When it comes to healthcare, we're screwed. Some form of universal healthcare is inevitable.
We already have "universal health care". Some people pay a great deal out of pocket for it, some pay modest (or maybe not so modest) sums into an insurance pool, and make a co-payment at time of delivery of medical services, and some are totally dependent on the kindness of strangers.
Emergency rooms have to accept incoming patients. Once the prospective patient has been put through triage, a certain degree of priority is applied to that particular situation, and it may be ten seconds, or ten hours, before directing medical attention to that individual.
The objection is that ALL medical care will be centered on crisis response, and the slow, deliberate application of good preventative medical care will become a casualty of this redirection of resources. Elective medical procedures will be allowed (or forced) to be postponed, until a crisis does occur, the fire drill response.
"Get your employer to pay for it" is bad policy, for a multitude of reasons. Because your employer does NOT pay for your health insurance plan, you do. By taking a lesser wage, or having the premiums deducted from your take-home pay AFTER taxes. Even if the employer pays ALL the premium, this is still a bad deal for the employee, because when the job terminates for any reason, the medical coverage disappears. Or the employer may have just done the insurance coverage shopping for you, and acquired the least-expensive source out there, with some company that is willing to accept the premiums, but may have a very poor record of paying the bills, something you do not want to discover in the middle of a major medical crisis.
Some may ask, why can't individuals just buy into the same plans that are available to most government employees? This is not the same thing at all as having the government, at whatever level, being the single-payer source, as the insurance is actually through regulated companies, that provide the coverage based on actuarial risk tables. Some people just cannot qualify for coverage under any plan, because of pre-existing health conditions, or time limitations, or some other disqualifier. Or if they do qualify for such a plan, they may be unable or unwilling to make the necessary premium payments or co-payments. These inevitably wind up as somebody's charity cases.
So to finance coverage for this pool of uninsureds, is it wise to enroll them in "compulsory" insurance? Again, this problem with triage, and overdependence on somebody else footing the bills, resulting in deferred or even inadequate delivery of health care. So, some say, slap a surtax on top of Social Security, or some kind of excise or national sales tax on goods and services, to finance. But then, it becomes a TAX, and not an insurance plan.
Problem with that, is that the tax will NOT be dedicated and segregated for that purpose and that purpose alone. The fund will be raided almost immediately, as were Social Security and Medicare, by throwing it in the general revenue fund, and "borrowing" against those funds, to run general government programs. Essentially, this program would only ADD to the national debt, as it would be funds that were to be paid out at some future time, but spent on current responsibilities, which means, there ain't anything in the bank when it comes time to pay the bills coming in.
Since the time of the New Deal, the government has been mortgaging more and more of its future by borrowing, and now, the least tremor in this cycle of always borrowing ahead, sets off tsunamis and shock waves all over the world.
Which is why GM builds such uninspired automobiles, and is soon to become the #2 automaker in the world. GM provides the biggest health insurance and pension program in the world, and exists only to continue to serve that purpose, not to build cars.
That's because the Republican Party has accepted the premise that healthcare is a right. The Party has always been the lesser of two evils and now their intellectual weakness is coming home to roost. "For the greater good" is now widely accepted by Republicans and conservatives alike. That their feel good programs are nothing but theft doesn't seem to bother them in the least. If a rational liberty focused party existed I would be ecstatic, but one simply cannot be found in this country.
IMHO, universal healthcare will cause healthcare rationing and fewer physicians as they elect to retire ASAP. If you think medicine is bad now, you ain't seen nothing yet.
The Last Time Congress Reformed Health Care: A Lawmakers Guide to the Medicare Catastrophic Debacle
"Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, one of the most powerful politicians in the United States, was booed and chased down a Chicago street Thursday morning by a group of senior citizens after he refused to talk with them about federal health insurance .... Eventually, the six-foot four-inch Rostenkowski cut through a gas station, broke into a sprint and escaped into his car, which minutes earlier had one of the elderly protesters, Leona Kozien, draped over the hood."
Health Insurance and "Adequate" Care
The Quranic Concept of War Check the source. It's long, but interesting, for a long war.
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Unfortunately. A lot of boomers are going to want someone else to take care of them as they age and they have no compunction about having the Government force their kids and grandkids to pick up the tab.
I am in that age group but I would be happy to see all government entitlement programs ended, even though I've been paying into them all my adult life.
But it doesn't have to be. All that needs to be done is to lower and simplify the tax code and abolish government healthcare regulations that mandate that insurance have to cover certain procedures and mandate that people have a right to use ERs as their primary care physicians.
Next Medicaid should be abolished.