has to be taken as each additional treatment or medicine etc become available. Otherwise existing services are damaged or there is a constant clamour for more money.
Your example is a perfect example of why the single buyer of pharmaceuticals works so well. Your $1million tablet might cost $1million in the US because it works so damn well and there are enough people willing to pay.
But in my country the government would so no. You can sell your tablet in our market for $100,000 or not at all. Given the marginal cost of the treatment is almost zero, the cost is agreed and the pharmaceutical is a tenth of the US price.
Cut a few zeros off the prices of the scenario described and you reach reality. Start comparing the US prices of Viagra compared to other countries….
How do we pay for all the copays, premiums and deductibles to healthcare bureaucrats right now? Kalra’s bill would just get rid of the layers and layers of corporate red tape. We have the lowest life expectancy of any wealthy nation and by far the highest health costs.
We also have the most diverse population of all the developed countries. There is a wide disparity in life expectations among the groups.
Native Americans: 75.06 years
African Americans: 75.54 years
White Americans: 79.12 years
Hispanic Americans: 82.89 years
Asian Americans: 86.67 years
I’m sure this nurse will have second thoughts when she realizes that Free Health Care means she’ll be working for free. Is there another way in a land dedicated to protecting private property?
I am sure they have figured out how to keep the mandate going after the system runs out of money.
Congress don’t care, they’re not eating their own cooking. Each congressional office is considered a “small business” (via 2013 OPM Memo), meaning Members of Congress, staff, and family are subsidized through DC Health. So don’t expect anything, anywhere, to change except the never-ending rising cost of care & insurance. CONgress: Laws are for thee, not for me.
By the way, Texas now has medicare for all to deal with a winter storm that would be a nothing burger in most of the rest of the country. Why not for the pandemic as well?
Then politicians will declare more events “natural disasters” to buy votes with medical services.
“With the government (taxpayers) paying every bill, what forces are holding down any costs (nurses, beds, doctors, drugs, operations, etc.)?
What forces prevent unnecessary procedures?”
Um, the payer. Aka the government. It works elsewhere. Costs especial with pharmaceuticals are generally MUCH lower with a ‘single’ payer system.
“Um, the payer. Aka the government. It works elsewhere.”
I will ONLY work in the U.S. when the private sector is no longer allowed to make political contributions.
Mish, may I suggest a future topic? Reshoring seems to be becoming more prevalent in the last few years and the Covid pandemic accelerated the trend. It looks to be mainly market-driven.
You cannot have this type of system if you are allowing illigal aliens into the country and paying for them and their families.
If they are doing this in Singapore, Germany, Spain and all over the world then it can be done here. The thing is along with the illigal issue, you have the military issue. The government will not stop spending on imperialism. Fat chance Uncle Sam diverts those monies to their LEGAL citizens.
The country is broke financially and lacks any common sense. Bad news, we’re doomed.
“How Do We Pay For This Free Stuff?
No one seems to have an answer…”
Not true. The CBO recently reported that national single payer healthcare would save the Federal government $650 billon a year. It more than pays for itself because existing spending is replaced with better, cheaper, single payer.
And folks would also save massively by not having to pay insurance, and business too.
Socialized medicine is a no brainer. It blows every other method out of the water.
And did you notice the Fake News media could only ask Bernie how he would pay for his proposal…that already paid for itself?
That’s what has become of USA. And Mish is part of that problem
Yet numerous countries across the world DO successfully make healthcare free. Sure no system is perfect, but almost every modern economy has a better healthcare system for the bulk of its population than the US.
The questions of who can pay for this stuff or how can it work can be readily answered by looking overseas rather than inward at a completely broken system.
“Yet numerous countries across the world DO successfully make healthcare free. Sure no system is perfect, but almost every modern economy has a better healthcare system for the bulk of its population than the US.”
Also note, none of these countries allow private sector political bribery, or as our SCOTUS called it “money is free speech”….R.I.P. Antonin Scalia.
Many areas are getting back close to normal. Cases are dropping fast.
Local schools are going back full time March 1st.
Restaurants and bars no longer have restrictive hours or capacity limits.
All stores have no capacity limits.
Airlines may end the middle seat restriction on March 31st.
Mask wearing is still in force and there are signs to respect social distancing but that is hit and miss.
Will we see huge growth in GDP this summer getting back to normal and some big stimulus checks.
Stock markets could go up another 10% this year?
I would bet that the Nurses are hoping to be eventually folded in as Government employees so they can join the ranks of other overpaid, unfireable unionites like teachers, police, correctional officers and firefighters who cry about how poorly they are paid in every election here in California.
Single payer does not mean that hospital workers work for the government. Single payer can be insurance type like medicare (but covering all and everything). Doctors, nurses do not work for the government. Inform your self please
Quit your liberal patronizing. It depends on how it eventually gets implemented. Doctors in the UK and Portuguese national health care systems are government employees for instance. Knowing how California works they would likely take the worst elements of multiple systems to make it the costliest most bloated system ever conceived.
With Covid anything is possible right now, lots of folks have gotten a medical screwing lately and it might fly in Cali this time
There is no budget problem if all medical personnel are paid at the $15/hr minimum wage. There might be a slight shortage of medical staff for a while; but really, brain surgery is like writing code or flipping burgers–anyone can do it.
Meat is meat, right?
This is without a doubt the dumbest comment I’ve ever read here.
ROTFLMAO.
“This is without a doubt the dumbest comment I’ve ever read here.
ROTFLMAO.”
Yeah, I’m’a guess he was joking.
Poe’s Law. It’s impossible to discern sarcasm on the internet without the author indicating it.
Written sarcasm is as old as writing itself. The internet changed nothing in that. Good sarcasm is easily detectable by the reader. What has changed is that unintelligent humorless social warriors have made it dangerous for normal people to use it.
I have an alternative solution that I think might be better…..let’s reduce healthcare CEO pay to $15/hr…..and eliminate bonus pay for insurance execs.
We have 177 Pharma and Insurance CEO’s….median pay of $7.7 million/year. That’s $2.6 billion a year, right there.
By my back-of-the-napkin math….their pay go would down so much that we could save NEARLY THE ENTIRE 2.6B…..in round numbers, since we could pay them all the
31, 200/year that 15 dollars an hour pays….and still have $2.596B and change to spend on care.
And that’s just a start. Hospital CEO pay can be in the 3 million range. That gets overlooked, because they work for non-profits, as a rule. But 1 in 7 healthcare dollars goes to one of these “non-profit” networks.
Healthcare execs at lower levels are bonused on meeting financial goals…..insurance companies don’t bonus for better patient care. I can tell you that.
It’s a corporate system that accrues the money to the execs….the social contract is just to keep the doors open and have some piss-poor level of care, so the citizens don’t riot.
Anybody who argues in good faith that this is some kind of self-equilbraitng system where market forces determine the best outcome is mistaken in my book…and should do a deeper dive into the reality of how US healthcare operates.
Look at the math. See where the money goes.
Corporate healthcare spends over half a billion dollars a year on lobbyists…..wonder why they do that? And I wonder if that makes a difference in how we deliver care?
Money in politics at work. Donors have the power to reward a politician who plays ball and harm those who don’t. Until we change the power of the big donors the system will not change and it is even more useless to talk about it. If perhaps we pass a law to allow only small donations from individuals, none from companies or foundations, no outsized speaking fees, no revolving doors, and a few others then we might be able to do something about changing the heath care system.
Captain Ahab, I think you should eat meally worms instead of meat. I’d rather see that than medical personnel being paid $15 per hour.
The problem with U.S. healthcare is cost, period.
Any plan to improve the problem that doesn’t tackle cost head-on is another band-aid, can-kicking to avoid the real problem.
Sectors, like pharma, insurance, suppliers, within healthcare that buy our government via campaign funding & lobbying make even the smallest changes near impossible.
We all saw how daunting it was back in 2009-2010, the insurance sector dumped billions into public disinformation about “death panels” and “government takeover”, leaving most voters confused & frustrated.
Meanwhile, with our healthcare being the most expensive in the world, factored into employee compensation, we’re losing our asses in globalization, both household and government debt is exploding.
We’re the only OECD without some form of government healthcare for regular citizens.
The “Free market” isn’t quite cutting it here, not when campaign funding is make-or-break for most candidates.
ACA did not improve anything and overall I think it raised cost for the average citizen while improving profits margin or the health care industry.
Here is an example of how messed up the system is.
My daughter a few years ago had a minor UTI infection. Urinary Tract infection. We gave her instructions to drive to the local Walgreens on a Saturday to see a nurse practitioner at the Walgreen minute clinic. She had this in the past so we knew it was a UTI. The bill would have been $100.
On the other side of the street is one of those small hospital urgent care / emergency room type of facilities that now have popped up everywhere. My daughter, being 17, got the directions messed up and went to the urgent care.
She saw a nurse practitioner at the urgent care and got a prescription. A few weeks later she got a bill for $4,500. This is for the same service she would have got a Walgreens for $100. The insurance company paid $1000 so we were stuck with a $3500 bill. I called the insurance company to complain and told them the urgent care needs to tell the patient what the cost will be before they do anything. If they did tell here this will be $4500, my daughter would have realized she was in the wrong place as we told her before she left the bill would be about $100 at the Walgreens minute clinic. That is what is messed up as most places have a sticker price for a service before you purchase the service. The medical industry will not tell you ahead of time, you find out when you get the bill.
I told the insurance company from now on I want to be called before any facility performs a procedure on my children because I do not want this to happen again.
They said too bad. You just need to inform your family better that you will not know the price until after the procedure if you go to any medical facility.
In the end. The same procedure is billed $100 at one provider location or $4500 just 1000 yards away by another provider.
I should have said, the insurance company probably negotiated a $3500 price as I bet they did not actually pay the facility $1000.
“ACA did not improve anything and overall I think it raised cost for the average citizen while improving profits margin or the health care industry.”
For me, yes, cost went up, but….
The ACA did add tens of millions of Americans to healthcare, who otherwise would be uninsured.
It also stopped providers from pushing out those who need it most – existing conditions.
It did slow the rate of increase in cost, but not completely.
I knew, once the “public option” was off the table ten years ago, that the ACA was only a band-aid.
In the end, It did not address the true problem, prices.
A public option may not have been a perfect solution, but it did at least open the door to force private sector competition.
“The “Free market” isn’t quite cutting it here…”
government meddling is not free market.
Infinite demand with private control of supply by buying government isn’t either.
Mish picks on a some bill in California that will never become law while still totally ignoring the actual disaster in Texas.
If single-payer didn’t work, wouldn’t all Britons be broke and dead by now?
The solution to Britain’s medical system was importing medical staff from mostly 3rd world countries. I’m not sure how it worked out. Most Britons are reluctant to talk about racist issues.
Don’t know if it is ignorance or just basic racism. Are you aware of the fact that many of the MDs and other medical staff that they “imported” were foreign students who graduated at UK schools? Or that some are from medical schools that are as good as regular medical schools here in the US or UK? I mean do you think that your private insurance pays for top of the class MDs from say Harvard?
So, the USA could do the same in theory. Also, mechanization, robotics and AI should make any industry more efficient and less costly.
Ironically, anything socialized only appears to “work” when individuals decide to avoid needing the socialized service.
There is some truth to that. On a 2-week family vacation to the UK (England, Wales, Scotland for us), we Americans were far and away the biggest people compared to the Brits we saw. They were quite universally lean people.
I understand that the NHS is aggressive in promoting healthy lifestyles, so that would be one way to condition people to avoid health services, thus keeping the system from imploding.
Of course, here in America, it’s all about consumption, which inevitably leads to obesity and all of its attendent maladies. There would be a major upheaval if preventative lifestyle maintenance became “mandatory.”
For kicks, look up race results for the London Marathon and compare them to the Chicago Marathon. Seems more of their population gets under 3 hours compared to us.
I believe it. I know anecdotes aren’t the strongest proof. But that experience in the UK was eye-opening.
Don’t do the UK one, massive waits for treatment and lower success rates for most. Go for the Japanese style one where you pay a nominal payment at the hospital of your choice (the cause of the UK problems, no competition no incentive to make a hospital popular) and the government provides the topup to the designated price of that particular treatment And the token payment, covered as well by government for unemployed etc. , stops another UK issue bored pensioners turning up endlessly about their bone aches.
The Japanese also have cheap foreign nurses but they have to go after 3 years. Nursing not a bad job for women in japan but low paid in the UK.
I always thought USA one absolutely unfit for purpose, let alone the morality of it. Plus now with pandemics non-universal healthcare doesn’t work.
You know for a country that has such an amazingly expensive healthcare system — by far the most expensive, with some rather dubious outcome…you know the results of healthcare instead of the “machines that go ping kind of mentality” (sic Monthly Python the meaning of life).
The failure of America is its terrible health care system. It doesn’t work for the vast majority of Americans and is fiendishly expensive — by all metrics, the American healthcare system fails Americans — not a single study shows the system superior — except in its costs — and its ability to provide amazing healthcare to a very small fraction of the population. But outcomes are poorer than in Canada — a county that spends about half of what America spends on healthcare
In Canada we have universal healthcare and it’s not great, too few doctors, too long a wait, the system has been taken over by the practitioners and the payer — the Government. There are more MRI machines in Minnesota than in the whole of Canada – not saying that Minnesota needs that many but still..
The best systems are those that place the user/client at the center of the equation. Singapore is an example — forced savings and private health care for the “usual stuff” from broken legs to other minor ailments. On the other hand, catastrophic health care is the domain of the Government — the impact the user/customer as the “usual” payer receives excellent health care, on the other hand, insurers know that they will not have to cover the cost of major surgeries.
The nurses are trying to co-opt the system to simplified “their” lives and to reduce the amount of suffering they see in their patients on a daily basis.
All good words and good deeds because America is broken and can no longer take care of the easy stuff!
The US spends pretty much double per capita as compared to all other countries. One would think that this would result in a health care utopia for Americans? To top it off Medicare Part A is facing insolvency in the next few years and proposals are to raise the Medicare payroll tax or cut benefits or a combination of the two.
As Mish says this cost will go down because you know “market forces”
I read a good article that said things are messed up when a lot of specialty doctors now live like kings.
I was reading an article from a Midwest city that said eye doctors get paid up to 10k to $15k for each weekend they are on call. Even if they do not see a patient. Want to buy a new car. Just work 4 weekends in one month and you have $40k to $50k income.
I know a couple of heart specialist that easily make over $2 million a year and that was about 6 years ago.
“I know a couple of heart specialist that easily make over $2 million a year and that was about 6 years ago.”
While I agree there are examples of specialists reaping insane profits, I hesitate to divert attention to med workers in general, the greatest source of extremes is in pharma, supplies and equipment.
General practitioners, nurses and staff don’t get such lavish salaries.
“All good words and good deeds because America is broken and can no longer take care of the easy stuff!”
Couldn’t agree more with your entire post, only wanted to say, regarding the state of America’s healthcare….”Merely a flesh wound”.
I think that a good way to start getting to the bottom of the Health Care Mess is requiring Hospitals, doctor clinics, dental offices to post their prices for all services at front for everyone to see (online better option). Then required insurance companies to post how much they pay for such services. Transparency definitely will shed the light on cost. However, if we continue with the smoke and mirror prices, we always going to continue to chase our own tails (figuratively)…
The key to the success of the design solution lies in understanding the needs of the audience, as well as in a clear understanding of the practical purpose of the future online store especially on geico customer service.
Influencing the user’s perception, the direction of obtaining information, simplifying the user’s access to information, creating a positive image of the resource – all this can be achieved through the use of various visual means. However, there are well-established features of perception, both of individual elements of the site design, and the general structure and composition of the resource. The competent use of simple techniques, the correct construction of the visual structure of the pages, the correct arrangement of the main and additional elements allows, to a large extent, to influence the improvement of the perception of the information provided by the site in general, and the online store in particular.
Do I detect a note of cynicism? Isn’t the behavioral approach a Cass Sunstein technique? He was Obama’s Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OMB). A Sunstein classic:
“We need to move away from short-term, politically motivated initiatives such as the ‘nudging people’ idea, which are not based on any good evidence and don’t help people make long-term behavior changes.”
“Influencing the user’s perception, the direction of obtaining information, simplifying the user’s access to information, creating a positive image of the resource – all this can be achieved through the use of various visual means.”
I say we focus on costs.
This reminds me of the way Reaganomics “Trickle-down”, “job creating” tax cuts were sold to the public 40 years ago.
It was a fantastic sales pitch.
The fact that household & government debt has exploded since, worker wages failed to increase with inflation and a mass of U.S. job went to China, Mexico, India notwithstanding.
…reporter Craig Unger got a former KGB spy to confirm on the record that Russian intelligence had been working Trump for decades. In his new book, “American Kompromat,” Unger interviewed Yuri Shvets, who told him that the KGB manipulated Trump with simple flattery. “In terms of his personality, the guy is not a complicated cookie,” he said, “his most important characteristics being low intellect coupled with hyperinflated vanity. This makes him a dream for an experienced recruiter.”…
KGB spies and the Pope never lie. It’s a well known truth.
Unger cited “Intelligence sources” is cited as his source. This is the equivalent of getting ‘facts’ from restroom walls.
Is it even relevant when Mish’s article is about a healthcare plan?
I’ll quote you from a reply you posted to one of my comments on Feb 11:
“Must you always bring up Trump?
I’m sorry you miss him, but he’s so last year….”
Likely going nowhere. It’s like the Teachers Union demanding the government to eliminate charter schools.
“Likely going nowhere. It’s like the Teachers Union demanding the government to eliminate charter schools.”
Provokes the question of how our private health system compares to the rest of the world’s socialized systems in cost, and quality.
In principle a big city like Los Angels could set up a health system modelled after Singapore’s. It could be done from an operational point of view I think. The problem would come from the companies that have a stake in keeping the present system. Since these companies are heavy donors it’s no wonder why we have the system we do. The countries that do have a very good health care system set them up when the after WW II prosperity gave them a window of opportunity. The insurance companies and the hospitals were weak players at the time and didn’t put up much of a fight. For us that window closed in the 1960’s never to open again unless another war comes along and disorganizes society enough to overcome the vested interests.
“The problem would come from the companies that have a stake in keeping the present system. Since these companies are heavy donors it’s no wonder why we have the system we do.”
That, right there, makes any discussion moot.
The real problem is money in politics, and it isn’t just healthcare.
The California bill would be more comprehensive than Canada’s. Canada’s publicly funded healthcare does not cover drugs, and dental which are viewed as too expensive and instead managed through government supports where needed and employer coverage.
Dental is hardly covered here in the US by any private insurance except for a few things but not the big things. BTW I can get a dental implant at about %50 of outside the US than what my dental insurance covers… (That includes travel expenses).
So the nurses are willing to give up some of their pay and face rising taxes? And how are those nurses going to keep up with the demand for “free” healthcare? How will nurses feel about their commutes to work becoming unsafe? How will those nurses feel when longer hours or rushed procedures lead to malpractice? If the nurses don’t care about the answers to those questions; then just move to Mexico.
“So the nurses are willing to give up some of their pay and face rising taxes?”
How ’bout we take a peek at some of the mark-ups for pharma, supplies, equipment?
On result would be a flood of people (from the U.S. and other countries legally and illegally) moving to California. Many maybe temporarily to get the free health care after a critical diagnosis.
I get the idea and maybe long term something can be worked out for a one pay system but we need to get rid of the current insurance system were only some people pay huge health care premiums and other pay almost none. FYI….my health care premiums through my company is $14.4k a year and a $3500 deductible for a family of 3.
I am guessing we would need to do something like in some European countries and raise federal income tax to about 40% for everyone. Poor people would pay less but rich people would pay more.
But we would still need to account for all the illegal immigrants who would flood to the U.S. in search of free health care. I guess we could just make are open borders official and that if you travel to the U.S., you become an automatic citizen? You only get free health care after you get a job though. The U.S. could hit a billion people within 10 years. Go long housing and food.
Then give them all an acre in Texas as someone else suggested once.
“On result would be a flood of people (from the U.S. and other countries legally and illegally) moving to California. Many maybe temporarily to get the free health care after a critical diagnosis.”
The thought briefly occurred to me as well, but I’m sure they’d require proof of residence, perhaps a sign-up for state health membership.
That aside, if there were a rush to move to Cali, it would send a potentially embarrassing message to other states.
I remember all the nay-sayers over Massachusetts’ precursor to Obamacare.
Why raise taxes? You do realize government programs are NOT financed by taxes?
Where are the calls for single payer food – for food justice? Don’t Californians have at least as much human right to food as for medical care?
Giving them ideas, are you? Surely a roof over your head is a “right.” As you point out, food. You’re going to need water with that food. Medical care. Education. You can’t get along without a cell phone. Seems we are getting things pretty well covered. Can’t go naked. How about we add clothing to the list?
Who is regulating cost now.
Payers. Like in any market.
“Payers. Like in any market.”
Almost choked on my coffee, thanks for the laugh.
Haha me to
I’m assuming you are joking or clueless
Markets can only charge what people can afford or are willing to pay, so threeblindmice is correct. Unfortunately, this very simple economic fact is very difficult for many to comprehend.
These pie in the sky ideas have gone nowhere even in California. That being said there is room for reform to lower costs. The problem is it involves someone losing their profit.
Shareholders, C-suite’s, yes.
More like doctors and nurses. Nurses in CA drive Lexuses and BMWs. Doctors are the owners of their practices. So, they’ll all give up their high salaries to make things free. Yeah, right…
How do you explain that most industrialized capitalist countries have universal healthcare? And education thru university level? That’s not “pie-in-the-sky”.