1170
62% of Americans agree US government should ensure everyone has health coverage
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
1170 points (99.7% liked)
News
23627 readers
2487 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There are very few states that can handle the cost of state-funded health care, and unfortunately they would be faced with negotiating care from for-profit enterprises that have no care other than maximizing profits.
It needs to be a “from the ground up” service, which we had at one point - we used to have a lot of state, municipal and county hospitals, but the majority of them got shuttered and replaced with for-profit enterprises - where the state creates facilities owned/operated by the state and can control pricing with no expectation for a profit to be made. That’s how you get care for all at government prices, we can’t keep shoveling money at for-profit businesses.
This is an interesting idea, but I don't see where that is ever going to be effective either given the massive logistical undertaking that would be required in order to deal with states managing non-profit medical facilities. The only option is to somehow circumvent the middle men.
Circumventing the middle man is exactly why for-profit enterprises resist state care with everything they have. The government is a powerful negotiator that can undercut for-profit business because they don’t need to profit from the work being done.
Yes, but you could say the exact same thing about the creation of single payer state insurance pools could you not? They can force negotiations on medical providers at the state level, and force them to accept state backed insurance if they wish to conduct business in that state. That seems like a way simpler solution than needing to come up with massive amounts of logistical infrastructure that already exists.
Not as effective as the government as a whole. Also singles that state put among others as you said, placing additional adversity between the state and existing or potential employers.
Look, if it were simple, we could do it. Even if much of the difficulty is artificially created by businesses and other monied interests, it still exists and one state doesn’t exist in a vacuum where businesses wouldn’t have the option to leave. Other states would undermine the attempt for political or financial gain. It’s not simple.
I totally agree that no solution is going to be simple. I think what I envisioned was an inter-state compact where it would make it essentially impossible for medical providers to pull away. If we just use the West Coast as an example, what if Washington, Oregon, and California were to create a public option risk pool that could then be joined by other blue states? That is really the idea that I think is the most sensible, and potentially feasible to implement over time.
That sounds like an actual plan. No one state could do it effectively solo.
I guess I didn't really explain my thought process very effectively from the beginning. That was my fault.
No worries. We’re on the same page.
A lot of states are larger, both geographically and economically, than many European countries. What's stopping those states from doing it?
You’re not comparing apples to apples.
Those EU countries have a hoard of social services available, from pre-school to free/relatively inexpensive higher education, to medical services, unions, pensions and elder care…a lot of services Americans have to pay for on top of any exchange of health care premium for state health care tax. I mean, there’s a huge difference between EU workers’ compensation, housing costs, and benefits work compared to US workers, how companies are taxed and pay into social services, and to make them comparable would require massive change. The US has faced “taxes are evil” propaganda for easily 40 plus years now, and getting the funding to create a care system from both citizens and corporations will require a miracle.
If universal healthcare is cheaper than private insurance (and most say it is) why not simply charge the citizens of, for example, California 4/5th of what they're currently paying? What am I missing here? If they did that in my state it would save me around $100/mo