"I'll try ̶s̶p̶i̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ printing more money, that's a good trick!"
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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The problem is that Medicare for All would be far more expensive as a replacement for private insurance. Private insurance actually has incentives to compete and keep costs down. Government does not. Government has incentives to mandate additional coverage to pander to interest groups, like covering birth control, abortions, gender reassignment surgery, etc.
Conceptually, it could be cheaper if the government was willing to assfuck the medical industry and cram down prices, but we have decades of proof from the Medicare system itself that the government is totally unwilling to do that. So the end result would be higher, not lower prices, similar to how Obamacare forced everyone to take all kinds of coverage for shit they didn't want or need.
The government has made it so hard, I assume on purpose, to be an insurer that there really aren't that many players. The states I'm intimately familiar with have only a few choices. And if you want to try something different, well, you can't. You want to have catastrophic only coverage and pay for your own shit? Too bad, illegal.
Speaking as a European, the government has plenty of incentives to keep costs down. By denying us care.
That said, I'm rather risk-averse so I would not want the American system, since I wouldn't know what the hell would happen. I can see the problems with both systems. Which is worse, I honestly don't know.
It seems to me that this is more of a problem in the US than it is in Sweden, where such crap is more restricted for some weird reason.
I've given up trying to understand what is better or not.
If you asked me if people should get dental care, I'd say yes. But I always pick plans that do not include it, since it is cheaper for me to pay it out of pocket.
That only comes later when your government runs into a budgetary crisis and is forced to ration care to balance the books.
The US Congress tripled the US national debt in the last 10 years They give absolutely 0 fucks about responsible spending and are going to bankrupt the United States and cause another global financial crisis in doing so, it's just a question of when. Fiscal conservatism is a joke because everyone in Congress is just a pig at the trough, and I don't blame them. If Republicans were fiscally conservative and didn't lead the charge with tax cuts, all they'd be doing is saving up money for the Democrats to spend when it was their turn.
If you look at data, competitive private systems are always FAR better than socialist systems. It's literally the point of the whole capitalist vs socialist/communist struggle of the past 100 years.
The reason US health insurance sucks is not because it's private, it's because it isn't private enough. It is HIGHLY regulated and restricted and non-competitive compared to a truly free market system. Hospitals also play a lot of games which would normally be illegal under anti-trust laws and yet they get a free pass because politicians will not touch hospitals.
Euros are super left wing in most areas, but there are pockets of social conservatism. Same with how France told Metoo to fuck off.
It seems that you can just spend as much as you want when you hold the reserve currency. There are always enough chumps who are fine with funding it by holding dollars.
That is what Democrats claim Clinton (and the GOP Congress) did for George W. Bush and his wars.
Absolutely. But I'd rather not base judgments on ideology, but based on empiricism. Is this also applicable to health care? The counterargument is alwys "the US spends twice as much but has worse health outcomes". And yes, I know that this is at least in part due to obesity.
This makes sense, but is there any place on earth that does do its health care in a way that has your approval? If there is none, isn't it more of a thought experiment? People can always think of a world that is superior to the one they inhabit.
We're mostly left-wing on economic issues. Even the most socially liberal places in Europe are not quite as bad as a Portland. Thank God for small blessings.
Your credit limit is higher, but not infinite. As the US national debt goes up, the interest rates that the government must pay also go up. This creates an exponential rise in the cost of the debt which eventually starts to crowd out the budget. Service on the national debt is projected to be $580 billion this year, up from $375 billion in 2019. Any shocks to the system could cause that number to spike, creating a downward spiral as the US credit dries up and interest rates force austerity and tax hikes.
Clinton wanted to spend. It wasn't up to him. Gingrich and the R Congress are the reason the budget was balanced in the 90s. Presidents don't control the budget.
Of course you are right that the Democrats portrayed themselves as victims as a rationalization for blowing out the spending on paying off their supporters and buying votes. All the "inflation reduction act" did was dump hundreds of billions in subsidies on "green new deal" environmentalist bullshit.
Both parties want to max out the federal credit card to deny the other party the ability to "spend" more, only the Rs do it with tax cuts, which isn't spending at all, it's simply taxing less. Both parties give 0 fucks about the national debt because the voters give 0 fucks because the voters are stupid and don't care or understand the danger. So we are going to charge full speed into fiscal crisis so all the idiots can learn the hard way. By the time the danger becomes clear, it will be too late to avoid it.
The main problem is that the US health care system isn't a free market system. It's a cartel set up between the insurers and hospitals to fuck over everyone else. Hospitals get special legal benefits so they can avoid competition. Insurers get the same. Both collude to make being uninsured too dangerous because the hospitals charge assfuck inflated prices to uninsureds.
Laws which force hospitals to publish and honor all their prices are a big step in the right direction. Consumers in the US have absolutely no way to comparison shop for health care, and both the hospitals and the insurers want to keep it that way because it benefits them both.
The answer, as always, is deregulation, taking health care policy away from states to form a singular national market instead of 50 state markets, elimination of probably 90% of health care insurance regulation so the free market can actually function, and forcing hospitals to compete with one another by forcing them to publish prices and giving consumers the right to pick cheaper hospitals and save money.
The reason for all this collusion is to keep doctors, nurses, and health administration staff rich. The reason health care is so expensive in the US is to pay all these grossly overpaid people disgustingly high amounts of money.
Nobody has the balls to create a free market in any rich country because the plebians demand gibs, so socialist health care is the norm. Of all such systems, Japan is the least bad because the government pays 70% and tells you to fuck off for the remaining 30%, so at least in that situation, there is still an incentive by the consumer to price shop and get the best value for the best price.