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The California Senate Just Passed Single-Payer Health Care
- Thread starter KSweeley
- Start date
Fancyarcher
Member
Congrats. This is awesome news!
AstroNut325
Member
1. Why should it NOT be mandatory?
2. On what basis are you saying this? Do you have any data to backup your assertion?
WooHooAlex
Member
I really want to move to California.
Peotical Injection
Member
I love California. Proud to live here.
Electric Eye
Banned
I wonder if we are witnessing a new neo-norther block of states forming to drown out the stupid south? Destroy them with northern progress?
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
I doubt it's as coordinated as that kind of statement would imply. Theoretically, this is one of the philosophical tenets of federalism - have individual states experiment with different policies to see which ones work and which ones don't.
pinsomniac
Member
AnathemicOne
Banned
Glad it passed in our state's Senate, hope iy it eventually comes to fruition! I'm always proud to be a Californian and this just vindicated that pride even more.
ZombiePlatypus
Member
I'm too scared to be excited about this. Was there a timeline mentioned anywhere? I'd there anything else that needs to happen before this goes into effect?
Fried Food
Banned
so legal weed, great and varied terrain, beaches, weather, great food, great health care, gets all the good concerts and early movie screenings and stuff. Cali OP
Mysterious
Banned
But SF rent :'(
A Link to the Past
Banned
Didn't y'all just vote against repealing the death penalty tho
I hope you can make it work in California. Coming from a nation with free healthcare there are some changes that need to happen otherwise it won't work.
Drop the free dental care.(we don't have it unless your under 16) It's not uber essential. Save that money to keep the cost down.
Can California negotiate fair drug prices? If it can't then massively inflated drug costs are going to hurt. The NHS is a 600ib gorrila that drug company's have to offer a fair price to or loose one of there largest purchasers.
Doctors earn a lot in the UK but in the US they can get paid much more. Could Cali offset this by offering free education to those wishing to become doctor's. Or at least have better pay back terms
Have single payer. But keep the private market as well. With free healthcare as a competitor. The private market will have to play fair with those who choose not to have free healthcare. It also ensures that free healthcare is only used by those who need it and not free loaded on by the wealthy.
Drop the free dental care.(we don't have it unless your under 16) It's not uber essential. Save that money to keep the cost down.
Can California negotiate fair drug prices? If it can't then massively inflated drug costs are going to hurt. The NHS is a 600ib gorrila that drug company's have to offer a fair price to or loose one of there largest purchasers.
Doctors earn a lot in the UK but in the US they can get paid much more. Could Cali offset this by offering free education to those wishing to become doctor's. Or at least have better pay back terms
Have single payer. But keep the private market as well. With free healthcare as a competitor. The private market will have to play fair with those who choose not to have free healthcare. It also ensures that free healthcare is only used by those who need it and not free loaded on by the wealthy.
The Greek Freak
Member
Dental care isn't about having your teeth look good.
Stuff like gum disease makes you much more likely to have a whole host of other much worse problems health wise.
"Fuck you, got mine"
People being forced to stay in jobs they don't like because they don't want to lose their healthcare is terrible for the economy and strongly disincentives entrepreneurship. It's also a much more expensive system in general than universal single-payer healthcare would be.
It's also very short-sighted for most people. You could always be fired, your employer could go under, your employer-provided plan could worsen.
Abstrusity
Member
If California can make it work, the country will be much better off with the active understanding that it DOES work. Slowly but surely...
Yup. Employer-based health insurance is also needlessly bureacratic and cumbersome for businesses who could be investing the money saved on such plans in hiring more workers or expanding. Let the state sort out healthcare for its citizens while companies focus on their own business. Why is this proving so hard to understand for some?
OG Shaka Zulu
Member
Edit: double post.
OG Shaka Zulu
Member
Are there weed stores open to the public?
NYC is heavily segregated and has a good amount of Blacks and Latinos. It would be too easy for the Right and insurance companies to spin this as the government stealing from hard working Americans, and giving a handout to the lazy.
tearsintherain
Member
First, the state cannot require companies to take their existing healthcare payments and give it to the state. Thats not how taxes or healthcare works. They would have to implement a new tax and hope their number crunching was right on how much things costs and how much the taxes bring in and everything lines up. It would work similar to a state unemployment or disability tax, just another line item that taxes an amount based on the employees salary. I don't know what would be going on with part time or contract workers. Its not a given that all companies would be for this, some view healthcare as a core employee retention tool (our healthcare is better than what you'll get elsewhere) plus there are issues around what happens if contract jobs don't require the tax paid, in which case every employee would suddenly get turned into a contractor.
Second, the governor has already said he is against this whole thing and plans on vetoing any plan put forward that isn't realistic in its funding.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/ess...ealthcare-gov-jerry-1490226321-htmlstory.html
Third, there is literally zero chance of Trump ever approving the transfer of medicaid allocated funds (which he wants to CUT by the way, so the numbers get even worse) into any sort of single payer system, so it would have to wait until a new President.
Fourth, it would have to be approved by voters. Colorado already rejected it, 80% AGAINST and 20% FOR, once voters found out it would be implemented via a 10% payroll tax. Healthcare lobbies spent millions with scare ads about how businesses would flee Colorado, California would face the same marketing/messaging problem.
Even Bernie Sanders home state of Vermont abandoned a single payer system in 2014 after the sponsor said the tax hikes would probably hurt the state economy.
Its a good set of baby steps for California to start this but realistically it would take 10+ years for this to move along to the point where it could be put before voters.
Second, the governor has already said he is against this whole thing and plans on vetoing any plan put forward that isn't realistic in its funding.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/ess...ealthcare-gov-jerry-1490226321-htmlstory.html
Third, there is literally zero chance of Trump ever approving the transfer of medicaid allocated funds (which he wants to CUT by the way, so the numbers get even worse) into any sort of single payer system, so it would have to wait until a new President.
Fourth, it would have to be approved by voters. Colorado already rejected it, 80% AGAINST and 20% FOR, once voters found out it would be implemented via a 10% payroll tax. Healthcare lobbies spent millions with scare ads about how businesses would flee Colorado, California would face the same marketing/messaging problem.
Even Bernie Sanders home state of Vermont abandoned a single payer system in 2014 after the sponsor said the tax hikes would probably hurt the state economy.
Its a good set of baby steps for California to start this but realistically it would take 10+ years for this to move along to the point where it could be put before voters.
Do people really think employers would divert that money to employee salaries? They pay for health insurance because they have to, take that requirement away and they'll pocket most of the money.
Upstate and Long Island say hello. NYC is super liberal but rest of the state is much more conservative, no way in hell our legislature contemplates something like this.
Our state senate is usually Republican controlled
So if the wealthier states all band together and do this, if there ever is democratic control federally, won't this create a powerful incentive to fuck the south over by never going national? (Because any national plan would have to be less generous thank california's and they won't like that.)
I can imagine a world where the coasts and some of the Midwest ends up with fabulous single payer and the south becomes a wasteland of religious fundamentalists and poor people who can't get out.
I can imagine a world where the coasts and some of the Midwest ends up with fabulous single payer and the south becomes a wasteland of religious fundamentalists and poor people who can't get out.
Old Gimlet Eyes
Member
Great post. If it comes to the people voting on it, they will see that tax increase and shut it down. I would love to vote for it but I don't think my fellow Californians would feel the same.
OG Shaka Zulu
Member
Jan 1st 2018?
Under single payer you would pay nothing. Ever. Individual private plans are fairly moot, because now California is the sole payer of medical bills and therefore can use their millions-of-population clients to push prices downward.
tl;dr you won't be spending 6k out of pocket each year to stay alive, and will see a small tax increase to make up for it. that's it.
GoldenEye 007
Member
And if the state can offer a better deal for employers over what they pay currently to private insurers?
Are we considering that at all? Are you suggesting employers will just abandon nearly 40 million people simply because the checks they already write and have to dedicate entire departments to will simply change payees?
there isn't really a half step out there that works. The entire point of single payer is you save money by having a literal single payer that is the one point of rebate/filing, and that the payer has the weight of the entire population for purchasing power, forcing medical suppliers to innovate lower costs or not be in the largest market and go out of business.
Cellbomber
Member
Will fail for mutiple reasons and the mess of implementing people from employer plans will be choas and will hit major pushback from people not wanting to lose there current coverages. If it ever passed I could see an option for not opting into the state plan being available if you have a way to obtain insurance outside of it. Also any government plans (Medicare, VA, TriCare..etc) I dont think the state can technically remove and have everyone within there plan since these are federal plans.
Health care options for everyone is great. Forcing people into one plan not so much. You think current insurance plans limit you just wait for what a state plan tells you to do before you get covered for treatments and therapies. Just the limitations on the drug plans will put you at a disadvantage.
Health care options for everyone is great. Forcing people into one plan not so much. You think current insurance plans limit you just wait for what a state plan tells you to do before you get covered for treatments and therapies. Just the limitations on the drug plans will put you at a disadvantage.
Fox Mulder
Member
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Last edited:
So do you even know how the mechanics of health insurance work?
Employers can get kicked out by their insurer because a spouse of an employee has cancer and costs them money.
You're trying to say choice would remain, but who would choose to pay 3 to 4 digit percentage more over their tax bill for the year on health insurance? Smaller businesses would benefit as they no longer have to carry health insurance and risk getting kicked off if an employee gets sick.
When the government becomes the insurer, their client base is large enough to start pushing prices down. It's not possible to get them as cheap as single payer, no private insurer has the customer base to influence prices to that degree singlehandedly.
Cellbomber
Member
Of course I do and I don't think you have a great understanding on how things work in healthcare.
K, so explain how a private insurer is going to be able to negotiate better rates than the State of California with 39.4 million customers?
A quick check shows that the largest single insurer in California is Kaiser with ~6 million.
Chmpocalypse
Blizzard
Bookmarking this for when it succeeds and you're proven wrong, because you will be.
Ziltoidia 9
Member
This is basically another reason the system benefits the powerful. Traps people into not even thinking about competing.
Baron Doggystyle von Woof
Member
Welcome to socialism California!
Signed,
Yurop
Signed,
Yurop
Single payer universal health care solutions can and do in many cases maintain a layer of optional private coverage choices. The downward price pressure the single payer system exerts on all medical costs, along with an adequate baseline of coverage for everyone by default, just forces those optional private plans to be more competitive on price and/or what advantages they're offering to justify opting in.
If your employer is paying for the bulk of the premiums on a five star benefits package right now on your behalf, most of that overhead would free up on their side in this proposal. Obviously there would need to be effective negotiations at that point for employees to see any of that savings passed along, but that's far more likely to happen at a workplace where you would have ultralux benefits: as a desirable, skilled employee in a competitive field.
For working class folks none of that is relevant, and they're freed from the day-to-day stresses involved with health care coverage dependent on their current employer (if they have any benefits to begin with), and they should see a straightforward cost of living improvement.
In a vaguely competent implementation of single payer, employers and employees both win. Insurance company middlemen are the main losers, but can still stick around in some capacity. For medical professionals it'll vary a lot on the provisions of the system and what your specific job is in the field, along with how we address issues that force a higher compensation baseline for doctors, like student debt and malpractice insurance premiums et al.
Cellbomber
Member
Lol ok..better bookmark for a long time then cause it will not be implemented even if it passes for years. I've seen state plans just end due to funding and budget shortfalls so what makes you think a plan amongst all state residents will work out any better? Also who will be running these plans? The same medical directors and people from insurers only now they have the ability to limit you even more. They are going to be tasked at keeping people on formulary and doing minimal amounts of what they consider unnecessary treatments. That's where I feel this falls short cause it is what they give you and you have no alternative.
Also one natural disasters or health outbreak could bankrupt a plan/state like this as well. Instead of the costs being split amongst 100's of payers it all falls onto the state.
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