Essentially what country free healthcare mode appeals to you the most would you want a nordic mode or a Canadian model or would you want a german model etc?

25 comments

  1. I don’t think there’s a model out there that just “plug and plays” into our country.

    Universal healthcare in this country will take one or more states trying it, figuring out something that works, and then everyone else just copycatting it.

  2. The German model is the one most similar to what we have currently. I think that it’d be the one that could be implemented with the fewest problems.

  3. I’ve been to the VA I know how bad it’s going to be.

    It doesn’t matter what you try to do the country, whose inner-city schools end up with a literate students. The country that has homeless people shitting in the street and junkie zombies. All over Kensington, isn’t going to excel in healthcare.

  5. Our system already has a lot in common with the Dutch, German, and Swiss systems, along with others. But there are political and constitutional issues with the individual mandate. So adapting some sort of tax-payer funded block grant payment system onto our existing system is probably the best way forward.

  9. Baseline safety-net care on demand that covers key preventative and life maintenance procedures, and you have the freedom to go out and get privare insurance / care if you wish. Certain elective procedures, like nose jobs and breast augmentation, should not be covered.

  12. Something like “Medicare for all who want it.” Prefer the insurance you get from work? Cool, keep it. Work doesn’t have great insurance so you’d rather get the public option? Sounds good, come sign up.

    Everyone should have access to good healthcare, but I’m skeptical of a completely government run and funded healthcare system. I feel like it would stifle research and innovation if all the hospitals were literally run by the government, and research and innovation is one area where American medicine excels.

  14. I think a Netherlands-style model where they have a single-payer system for primary care,
    and private insurance for specialty care (cardiologist, ophthalmologist, etc) would work best for us.

  15. Canada somehow created a universal healthcare model that’s worse or about equal to the current US model. I’d rather look to other countries.

  16. What I would want is a modified version of what Singapore has.

    In essence I would argue what would work best is if insurance companies are only responsible up to a certain lifetime cap on medical bills–with the balance beyond that cap covered by the government.

    To give an example, suppose we set the lifetime cap at $1 million. Insurance companies would only be required to cover your medical bills up to that cap of $1 million–beyond that, the government covers 100% of your medical bills.

    And it’d be cumulative: if you (say) ran up $500,000 in medical bills when you were young, future insurers would only have to insure the rest of that cap–$500,000–before the government coverage kicks in. If we were to make government coverage payable through insurance companies–say, for example, once government coverage kicks in, the government pays the insurance company a 5% administrative fee (or something)–so the insurance company is the one paying the bills, but drawing on government funds, so a bill for $1,000 would net the insurance company a $50 profit for processing the bill.

    —-

    I think this would work for a few reasons.

    First, it makes insurance “insurance” again. Meaning insurance customarily works well when there is a cap on the maximum possible payout: your home owners insurance, for example, caps out at the resale value of your house. Your car insurance at the cost to total your car. But health care “insurance” really isn’t insurance because we expect it to pay out for everything and be ‘uncapped.’

    But, really, when we talk about how some poor guy is in the hospital with cancer–in a way, I have zero problems ‘socializing’ that cost. (To do otherwise is to demand corporations pay the bill for social outcomes–which never works.)

    Second, it would actually encourage insurers to insure people who have had complex medical histories. If I’m an insurance company and I’m selling you a product but my maximum out-of-pocket is $100,000 (because you already used up $900,000 on prior illnesses), *I want you as a customer.* The chances of my having to pay out may be higher thanks to your history, but my total exposure is 1/10th some random healthy 30-year-old schmuck.

    Third, it doesn’t actually wipe out the existing system, as most proposals do. Politically speaking you are not wiping out a trillion-dollar industry with a stroke of the pen because you like England’s system better.

    And of course it also means if you’re wealthy enough you can actually reasonably ‘self-insure’. (Our current system makes self-insurance an insane proposition, and worse: with co-pays, we are demanding the sick, to some degree, self-insure.)

  18. The amount that my taxes would have to rise to pay for universal healthcare would make it entirely not worth it

  19. The kind that won’t radically increase my taxes and won’t decrease my current level of health care.

    I have chronic health issues and currently have excellent health care. Some of my friends in Canada and over the pond are not so lucky with the same issues and end up on waitlists for tests and treatments while I do not. I do not want to get sicker or die.

  23. I would not want government run healthcare. I want more transparency with costs. I want insurance to not be tied to our jobs. I want to lessen regulations to lower administrative costs. And stop the fda from it’s corrupt practice of not approving competitors to name brand products. I also want us to enforce the actual cost of drugs in our trade agreements, and stop us subsidizing other countries when it comes to drugs and treatments.

  24. Medicare is in place and it’s not free but probably extend Medicare to everybody is the most practical method for Universal Health Care

  25. A model that makes it so I don’t have to pay 1,200 a month no insurance to get meds I need to live (I end up paying 100 with insurance per month but it’s still too much)

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