Single-Payer Universal Health Care Explained - TYT

[phazed0]

Sounds good to me!

[longship]

1. As always, Cenk tells the truth. R&K nt

[DhhD]

14. I needed to hear that this amount was over a 10 year period at the beginning of the video instead of

in the middle. Anxiety, and therefore Adrenalin, can make you forget what you just heard and saw.

[Dragonfli]

2. That doesn't even explain how much Doctors, healthcare facilities and hospitals

Would save via administrative costs. It takes a very large administrative dept. for each of these to keep up with the paperwork for each separate insurance company, each with their own brand of paperwork and strange quirks and hoops they put up for caregivers to jump through just to get paid, not to mention the constant re-submissions these office staff personnel have to submit (because insurance co.s routinely "loose " paperwork and stall payment over constant and never ending minutia in order to gain a percentage of money for what they don't pay out when someone fails to accommodate all the stall and loss of paperwork tactics used to avoid paying.

My doctor told me he had 4 people just to keep up with all the differing paperwork and would love to only hire one to fill out what would be a single universal set of papers under a single payer plan.

Single payer would save practices a great deal of money spent on an unnecessarily bloated administration needed to cover all the differing requests and paperwork from several companies rather than from one source, my doctor said he would only need one person that may even have extra time to do other non-medical duties for his practice, such savings on the part of the healthcare providers would cheapen the cost of care. Imagine the effect such a change would have on a large scale caregiver like a hospital, talk about saving on the cost of health care, it would be substantial because of the savings to the caregivers.

Adding that bit of information makes our healthcare savings even larger than under the projections like TYT just talked about that doesn't even address that bit.

[passiveporcupine]

6. Yeah, I too was surprised a lot of this wasn't even mentioned.

And he didn't mention that it would (if I've got this right) cover prescriptions, vision and dental, which are not covered now under basic Medicare and many insurance plans.

[phazed0]

8. Hard to do in keeping with facts.

I think it is because the numbers given are more-or-less "fact" as where we would have to speculate at the additional savings.. While it is fairly easy to see how much of the pie Cenk talked about can be affected... it's another to quantify down to the microcosm of each medical office, admin costs, decisions on staff, etc. other than to say "more savings here!".

[D Gary Grady]

12. Excellent point, and it's a saving we could go for immediately

For example, U.S. banks and mortgage companies (pretty much all of them, I think) use a standard application form for home mortgage loans decreed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There are also federal standards for homeowner insurance (because the insurance is required by mortgage lenders). Health insurance companies could and should be required to have similar standards imposed on claim processing. Even some Republicans might go along with this. Lots of doctors are conservatives and campaign donors who would like to see insurance companies get beat up on a little.)

I think something very similar is already in place in Japan, Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and other countries with multiple health insurers. (It goes without saying, of course, in single-payer countries like the UK, Canada, or Taiwan.) In France, I've read, insurers are required to pay a doctor's bill within a matter of days. They can of course claim fraud or error or otherwise try to get the payment reimbursed, but there's none of this business of routinely requiring bills to be resubmitted over and over and over before they're paid at all.

[Enthusiast]

22. The best choice is to eliminate the role of private insurance to the greatest extent possible.

Give these profit taking pirates a foot in the door and within a few short years they would once again be taking a huge share of profit while contributing nothing.

I would like to see insurance companies beat up a lot for all the decades of abuse they have heaped on the American health care consumer. Abuse? They have fucking outright killed thousands of us.

[sansatman]

3. The Plan Would Be Fully Paid For By:

A 6.2 percent income-based health care premium paid by employers.
Revenue raised: $630 billion per year.
A 2.2 percent income-based premium paid by households.
Revenue raised: $210 billion per year.This year, a family of four taking the standard deduction can have income up to $28,800 and not pay this tax under this plan.

A family of four making $50,000 a year taking the standard deduction would only pay $466 this year.
Progressive income tax rates.
Revenue raised: $110 billion a year.Under this plan the marginal income tax rate would be:

37 percent on income between $250,000 and $500,000.
43 percent on income between $500,000 and $2 million.
48 percent on income between $2 million and $10 million. (In 2013, only 113,000 households, the top 0.08 percent of taxpayers, had income between $2 million and $10 million.)
52 percent on income above $10 million. (In 2013, only 13,000 households, just 0.01 percent of taxpayers, had income exceeding $10 million.)

[ErikJ]

4. I think they should add a "self-responsibility health" tax too.

Of some sort. Like they do for cigarettes and alcohol sin taxes. They should put sin-taxes on highly processed / junk foods and drinks as well. A soda-tax would be a good, easy place to start. Or any drinks or foods over a certain % of sugar. And or fat and salt. They especially shouldnt subsidize these corporate toxic foods with food stamps.

They say poor people dont have access to any other kinds of foods which might be true, but they could have govt subsidies for convenience stores to also offer good wholesome unprocessed foods.

[phazed0]

7. I can appreciate that, but is it not a big overreach?

I can appreciate the idea of taxing in order to offset bad behaviors/unnecessary costs, however it largely doesn't work(in making behaviors change) and it's also a regressive tax.

Changing our food culture and the behavior of bad habits needs to be carried out in the form of public health and awareness campaigns. If we had an FDA that actually accepted facts... much of the crap on the shelves would be gone or re-formulated, in turn, fixing the root of the issue as opposed to punishing the people of whom have been taught (advertised to) what to eat by corporations or limited in their choices.

If you want to smoke a pack a day, knock yourself out.
Want to eat a steak 4 times a week, knock yourself out.
If you want to smoke marijuana everyday, knock yourself out.
Want to commit suicide or have assisted suicide, your choice.
Want to drop Ecstasy, go ahead.
Want an abortion, your body.

I would like gov't less involved in what I choose to do with MY body.

Knowledge and an informed populous is a large part of minimizing these issues, while other dynamics are at play as well... like corporate advertising and lobbying.. among others.

[ErikJ]

9. Sin taxes on cigs and alcohol go to

help pay for Canada's univ health care system. Not sure about individual states in the US. But highly processed and junk foods are equally bad for health so should also be sin-taxed. The only problem I can see with sin taxes is states can become overly dependent on them.

But the US has a very serious diabetes and obesity epidemic largely caused by overconsumption of junk foods. That means my taxes are paying for these problems. So its un-fair to us who eat and live more responsibly to have to pay for those problems.

[phazed0]

10. Yup..

I "see both sides of the coin" and there is certainly a problem that needs addressing. A conversation to be had, for sure!

[DhhD]

15. Early onset Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes is very expensive when it starts in childhood. A school

healthy food initiative should be started. Michelle Obama started one that could have developed in to public law. It was thwarted by big Ag/food corporations and Republicans.

[jtuck004]

11. We should quit subsidizing sugar before we start taxing people for drinking it. n/t

[Enthusiast]

23. Yes! We could drug test for nicotine, THC, excess sodium and sugar!

[ErikJ]

5. His top tax bracket should start at $5 million not $10m.

In the 50's and 60's it was 92% on anything over $3 million in todays $'s.

[1939]

13. Beginning with the 1963 tax year

President Kennedy (obviously a far right GOPer) lowered the top rate to 70%. He blamed the rolling recessions which plagued the Eisenhower years on the high marginal tax rates.

[rickford66]

16. Reporting the costs over 10 years is always so annoying.

Why not report the costs over one thousand years? Or a million years. Never in one year though. When the average person hears the costs, they usually think in yearly terms.

[A Simple Game]

17. I imagine the first 1 to 3 years of implementation would be much higher than the average.

Initial costs of designing and upgrading the system,mostly in place with medicaid and medicare, but I'm sure there would need to be upgrades at least, healthcare providers would need a year or so to make adjustments to their staffing, medical schools would need to add staff for increased enrollment, etc.

At least using 10 year figures you only need to move the decimal point one place to the left to figure the yearly average.

[rickford66]

18. The 10 year span isn't emphasized as much.

Most people hear it as a yearly cost. If I'm not mistaken, the defense budget is given as yearly costs.

[A Simple Game]

19. You're right and it is confusing, but I'm sure the Pentagon does also have a 10 year plan.

Although as Rummy would be fond of saying, the Pentagon would have too many known unknowns and unknown known's and unknown unknowns, to be able to do a very accurate 10 year plan.

Then again we are talking about an organization that can't even balance their books, nor do they want to it would seem.

[rickford66]

21. My quick GOOGLE search showed a yearly defense budget.

They plan for 10 years or so but don't emphasize that cost. Smoke and mirrors.

[Enthusiast]

20. Kicked and recommended a bazillion times! Because fuck this status quo shit!