Health insurance vs. taxes for public health care... which would be better?

I am currently paying a TON in health insurance, with deductables that aren't that great... and I HAVE NEVER BEEN IN THE HOSPTIAL... this seems to be the earmarks of a very inefficient system...

I would happily accept a tax increase for universal health care coverage. Out of my own say 20 years of working I have probably had health coverage for less than half that time. The problem is, the wealthy people would find ways of getting out of any tax increases and it would become the burden of the middle class, so it could not be carried out so that everyone is sharing according to their ability.

A comparison to whats already out there is good too..

http://www.surveyland.org/jump.php?link=insurance

Best of luck.

The quality would suffer and the wait times would increase dramatically in a public health care system. In my city, there is a hospital run by the city/county for the uninsured. It is a cesspool. There are endless lines of people with the sniffles waiting in the emergency room when all they needed to do was get some Nyquil and go to bed. There have been newspaper reports of trauma patients lying on gurneys in the hallways for hours because there are just too many people for the hospital to handle. They provide the minimum of care needed. A public health program runs the very likely risk of dragging all excellent hospitals down to this level.

People do not value things that are free. Without some financial cost associated at the time of the visit, people would flood the system with every bump, bruise, and sniffle.

I know so many junior hockey players from Canada who were forced to come to the US so that they could get damaged knees repaired within 2 weeks of the injury rather than waiting 6 months in Canada. They may have a universal health program but there are significant drawbacks to it. It is easier to get an MRI for your dog in Canada than to get one for a human.

Also, do you expect a public health program to provide all the bells and whistles or just minimum basic health care? Where would the limits be? If there were no limits, what would prevent the hypochondriacs from visiting a different specialist every day of the week? What would prevent patients from demanding every new and expensive drug when there is an existing, less costly drug that would actually be better for them? If the odds of survival are under a certain level, should we cut off funding? (It seems ridiculous to me to pay millions for a baby that was delivered so early it only has a 1% chance of survival and will be severely crippled for life if it survives----as a taxpayer, I wouldn't want to fund that.) But then you get into social engineering issues that no one wants to touch and you put the government in the position of deciding which patients live and which ones die.

Bottom line is that even if they manage to pass some universal health care program, there is no way in the world it will be able to fund all of the health related care that Americans demand. Unless you want to go back to "take two aspirin and call me in the morning."

Look at all of the fraud in the Medicare system and imagine that for all medical treatments. Besides, who wants the government to have access to your medical records?? If they're paying, they get access.

I have seen a report (and of course can't find it now, but will research) which shows that people who are paying for health insurance will wind up paying less in taxes if we have national health care.

hello,
if you want read something about health insurance
i just come accross this blog which may help you

http://the-health-insurance-plans.blogspot.com
http://the-health-insurance-rates.blogspot.com
http://the-health-insurance-coverage.blogspot.com
http://the-medical-health-insurance.blogspot.com

I guess you haven't looked at your paystub to see how much you pay per pay check in social security and medicare taxes, huh? It's more than health insurance, guaranteed. You would multiply that by 5, in order to pay for government healthcare.

I suppose if you enjoy calling the DMV, or trying to get a straight answer from the IRS phoneline, or living on government housing, you'll love the service from government medicine.

I'm not ready to pay $16 for a can of Mountain Dew. There's too much money to be made for us NOT to be healthy. As soon as Americans became fit, eating right, going in for check ups every six months ($300 a year at my doctor's office 'self pay'). Then doctors would go out of business, hospitals firing staff, drug companies going bust. Apparently bad health stimulates the economy. Sad reality my friend.

Instead of a false choice, why not fix the present system?
There are two main problems with health care in the US:
the government meddles (another solid reason to be 100% against UHC)
and the government REFUSES to enforce the LAW with regard to the largest insurers who routinely violate contract law AND antitrust laws.
Correct those problems, require price transparency (prices are posted online without the "if you're a friend of United Health Care you get it for x; everyone else pays 25x"), and reduce government BS and you drop prices dramatically because suddenly you have something resembling a free market!
The free market does work:
Read:
http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/0217er17.html
A doctor owned and run hospital that sees everyone gets care, no matter what happens to the bottom line.

http://www.simplecare.com/ a doctor-driven group where reasonable rates are charged.

Note you can go to a walk-in clinic at Wal-Mart or CVS or the like in many cities and get many of the most typical reasons for seeing a doc addressed for under $100.

The price of LASIK has DROPPED dramatically over a decade. Plastic surgery is CHEAP. Compare a major procedure like a tummy tuck with the bill an uninsured patient will get for a medically necessary appendectomy WITHOUT complications.

A REAL solution:
I want QUALITY, ACCESSIBLE, AFFORDABLE health care for all.
That means preventative care (physical with follow up). Real medication (no Medicare "donut holes" the really ill are ripped off again.) No bogus ridiculously low "caps" on needed medical procedures. No abuse of the ER. No paying for the silly with the sniffles to go to the doc for free. No more bankruptcies over medical bills. I want THIS plan that ends abuse of the taxpayer, takes the burden off employers, provides price transparency, and ends the rip-off of the US taxpayer at the hands of greedy insurance CEOs (which has been repeatedly documented).
http://www.booklocker.com/books/3068.html
Read the PDF, not the blurb, for the bulk of the plan. Book is searchable on Amazon.com
Cassandra Nathan's Save America, Save the World

FACTS about the large insurers:
"While growing into a colossus, UnitedHealth has repeatedly failed to perform its basic job of paying medical bills. UnitedHealth, which covers 70 million Americans, has been sanctioned in nine states for paying claims slowly; shortchanging doctors, hospitals, or patients; or poorly handling complaints and appeals.
One Nebraska woman complained to state regulators that UnitedHealth's computers had incorrectly rejected claims related to her son's surgery six times.
At one point, UnitedHealth owed Dr. George Schroedinger, an orthopedic surgeon, $600,000. He and his clinic sued UnitedHealth of the Midwest in 2004.
Deciding for the clinic, U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh of Missouri declared that the company's claims processing systems were "flawed in many ways, denying, reducing, and improperly processing claims on a regular basis. And despite innumerable requests, United was unwilling to remedy the underlying errors in its systems" (Star-Tribune Dec. 12, 2007).
Payment troubles continued after the verdict, and Dr. Schroedinger filed a second lawsuit. "These people can never get it right, which says to me that they just plain lie," he said in an interview.
Failure to pay isn't the only complaint. The insurer also gives incorrect information on which physicians are in its network, creating enormous problems for physicians' staff.
The AMA said that no other insurer has prompted as many complaints as UnitedHealth about abusive and unfair payment practices. AMA officials have met with UnitedHealth executives 16 times since 2000, with little to show for it.
"They have always got a new plan to fix it," said Dr. William G. Plested III, past president of the AMA. But "nothing ever happens."
It seems to us that this case is just the tip of the insurance iceberg. More and more stories are appearing daily in the news media about how insurance company are instructing employees their jobs are to deny claims and/or delay payments.
With such a high percentage of medical premiums and other costs going to the legal profession, to maintain compliance with endless government rules/regulations and being hoarded by the insurance companies and executives â€” is it any wonder medical costs are increasing so dramatically?
It's time to take a closer look at the medical insurance companies.
UnitedHealth Group is not the first medical insurance company to rob patients, hospitals and clinics to pay obscene salaries to their executives.
It's a modern day robbing patients to pay pimps.
Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., comments on medical-legal issues and is a visiting fellow in economics and citizenship at the International Trade Education Foundation of the Washington International Trade Council.
Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a senior fellow and board member of the Discovery Institute and a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
http://www.newsmax.com/medicine_men/medical_insurance/2008/01/03/61543.html

Furthermore:
"the vast majority of health insurance policies are through for-profit stock companies. They are in the process of â€œshedding livesâ€ as some term it when â€œundesirableâ€ customers are lost through various means, including raising premiums and co-pays and decreasing benefits (Britt, â€œHealth insurers getting bigger cut of medical dollars,â€ 15 October 2004, investors.com). That same Investors Business Daily article from 2004 noted the example of Anthem, another insurance company. They said the top five executives (not just the CEO) received an average of an 817 percent increase in compensation between 2000 and 2003. The CEO, for example, had his compensation go from $2.5 million to $25 million during that time period. About $21 million of that was in stock payouts, the article noted.

A 2006 article, â€œU.S. Health Insurance: More Market Domination, More CEO Compensationâ€
(hcrenewal.blogspot.com) notes that in 56 percent of 294 metropolitan areas one insurer â€œcontrols more than half the business in health maintenance organization and preferred provider networks underwriting." In addition to having the most enrollees, they also are the biggest purchasers of health care and set the price and coverage terms. â€œâ€™The results is double-digit premium increases from 2001 and 2004â€”peaking with a 13.9 percent jump in 2003â€”soaring well above inflation and wages increases.â€™" Where is all that money going? The article quotes a Wall Street Journal article looking at the compensation of the CEO of UnitedHealth Group. His salary and bonus is $8 million annually. He has benefits such as the use of a private jet. He has stock-option fortunes worth $1.6 billion."
--Save America, Save the World by Cassandra Nathan pp. 127-128

Linda Peeno, MD testified that SHE had often denied treatment JUST to save the insurance company money (http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/DrPeenotestimony.html

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