Umber

1 hour ago, RideJocky said:

So what kind of healthcare did you receive while you were working in the US?

Something provided by the company I was there for. I had a medical examination, I remember. It was the 80s and I was indestructible in the way you are when young.

2 hours ago, sirineou said:

It will be accomplished the same way it is accomplished by every other country in the developed world. 

We actually have an advantage over them, we don't need to invent the system, simply adapt the best part of each one of them. 

Taiwan, I think, made a very through examination of the worlds UHC systems, strong and weak points, short and long term consequences, a few year back when planning out their own UHC system. I am sure the US could have a copy of the report for the asking. 

39 minutes ago, RideJocky said:

I think Warren’s plan of not raising taxes (except on the greedy rich) is brilliant. 
 

We provide healthcare to everyone, and save money by making it free. 
 

There is not debate. If Batman ever goes to bed at night and dreams about selling wolf tickets to Superman, he better wake up and apologize!!!!

52 minutes ago, RideJocky said:

 

 

So who’s system do you think is best? 
 

 

This is actually theoretically possible. The US system overspends by so much that if you can bring costs down even close to what other nations spend, there is plenty of economic room to do both. I say theoretically because any such huge system overhaul would be very ticklish to actually pull off.

The US currently spends about 3.2 trillion $ on healthcare. About 10 000 per citizen. Other nations spend roughly 5 000. Thats a total difference of 1 600 billion. The US military expenditure is less than 400 billion per year. Total world biomedical research is about 330 billion.

As for best... whats the definition of best? Health per dollar spent? Best public health results? Fastest response time? Best preventive care? Best coverage of specialists? Different systems do well in different areas.

1 hour ago, RideJocky said:

It’s been my experience that virtually anything (popular) that is sold on the open market where people pay for what they get directly is good value. 

 

Markets are not that simple. Even Adam Smith, back in ye olde "Wealth of Nations" noted that some areas are not suited for market provision. He named contract arbitration and national defense. As in so many things, he was right. There are many things that can lead to market failure. ironically, it was an American, Kenneth Arrow, that founded the branch of economics known as "Health care Economics" during the work on uncertainties which won him the Nobel prize in Economics. The seminal work, "Uncertainties and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care" is available online in pdf, and quite readable for Nobel prize winning work.

The field have moved on since 1963 of course, and none of the theory or real world experience has indicated that the market is functional as a provider of most kinds of health care. Health care just has too many of the features that lead to market failure. 

Now in my personal opinion, the biggest one is lack of price elasticity. Which means the purchasers ability to refuse the product if it is too expensive is nonexistent for medically necessary things. In sub-areas such as liposuction, nosejobs, Lasik etc, the market works well. For cancer, diabetes, pulmonary issues etc, it collapses. There is a reason the US healthcare sector costs so much, delivers substandard results and do not get adopted by any other nations.

There are many other issues of course. Information asymmetry, barriers to entry, people being both the custodians of their health and consumers, the customers most in need of the product being the leas attractive customers (for insurance provision), et, etc. Its a big field.

https://web.stanford.edu/~jay/health_class/Readings/Lecture01/arrow.pdf

On 11/2/2019 at 6:45 PM, Crazy Alex said:

Because government sucks at reducing the costs of anything. Specifically to Warren's proposal, there are a plethora of flaws. The most obvious is dumping tens of millions if not more people into a system that up until now people paid into for decades without receiving benefits.

 

For example, a hypothetical Medicare recipient: at age 65, becomes eligible for benefits. Begins benefits with tens of thousands of dollars vested over decades.

 

New Medicare recipient: eligible now with little to nothing vested.

 

Pretty big financial hole to plug up. Going after evil rich people won't cut it.

Americans pay more money in tax towards government health care than almost all other nations.

The difference is mostly that working tax-paying Americans pay a bit more in tax towards health care, and also have to get insurance. Because the government healthcare in the US mostly do not cover working taxpayers. Americans like it that way I think, they pay twice as much as everyone else for fairly poor care, to avoid having to cover the whole population.

Anyway, have worked in the US and Norway; differences in personal tax rates are small. The notion that Scandinavian taxes are higher than the US is mostly build on Danish and to a lesser degree Swedish tax rates.