mrken30

This site says the max for MS should be around $2000, someone has got the wrong information.

http://health.usnews.com/health-insurance/mississippi

Giantaxe

There are 20m less uninsured than there were before the ACA was enacted and is at the lowest rate ever recorded. So I would suggest the situation is more nuanced than you are depicting. Additionally, in your daughter's position, I would want the mandate made more effective to bring more younger and healthier people into the insurance pool. With the current mandate, too many people choose to forgo coverage and effectively freeload on the system - including one of my daughters.

mrken30

I think employers should just give employees "cash" to buy insurance on the open market. This would hopefully bring insurance down for everyone. At the moment, some employers get huge group discounts for health insurance.

dc koop

It had everything to do with racism. GOP Congress had no intention, nor ever had of passing any health plan for the millions without insurance and especially from a "suspected secret Muslim" a man who they regarded as black and a liberal to boot. It was everything they hated.

Racism is alive and well. Trump has slandered and insulted Obama to the point where Obama should sue him for libel once Trump is kicked out of office.

I hope that the latest baseless allegation that Obama had Trump Tower wire tapped becomes another headache for him.

Trump might come down to earth a bit if he stopped listening to that former Breitbart loony Steve Bannon.

yellowroom

Because healthcare requires specialized knowledge and individuals providing it need to be shown to be capable of providing the required skills. Because most adults could fashion shelter from basic materials and grow food from seed and hunt and fish, but not many could perform an appendectomy. Because having a healthy population is of benefit to the entire country - you have a ready supply of young men to fight in your armed services and a fit working population to drive your economy and to be able to provide support to individuals who cannot work - due to age, bad luck or genetics. Because healthcare overseen by a government provides for a more flexible workforce than one where people stick at employers in unsuitable jobs because they can't leave as the insurance is good. Because a single payer system cuts out the inefficiency of a doctor's office employing more billing clerks than medical staff just to deal with the different insurer systems.

The US population doesn't seem to accept that it is perfectly possible to have an efficient government bureaucracy - other countries to it, but for some reason the concept has never taken root there. It really bewilders me that "we the people" for example never rise up and make a fuss about poor service from their local servants, for example, DMV in whatever state, and keep making a fuss until it's fixed. Witness the hoo-hah in the UK when the passport office had delays a couple of years ago - people contacting their MPs, questions in parliament, headlines in the papers. It got sorted. That NEVER happens in the US, people get outraged for 10 minutes, then its a shrug and "meh, what can you do" and back to normal. I can only put it down to the US culture of the individual vs the European culture of "for the good of the people".

This is a country that put man on the moon nearly 50 years ago with less computing power than my mobile phone. Now it is beyond them to come up with a fair healthcare system when there are already successful examples of different systems in place around the world? What the hell happened?

scrubbedexpat099

Such as?

Pulaski

That is why healthcare might need government to promote the development of medical technology and infrastructure. None of that explains why the government should PAY for it, and raise taxes to do so.

yellowroom

You're moving the goalposts there - you were previously talking about "government responsibility". You've also not addressed why the USA is incapable of developing an efficient civil service.

Frankly, you and I are never going to agree due to your extreme individualism relative to the european middle ground. I have US colleagues who share a similar view to you, and the conversations always get unstuck around "why should I pay for roads I don't drive on/schools my kids don't attend/hospitals when I don't get sick". Some were very kind and generous people who did a lot for their neighbours, so not total bastards. But it's a worldview that works well if you live in Walnut Grove in the late C19 and have Ingalls as your neighbours, but IMHO is not a worldview compatible with modern society.

Frankly, if the US isn't going to develop some kind of single payer system, you'd be better off abolishing insurance companies and making healthcare cash on delivery, with all patients paying the same price. Like it was in the C19 - at least there was some transparency.

[edit to add]why should you have to raise taxes to pay for it? you're already spending 50% more than France and covering fewer citizens. See here.

yellowroom

Is google broken for you?

By measures of %GDP spent, patient access and patient costs, and healthcare outcomes like life expectancy and disease survival? Countries that are consistently rated highly (and higher than the US) include Japan, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Australia...

scrubbedexpat099

I am familiar with the issues France and Canada have, Canada has problems that have been mentioned on this thread. Down under, well I have come across a few threads on BE that certainly suggests not all is rosy.

Vaguely amused you did not mention the UK.

Japan would be interesting, aging population etc etc. Not sure if I have seen anybody who is familiar with it comment.

yellowroom

Vaguely amused that you can't read.

Giantaxe

None of those countries spends anything as remotely as much as a percentage of GDP as the US does. And none leaves large numbers without effective access.

That's not to say other systems don't have issues - clearly they do - but by almost any measure the US system is an outlier in terms of cost and access for no palpable improvement in health outcomes.

mrken30

The US system is probably one of the most complex health care systems in terms of billing.

Why can't I just get one bill from the hospital. When I get my car fixed, I don't get a bill from the dealership, a bill from the employee, a bill from the various suppliers. The dealership bills me, the suppliers bill the dealership.

There is so much paperwork and bureaucracy in the US healthcare system. This needs to be addressed, stop the waste.

kins

I got a bill from my dentist yesterday. Out of nowhere there was a $296 charge for a crown my husband had in 2014.

Apparently I'm now supposed to find my insurance company from 2014, submit the claim to them, then pay the remainder

mrken30

Another example of how screwed up the system is. No other industry would be able to work this way