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So...how long until Universal Healthcare?

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Future PhaZe

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Black President: Check

50 States with legal gay marriage: Check

With a list of unlikely things becoming reality, I thought now is as good a time as any to ask the question. Especially prior to an election.

I'm on a HSA plan where it's basically the same as being without insurance for anything that's diagnostic up until I meet a yearly deductible that's in the thousands, and I'll be honest--I'm putting myself at risk. I lie to my doctors about certain symptoms because I know the diagnostic costs would be too extravagant. I'll be jumping over to an obama care package at their next registration period, but at the moment I'm kind of up shits creek.

So...can we please get this Universal Healthcare thing done? Pretty please? What are the chances?
 
Let's start with Earth.

edit: holy crap, I'm the first post? Sorry, don't want to derail a serious discussion. I imagine it'll take quite a while, at least 15 years, and that's probably extremely optimistic. The current privatized system is "dug in", and with how effective lobbying is in our Congress, Republican opposition, and that party's favorable position in all but Presidential elections, it doesn't look good in the short term.
 
So far only Bernie Sanders has expressed any interest in moving to a Universal Healthcare system. So this probably depends on if he becomes President or not.
 
This is something that will forever baffle me, how the wealthiest country on earth does not provide universal healthcare for its citizens.
 
Vanpastel said:
This is something that will forever baffle me, how the wealthiest country on earth does not provide universal healthcare for its citizens.
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Well, you're off a bit.

You forgot the part where, "and is so expensive, most people don't even go to the hospital when they need to."
 
Future PhaZe said:
I'm on a HSA plan where it's basically the same as being without insurance for anything that's diagnostic up until I meet a yearly deductible that's in the thousands, and I'll be honest--I'm putting myself at risk.
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I'm in the boat where I actually have great diagnostic coverage ($15 copay, that's it), but my insurance company has decided to bill the diagnostic services I actually need as surgical (20% coinsurance after meeting my deductible) even when they're clearly described as diagnostic in my plan.

Out-of-pocket costs are more than 66 times higher in that scenario than they should be according to my plan. As a result, I'm hesitant to pursue care despite the risk because I can't count on my insurance company being accountable to what's stated in my plan.
 
Vanpastel said:
This is something that will forever baffle me, how the wealthiest country on earth does not provide universal healthcare for its citizens.
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America gets a lot fucnking wrong. It's astonishing.

A dying middle class and a bedsore of a health care system. Greatest nation on earth.
 
entrement said:
Could we afford it. It's 300 million people.

I know NHS in the UK has been struggling with budgeting.
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If we offered strong primary care, the cost of health care would go down significantly. It's shocking how little emphasis we put on primary care. People should see a doctor before they're sick to ensure they're doing everything they can to remain healthy. Instead, we wait until we have a health problem, which is infinitely more expensive to fix.

And if we need more money to fund universal health care, we can always take money out of defense budget.
 
FDR decided to tie in health insurance to unions and employers as an incentive to workers. For better or for worse that unknowingly kickstarted the entire for profit health industry and the entire system is based around this. Universal healthcare in the US would bankrupt the country unless some kind of price control measures were put in place and that's exceedingly difficult in an era of constant lobbying. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and device makers all make sky high profits and good luck getting them to agree to less money. That would need to come first before we start talking about single-payer.

So, not any time soon.
 
I guess I'm more optimistic than most in this thread in that I think we'll see it in the next 10 years. The ACA was an important step, and the only way to go here is steps to UHC, which is why conservatives fought it so much. But it is going to take some steps to get there.
 
alr1ght said:
Obamacare deductibles are huge too.
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But at least it makes regular annual doctor visits affordable, right? I would think the idea is to use those to hopefully catch most things in early stages so corrective measures can be taken sooner and theoretically much less expensively.
 
I believe it would pass soon if there were a budget for it. Didn't the single payer reform fail to pass in vermont because of the steep taxes that would have needed to be imposed?

Let's be honest, in a country with over 30% obesity rate, universal healthcare is difficult even with the best intentions from politicians of all parties.
 
entrement said:
Could we afford it. It's 300 million people.

I know NHS in the UK has been struggling with budgeting.
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The UK spends a much lower percentage of GDP on the NHS than the US does on public healthcare, around half as much, yet the US doesn't have universal healthcare.


The NHS budget just isn't as big as it should be.
 
There would have to be some serious changes to the tax code for that to be feasible in the US. A tax code reform would take decades to implement and would be met by the strongest lobbyist opposition to find and manipulate any angle they can find to get the bill to fail.
 
We definitely have the money for universal healthcare. The people that lose out - health insurance companies, hospitals, medical and pharmaceutical companies, etc would lose a lot of money which makes it politically difficult to happen.
 
danwarb said:
The UK spends a much lower percentage of GDP on the NHS than the US does on public healthcare, around half as much, yet the US doesn't have universal healthcare.


The NHS budget just isn't as big as it should be.
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Bingo, we could do UHC without spending more right now, and have much better coverage. But there is a lot of work to do and a lot of minds to win over before it happens.
 
Gonna be a while. The insurance companies now have more americans than ever paying them thanks to our mandated healthcare.

Their lobbying is going to be god tier against any kind of universal solution.
 
If I remember correctly, a public option was part of the original ACA package? Although it failed, it was a start. I'd hope within 20 years. But that's only if Democratic voters stop being idiots and show up not only to the general elections, but also midterm elections.

This yo-yo political movement and skew to conservatives every midterm isn't sustainable.
 
Gigglepoo said:
If we offered strong primary care, the cost of health care would go down significantly. It's shocking how little emphasis we put on primary care. People should see a doctor before they're sick to ensure they're doing everything they can to remain healthy. Instead, we wait until we have a health problem, which is infinitely more expensive to fix.

And if we need more money to fund universal health care, we can always take money out of defense budget.
Click to expand...

A good chunk of the time you don't see shit coming though. You can take great care of yourself and pass checkups and preventitive testing just fine, but that doesn't do shit if you all of a sudden develop a gastro issue that requires a diagnostic screening, or you get something random like lyme disease after camping.

Shaming of diagnostic testing is one of the biggest things I'm passionate about. Like, yea, duh, lets try to stay healthy, but there's this whole idea out there that everything is preventable which isn't anywhere close to the case.
 
Gigglepoo said:
If we offered strong primary care, the cost of health care would go down significantly. It's shocking how little emphasis we put on primary care. People should see a doctor before they're sick to ensure they're doing everything they can to remain healthy. Instead, we wait until we have a health problem, which is infinitely more expensive to fix.

And if we need more money to fund universal health care, we can always take money out of defense budget.
Click to expand...

People in the US don't see doctor's regularly because for many of them it's crazy expensive, so they wait until they have no choice.

Nothing says freedom like going into soul crushing debt over medical bills.
 
Given all the money they've made this year with Jurassic World and Fast 7 I'd say it won't be too much longer.












boom
 
StopMakingSense said:
I could see a gradual expansion of Medicare downward.
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Bernie Sanders' idea of a UHC system would literally be just that. It'd ultimately be a Medicare for all system. That is unless the medical industry and its lobbyists don't kill it.

It'll be interesting to see which we create first, a UHC or a UBI. It's very clear that health care and labor are serious problems, and the sooner we have a larger safety net, the better we'd be. What we have with the ACA is only more encompassing with a few additional perks; it's still by all means a very poor system. It says a lot that what we had before it was a few magnitudes worse.
 
Ke0 said:
People in the US don't see doctor's regularly because for many of them it's crazy expensive, so they wait until they have no choice.

Nothing says freedom like going into soul crushing debt over medical bills.
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Well, yeah, that's my point. We get UHC, we have stronger primary care, and our overall spending on health costs would actually be lower.

It's something that would have to extend through our societal infrastructure, though. Schools would have to teach the benefits of primary care and jobs would have to accommodate people going for yearly checkups. It would require a commitment, but it's worth the effort.
 
Gigglepoo said:
Well, yeah, that's my point. We get UHC, we have stronger primary care, and our overall spending on health costs would actually be lower.

It's something that would have to extend through our societal infrastructure, though. Schools would have to teach the benefits of primary care and jobs would have to accommodate people going for yearly checkups. It would require a commitment, but it's worth the effort.
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I'm feeling that a universal healthcare system in the US would stifle the growth of the industry, leading to layoffs and increased competition for jobs (not that many jobs there aren't already competitive). Less enrollments for health related majors. Kind of like how the law industry is.
 
Ke0 said:
People in the US don't see doctor's regularly because for many of them it's crazy expensive, so they wait until they have no choice.

Nothing says freedom like going into soul crushing debt over medical bills.
Click to expand...

Yep, healthcare as it works right now is basically expensive damage control. If we shift the focus to preventative healthcare, not only will people lead healthier lives, but everyone will save money because stopping medical issues before they get worse will be cheaper in the long run than treating it when it's already severe.
 
Bubba T said:
I'm feeling that a universal healthcare system in the US would stifle the growth of the industry, leading to layoffs and increased competition for jobs (not that many jobs there aren't already competitive). Less enrollments for health related majors. Kind of like how the law industry is.
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How many of those jobs can eventually be given to machines as they become more cognitively capable? A good chunk, I'd wager.

In fact, a situation of automation would probably benefit that scenario on the end of the company, which is what most businesses will end up resorting to as deep learning automation becomes more and more invasive to labor.
 
Bubba T said:
I'm feeling that a universal healthcare system in the US would stifle the growth of the industry, leading to layoffs and increased competition for jobs (not that many jobs there aren't already competitive). Less enrollments for health related majors. Kind of like how the law industry is.
Click to expand...

It could only stifle the insurance industry. There'd be huge demand for GPs, you'd need more doctors.
 
The Affordable Care Act brings us pretty close to what would be considered universal healthcare and it would be a lot closer if the Medicaid expansion took place in every state. I understand the frustration but I think people need to understand how much the ACA has really raised the bar and try to remember the individual healthcare market before it.

It was really said well in the PoliGAF thread.

pigeon said:
Contrariwise, I think people who say we need "real universal healthcare" are selling the ACA way short, which is why I usually call it universal healthcare.

We got guaranteed issue, community rating, bans on rescission, price regulation, expanded public insurance, and subsidies for low-income people. True, it's not single-payer, but every American should (if states had cooperated) have guaranteed access to health insurance, of a required level of quality, at a reasonable price. That's a pretty big deal! It's very, very close to health care as universal as any other country.
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Jackson50 said:
The ACA is near universal healthcare. It wasn't designed to provide universal coverage; that would be true even if every state expanded Medicaid. True universal healthcare remains the goal. But the benefits of the ACA should not be diminished. Millions of Americans now have access to health insurance or public healthcare. That's an accomplishment considering the repeated failures to reform healthcare in the past.
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Diablos said:
I really hate it when people trash talk the law. It's a necessary step forward in order to obtain literal 'universal healthcare' someday. It's far from perfect but it's vastly superior to the way things were pre-ACA. The level of uninsured Americans is at a record low, and even if you aren't on the Exchange (i.e. getting insurance through work) you are still benefiting from the reforms in some way. Even with Democrats dominating all three branches of Government circa 2010, this was about as good as it got. We can't change to a single-payer system overnight. This, however, paves the way for such a law to be enacted someday.
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danwarb said:
It could only stifle the insurance industry. There'd be huge demand for GPs, you'd need more doctors.
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That's what I was thinking. We'd need more doctors and nurses--and more with a focus on primary care--to meet the need of the populace. That seems like it would be a good thing. It would be nice if we rewarded doctors for choosing to provide primary care. Now, the lucrative choice is to specialize in something so many of our top doctors don't provide primary care.
 
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