US reform of healthcare. Good or bad?

The senate has just passed Obama's bill on healthcare.
A Universal healthcare system for all US citizens, regardless of ability to pay.
First proposed nearly a century ago, it has taken until now to overcome the hurdles.

Unless something extraordinary happens, it will now become law.
What differences do you expect it to make to healthcare within the United States?

For those agin, I apologise for the use of the word reform in the thread title, which reflects my own stance.
Perhaps a mod could change it to "US Healthcare Changes. Good or bad?"

 

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It's bad; say hello to socialism!

Hopefully when Obama is out of office, they will repeal such a system.

 

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Because as soon as a country gets "free" (taxes pay for it) healthcare, they all turn into communists. Cos that's what's happened in every other country. Someone posted that America is donating 30 billion to Israel over the next 10 years (that's how i remember it), why not spend some of that money on yourselves?

If Australia can manage a "socialist" medicare, why can't America? Taxation here seems reasonable to me. Here's the medicare levy specs: A 1.5% levy is imposed on individuals with a taxable income of up to $50,000 per annum (higher cap for families - $100,000). If higher, the levy increases to 2.5% unless they have private health insurance. Meanwhile low income earners are exempt from the Medicare levy but contribute through indirect taxes. given the average wage is 35 - 40K per year, its costing people 50 bucks a month. not a big deal.


The way my american friend explained the socialist paranoia to me, is that socialism is against the american dream of getting rich, but i'd argue its as easy to get rich here.

 

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I think the healthcare bill is just one more notch in the guns of the American socialists. Just one more of many more to come. It will all become easier, passing more and more socialist programs ...the slippery slope has now been greased thoroughly and we're now being pushed onto it. Soon we'll have national housing care; national food care; national utility care; national auto care; national condom care; national prostitute care; national beauty care; national shoe care;................ Once the socialists get a toehold, they can never be pried loose.

I'm still trying to figure out how healthcare costs are going to be reduced by this bill. I mean, if an operation in a hospital costs $12,000 in 2009, will that same operation in the same hospital cost $6,000 in 2010? And if that's so, why didn't they just lower the costs by half without all the bullshit of the bill?

Baron Max

 

The health bill will also hurt doctors and people in the medical field.

 

I've read some comments from several people in the healthcare industry and they've expressed lots of concern about how the hell this is all going to be controlled ....and by whom? They talk about controlling costs, etc, yet there's no mechanism to that. So if an operation costs $12,000 today, is it going to cost $6,000 in 2010? And if so, who's going to tell the hospital and doctors how much to charge?

Baron Max

 

Where did you hear that? It's far short of universal. It's a compromise, the only thing that appears to be possible in a legislature controlled by the very interests they aim to control. We won't get anything better until we have public financing of campaigns.

 

Doctors make good money here because its still a challenging and highly qualified job. If it didn't pay well, people wouldn't go through the hassle.

by the same logic, giving criminals rights should have stopped them going to jail by now. and letting immigrants into the country should have given the entire world american citizenship.

 

To echo Spider, the plan does not provide universal healthcare, regardless of ability to pay.

 

Which is what I'm curious about.
From a non-American perspective, it's interesting to see this debate going on, but I must admit I'm unclear on exactly what this reform entails.
Does anyone have any of the Plan's specifics?

 

There's well over 1,000 pages of it. And it's SO convoluted that I seriously doubt if any one individual understands everything in it.

Also, various news reports say that the cost over ten years will add between $800 million to $1 billion to the Federal deficit with the final, actual number being quite higher.

Much of the plan doesn't even kick in for a few years and even then will only cover an additional 300 million more people than today and leaving MANY more than that still completely without insurance coverage at all.

 

Yeah, I have no doubt the documents themselves are vast.
That's why I was hoping someone could summarize.
I know how the system works here, but I can't figure out how a remotely similar system could work in the US, given that they're still going to maintain elements of the current system [it's my understanding that each American has to have some sort of private Health coverage/insurance thing.... ??].

 

This is not 'reform' of anything. It's bribery of whores to achieve political agendas.

Huge tax increases are a 100% guaranteed thing in the relatively near future, heath care 'reform' or no health care 'reform'.

Though the propaganda, I mean 'news media' we have mentions nothing of it as if it doesn't exist, and the great majority of the populace is so completely stupid and/or willfully ignorant they are in bliss, we have over $38,000,000,000,000 in unfunded liabilities as to medicare alone. Add social security to that and we have over $100,000,000,000,000 in unfunded liabilities. Bear in mind our entire private national net worth was only ~$51,000,000,000,000 last year. We also have over $12,000,000,000,000 in outright foreign debt, a number that will be making huge increases by the year until our currency hyperinflates. Do the math. You only need an elementary school education to figure it out.

Medicare and Social Security have less than 10 years left, and we won't be able to pay them under our current tax scheme. Since the American public thinks we can spend forever with no consequences, the incumbents they keep re-electing will never make any meaningful spending cuts or reforms. As long as men/women continue to enter the legislature for careers, not short tenures as Jefferson and Madison wanted(Jefferson's greatest regret about the Constitution was no term limits), there will be no major changes except raising taxes.

Huge tax increases are a guarantee in our near future.

The fact that the so-called 'reformers' didn't go after the absolute #1 problem in our health care system: the pharmaceutical companies, means that nothing will come of this current 'reform'. Why didn't they? They want loooong political careers, so they are beholden to the monied interests for re-election support. Obama wants a second term and he damn well means to have it, whatever be the fate of the US. Obama was getting in bed with big pharma before his inauguration took place, so were the career politicians in the legislature on both sides of the aisle.

Bush 2 set records at spending, Obama is making him look like a rank amateur at spending by comparison. We are rolling a big stone faster and faster uphill that will roll back on us like Sisyphus and end our nation as we know it.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury." - Alexis de Tocqueville

"Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us." - P. J. O'Rourke

 

I think the bill is better than nothing, it's a step in the right direction, it's a foot in the door for further reform. Obama is driving the ship of state he's got, not the one he might wish to have. Politically, he will be remembered for getting it done.

 

The present plan is not universal health care, all it is is regulating insures so that it will be much harder for them to scam people in trade for everyone needing to get coverage (thus the insures get more business), I don't see why conservatives are complaining about socialism, there is nothing remotely socialist about it. Still a public option exist even within the senate bill in the form of state run non-profits.

 

The right direction is going the other way, not becoming like all those uncivilized European socialist slums.

 

It's government-run, provided by taxes. That's socialist. If you want to pay for it, then YOU pay for it.

Better yet, why not stop spending that money at all and cut taxes?

By that same logic, how about the government also pay for food, housing, and recreation? Why stop at healthcare?

Then it really will be easy to 'get rich'. Heck, the government can go and give us each a trillion bucks!

Great idea, codanblad.

 

Yeah god forbid Americans end up living longer, better and even happier lives like the European.

 

And lose all our values like the Europeans.

No thanks. And Europeans only live 'longer' because they practice healthier habits, not because of their healthcare system.

Europeans, like everyone else, COME TO AMERICA to get healthcare when they can't get it in their own country.

 

I doubt even the fools who voted on it know.