Forum Post: Occupy Healtchare: Change our helthcare system in America
Posted 12 years ago on Feb. 22, 2012, 11:04 a.m. EST by flamingliberal
(138)
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We should also bring to attention that our current government has chosen healthcare insurance monopolies over providing needed care for millions of Americans. As a result, over 50 thousand Americans die every year due to them not having access or affordable healtcare. That is 10 times more than any terrorist attack on American soil die every year to satisfy corporate monopolies.
If you give health care to all; paid for through taxes; and remove the "for profit" component; you would save 30%+ right out of the gate. Some of the things you do need to spend money on to supply health care to someone is doctors, nurses, hospitals, drugs, medical equipment, clinics, etc. The one thing you don't need is insurance companies. They offer no service except to jack-up the costs and provide a return for their investors at patients expense.
Think about it. The only way an insurance company can make money is to collectively overcharge their customers the percentage of profit margin, over and above their expenses. The expenses include the paying of claims, but also include, executive pay and bonuses, employee pay, benefits, taxes (maybe not), Marketing and Administrative Expenses ( you even have to pay for their TV ads), utility costs, maintenance costs, and much, much, more; that are passed directly to the patient on top of already high actual health care costs.
A 2004 economic study published in The New England Journal of Medicine determined that a national single-payer healthcare system would reduce costs by more than $400 billion a year "despite the expansion of comprehensive care to all Americans." I'm sure that figure has increased since then.
I think the cartoon at the bottom of this page says it all -
http://www.healthcare-now.org/whats-single-payer/
Cheers :)
One thing about single payer that really upsets people, myself included, is how many Americans do not care about their own health. Just an hour ago I was at WalMart and the lady in front of me in line, who weighed about 350 lbs, was buying a cart full of soda, Doritos, and cheap WalMart cookies. Then she asked the cashier for a carton of cigarettes.
Obviously she doesn't give a damn about her own health, so why should everyone else have to pay for her medical bills which will inevitably be huge?
I agree we have to make changes to our healthcare system - it is a mess. But our population is also a mess. It is not like Norway or Sweden which are much healthier as a whole. Americans simply do not take good care of themselves. As a dentist, a solid 80% of what I do is fix problems that were completely preventable. And everyone I see knows how to prevent them - it takes about 5 minutes per day, a tooth brush, and some floss. Amazingly few people do it even though you can buy a lifetime supply of those supplies for the cost of just 1 dental implant.
The AFA nibbled at the edge.
Warren has a relevant comment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHFHznu-N-M