@buyinghouse How would repeal of ACA impact you? Unless you’re one of the 7% buying their own insurance, it won’t.
Yeah, the guy in Germany barely pays anything. Do you think the cost of care he’s receiving is only $350/mo? It’s not. That means someone else is paying way more than $350/mo, so his bill is lower. That’s not lowering the cost of healthcare. It’s just shifting who pays the bill. You seem unable to tell the difference.
Germany spending per capita is $5,411. That means the average family of 4 would cost Germany $21,644/yr in costs. They are paying $4,200/yr. that means someone else is paying the other 81% of their healthcare costs.
This is video shows what Republicans are expecting on every single town hall meeting they hold. They are running scared. They woke up the sleeping giant, people are not afraid to put to sleep the famous “socialist paradise” republicans cry whenever they see single payer being mentioned.
The guy in the video called this republican “Tommy”. 
https://www.facebook.com/TrumpResistanceMovement/videos/626888404168396/
So I guess you don’t understand basic math.
When I lived there (until 12/1996), employers paid 50% and employees paid 50% of the premium. The premium was a % of the gross salary with a cap.
I think back then the numbers were approximately:
15% of salary. The maximum was DM 750 which corresponds to maybe EUR 400 or $440. As a software engineer in the 90s in Germany, I earned about $4k (DM 6000) a month and was already above the cap. (15% would’ve been $600, I was charged around $440). The employer paid another $440.
Key difference is:
everyone has health insurance. While I attended the university, the college fee ($35 a semester) included the health insurance. There’s no typo in the previous sentence.
you get unemployed? You have health insurance as soon as you register as unemployed with the government.
the problem is not the US lawyers but the legal system which makes lawsuits easier here. Anyone remembering the recent VW Diesel scandal? In the US, VW paid buyers of Diesel large sums of money for diminished value or even bought the vehicle back from them. In Germany, VW did not need to make any such offer.
Consumers do have more power in the US than in Germany (and presumably, than in many other countries). Class-action lawsuits against a credit card company? Unheard of where I come from.
This additional power comes at a cost. It does affect doctors, and also home-builders. I cannot speak about malpractice insurance, but the premium for insurance to protect a developer from construction defect lawsuit is quite expensive (low six figures for a small project), and not exactly trivial to obtain.
These insurances don’t really improve the quality of health care or a foundation, but make it certainly more expensive.
Right, America is incredibly litigious. Something I still don’t fully grasp as an immigrant. That to me comes from imbalance between individual rights and living together as a society. By dialing up individual rights to 20 society pays the costs, which ultimately individuals pay because society is nothing but a group of individuals.
Another issue that comes to mind is gun rights, a problem unique to America.
I am going to apologize to you Marcus. I have said some hard words in my comments, and I repeat it, I apologize for whatever. But, let’s be clear on something. You are alone on this Marcus, you really are. You are stuck in that world of “can’t be done” and that’s a disgrace coming from such an intelligent guy like you. Are you sure they hire you for being a free thinker? With such negativism, man! You wouldn’t last in my group.
Ptiemann gave us a concrete and real evidence of how healthcare is treated in other countries. It can be achieved here, and cheaper as you can see, except we need to get rid of those so called insurance companies which are none the less a book keeping scheme that needs to be shutdown. Those $30-$80 million bonuses for their CEOs should tell us they got to go. Period!
I am defending the right of every American, including you, because some day you will need it, to have a decent healthcare. That’s something to applaud, not to be scalded for. Don’t give me that crap of numbers, blah, blah, blah. You are lost Marcus, lost!
To me, pardon my sincerity, you seem to be that proverbial Russian troll defending this administration and the corrupt GOP entity. You speak of being unbiased, but come on! Any idiot would understand you are a bone to the bone a republican. And, if any criticism is thrown at republicans, I see the “government” is to be blamed, but not the GOP. All you spout is democrats, Hillary, Obama, blah, blah, blah, but when it comes to spit that “republican” word, crickets, crickets, crickets.
And let me correct something: I know those guys made bunches of errors, mistakes, but they were scalded, berated, insulted to the limit of paranoia and discrimination and whatnot. Their words were translated into “well, s/he meant this or that”, but nowadays we have a dumb guy who says it with crude words and he is not hiding it. What do yo say? Nothing. But 1% these others guys said was multiplied 100% and investigations and whatnot were on their way.
Admit it, you are a republican. Period!
Look at the mess we are in. Barely any legislation, all executive orders, why? Because there’s no unity in congress nor in the country. And the problem is not that lack of unity buy the idiot in the white house.
Here, again, this is the video making rounds online. This is what’s waiting for republicans in the next elections. Yeah, let’s hear it from you, shall we?
I’ve actually proposed solutions that would lower healthcare spending. I guess you either didn’t read or didn’t understand them.
You don’t seem to care that only 7% of people buy their own healthcare. You act like the issue impacts everyone when it only impacts a very small percent of people. You’re willing to make everyone else have worse healthcare, so 7% of the population can benefit. Why not just put that 7% on medicaid and be done with it? It’d be cheaper than what we did with Obamacare.
You are only interested in shifting who pays for healthcare. You really think that family’s healthcare only costs $350/mo, because that’s what they have to pay. Their actual costs are 4 times that much. They just don’t realize it because other people are being forced to pay the bill. The only solution you believe in is forcing other people to pay the bill. I’m the one actually thinking outside the box on how to get people to live healthier, so they require less care. That would actually lower costs, because people wouldn’t need as much care or drugs.
You don’t seem to understand you can only shift who pays for so long when healthcare spending is growing twice as fast as GDP… Healthcare spending in the US is already equal to total tax revenue. So if we went single payer, there wouldn’t be money left for the government to run unless we significantly increase taxes. If you think there’s enough income in the top 1% to cover it, then that’s some horrible math.
You also ignore all data that says insurers profit adds 5% to insurance costs. How much would people notice if healthcare got 5% cheaper? That wouldn’t even cover the annual increase in cost of care, since premiums are going up by 20%+ a year. You realize the premiums going up by that much aren’t because insurers are making that much extra profit. Premiums go up by that much, because each year people are that much sicker and require that much more care.
Lowering costs, this and that, blah, blah, blah. It seems you are deflecting again. ptiemann gave you a class, from a personal experience, of what is to have a world class healthcare. Anything else fails the test. All what you are parroting is again, the same "oh well, increasing taxes for the 1% wouldn’t cover expenses, but you don’t mention the dumb administration based on the trickle effect theory is at it again, cutting taxes, which has been proven to not work at all. You just don’t get it, do you? Get rid of the insurance companies!
When Medicare was facing an impossible $13 trillion funding gap, Congress opted for a bold fix: It handed over part of the program to insurance companies, expecting them to provide better care at a lower cost. The new program was named Medicare Advantage.
Nearly 15 years later, a third of all Americans who receive some form of Medicare have chosen the insurer-provided version, which, by most accounts, has been a success.
But now a whistle-blower, a former well-placed official at UnitedHealth Group, asserts that the big insurance companies have been systematically bilking Medicare Advantage for years, reaping billions of taxpayer dollars from the program by gaming the payment system.
Just because you can’t understand doesn’t mean I’m deflecting. You think paying 50% of your insurance premium up to 15% of your income is a deal? My insurance premium would be ~$700/mo if I bought it on my own. My work charges me $100 and pays the other $600. I’m only paying 14% not 50% of the premium. I’m also paying far less than 15% of my income for healthcare. Anyone with an employer plan is paying less than 50% of their premium. Anyone with medicaid and medicare isn’t paying a premium. So again, 7% of people buying their own healthcare plus 5% without healthcare would be better off under Germany’s system. Everyone else would be paying more. I guess you’re OK asking 88% of the population to pay significantly more, so the 12% can be covered?
You think there’s no administration with medicare and medicaid? Doctors still have to submit all the paperwork to get paid. Someone at medicaid and medicaid still has to process payments to doctors. There are administrative costs.
You realize there’s a TON of medicaid and medicaid fraud from doctors?
I’d love to see the data of premiums vs. cost of treatment for medicare advantage patients. Then we’d get to see if the companies were milking profits are just covering their expenses.
Excuse me, but you are a dummy or you pretend to be one? You keep pounding %s of our paycheck for healthcare and whatnot. In the long run, it is a good deal.
Let’s put elt1 for example. Not long ago he was bitching about paying huge sums of $ for his healthcare coverage. That was due to the insurers doing the book keeping, not the hospitals pocketing the entire money.
What you don’t get is that you get sick under the German healthcare, Canada, France, and so on, is that you just go to the hospital, they take care of you, and then you go home without signing the deed of your house to the healthcare industry.
Don’t you get it?
I pay $1100/m and $10k deductible thru Obamacare…Before Obamcare I was paying $500/m…Obamacare is crap…Most everyone on this forum is covered by their employer…No dog in this fight…In 2 years I will get medicare. .Still costs $400/m for part B…No free lunch. .Single payer is probably the most cost effective, transition will be a bitch…But the employee benefits now received could just be transferred to the single payer system. .no added tax needed. …
Wow, using data and statistics instead of an emotional opinion makes someone a dummy? That’s hilarious. In the long run, what is a good deal?
You realize insurer profit is 5%. So make them non-profit, he’d pay $1045/mo. Notice the premium has more than doubled since the “affordable” care act was passed?
What you don’t get is that if you get sick in those countries, the care isn’t actually cheaper. They just force everyone else to pay your bill for you.
Half of our healthcare spending goes to the sickest 5% of the population. Exactly what treatment would those people get in other countries?
High deductibles and rationing are the only solution. …Free health care would be abused…too many hypochondriacs and unhealthy people…
$1100/m for 1 person or 2? You need to shop around for better insurance. Maybe check out group insurance from realtor association or other professional association which has many young members.
My current employer plan has zero deductible and a low co-payment. I heard that emloyers are pushing employees to high deductible plans.
I guess the healthcare insurance nightmares force many people to be an employee rather than an entrepreneur.
We have quite a few forum people with no employer coverage. Is it a pain to find good insurance with your after tax money?
One of my friend’s is a CEO of a small company. He signed up his company to a group buying entity for SMEs called Tri-net i think. He said the over head charged by the group buying entity is $50/month/per employee. From what I can see the rates he is getting for his people are competitive (and in some cases lower) then companies with thousands of people (that i have some personal knowledge of in terms of benefits expenses)
So elt1 can form a company and buy insurance at group discount through Tri-net with pre-tax money?
I guess people with resources can go this route and get group rate. Obamacare only makes sense for middle and low income people who can qualify for subsidy. Employer insurance still dominates the healthcare and Obamacare should be an expanded Medicaid.
Here is the realtor insurance marketplace. They even have an online marketplace.
Maybe his small company has young workers and the large company has many older workers. Also large company is self insured so the insurance rate is determined by the employer, not the insurance company.
Almost all the big companies with 1000+ employees are self-insured. Insurance company is not the problem since they are just paid for their administrative work.
Is there any data to support my assumption of small company workers are much younger than big corporations on average?
There’s a reason over 80% of people that get insurance through Obamacare are on medicaid. It really didn’t change the market for buying insurance. Which is back to my original point. If the goal was to insure people who can’t afford it, then we could have saved BILLIONS and simply made anyone without insurance eligible for medicaid. Oh, and the new enrollees are costing us 49% more per person that was budgeted.
“HHS found that the ACA’s Medicaid expansion enrollees cost an average of $6,366 in FY 2015—49% higher than the $4,281 amount that the agency projected in last year’s report.”
Obamacare is very bad. But Trump is having a hard time to find a better replacement.
The same force is fighting both Obama and Trump. It’s not a partisan issue, it’s an economic issue.
Obama, Hillary and Trump should stop any infighting immediately and let the people to find a solution. Heated political dog show is useless