I personally believe that the lack of understanding of bills is directly a result of bills being far too large. Realistically, if you can’t explain the bill in principle in 1 or 2 pages, complete the bill in detail in a dozen pages, and include all addendums in under 100 pages the bill is too complicated; and should be split into smaller bills to each be passed on their own vote. I could be wrong but I suspect that had this healthcare bill been split into a dozen smaller bills each bill would have been substantially better, received bi-partisan support, and had the support of the people behind it because it would be far easier to understand and improve upon.

A poll on a website (automatically very little credibility) and a bill so long that nobody visiting the website will actually read it. Thats far worse than even the polls showing 70%...

RealMafoo,

You'll have to excuse me as I'm in Australia and on a completely different time zone so may take a while to respond to your answer on my question on your bolded comment from earlier.

Do the people who choose not to get private health cover, get public health care for the 2.5% of their salary which will be taxed (or "fined" in your words)?

Also how much does it cost in the US to get a reasonable private health care plan for an average... say 30 year old male, healthy, non-smoker, etc?

I don't think anyone knows yet how that works. I think the answer is no. They will, just like today, get taken care of if they walk into a hospital, but they will get no preventative care (unless they pay for it out of pocket).

As for how much does it cost, going forward it depends on how much you make. If you make 44,000 or more, it will cost you a lot to get insurance on your own, but almost everyone in that salary range has insurance paid for by there company.

As that number goes down, the cost goes down. Up until you get to just over 10,000, and then you pay nothing.

Except

A) You have to be a member to vote

B) It's a non partisian website.

C) To get to the vote you had to go to the specific page that outlined everything in the bill and hard links to all kinds of things.

There is no reason to go to that webpage unless you DID want to read the bill.

The answer is no.  If you don't get insurance you get treated like you would today with no insurance... in adition to having to pay a 700 dollar fine or 2.5% whichever is higher.

So some quick math shows the 2.5 won't really apply to you unless you make over 280,000 grand.

If that really is the case then I do kind of agree that this bill is a bit pointless.

I quite like the system we have here in Australia, the public system is under stress and we are looking at reforms of our own, but its more for people having to wait too long for care rather than the cost of getting health.

The way it works here is that there is a weighted system of how much you contribute into the Medicare from your salary. For example as a single taxpayer:
If you earn under $18k per year then you pay nothing
If you earn over $18k per year, then you pay 1.5% of your salary
If you earn over $70k per year and don't have private health care then you pay 2.5% of your salary

As an incentive for getting private health care, the government will rebate 30% of your private health fees, either directly deducted from your fees, or at the end of the financial year when you do your tax return.

This way everyone gets free health care, but if you want to choose your doctor, get your own room in a hospital or get immediate elective surgury, then you can get it through the private system. Some doctors will bulk bill which means you just show your Medicare card and get a free visit, if you want to go to a better doctor then you can pay your higher fee and Medicare will pay part of the bill. There are also public and private hospitals that work the same way. Public hospitals don't cost you a cent, but depending on the level of your private health care, they will cover most of the costs, however there is generally a gap payment which you need to pay on top of your annual fees. Kind of like having an excess on car insurance, how much that gap is depends on your level of private health care.

Private health care isn't that expensive here, I pay about $1400 per year but get 30% discounted from the government, so it's about $85 per month. This is both for hospital and extras cover (dental, accupunture, remedial massage, etc). In the event I need surgury, I can choose to go to a public hospital and not pay anything, or I can use my private cover and get scheduled in quicker and can choose the best doctor if I want.

I like the way that everyone gets health care, but if you want to pay for better service then you can. I don't like the idea of making the entire system the same for everyone.

It is still strictly non-representative. It's a poll that targets only a small subset of the population, those who go to that website. There is no reason to believe that they represent the general population.

Of course, any pollster can use loaded words in order for the results to come out to his/her liking. I suspect that the 70% figure comes from that considering that its such an outlier.

Gallup poll (released yesterday) shows that 49% of U.S. adults are in FAVOR of the bill, while 40% oppose it.

70% is a ridiculous figure. RCP average was 50/50 and thats changed after passing to 60 in favour.