Fight Poverty! Raise taxes?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Crocus
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Elizabeth3 said:
. The part I was concerned about were the examples of why single payer healthcare works in other countries - because everyone is expected to work and pay into the system, including moms raising families.

Re: the second article - are you saying the wait times aren’t terrible in countries with single-payer systems?
Click to expand...
First one, so many half truths, missing truths calculated to mislead the reader. The women have the choice whether to work or stay home, or share jobs if they want. They are supported in real choices. They don’t suffer economically whichever they choose.

Second one, you get the medical treatment you need, in a timely manner. You don’t have to worry about cost or if your insurance will cover it. It is your doctor who decides, not an insurance company, not the government.
Example: hip replacement for DH
Day 1 first visit gen practitioner
Day 2 xray
Day 3 Gen practitioner evaluate xray
Day 12 MRI
Day 13 nuclear scan
Day 61 consultation orthopedic surgeon & xray
Day 108 first hip replacement
Day 162 2nd hip replacement
2 months of physiotherapy
Includes 5 months tramadol.
Total Cost for top of the line titanium Stryker implants = $0
Top of the line surgeon and support staff.
Walking better than ever did.
Very happy with treatment and results.
 
Last edited:
Crocus said:
Example: hip replacement for DH
Day 1 first visit gen practitioner
Day 2 xray
Day 3 Gen practitioner evaluate xray
Day 12 MRI
Day 13 nuclear scan
Day 61 consultation orthopedic surgeon & xray
Day 108 first hip replacement
Day 162 2nd hip replacement
2 months of physiotherapy
Includes 5 months tramadol.
Total Cost for top of the line titanium Stryker implants = $0
Top of the line surgeon and support staff.
Walking better than ever did.
Click to expand...
My mom’s knee replacement surgery was scheduled 2 weeks from the consult w/ the orthopedic surgeon. Not really impressed with 108 days from 1st visit to replacement. Mom’s was about 50 days from 1st visit. Also, 5 months on tramadol? An opioid pain reliever? Mom was off them completely in 6 weeks.

Reading this with perspectives from those who live in single payer countries, doesn’t really convince me either.

"Recently, The Heritage Foundation, in conjunction with the Centre for the New Europe (CNE), a prominent European public policy institution based in Brussels, Belgium, 2 held an international conference in Washington on precisely what Americans can learn from the European experience in health care and pension policy. "


Edited to add that from the time of my diagnosis of breast cancer last year, it was 12 days to get an appt with a surgeon of my choice and on my way out I was able to schedule my surgery with his secretary for 1 week later. I’m thankful I didn’t have to wait weeks to months for surgery.
 
Last edited:
Okay yes, your mom had great care (and that’s great for her) here but what about the millions here who don’t have access to care? What about them? There are millions of people who are uninsured, what solutions are there for them?

At the very least, why not work towards a two tier system to serve as the safety for those who end up uninsured for whatever reason, I mean life happens to people, what about those who are uninsured by their workplace, or even self employed people starting out, small businesses who can’t get a good deal and etc?
 
Last edited:
RCIAGraduate said:
Okay yes, your mom had great care (and that’s great for her) here but what about the millions here who don’t have access to care? What about them? There are millions of people who are uninsured, what solutions are there for them?
Click to expand...
I wish I had the solution but I don’t. Lowered quality of care and greatly increased wait times seen in single payer systems don’t seem like a good solution for anyone either.
RCIAGraduate said:
At the very least, why not work towards a two tier system to serve as the safety for those who end up uninsured for whatever reason, I mean life happens to people, what about those who are uninsured by their workplace, or even self employed people starting out, small businesses who can’t get a good deal and etc?
Click to expand...
The US has a two tier system but the problem is the gap of those who don’t qualify. Could that be expanded? Sure but it would have to be done in a way that is efficient without a loss of quality of care across the board for everyone. How to accomplish that is part of the public debate currently.
 
Elizabeth3 said:
Edited to add that from the time of my diagnosis of breast cancer last year, it was 12 days to get an appt with a surgeon of my choice and on my way out I was able to schedule my surgery with his secretary for 1 week later. I’m thankful I didn’t have to wait weeks to months for surgery.
Click to expand...
I have seen stats showing US does exceptionally well for cancer treatment. You must have good insurance yourself. And your mom too? For the many who don’t, results may vary I suppose.

Wish I could remember who it was that recently said “When one of us gets sick, we all look after them.” That’s what Canadians value about our health care system. Look up OECD results on health outcomes, life expectancy, maternal health, child mortality. While at it, see cost per person by comparison for those results.

You seem to think there is a lack of quality care. That is patently false. Part of the wait time on husband’s surgery was in preparing the house for support appliances and access, workshop on pre and post op needs, dietitian, pharmacist, anesthesiologist, physiotherapist. That’s wholistic quality care.
Canada effectively prohibits patients from pursuing private treatment as an alternative to the government-run health program.
Click to expand...
That is an odd, backhanded way of describing the situation.

There are private treatment facilities, direct billing to patients. Their customer base is limited to those with deep pocket$. Most doctors though, prefer to work within the single payer system. Rich people always have the resources to go buy whatever they want.
U.S. policymakers should be wary of enacting any health care reforms based on the Canadian system.
Click to expand...
Who stands to gain? Who stands to lose?
(Follow the money.)
 
Last edited:
RCIAGraduate said:
Touche, ideally we’d want government to be effective but it’s a complex issues so maybe it takes time to find out what works? Couldn’t they be overwhelmed?

Btw, Happy Christmas, how have you been? 🙂
Click to expand...
Merry xmass to you as well.

since they’ve been working on this for years, I’m convinced their approach is wrong. They are exacerbating the problem rather than helping reduce it.

As the below article indicates, their strategy of ignoring criminal behavior plays a significant role

 
Last edited:
Just looked up stats on cancer surgery. Median 17 days. Consider long distances due to remote areas, people have to arrange family needs and accommodations. Everyone is covered and gets the same excellent care.

All things considered it is a very complicated system you have, would be hard to sort out to change much.
 
Last edited:
Theo520 said:
SFC is spending $40k per person
If they aren’t solving the problem then it’s very likely they are misspending their money.
Click to expand...
The article that you posted actually detailed that that 40,000 figure was based on faulty math and was a misconception.
 
Don’t know if I’m helping here, but the figures at the end of the article says:
But divide $57 million by 15,000 homeless people who need city help each year, and you see the city spends $3,800 per person per year. Or $10.41 a day. An outlandish figure? I don’t think so.
Click to expand...
 
According to the article which I just took at face value, they have an allocation of roughly 1/3 of $250M - admin costs divided by 15,000 homeless, working out to about $3800/yr per person.

I might debate that the 7,500 homeless is a better figure, and it’s probably a closer approximation of the average homeless population on any given day (although no idea what the standard deviation would be). So, giving the most liberal assumptions, that works out to $7,600/yr per person.
 
Socrates92 said:
According to the article which I just took at face value, they have an allocation of roughly 1/3 of $250M - admin costs divided by 15,000 homeless, working out to about $3800/yr per person.
Click to expand...
They are spending over 250 million each year, now it’s around 300 million
That’s about $20,000 per person every year
 
Last edited:
Elizabeth3 said:
The US has a two tier system but the problem is the gap of those who don’t qualify.
Click to expand...
Yeah that, maybe make a set aside in Medicaid for the uninsured, the issue there is what’s stopping employers from dropping their more marginal workers? We’d probably need to train more doctors (we could make a medical visa program but what if that triggers brain drains and I like the idea (got it from someone else) of expanding Medical and Nursing Schools to make more good jobs for our people yet having the number of uninsured being the size of a moderately large country seems too much especially if other countries of comparable status cover everyone at comparable if not lower costs. If the Dutch or Swiss or Australia, English, Canada, Japanese and Singaporean (they have HSAs so maybe the GOP could look into it if they like HSAs) peoples can have it, why not us?
 
Socrates92 said:
According to the article which I just took at face value, they have an allocation of roughly 1/3 of $250M - admin costs divided by 15,000 homeless, working out to about $3800/yr per person.
Click to expand...
That is a reference to their spend progress within one year, before the end of the year. You don’t state your annual salary by summing only the 4 monthly paychecks you’ve received so far (ignoring future planned payments).

The data shows they are averaging spend above 250 million every year on this problem, for several years. You cherry picked facts to come up with a much lower spend per homeless
 
Last edited:
We didn’t cut any of our giving when the new tax laws took effect, but we did see a significant decrease in our ability to give. Under the old system, every dollar we gave to charities we wanted to support only cost us $.80. Now it costs us a full dollar. Though we don’t give in order to decrease our tax liability, the loss of tax effect did make us noticeably less able to give. 2018 was a crazy year for my family, so I missed the tax changes. Because of an unexpected windfall, we gave more that year than we ever had, but since I had done my planning under the old system, we got SLAMMED with taxes that year. It was seriously painful.

Tax-deductible giving used to be an important part of tax planning, for those of us who have the ability to do that kind of accounting. To imply that consciousness of the financial repercussions of our charitable giving is morally problematic is unjust.
 
Theo520 said:
That is a reference to their spend progress within one year, before the end of the year. You don’t state your annual salary by summing only the 4 monthly paychecks you’ve received so far (ignoring future planned payments).
Click to expand...
I’m not sure how you got that from the article. Here are the paragraphs I took from. Nowhere did I see a mention of the numbers being for only a third of the year.

"Of the $250 million he spent last year, two-thirds went to people who aren’t homeless at all. That’s the amount spent on rental subsidies, eviction prevention and permanent supportive housing. Those are great causes, but they’re aimed at preventing people from becoming homeless or to house the formerly homeless.

Take away 11 percent for administrative costs and one-time capital spending, and you’re left with 17.6 percent spent on temporary shelters, 3.2 percent on street outreach and 2.2 percent on health services. That means about $57 million was spent on the visible homeless population, the group of people we see every day who so clearly need help.

If you are contending that the article misrepresented the facts or lied, you should contend so and explain your argument. Like I said, I was just taking the article which you provided at face value.
 
Last edited:
Again there is a solution. Those who work and can not afford health care can opt to have 12.5% of their health care go to medcaid. The 12.5% is the average amount those in the UK spend out of their paycheck. You can also have those who believe we need to help those who can not afford health care donate 6% of their checks to this program.

We do have two health care systems payment systems here in the usa. One is public the other is private. I am in the private payment plan is is none of anyone’s business including elected officials and the Pope. That is a private transaction.

The USA spends about 8.2% of it GDP to insure 90 million that and only that is the business of government when it comes to health care spending
 
Last edited:
Socrates92 said:
Which facts did I leave out? How do those facts change the picture? Please elaborate.
Click to expand...
I already told you
SFC has been spending over 250 million annually on the homeless
Whether they’ve spent only partial budget in the current year doesn’t mean they won’t spend it.
The average spend of multiple past years allows you to accurately calculate their average spend per homeless, per year.

If you dispute the numbers, google it yourself.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top