US Universal Healthcare: How are we going to pay for it?

[highwaystar101]

Kasz216 said:

highwaystar101 said:

Kasz216 said:

Actually Highwaystar products like Tobbaco and Cigarretes LOWER the overall burden of Healthcare... because while people may get cancer or liver disease. They die earlier and aren't a giant cost during old age.

Also healthcare in the US would cost more then 7 times the UK system for a variety of reasons.

1) Old people wouldn't except being treated as second class citizens when it comes to healthcare.

2) The US just does everything more expensive because it's a REALLY inefficent government since it's only a 2 party system.   The republicans and democrats never have to worry about falling to 2.5 party status.

3) The US is a much bigger country land wise.

4) The US provides 84% of the worlds medical funding.  Either the government would have to fund that or medical discoveries that increase peoples health would DRASTICALLY fall off... in which case... medical care in the US and in general the entire world would drastically fall.

The point was that the financial burden doesn't rely directly on the general tax payer. Those that choose to damage their bodies will pay for treatment through the tax on products they have harmed themselves with onntop of general taxes.

Smokers cost the NHS >£5billion in 2005, however tax raised from the sales of cigarettes in the same year accumulated £9.9billion. And it's more or less been the same year on year, that's just one example. So therefore tax on tobacco product creates a net gain from each smoker, so it would generate income. And if the US were to introduce a policy like that in it's tax system then it too would generate income for the health service without the burden of supporting them being on the tax payer.

The bottom line is that smokers fund their own treatment on top of healthcare and pay partially for the healthcare of the aged with the left over revenue from cigarette taxes.

Also,

It will cost more than 7 times, but I can't imagine it costing more than 15 times the UK healthcare budget. The $3trillion pricetag seems very inflated to me. 

They cost 5 bllion in 05.  But SAVED way more in the long run.  Lots of studies on this.

 

That's according to the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and Environment, which found that while "a person of normal weight costs on average £210,000 over their lifetime", a smoker clocks up just £165,000 and the obese run up an average £187,000 bill.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/05/healthy_tax_burden/

Perhaps the government should subsidize smoking?

Not to mention social engineering like that is pretty immoral.

Haha, subsidised smoking, I think Obama should go for that?

I wouldn't call it social engineering though, that's the kind of thought that leads to genocide. This is just collecting taxes to pay for a government expenditure and the way they do it is by taxing the very thing that causes the expenditure.

 

Anyway, onto your main point. The article said

"The scientists did, however, concede their research "did not look at the total costs of obesity and smoking, just the narrowly-prescribed health costs". Report co-author professor Klim McPherson, of Oxford University, warned: “It would be wrong to interpret the findings as meaning that public-health prevention, for example to prevent obesity, has no benefits.

“Quite apart from health-care costs, the other costs to society from obesity are also greater because of absences from work due to illness and employment difficulties; these costs amount to considerably more than health-care costs.”"

 

 

Which goes to support that smokers are in fact a financial burden on the governments tax system in more ways than just direct healthcare costs. Once you think of it three dimensionally the costs are far greater than just healthcare bills.

Also, a Dutch study does not apply to a British policy. From what I could ascertain those figures are the figures in Holland and not Britain, so the study does not translate well primarily because Holland charges ~$3.17 per pack of 20, where as in the UK it is ~$7.34 and our Health funding and tax system is different so it bears little resembelance.

 

Additionally, once you look at it from a humanitarian point of view and not fiscal like the NHS does you find you get the best of both worlds. This is because publicly funded health is not about money but about saving lives and so getting smokers to quit is a major concern as it will add ten comfortable years to their lives. And so if you can get people to quit then great, but if they choose not to then they will contribute to their own treatment and unfortunately die ten years earlier.