Pelosi on single-payer health care: 'How do you pay for that?' (only $30 TRILLION)

The Hill ^ | 2/28/19 | PETER SULLIVAN

[bert]

No, I made no comment on the nurses actual salaries. My comments were that what is said to sell the one payer system has nothing to do with reality.

At present I perceive that there is a problem in the market for nurses salaries resulting from the competition for nurses. Nurses salaries and institutional viability is a very complex issue

[PubliusMM]

And...ration care.

“Sorry, sir. We don’t pay for cancer treatments if you are over 63 (or, 53?).”

“No, Ma’sm. We can’t provide replacement joints for persons not engaged in work that requires the joint to be used in the course of that employment.”

[FrankR]

Didn’t we already run this “government healthcare” gambit once?

If the American people sit down for another go at it, then it’s about time to give up on America, declare Pelosi the queen, and die.

[Vermont Lt]

Whatever you are paying for insurance now, you will be taxed. What your company is paying for insurance will be confiscated.

So, as soon as it looks like it will be possible your company will start cutting insurance contributions and transferring those expenses to salaries.

[xzins]

Don’t forget to mention that the sick and elderly will go to the back of the line, if they get coverage at all. Cheaper to give pain killers and let them die.

[Keyhopper]

Get your yellow vest here!
Yellow vests for sale.
Get them now before their all gone
Yellow vests here and going fast.
Freepers get 10% off today!
I might as well get started early

[Revolutionary]

Actually it would be much, much more that $30T. If you put everyone on Medicare it would be $4.6T a year. But Medicare cost shifts a large percentage of its costs onto to insurance companies by paying way below market costs. That is why health care costs were rising faster than inflation in the first place before Obama care. So add another 50% onto that cost and you get $6.9T a year. But, but many people don't cost as much as seniors. So I will subtract 33% percent and we still get $4.6T per year. That is still larger than the entire yearly U.S. federal budget.

[snoringbear]

“I'm 75 and have Medicare which costs me $1600 a year right out of my SS check. It chews up all the COLA increases and I paid into the system since it began...until I finally retired at age 72.” I wish I paid only $1,600 out of my SS. I’m 74 and having worked hard and diligently saved into my employer 401k, received profit sharing and such I’m now being hit with significant taxable RMD withdrawals which pushes my income into a tax bracket causing high Medicare deductions from my monthly social security check. Yeh, I know, I should be grateful to be able to pay that amount. But, i don’t see it that way as I deferred lots of things so to save for my “golden years” and am now being required to subsidize those who didn’t. Guess, using Esop’s fable of the ant and grasshopper I see myself as the ant being required to take care of the grasshopper. Piss on the grasshopper is what I say 🤬....

[Rummyfan]

Free crap seems to be expensive.

As P J O'Rourke said, if you think health care is expensive now, just wait till it's free.

The sponsors -AOC, Harris et al - see the solution as easy - just print more money!

[Rummyfan]

Administratively Obamacare has been a nightmare. One can only image what a 100% government managed health care system would look like administratively.

Just as with the NHS in the UK, such a system would soon become the largest employer in the nation.

I just made a trip to the DMV this week, a simple transaction but it still consumed two hours. You have to stand in line for an hour to get a number to stand in line again... for another hour. I thought the whole time 'who in their right mind wants to turn health care over to the government and deal with life and death issues through such a monstrous bureaucracy?'.

[Rummyfan]

For a look at how smoothly that will transition, think back to the Obamacare software roll-out disaster.

Didn't they spend almost one billion dollars, and could not even produce a working web site?!

[Jim Noble]

Well, if the idea is for money from the Federal government to pay for everything we have now, at the prices we pay for it and without restrictions on who gets what when and how, then, yes, Pelosi is right. We can’t pay for that.

However.

We aren’t really paying for what we have now, anyway. We have contracted $22 trillion in liabilities (and this number is increasing rapidly) to have what we have now, AND futile interventions to “control spending” and “increase quality” are destroying the workforce we rely on to deliver it.

So, there is going to be major change. If it is driven by politics, and if the next election is fought between AOC and her citizen army (who have a plan) and the Republicans (who do not have a plan), then the ones with the plan are going to prevail.

[Vaduz]

We are going to take things away from you for................
Oh never mind same old scam.

[Syncro]

It's all about her fear of losing her power to the young socialists/Islamists in congress.

She isn't against socialism and radical Islam but is giving lip service to talking points that she thinks will help her stay speaker of the house.

She acts like a dictator in running the Hos (<^______ I noticed the thypo but decided to leave it in) of Reps.

House of Representatives

[Leep]

She probably has less than 10 years..if that to live..and she acts like a ding ding teenager.

[Leep]

...but she thinks she is going to live forever.
But the devil has other plans for her.

[Syncro]

The Father of Lies always calls in his chits.

It will not go well for her when she has to pay the piper.

[Syncro]

Well she is trying to impress a 29 yr old teenager...

[Soul of the South]

“I thought the whole time ‘who in their right mind wants to turn health care over to the government and deal with life and death issues through such a monstrous bureaucracy?’.”

Under government healthcare most people will be seeing nurse practitioners and physician assistants. An appointment to see an MD will take weeks and a specialist months. Likely a committee of bureaucrats will have to review and approve requests for any surgery. If you are over 75 years old, the focus will be on end of life “choices”. Medical providers will be directed to encourage patients to choose euthanasia over treatment for almost any condition.

For the politically influential wealthy, and senior government officials there will be special hospitals and medical practices invisible to the public and offering treatment options not available to the public. Every socialist utopia in history provides a different standard of living for the rulers.

Healthcare for the masses will be rationed by bureaucrats. The administrators will soon be corrupted. Diagnose with a tumor either wait in line to have surgery in six months or make a $10,000 cash payment and move to the front of the line. Sitting in the emergency room for hours with excruciating pain which may be a burst appendix, wait another 10 hours and die waiting or slip $1000 to the clerk gatekeeper at the admitting desk.

Your body needs the formulary drug because it rejects the generic? Forget it. Bureaucrats know better — in public hospitals everyone gets the generic. Plus the generics are now mass produced in China where there are no independent quality inspections and the factory managers frequently substitute chemicals and freely use old expired chemicals. Not unlike the imported tainted pet foods and lead painted toys we hear about all too frequently on the news.

Ten years after the government takes over the healthcare system, the current VA system will look good.