That is a surprise to me. 1 in 5 people in CA or in the USA? Either way, that’s a very high #.
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1 in 5 in the USA
1 in 4 Californians
Within hours of assuming office on Monday, CA Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a defiant challenge to the Trump administration with sweeping plans to expand health coverage to more Californians, pushing for a single-payer system and insurance for undocumented young adult immigrants.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who is working with Newsom, said Congress needs to pass a bill that gives states permission to create their own healthcare programs and still receive federal funding.
The last part won’t happen under the current Congress but very well could if the Democrats take complete control in 2021. It’s scary since it calls for the Feds to give Medicare funding directly to the states and to take it away from individuals.
It should be a Republican ideal right? Letting states decide what they want to do instead of the federal government.
While I, as a Republican, support federalism I also support individual freedom. I think Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional but if the law exists it should be followed. Medicare and Social Security law creates individual accounts with benefits to each individual taxpayer forced to participate.
If the Democrats want to rewrite the law saying that benefits go the the taxpayer’s state of residence they should do so. But people like me who paid into individual accounts should, under the last clause of the Fifth amendment, be able to get the benefits for our accounts as when we paid into them.
You didn’t pay into any account, you paid a tax that is used to operate a welfare program.
When social security constitutionality was being challenged, the Federal Government took the position that social security was not an insurance program, that it is simply a tax, and that it has no relationship to any benefits being paid. The government does not have the authority to run insurance programs or hold accounts for individuals. The 1960 Flemming v. Nestor decision reaffirmed that paying the tax creates no entitlement to benefits.
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A republican ideal would be getting the federal government out of healthcare and let states compete. If they want to tax their citizens and run socialist medicine then let them do so. It doesn’t make any sense for the federal government to forcibly tax everyone and then hand the money over to states, essentially forcing their hand to intervene.
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Lest you fall for that line that everything’s cheaper and affordable in Europe because of socialized medicine, here’s an update and they’re have the same issues with rising healthcare costs that we are.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-government-idUSKCN1QP0R6
Healthcare systems across much of the developed world have come under increasing stress in recent years as treatment costs soar and people live longer, meaning fewer workers are supporting more pensioners. Nordic countries, where comprehensive welfare is the cornerstone of the social model, have been among the most affected
Sweden is to gradually raise its retirement age and has opened up parts of the healthcare system to the private sector in a bid to boost efficiency. Denmark will gradually increase the retirement age to 73 - the highest in the world - while cutting taxes and unemployment benefits to encourage people to work more.
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The article doesn’t go into specifics of how much healthcare is increasing in Finland or other European countries.
The rate of increase is indeed similar in Europe as in the USA.
Of course since we’re spending over 2x what they are that increase hurts us a LOT more than them…
In 15 years the costs in Europe went up ~$1700/capita and ours went up ~$5000
source:
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Vermont is arguably the most liberal American state. Word is the last conservative Vermonter passed away about ten years ago. The old guy was living in the mountains hard alongside the Canadian border, as far from Massachusetts as he could get while still remaining in his beloved Vermont. There were no mourners at the funeral. 
If Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin and his legislature could not make this work, it cannot be made to work. That is my view, anyway.
Democrats don’t have any more knowledge on how to fix health care than Republicans do. I think it’s generally accepted by both parties that there’s a problem with our current system.
Democrats are willing to try new ideas, try to fix problems, etc., while risking that things end up worse. Republicans want to keep things the way that they are until they are fixed naturally, or just maybe they come up with an idea they are confident will work, because they don’t want to do something actively that might not work.
Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong, either, both, or neither could end up in the system crumbling.
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IMO the problem with the R side of this is that they still think it’s a ‘free market’ subject to the usual rules, therefore they want the gov’t to do as little as possible. Well at least until they figured out that the public greatly desires not being cancelled by insurers for any ‘condition’, and they really don’t have a plan to couple banning that with any reasonable ‘market’ for insurance.
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The problem is the combination of free market and entitlements. The free market will never be a solution for something people insist they’re entitled to receive.
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Ethan Allen?
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Thats a cop out. Capitalism’s broken cause people want stuff??
People want lots of things. $15 minimum wages, free college, etc. Just cause a lot of people want stuff doesn’t mean they get it or that those desires break capitalism.
Most people don’t want free or government control of healthcare. And they aren’t getting it now.
So in other words, Medicare is bad because it’s an entitlement right?
Yeah, that’s what I said…
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No, “people wanting stuff” is what drives capitalism. Wanting stuff is not the same as an entitlement.
So how is that a cop out? It’s a basic fact. The free market simply does not accommodate entitlements, since in a free market people only get what they earn or can afford. If people insist they are entitled to health insurance, “the free market” cannot be the solution since there will always be people unable to obtain what they’re entitled to.
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People don’t want Medicare for all per se, but rather want to escape the complexity of the current system.
In network / out of network coverage, in network facility but out of network physician, difficulty to shop around for prices, not able to find out if procedure is covered until it is done, having to appeal and fight with insurance company over every large claim, insurance denying preventative care by someone without medical background, insurance tied to employment, no choice over health insurance company while employed, deductible reset when changing jobs, physicians no longer in network for various reasons, procedures overbilled at 5x-50x to those without insurance, medical bankruptcy due to having bad genes, etc.
Imagine car insurance that has different deductibles based on whether the party involved in the car accident is part of their network, and not knowing whether your car will be covered until you get it back from the shop.
IMHO, if healthcare worked more like dental care, the Medicare for all push would go away.
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If it gets bad enough, people will just pay cash for services or go without (or get Medicaid if they qualify). Honestly this seems like a better setup than the current mess, although not for the insurance companies.