SamuelRSmith said:
The bolded isn't true. Costs do not directly imply prices. With something like medication, most of the price comes from scarcity. Allowing more migrant workers to work as doctors and nurses will be far more effective at wage suppression than reducing the cost of medical education in America. As an example of this, training to be a doctor/nurse in the UK is free under the NHS, and yet a large chunk of our doctors and nurses are migrant workers, because free education simply wasn't enough to keep doctor/nurse wages down in the UK.
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I disagree. There are only so many migrant doctors you can acquire at any given time in the US. Lets not forget that the US pays its doctors 40-50% more than the UK does...Those are costs that are wrapped up in education, and bonuses for becoming a doctor (much in the same way that hospitals usually offer a $10,000 bonus to nurses that join their hospital...Look in any nursing journal in the US for proof) and the demands the US places on the doctors. We have a lower per-capita number of doctors than most of the top-tier nations do, which correlates to a higher demand of services (throw in the fact we're rather unhealthy in comparison to other countries, and its a double whammy).
@Lord Flasheart -
So is that all the providers will have to charge the same for equivilent policies?
Isn't part of the problem with that that they would have to get enough people to sign up and if they don't then they go out of business?
I understand the need for price controls. Too cheap to undercut the rivals and you wont have enough money to cover the hospital charges. Too much and you price yourself out of the market. No regulation and they will charge whatever they want. If this bill doesn't have any price controls then that is a good enough reason not to want that part of it but does that one bit which can be amended spoil the rest of the bill?
The problem is that the whole point of the bill (at least from the point of constituent wants) is that people are paying too much money for health care. Not about the lack of coverage, but the vast, and I mean vast majority of complaints is that health care is too expensive. If the bill doesn't tackle the cost of health care....Then what was the point of the bill? Yes, it covers more people and looks to do some things through medicare, but if it doesn't fix prices in the 2,370 page bill then what was the point of it?
For example, I have a health care program through my job. It costs about $300 a month, and my employer pays most of it. This bill will reduce my costs by $0 and my employer costs by $0. The bill doesn't reduce costs for those already on private plans. It helps some uninsured, does nothing for those on private plans, and hurts those on higher end plans through a 2.5% tax.
Will it drive cost up? No-one has explained why yet.
It seems that at the moment a lot of people can't afford insurance as it's too expensive for them and the supposed cheap alternative is simply that. Cheap all round. I can see why people wouldn't want the US gov to control the spending if the money came from taxes but to have the money coming in from so many different sources can't be good for the system either? How much money is spent in administration charges by the hospitals jsut getting the money?
Lets explain this:
The USA spends a significant amount of money to cover the number of people that are currently insured, or get health care services. If we have an increase in the numbers of insured people (which the bill is supposed to do) without reductions in the cost of care, then we will increase the amount of spending to cover new people, which results in an overall increase in the cost of health care. America spends 17% of its GDP on health care, give or take. This bill will not drop that overall percentage, and will most likely increase it due to ~32 million extra Americans being insured.
And what about the policies themselves? will they cover more for the same price as point 2 indicates.
You answer so far has been the most reasonable reason as to why you don't want it but to me it's not a good enough reason to throw it all out . I'm going to go and read up on the bill itself to find out more about it.
No. They don't cover more people for the same amount of money. That is the problem. It doesn't solve the problem that the average cost per private insurance recipent. It just puts more people on it medicare, and taxes employers who don't provide health care, and taxes high-end health insurance provided by some companies. The goal of the program is more access, not affordability. I haven't read any significant part of the bill that states what activities it will undertake to reduce overall expenditures on health care - just reduce some costs in Medicare.
