Posted on 10/12/2018 10:46:19 AM PDT by caww
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in an op-ed accusing President Trump of lying about "Medicare for all," starts out with a whopper of his own.
"It would guarantee everyone could get the healthcare they need without going into debt at far lower cost than the current dysfunctional system," Sanders writes in USA Today.
The problem with his pie-in-the-sky statement, and the op-ed that follows, is that it fails to recognize the natural tradeoffs between access and cost in healthcare policy. In doing so, he also ignores the value of individual choice and the distinction between public and private that is central to the American character.
The tradeoffs (in article link) are pretty clear. If the federal government offers more generous payment rates, then the Sanders plan would cost well north of $32 trillion and any "savings" to national health spending would melt away. If the plan reduces payment rates further, it will only make access problems more severe.
It's a very dangerous place for us as a society to make no distinction between public and private spending. If government banned all restaurants and offered free food to all at government cafeterias, most people would see that as problematic even if there were circumstances under which it could reduce our national food budget. When it comes to the personal decisions involved in healthcare, there should be even more reason to be wary of government control.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
My nephew has a wife and three kids. For a while he was out of work during the Obama years and they were desperate. He looked into Obamacare. Well it was so doggone expensive he could not afford it and did not pay and of course was charged that fine they charged for not having insurance at all. He had no money to pay for insurance so they fined him, and the fine was a lot for a guy out of work.
Bunk.
When everything is government’s business no one has any business being independent from government’s dictates.
The current health system is run like a cartel, an oligarchy of mobbed up entities entangled in various collusion agreements on pricing and transparency.
Any initial fix of the health care system should involved mandated transparency to see who is paying what to whom. Transparency enables the market to make informed purchasing decisions, which really is the crux of a strong, working capitalism.
VT Bernie.
State paid the clown who wrote Obamacare thousands of dollars to draft a medicare for all plan for the state
they finally realized it was way to expensive for the state EVEN WITH all the second home owners taxes contributing to the state coffers
Monopsony is just about as bad as monopoly.
Monopsony is what happened when Walmart was the place suppliers had to sell into in order to move a decent amount of product. And because Walmart was a monopsony they dictated the sales price of the items, which dictated how much the suppliers could charge Walmart, which dictated that most products had to be manufactured in China in order for the suppliers to make a reasonable profit.
Monopsony sucks. Monopoly sucks. Medicare for all would suck.
But what of cost savings?
Ocasio-Cortez said that we need to deduct savings from lesser funeral expenses, if only we had socialized medicine.
Because if we had socialized medicine, we would have fewer deaths.
That was her answer to how Medicare for all gets paid for.
Exactly how it’s supposed to work — then Trump came along and undid it.
Ship this traitor to Red China. He’ll love it in his paradise.
The statement is plausible ONLY if you consider collective debt different from individual debt.
In Colorado, even the liberal idiots in Boulder and the Denver suburbs voted against single payer two years ago.
People love it in the abstract - until they learn how much it costs. That’s always been the Achilles heel of “free” health care.
It never costs less than the budget predictions.
It still is expensive.
What Bernie proposes to do is to merely shift the costs around.
Price would still be the same.
Socialism is wonderful... until you run out of money to pay for it.
‘everyone could get the healthcare they need’
Has it occurred to any grasping-hands type that one reason medical devices, equipment, treatments, etc. are expensive is because they are rare? And has it occurred to any grasping-hands type that they exist at all because someone took a risk seeking a reward in the form of a profit?
X-ray machines, surgical trays, diabetic supplies, etc. did not drop out of the sky fully formed in infinite numbers.
Moreover, ‘need’ is a fairly shaky basis and a rather nebulous term. Does someone need a nose job or liposuction? If a bum declares a need for gamma-knife surgery is he moved to the front of the line ahead of the person able to pay for it or even whose philanthropy created the hospital wing and paid for the gamma-knife itself?
Need is not want and need is not justification for demanding and taking.
Good post.
Who decides what’s necessary medical care and what isnt?
Under Bernie’s plan - that decision won’t be made by you and your doctor.
It will be made by politicians and bureaucrats.
Now get this - the same people who say the government has no business telling a woman what to do with her own body, turn out to be the same people who insist the government has the right to decide how to manage your health care.
Just don’t accuse them of hypocrisy.
They did get on Medicaid, here in Az it’s called Ahcccs. Obamacare was expensive. I don’t know the particulars of it but I’ve heard it from many people including my brother who could not afford it. There is some cost you must pay per month and if you have no income how do you do that? Her income was barely paying rent.
Meant to add she had a part time job.
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