<p>“What would the cost of healthcare be if we were to eliminate the 12+ million illegals?”</p>
<p>Omg…really?</p>
<p>Well tell me where do they go for their healthcare now? The emergency room… which is EXPENSIVE. Think about if we cut those out of the equation, lots of money saved by the hospitals…</p>
<p>Yeah…health care costs would just plummet…all the health care cost issues would be over.</p>
<p>Stinkin’ illegals… ruining it for everybody.</p>
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<p>Do other countries give away healthcare to those in the country illegally? Didn’t we just have the story of the man who couldn’t go to Canada for a transplant because they wouldn’t provide him with the healthcare without him being employed there? </p>
<p>If you want the USA to be the same as every other nation, let’s be the same…</p>
<p>^Why don’t you provide us facts on the number of illegals using emergency rooms for healthcare, as well as the cost of that care?</p>
<p>Your hypothesis isn’t helped by a recent Pew Center report that in the last five years the population of illegal immigrants from Mexico living in this country significantly decreased.</p>
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<p>So you’re OK with what’s happened to mini’s friend. And you’d be OK if it were YOU being “rationed” into the grave.</p>
<p>The latest evil-doing by the private insurance industry:</p>
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<p>[Insurers</a> alter out-of-network cost formula for gain](<a href=“http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.aspx?id=340040&type=newswires]Insurers”>http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.aspx?id=340040&type=newswires)</p>
<p>How much longer are we going to allow these sharks to be in charge of our medical care? How much more evidence do we need?</p>
<p>It is time for the US to implement universal healthcare for all. While we’re at it, also be sure we are taking care of our poor by giving them money. A country as great as America shouldn’t have struggling citizens.</p>
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<p>We could give them a job, but would they take it? Plenty of them would not…</p>
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My family has a history of prostate CA. If I end up with it and if the system determines that I shouldn’t be given a $90,000 treatment to extend my life by 2-3 months, I would say it’s the right decision. (PS - this is not a hypothetical scenario - there have been drugs of this cost and efficacy) But let me turn the question around to you - do you feel that every individual should be entitled to every treatment, regardless of what it costs? It is very wrong and irresponsible to not have rationing.</p>
<p>Here’s my main objection:
Most of us probably feel that food and shelter are two basic necessities of life. However, I suspect the majority of us don’t feel that every soul is entitled to have shelter like what Bill Gates can afford or food in a luxury restaurant every day. The same is true in most things in life - we feel that if Warren Buffet wants to use a private jet to go to NY, that’s fine, but few people think that privilege is something everyone’s entitled to. Is this rationing wrong?</p>
<p>A huge problem with healthcare is that this mindset does not apply in this country. We have set up a system that brings Rolls Royce treatments to the market, and then we insist that everyone should be entitled to it. Healthcare is such an open ended industry that if we had 200% of GDP to spend on it, the players will find ways of doing so with ease, so putting more money into it will never solve the problem. For all their flaws, private companies don’t have bottomless wallets and therefore limit this spending. History has shown the same cannot be said of the government.</p>
<p>Whenever we’ve given a free reign (healthcare or otherwise) the consequences have been same - irresponsible spending. What’s the comment about people in a democracy realizing they can give themselves whatever they want and doing so? So here’s what I suggest - we know there is more money in the system (per capita and total) than in most places in the world. Now demonstrate you can live within your means, which intrinsically means rationing, like it happens everywhere else in the world. When you can show that the money put in by people born in each decade - the 50s or 60s fully covers the expenditures to that population, then we can talk about escalating the responsibilities.</p>
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<p>I was being sarcastic with my previous statement.</p>
<p>Sadly, this is likely true. I know this from having family on welfare, and it sucks to see them not try to get off of it. 25 years my grandparents have been on it, never seeking out work. So I don’t really have sympathy for this system. It doesn’t seem necessary.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, anything the government does in this country comes with a million stupid, costly rules. THAT is a big part of the problem and certainly contributes to the overall cost. The rules that have come with Health Care Reform are an example … hard to interpret, costly, and largely unnecessary. Make a rule, charge more because of it, and hire more federal employees to oversee it … oh, and fine a few companies while you are at it. And don’t forget to make a few more rules that are so difficult to interpret, you need to hire a consultant and a lawyer to figure it out.</p>
<p>Actually, opening up Medicare to citizens below the age of 65 would radically improve the solvency of Medicare. Right now people over 65 use more healthcare resources. If you added in people below 65, at decent premiums, the percent of usage would plummet, since those below 65 use fewer resources. </p>
<p>Instead of being more expensive, making medicare available to a broader segment of citizens would actually lower the overall cost of the program.</p>
<p>I think people who complain about the government should not take medicare when they are eligible and should stay with private insurance.</p>
<p>And when these people who choose private insurance get in trouble…too bad.</p>
<p>People should have to live their views…</p>
<p>Hayden is right.</p>
<p>dstark, your post #74 makes no sense. With that line of reasoning, those who do not “believe” in Medicare should not have to pay into it throughout their working life.</p>
<p>And neither Hayden or anyone else is really “right” in all of this. The problem is complex and there is no one right answer. That’s about all we really can be sure about.</p>
<p>Specifically, the medicare-for-all idea would be fine except provider compensation would fall considerably, and we’d become like UK where the smarter students aren’t drawn to medicine. If you’re fine with that – civil servant mentality for your physicians – then I guess you’ve got your solution.</p>
<p>My friends from UK who are doctors over here say they support the Affordable Care Act but they also say that under it you really need to earn the money for private care to get good care. In other words, let’s have health coverage for all but by all means let’s be at an income level where we don’t get our own care that way.</p>
<p>I did not address the medicare tax issue…</p>
<p>What I would really do…if I was in charge and an a…, would figure out how much revenue it would take to run the program…and if it was possible…I would let people opt out…</p>
<p>But once they opted out…they couldn’t get back in…</p>
<p>Then these people who think they are so smart for opting out…</p>
<p>Will be shocked how high the cost for private health care is when a person is 70…</p>
<p>And age 80…good luck…</p>
<p>The only people that can really afford to opt out are probably in the
top.1 percent of the population…wealth wise…</p>
<p>Sewhappy…you have a kid going to medical school?
I understand your concerns.</p>
<p>To be fair (you already know where I am on universal health care), my friend is not complaining about the quality of his care. He is on the same transplant list as everyone else (true, there are ways for “certain people” to jump the line, which we’ve recently seen), and as a working person in a workplace with “good insurance”, he has received reasonable care. We have worked hard to make sure that he has been able to keep his insurance until the last possible moment. </p>
<p>But the problem has been that his insurance, and what will follow has basically bankrupted him and his family (though he does get to keep the house and the '83 Imperial), kept him chained to his desk while his health deteriorated even further, and without a system of advocacy that is unavailable to most, put his life in very severe jeopardy. It turned the hospital and doctors away from their best qualities as Hippocratic agents of health and into hypocritic moneygrubbing lowlife, and employed a raft of people (both in the private and public sectors) whose prime purpose in life seems to be to impoverish him and his family and deny him the care that he needs (so that he dies before they have to pay up).</p>
<p>Best medical care in the world.</p>
<p>(Putting aside the question of in-migration and out-migration, our state has a system of migrant and community health clinics that keeps migrants out of emergency rooms, and at very low cost. I am sure there are migrants who do go to emergency rooms unnecessarily; what I don’t know is how that pencils out against the hundreds of millions of dollars they pay into Medicare and into workers comp out of which they never collect. For the Medicare part, my mother is very grateful, and the projected shortfall in Medicare in the future is at least partially the result of fewer undocumented immigrants paying into it. For the period 2005-2010, there was no new net in-migration from Mexico, precisely the period when it seems Social Security and Medicare began to appear to be in trouble.)</p>
<p>If I Was King (IIWK) I’d make two small changes to start:
(1) Nothing medically-related is heretofore deductible; and
(2) All healthcare plans are heretofore available to everyone.</p>
<p>My cousin pays $20K+ annually for himself and his wife. He’s semi-retired but doesn’t yet qualify for Medicare. My brother is currently without health insurance due to cost … so his family is “pay as you go, and hope you never need the Emergency Room.” He and his wife both work, but neither employer offers health insurance. By fortuitous-luck-of-employer my family has very good (and quite reasonable) health insurance.</p>
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<p>Uhh . . . How about the financial melt down, mass job losses, housing value losses, etc. making payrolls a lot smaller? Or that little issue known as the boomers starting to retire??? Are you actually arguing that illegal immigrants prop up Medicare and SS?</p>