How much pressure would single payer take off of a 2nd stimulus?

[BR_Parkway]

It seems that if we need to pump more money into the economy to get things moving again (not about to debate on if we should or shouldn't in this post) - how many more jobs could be created by passing a single payer now? How much pressure would it take off the average family and allow them to start 'consuming' again?

[lindisfarne]

1. There's a widespread myth on DU that single payer is cheaper and better. Neither is inherently true

http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm
Shows costs per capita of various countries' health systems.

Single payer is not a unitary thing. Neither are other options used in various countries. What makes them better or worse is how they are set up.

We don't need single payer to have a universal, cost-effective option. And single payer can create a universal, cost-effective option (but, depending on how it is set up, it does not necessarily create this).l

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. What IS true, is that our 'system' is the worst of all the industrial nations.

BTW, those charts and graphs and bullshit all end 2003, which was before the MASSIVE explosion of healthcare costs of the past few years.

There are several forms of single-payer out there we can model from - and ALL are better than what we've got.

[lindisfarne]

5. No one is disputing the US pays more per capita &has worse outcomes than any other developed nations

Well someone might be, but I'm not.

[LWolf]

2. Not just single-payer.

Not-for-profit single-payer.

One way to take heat off on the widest scale.

[pnwmom]

4. None, overall. The idea is to lower costs, not increase them. And the second

stimulus that is being proposed would increase spending on needed infrastructure -- which is an investment in the future.

[backscatter712]

6. Real health care reform, especially single-payer, IS a stimulus.

We lose untold billions of dollars in lost productivity, lost wages, and so on because people are incapacitated or killed by preventable illnesses.

If single payer, or a real, working, public option that actually did fix our broken-ass health care system was implemented, for one thing, the health care industry itself would be stimulated extensively (except for the insurance companies, but I don't think anyone here will shed tears over billionaires that got their money by keeping cancer patients from getting chemo...)

The populace in general, would get better health care, would be more productive at work because they're healthier, wouldn't be subjected to excessive debts and bankruptcies due to medical conditions, wouldn't have to spend so much money caring for incapacitated family members and working around fixable medical problems, and that would result in billions of dollars going into the economy for better things.

[customerserviceguy]

7. We're not going to get single payer

until things get very much worse for people under the current system. That includes all those Repuke-voting f***heads who think that they have it good with the current system, and that the people who are in trouble 'asked for it'.

When they can see their own asses on the line, then we get them over to our side. That's why I think public option is a bad idea, it delays the day of reckoning.