Employer-sponsored plans could not duplicate benefits provided by Medicare, but could offer extra benefits.
An interesting little bit, don’t you think?
If Medicare for all will, eventually, fix your hip then other insurance plans cannot offer to fix your hip…..
That’s not just single payer, that’s nationalisation of who may pay for care.
That’s not just single payer, that’s nationalisation of who may pay for care.
That’s both obvious and unimportant to the writer. What is important to the writer is maintaining the comforting fiction for the readership that employer plans would even exist after implementation of Bernie’s SP plan.
In any event, it is little more than prattle to keep the left-wing loonies engaged now that Schumer and Pelosi have dropped the whole “Trump Isn’t President” thingy. Kind of being alone the lines of the Republicans voting 19 times to end Obamacare when they safely couldn’t.
Bread and circuses, Timmy, bread and circuses.
Canada had a similar plan. What Gov provides can only be provided by Gov. The Canadian court threw that out saying something to the effect that the Gov law giving citizens a right to stand in line waiting so long for healthcare was not healthcare & thereby allowed private insurance & healthcare.
A question I meant to ask on the other thread; why has no state, California, Nebraska, whoever, introduced whatever health care system it fancied?
Obviously I’m missing something, but what?
There are two reasons:
1) The majority of states have constitutions that forbid state governments from running budget deficits. Here in Ohio, for example, the budget must be balanced every year. Period.
2) Given that those states must match revenues and expenses, they cannot enact a hideously expensive program without raising taxes to cover the cost of said hideous program. Taxpayers tend to think differently about new programs and benefits when they are actually required to pay for them.
Well, that would be sane, but I did mention California.
Vermont tried to enact BernieCare, but they realized that it was too expensive and cancelled it. Giving free shit to everyone costs money, who knew.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/01/25/costs-derail-vermont-single-payer-health-plan/VTAEZFGpWvTen0QFahW0pO/amp.html
Well, that would be sane, but I did mention California.
California is not part of the U.S.A., believe me.
Dear Mr Worstall
All your hips belong us?
Whatever next?
DP
Ducky,
CA did look into their own single-payer system. What they found is that taxpayers would have to pay the ~$10k per capita needed to cover everyone. Since voters would not approve the necessary large tax increases the proposal was dropped.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The problem with American healthcare isn’t who pays the bill for the customer*. The problem is restrictions on supply.
* We do need to look at this eventually but it is secondary to fixing supply limitations.
“The problem with American healthcare isn’t who pays the bill for the customer*.
* We do need to look at this eventually ”
Why do we need to look into it? The bill is either paid by the person consuming or its paid by someone else – but the bill *will* be paid by someone.
No one I’ve seen has yet come up with a good reason why the bill shouldn’t be paid by the consumer.
LY,
Thanks for that. I had it at the back of my mind that California had done something specific. Although it sounds as if it failed to get anywhere for the reasons DtP gave.
So, given Dennis’ point 1, that’s presumably how they came up with the 10 grand figure? That is, there’s no good way to set up a separate fund which has a duration/horizon beyond the annual, that the legislature/executive has?
“Restrictions on supply”, sorry, it’s late, and I’m not sure what this specifically refers to.
That is, there’s no good way to set up a separate fund which has a duration/horizon beyond the annual, that the legislature/executive has?
The fundamental problem with the separate fund idea is that you have to have funds to fund it, and they couldn’t come from the state’s general fund (or budget). So you’d have to fund the fund with funds from a new tax… That sort of defeats the idea of creating a new fund to enable you to kick the funding can to another generation of taxpayers.
Another issue that impacts states trying to provide a health care entitlement is that nearly all states are facing, to varying degrees, the problem of massive unfunded pension liabilities for state workers. For states like Illinois it is already catastrophic, for others it is merely a major looming problem. States are going to need new taxes, and lots of ’em, just to fund their pension plans.
That sort of defeats the idea of creating a new fund to enable you to kick the funding can to another generation of taxpayers.
To anticipate the “just issue bonds to fund the new fund” argument: I forgot to mention that it is tough to issue state bonds if there isn’t tax revenue backing them. In Ohio at least, the state and municipalities can’t issue bonds without first having funding in place to pay for the bonds. No “we’ll deal with the revenue side later” at the state level… That’s for Bernie Sanders and the federal government only.
Agammamon,
We’ll need to look at it eventually because, when the consumer does not see the costs for themselves, they generally want more free stuff. This should self-regulate as increased supply allows customers to have more options in health care finance. We’ll want to look to make sure it does what we expect.
Note that I did not say we should do anything.
Ducky,
They couldn’t even figure out how to pay for the first year.
A legislative analysis found that California’s single-payer plan would cost $400 billion to implement, $200 billion of which would be new spending. Critics were quick to point out that this “hefty” price tag is twice the state budget.
Polling in support of single-payer in the state is high—two surveys showed 65 and 70 percent of people in favor of the policy. But, when people were confronted with the prospect of new taxes or the costs of the program, support for single-payer fell.
https://newrepublic.com/article/143650/killed-single-payer-california
We should have roughly double the number of doctors, based on national demographics. Most markets are only served by one or two hospital networks.
“No one I’ve seen has yet come up with a good reason why the bill shouldn’t be paid by the consumer.”
For the same reason that if my house burns down there’s no way I can afford to pay to rebuild it, and don’t pay to rebuild it, the cost is spread across everybody in the house insurance system I subscribe to.
@jgh
Yes but that’s you paying for it? Who rebuilds your house if you don’t subscribe to a house insurance system?
“Medicaid for everyone . . . would bankrupt the country.” – Guess who?
https://youtu.be/NyIWpYDP-PQ
His objective IS to bankrupt the country. The Left’s continuing battle to destroy Western Civilization.
Jgh
Ah, but there is a big, big difference in your house insurance vs healthcare “insurance.” If you tried to have it cover everything as the single payer, and many other nationalized, plans do, your homeowners insurance would cover, . . . well everything: plumber, yardman, painting, broken windows, re-roofing, etc, etc. . . . IT would be impossibly expensive.
Healthcare treated the same for most of us would be Major Medical with the consumer paying for all the routine & normal “maintaince & repairs.” The Spread the Risk limited to those unforseen, big things.
Exactly. I don’t claim on insurance to wash my windows or paint the frames, I similarly wouldn’t expect to claim on insurance for paracetamol or a pair of glasses.