I don't get all this stuff about healthcare "mandates" and "signups" and "penalties"

[StefanX]

Correct me if I'm way off the mark here, but...

I thought in most countries Europe if you got sick you just went to the clinic and if you could manage to show proof of address or something that showed you were citizen, the doctor would see you. (Maybe not in Germany, but I think in France and England you can basically put off dealing with the system until you show up sick.)

It's just a public facility like a library or a gymnasium which is paid for by taxes, and you show up when you feel the need to avail yourself of its services.

War comes out of taxes doesn't? Correct me if I'm wrong, but... there wasn't any kind of "mandate" where we had to "sign up" to pay our share of the $1-2 trillion to pay for the Iraq War, or face a "penalty", was there? Ahmed Chalabi and Judy Miller and Condi Rice and Colin Powell and GWB and FourthBranch and all the other Very Serious People in DC told us about the WMDs and the mushroom cloud and the aluminum tubes and the chemical trailers and all, and they read the NIE with the 16 words and Congress came up with the money by passing a spending appropriation bill or whatever, which came out of taxes.

Seriously though, why the separate funding conduit for healthcare? Why do wars get funded automatically by everyone all at once, whereas healthcare has to be this à la carte sign-up thing with individual mandates and penalties?

The whole healthcare funding debate already strikes me as so utterly derailed and debased and defrauded from the very outset, just like almost every other aspect of this inane American political discourse. People of bad faith poison the discussion by corrupting the very terminology, and from then we go merrily down the garden path talking about irrelevant abstractions, and then we get screwed. It's the American way, and I'm getting really tired of this nonsense.

Figure out how much the damn thing is going to cost, and raise taxes for it, just like you do for all the wars. End of story.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. there's no reason why we can't copy

the successful health programs of Europe and Canada.

[PDJane]

2. The difference is that the US

has had its political process hijacked by the corporatocracy. That's what this is all about. Insurance companies think of the public as just another way to make money without producing anything.

Europe and Canada, generally, believe in the common good; the US pays lip service, but doesn't actually believe in anything but short-term financial gain.

[unpossibles]

3. how much it's going to cost?

it looks to me like we're already paying twice (or more) what other countries are paying for lower quality care overall. You'd think the Republicans would be all about trying to slash costs by going to tax-funded universal health care.

Oh wait, my bad. They don't really care about lowering costs, they just uses taxes to get votes, then spend, spend, spend.

[stillcool]

4. actually...you have it right...

How much is it going to cost 'them'...way more than they are willing to give up... What a behemoth of a scam the 'playing against the odds' insurance industry is.

[warren pease]

8. More than twice as much in most cases...

All that garbage about mandates, signups, pools, penalties for not having insurance... It's all just sophist bullshit to distract the ill-informed, dummied-down chowder heads from focusing on the outrageous fact that the US is never, ever going to have a decent, just, equitable health care system as long as the corporatists are in power.

As even an opponent of single-payer admits:

In the mockumentary 'Sicko', Michael Moore points out that despite spending the most on health care of any nation ($7,400 per capita), the US ranks near the bottom among industrialized countries and only two spots above Cuba (that spends $251 per capita).

What rankings? In 2000 the World Health Organization came up with rankings for the health care systems of 190 countries.

And maybe the most galling stat of all: A Harvard Medical School study showed that, back in 1999, the US taxpayer shouldered the burden for just under 60 percent of all medical costs nationwide by being forced to fund health care for federal, state and local government employees. That included programs such as the Federal Employees Health Plan and those for state and local employees as well; the VA system; the Cadillac coverage our fine representatives and Senators enjoy (and which they say we can't have); the cost of covering ER expenses for those without insurance; Medicare; and the costs of various state-run Medicaid programs.

That 60 percent represented $2,604 per capita at the time, which means government spending per-person (via tax dollars) on health care in the US was higher than total per capita health care expenditures in any other country in the world – including those with single-payer, universal-access national health care systems.

So we're paying for national health care; we're just not getting it.


wp

[WinkyDink]

5. Exactly. But one correction, from my experience: I went to clinics and/or

doctors in England, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Oporto, and Strasbourg: Never had to show residency; never paid a dime.
And the Amsterdam one was an ophthalmologist.

[StefanX]

6. What? No signup? No penalty? No mandate? Sacré Bleu!

nt

[Critters2]

7. We have to protect the insurance companies.

You didn't think this was about you and your health, did you?