I am SICK of hearing about "affordable" health care.

[Laelth]

That means that (for Americans) health care isn’t a right (as it is in every other wealthy, civilized nation on Earth). No, you’re still going to have to pay for it, but maybe Joe can make it cost less. Maybe he can make it “affordable.”

This is not what I want to hear. I think it’s a bad argument, and I don’t think it should be featured so prominently on the second night of the DNC.

People don’t need “affordable” health care. Have you seen a hospital bill recently? Barely 5% of the American people can afford a visit to the hospital. Just shut up about health care if you’re not committed to universal, taxpayer-funded health care. Health care IS NOT affordable, and it never will be until we guarantee health care to all Americans, as a right, and commit to funding it completely.

Too many people are talking about “affordable” health care tonight. I am disappointed. Last night was great. Tonight, not so much. Not yet.

-Laelth

[a kennedy]

1. I'm ashamed, I didn't watch last night.......

tonight??? I’m feeling sad I didn’t watch last night, but......I’ve enjoyed tonight, AND PROUD of being a Democrat.

[Laelth]

3. Last night was awesome. No joke.

Catch it on YouTube if you have the time. It’s well worth it.



-Laelth

[Siwsan]

2. The "for profit" aspect of health care needs to end.

IMHO, it is immoral. We are no longer patients. We are now customers. Healthcare is no longer a healing art. It is a corporation.

[smirkymonkey]

8. +1000

[I_UndergroundPanther]

19. I agree💯

[appalachiablue]

29. Yes, now more than ever with all the sickness from

Covid among patients, stressed health care workers, people with serious lingering effects and disabilities. It's massive.

[notinkansas]

35. Customers are treated with more respect than people in need of healthcare.

An uninsured person can expect to be robbed blind with healthcare billing charges. Literally.

[brooklynite]

4. Name a country where health care is free...

[Laelth]

6. It's never free.

I don’t expect doctors, nurses, and hospital staff to work for nothing. I don’t expect hospitals with massive overhead to provide medical services for nothing.

I want these services paid for with taxpayer dollars—and I assume you understand that.

-Laelth

[Blue_true]

17. Taxpayer paid healthcare works only when citizens are conditioned to HELP

make it affordable. If we implement taxpayer healthcare with people refusing to exercise, or over-eating, or smoking more than any other western country, or drinking alcohol to excess, or using guns or weapons to resolve disputes, then healthcare costs are going to be outrageous for us and most of the tax money would go to paying those costs (which is ok in a lot of cases like over policing ourselves or spending money on enough weapons to kill the world five times).

Nothing is low cost without tradeoffs. My argument is our society (I mean us, we the people) are not ready to make our share of the changes required to make a low cost healthcare system work.

[Demonaut]

25. so you would rather taxes, that we pay in part, be the method of transaction

I agree completely

[Laelth]

7. And you're missing my point.

I suggest SHUTTING UP about health care if we’re not advancing universal, taxpayer-funded health care.

There are plenty of things that we can talk about without featuring our nation’s failure to provide universal health care to all our citizens.

-Laelth

[smirkymonkey]

9. Thank YOU!

[Amishman]

15. How about we start with the obtainable?

And actually make some progress?

We live in a deeply divided country that is extremely skeptical of government competence. There is a lot to overcome to get anywhere.

[Laelth]

21. How about we NOT focus on the fact we still stink as a civilized nation. n/t

-Laelth

[Amishman]

47. The first step is admitting we have a problem

Ignoring the political reality of this country is a great way to stumble and fail.

The path forward is best walked with our eyes open and aware of the severity of the obstacles before us. We might even make a few baby steps of progress.

[Thekaspervote]

27. +1000

[brooklynite]

20. I suggest talking about any policy that's an improvement over what we have today

[Laelth]

23. The ACA was a massive achievement.

It is worth celebrating. I don’t deny that, but I am inviting you to HEAR ME when I tell you that, despite the ACA, I still can not afford health care. It grates on me to hear the ACA and our current healthcare delivery system celebrated when I KNOW that if I lived in Canada or the UK, I could just go to the doctor when I am sick and not worry about paying for treatment.

Please hear that.

-Laelth

[brooklynite]

24. Understood, but Biden proposes to build on ACA...

And that’s worth mentioning.

[notinkansas]

36. Worth mentioning as in indictment.

In the middle of a raging pandemic he still can't bring himself to do what every other major industrialized country has done in terms of health care? Yeah - he needs to do better. Much better!

[brooklynite]

38. Much better to campaign on an unachievable (FOR NOW) goal and risk losing?

=

[notinkansas]

49. With so many people having lost their health insurance,

now (after the election) seems to be an optimal time for the change to medicare for all.

[frazzled]

5. Well, even government sponsored health care access is paid for

by people, predominantly through taxes, sometimes very substantial taxes (something Bernie Sanders attested to). It is never “free,” because health care costs money: to pay for doctors and nurses, technology and surgical equipment, building costs and service staff, etc. etc. etc.

Let’s not let words get in the way of goals and facts: we do need to make health care more affordable. How we get there (and there are many ways) is a matter for debate.

[Laelth]

10. I want taxpayer-funded health care.

I never said anything about health care being “free.”


I suggest SHUTTING UP about health care if we’re not advancing universal, taxpayer-funded health care.

There are plenty of things that we can talk about without featuring our nation’s failure to provide universal health care to all our citizens.

-Laelth

[frazzled]

13. Telling people to shut up

is rarely the way to convince people of anything

[Laelth]

18. Thanks for the tip.

Multiple Democrats talking about “affordable” health care bothers me. If it doesn’t bother you, I assume you have good insurance. Many of us do not.

-Laelth

[notinkansas]

37. What we have now is certainly not affordable.

Costs for Medicare for all would be significantly lower than what we pay for premiums, deductibles, copays and denials of coverage because of insurance company policies - the real death panels.

[frazzled]

45. That is not at all proven

If it were the case, then Vermont and California would have gone ahead and enacted their planned single-payer programs.

Right now, my grade a employer's insurance costs us less than Medicare plus supplemental insurance will. That's why we're staying on it until retirement.

[notinkansas]

50. That seems to be an easy decision.

For you. However the fact that some people will want to keep what they have should not prevent people who desperately need access to medical care from getting it.

[frazzled]

51. Don't pull that on me

I've repeatedly argued that many people remain desperately in need of good, affordable health insurance, and I have advocated for this for years. I put myself in the streets back in 2008 to express support for a government public option. I know that my position is better (but so is that of many people with decent employer insurance at the moment). I also know that the ACA allowed 20 million Americans to have access to health insurance, with large subsidies to those who could not afford it. It wasn't perfect, but it was a huge first step forward for many Americans (including some home health aides I know who got insurance for the first time and were enormously thankful for it.)

That is not the point of this thread. The OP claims that he/she is sick about hearing about "affordable" health care (meaning insurance) and implying that it should be about free health care. Numerous posters in this thread have argued that no health care is free, and that remains the absolute truth, whether we are talking about private insurance or a single-payer Medicare for all system, or a hybrid system.

The economists are not in any agreement at all about how much a single-payer government system would cost, how much people would have to pay in additional taxes, and how hospitals and providers would be affected. All I was pointing out was that two states that very proactively tried to institute state-level single-payer systems (Vermont and California) had to abandon the effort, not because of opposition, but because they were going to be too expensive and put too large a burden on taxpayers. People act as if this is a simple process, but it is enormously complex. Ideas are great, implementation is another thing. The one thing this thread is trying to establish is health care must be made affordable to the citizenry, universally, but the notion that it could be "free" is ignorant. There will always be a cost: it needs to be made progressively distributed.

[notinkansas]

52. I don't think anybody expects that Medicare for all would be free.

But it would be considerably less expensive than paying the overhead for insurance companies. What's wrong with less expensive? And we might even get less expensive drugs from big pharma if the government was permitted to negotiate drug prices. The status quo is absolutely unsustainable.

[Blue_true]

11. Regardless of the system, healthcare is not free or even close to free.

Other western nations do a better job of making healthcare available to everyone, but across those societies there is an understanding by everyone involved about their role. Just look at a picture of a crowd of people in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, etc, you don’t see morbidly obese people like is common here. I must admit that in Florida now, I only occasionally run into a person smoking a cigarette, so that is markedly better. In order to make a system affordable, user of healthcare must do their part in that effort, in the USA, we fall vastly short in that regard.

I may jinx myself, but other than when I was born, I have not spent one minute in a hospital bed. I use 2-3 inexpensive prescriptions. I take care of myself and always have, even when I was a young man. If I were the model, not only would healthcare be affordable, but hospitals and drug companies would be offering deep discounts for people to use them. But I AM NOT the model, I tend to be at one end, the healthiest one, but, if more people are socially conditioned to make the choices that I have made, my argument is that there would be far more people in my end of the healthcare spectrum and costs would be vastly lower.

There are no magical solutions, despite what some claim, there are ALWAYS going to be co-responsibilities and tradeoffs.

[Laelth]

14. Nobody said anything about "free" health care.

I want healthcare taxpayer-funded, and I think you know that.

Right now, I suggest SHUTTING UP about health care if we’re not advancing universal, taxpayer-funded health care.

There are plenty of things that we can talk about without featuring our nation’s failure to provide universal health care to all our citizens.

-Laelth

[Blue_true]

22. You shouldn't tell people to shut up because they don't share your view on an issue.

I pointed out some material differences between the average American and the average Dane, or Norwegian, etc. They seem to be more attuned to making the choices that protect their health and result in lower cost interventions when those are needed. Here we have people that routinely over-eat, smoke at the highest rate in the western world, never workout or even take walks. Gun use among us is routine when compared to the countries that you keep alluding to when you talk about taxpayer paid healthcare.

The fact is, there is no magic solution. If people keep eating the wrong things in large amounts, smoking, not working out any at all, we are going to have an expensive healthcare system, whether taxes pay for that system or not.

The ACA, when it was ran properly, emphasized preventative care and educating people about taking care of their health (changes to diets, exercise, smoking cessation, routine physicals). The cause and effect was pretty simple, if we get better at those things then expensive hospitalizations and prescription MEDS can be avoided except in the case of people that have genetics that lead to worse outcomes for them. With interventions being low cost, then healthcare costs follow.

You are making an argument similar to the people that want to spend all Federal tax money on defense, that we shouldn’t look at the reasons why we are spending big dollars on defense, just spend the money and everything will get better. That is akin to looking for fools gold as the real thing.

[Laelth]

26. I am attempting to advise you (and the party) on good rhetorical strategy.

I am sick of hearing about “affordable” health care (because health care is NOT AFFORDABLE for the majority of Americans). It makes me sick to my stomach to hear us talk about it. There are plenty of other things that we could talk about. I don’t want to talk about our continuing failure to provide taxpayer-funded health care to all Americans as a RIGHT.

You can either choose to listen to what I have to say on this or ignore my feeling and reject it. That’s your choice, but I can assure you that I am not alone in feeling this way.

-Laelth

[mvd]

48. I feel the same way

And I do think Medicare For All could pass. Maybe not right away, but it will. We may have to accept incremental progress because neither Biden nor Harris is a M4A advocate. But we should continue the effort.

[Phoenix61]

28. I get what you're saying.

Type II diabetes is now a thing in children due to increasing rates of obesity. The long term health care cost of just that one thing will be astronomical. I had the opportunity to spend a week in Singapore and I definitely noticed how slim everyone was. Interesting because eating is a pass time there but it's an entirely different way of eating. Lots of vegetables and single servings of every and any kind of fruit available everywhere. (including durian which is a topic all by itself) And they walk....a lot. Sadly, we don't really have a health care system. It's more of a symptom treatment system. Lots of places to make changes but it will involve people making lifestyle changes.

[Blue_true]

31. You did get the point that I was making.

Expensive interventions are going to lead to an expensive healthcare system, that is going to be the case regardless of how we pay for healthcare for each individual.

Until we, including people comparing our system to systems where people take fundamentally better care of themselves, grab the base cause of high healthcare costs by the horns, we are not going to make any real progress. Drug companies can charge a lot for certain medicines here because we have people that have allowed their health to decline to the point where they must have those medications (again, people that were born with certain conditions are not included in the group that I said “allowed”). If we develop a culture of making wiser health choices, drug costs and hospital costs will follow and drop.

[dflprincess]

12. Usually when they say "affordable healthcare" what they really are talking about is cheaper

health insurance.

And that makes me grind my teeth as health insurance in no way means access to healthcare. Not when you look at how high copays and deductibles can be.

[Laelth]

16. +1 n/t

-Laelth

[theaocp]

34. That's what happens when you complicate simple ideas.

We deserve the country we have.

[brush]

30. Patience. We have to win first. It'll get done if we get...

the WH and Senate.

[moondust]

32. The COVID nightmare

Last edited Wed Aug 19, 2020, 12:46 AM - Edit history (1)

and massive unemployment may have convinced more Americans and their politicians that employer-based health care is not such a good idea.

Employer-Based Health Care, Meet Massive Unemployment

[brooklynite]

39. Remind us which candidate won the nomination.

[JI7]

33. EVERYONES taxes would have to go up . The problem is many people often call for these things

but refuse to talk about what it will take to get it.

And no, it can't be funded only by taxing billionaires.

In Europe and other places where people pay more taxes and even there it's not totally govt funded.

[MichMan]

41. Most countries have 15% VAT taxes to pay for it.

Hardly ever hear anyone proposing that system here.

[betsuni]

40. Affordable anything is good.

[myohmy2]

42. "People don't need "affordable" health care."

"I am disappointed. Last night was great. Tonight, not so much."

...

[Laelth]

43. In retrospect, it's the word "affordable" that really grates on me.

“Lower-cost” would be more honest. “Affordable” is too relative.

-Laelth

[mvd]

44. I agree

Does affordable mean good? I am 100% for single payer or at least another form of universal health care not driven by profits.

I did enjoy the night, though. Jill Biden was wonderful!

[dansolo]

46. I'm sick of hearing about fantasy plans that will do nothing to help people

How good is a plan if it will never pass? M4A will never be a reality, but it's supporters are happy to get no improvements if their plans aren't enacted.