Quote:
Originally Posted by steve k
The healthcare premiums will not go down because you are assuming the government will know what to do with this "Universal healthcare". You are assuming that Edwards-if elected-will have the plan and the people inplace. You will assume that he will have the healthcare companies behind him offering the same quality of medicines and care despite the fact that research and development funds will be way down because the government will be subsidizing it. You are assuming that something of this magnitude can be handled by the government or the people running the government. You are assumming that Edwards prediciton of an annual cost of $90- $120 billion annually will be correct when you know it won't because government spending always goes above and over what is intended. This would not only crash the American economy but wound to a point that not even the 9/11 terrorists couldn't do. Tis plan if enacted would be the equivilant of a nuclear bomb going off in Ny, Chicago and L.A. It would be that bad.
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If universal health care is so inefficient, why does total health care spending in the US
account for 15% of our GDP, the highest share among industrialized nations ? All other Western countries, which mostly have universal health care systems, commit under 12% of their GDP to health spending.
We also have the highest per capita health spending : $6,100, two and a half times the industrialized world's average of $2,550; we also have the highest per capita spending on pharmaceuticals, which is a testimony to the power of Big Pharma lobbying.
And these high costs
don't add up to high quality health care !
What does that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of industrialized nations.
Etc., etc.
Moreover, with the rising cost of insurance,
small businesses are having a hard time covering their employees.
The number of small businesses in Florida offering health insurance coverage has declined over the years, according to a survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business. The study revealed that 69 percent of respondents provided health benefits last year, compared with 80 percent in 2002. Nearly half said they pay more than $2,500 per employee per year for health benefits.
Many local business owners say they cannot provide health insurance to their employees because the cost is prohibitive. Some, like Pashley, say they plan to add health insurance in the future, after they have finished expanding and are more fiscally stable. Others say they don't know if they will ever be able to afford it.
Not just in Florida :
Health insurance is becoming increasingly unaffordable for small business owners in the Northwest, according to a study released Wednesday by a Seattle-based social justice group.
(...)
Roth was among the two-thirds of survey respondents who do not offer health insurance. He said he provided insurance for employees for the first 25 years of the restaurant's 29 years in business, but rising costs finally forced him to drop it.
"In the beginning, all my employees who worked 25 hours a week were covered, with dependent coverage available for full-time employees," he said. "As the cost of insurance went up, we had to increase the cost of deductibles, and charge employees for a portion of the coverage. Finally, we were no longer able to provide any coverage at all."
Roth said the solution is a single-payer system that covers everybody, "like almost every other part of the developed world has. What it will take to get there, I don't know."
It's a nationwide phenomenon. Even the GOP has to
propose answers to these concerns :
Small Business Health Plans lower cost. Small Business Health Plans would allow small businesses to band together through associations and purchase quality health care for workers and their families at a lower cost. In fact, according to the CBO, premiums for businesses participating in Small Business Health Plans would be 13 percent less than the premiums paid for existing health insurance coverage. (CBO)
Small businesses banding together through association ? Sounds like the first step towards communism... Universal health care is basically taking that to a higher level, where the entire citizenry bands together, thus allowing economies of scale and decreasing the amount of private insurance paperwork : one single, nonprofit bureaucracy would be cheaper and much more efficient than the present chaotic assemblage of private insurance bureaucracies. And everybody would be covered.
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