Can America really have health insurance with no (like 5K deductible) before the insurance starts

a reply to: Idreamofme

All those entitlment programs,giant government payrolls,the problem with liberals today,they have no fiscal responsibility,one if using common sense would realize someone is paying for all those government vehicles,as well as people in them,the free give away are only free to those that aren't tax payers,do the math,need to rid these programs,open more free market to prescription drugs,medical supplies,so no monopoly exist's a free market,not paying for attys and opportunistic bunch

a reply to: musicismagic

when i worked at the hospital here in town, i paid 59 dollars a month for insurance, 100 deductable, 10 dollar doctor visit, 5/10 on perscrition meds. i have not had insurance since that time, some 20 years now. everything plan i have looked at in the last 5 years is just insane, i doubt i will look at insurance again for at least 10 years once i'm well into my 50's

a reply to: reldra

Well, we have the right wing here that think the poor and the old and people with psychological problems and pregnant women should pay more. They think peple in general should pay quite a sum, that amount will go up with the new plan.

I'm not right wing and feel both party and politicians are one in the same and are only tools used by the lobbyist to con the people into their goals. I'm a libertarian on most issues due to rampant corruption in gov't , but thought (wrongly) that Sanders was the best choice in this election between the ultimate political scum in form of a female and a conman.


If you actually listen to those you disagree with and hear their concern such as the conservatives reasons for not wanting socialized medicine, then you find out that it has nothing todo with not wanting to help those people who need help.

It has more to do with the fact that when gov't does something they typically do it under the false claims to help people but in reality they only help politicians and the corporate Oligarch that controls DC , at the expense of the majority of Americans that are middle class and below.

I personally think Socialized healthcare is the way to go and a first world nation should not be considered a first world nation without it. However the environment and timing is way off.You can't have a gov't get more power,control when its so blatantly compromised with corruption. They will bastardize the program just like every other program we have. It will end up being no better and possibly even worse than what we got.

To do it right and before you even start talking about Socialized healthcare you must get corruption under control and separate our politicians from special interests and lobbying. This should be an issue where both liberals and conservatives can tackle together , yet they are to busy attacking each other to actually fix anything or make things better.

So instead of blaming the Right and vice versa which hasn't been productive, change your stance and try to work on issues that both party want that will actually benefit most Americans and both parties.

Minimize corruption by isolating politicians from direct contact with lobbyist by using technology , enforce congressional term limits and other methods such as enforcing no private fund raising again with technology. Then go after your political ideal issues such as socialized medicine. Eitherwise we will continue running in circles between both parties.

a reply to: musicismagic

Comparing Japan to the USA is about as fair as comparing Norway or Iceland. Socialized medicine works there because of demographic pressures that just aren't the reality here. They are a far more homogenous society in terms of socioeconomics, culture, an overall personal health. Their workforce participation numbers mop the floor with ours, meaning that they have more people working and able to pay taxes towards the system. Furthermore, the makeup of their economy is much closer to what ours was in the 60's, with a literal army of midlevel white collar workers and an incredibly strong working class base of well-compensated industrial workers and tradesman, rather than what we have today with a dwindling middle class, an essentially dead industrial class, and a working class that is overwhelmingly comprised of low-skill, low-wage service sector workers. On top of that, their population is far, far healthier than ours, with a better diet, more physical activity, and the incredible longevity to show for it, with none of the HUGE socioeconomic-driven variation between diet and long term health that our country has.

What that means is that their population uses far less health resources than ours does, and is in a much better position to actually pay for the resources that they use. Furthermore, they don't have the problem that we do where the bottom two quintiles are the sickest and often times rack up 7 figures in healthcare expenditures without putting 1/10th of that into the system over their lifetimes due to poor diet and poor self-care leading to snowballing chronic conditions. So it's relatively easy for someone with the demographic balance and cultural/self-care homogeneity of Japan, Norway, or Iceland to throw together a national system that provides good care to everyone at a cost that they all are OK with paying.

The demographic makeup of 2010's America, on the other hand, is precisely why an elegant solution such as Japan's is nigh-on impossible. So we can either have
A: A good system that is reasonable but shunts low-income consumers to free clinics and safety-net hospitals and rationed care at private hospitals;
B: A system that provides mediocre, if not awful care to everyone that is at least relatively affordable;
or
C: A system that provides good care to everyone and ends up being horrifically expensive;
But the USA, as it exists today, can't have all three.

The only other option is to get people back into the workforce, working manufacturing/industrial/trade jobs, completely change the diet/lifestyle choices of the lower class, and embark on a demographic manipulation program to slow the birthrate among those most likely to consume far more in healthcare resources than they will ever come close to paying into the system. I'm pretty doubtful that any of that is even feasible, much less is actively going to happen.

So my hunch, as a healthcare provider, is that we're going to try a mix of B and C, as we are right now, and that it will fail spectacularly, causing us to drift back towards option A, because that's honestly where the US was in 1980, before HMOs, EMTALA, etc sent the healthcare system into the slow death spiral that it's still in today in terms of escalating costs that nobody seems to be able to afford. It wasn't equitable, for sure, but at least the system operated in a state of sustainable, if somewhat dysfunctional equilibrium.

a reply to: musicismagic

Funny...friends wife was bought out by a big insurance company so he checked on what their deductible is...it was a five thousand deductible and now it will jump to ten thousand...ridiculous...

I live in the UK and really like America but your health system is one of the most stupidest, idiotic systems going. I don't want to hear oh it's capitalism, oh it's socialism, it makes no difference when your in pain or dying what political system is in place as long as you can get treatment.
For the life of me I cannot get just why you pay middlemen (insurances) billions of dollars when you could pay direct to the government for them to provide either a free or greatly affordable health care. And I don't mean by heavy taxes.
Your government at the moment could supply you with free healthcare if they wanted to.
Let me give you an example from 2015. Your health care for that year was 66 billion yet your government spent 598 billion on military expenditure and your country is not even at war or being invaded.
So on those figures your government could pay for your healthcare free for about 9 years. Go figure.

I think that is good that Medicaid program covers poor, disabled and elderly residents, but poor adults under 65 who aren't disabled and don't have children are not eligible. People in this country illegally do not get Medicaid or welfare for that matter. No doubt that health care is too expensive.But I understand the importance of health care. When I have health problems I want to feel safe and insured, that's why I pay every month $19 to MIS California ( www.mis-insurance.com... ) for my health. But the cost doesn't end there. If people drop off the Medicaid rolls and become uninsured, they will likely wind up as charity-care patients when they get sick. Over the past three years, Gov. Chris Christie has cut the amount the state pays hospitals for providing charity care by about $373 million, citing a decline in charity-care cases due to the increase in those covered by Medicaid, and he has recommended another cut of $50 million in the coming budget.

The USA cannot sustain 90 million + people not in the workforce and being taken care of by the government. That's pretty close to saying the USA could support the entire population of Japan not working.