AFFORDABLE healthcare or UNIVERSAL healthcare?

[Earth_First]

Poll question: AFFORDABLE healthcare or UNIVERSAL healthcare?

:shrug:

[gollygee]

1. No option for "both"?

[Wickerman]

2. Affordable Healthcare?

There can be no such animal in a capitalistic society.

[jwirr]

3. It is the universal nature of the program that makes it affordable.

The bits and pieces approach to health care has given us dozens of individual programs at the federal level and a three tiered system including federal, state and county levels in the delivery system. When you do nothing about this albatross you keep medical care from being affordable.

[sandnsea]

4. Affordable will not be guaranteed

Universal is guaranteed, even though it may mean subsidized insurance.

Single Payer is guaranteed, with the government decided what to pay and what is elective, like insurance does now.

None of it is free.

[Rosemary2205]

5. I want affordable single payer healthcare. -- Both.

keeping it affordable means getting tough with companies involved in making profit off of healthcare -- big pharm, hospital chains etc. I am certainly not offended by profit making by, say, Dupont, in creating better ways to deliver IV's and such, but there has to be a reasonable profit rather than what we are seeing in big Pharm.


Edited because I said universal and meant single payer.

[Matariki]

6. It's not rocket science

The small tax increase to businesses and individuals will be MORE than offset by the savings from paying skyrocketing premiums. The only losers in this will be insurance companies.

[Vincardog]

7. Say it again kineta. "The only losers in this will be insurance companies. "

Why should we pay an additional 30% for our health CARE? So some few a$$hats can drive new mercedes every year while telling us our treatment is not covered?

[subterranean]

8. In Japan, they have both.

I don't know about other countries, but Japan requires everyone to have health insurance, just like drivers are required to have car insurance. National Health Insurance is available to everyone, and premiums are proportionate to income -- the more you make, the more you pay.

[azurnoir]

9. It has to be both

if it's not affordable then it is not universal and really WTF good is it?

[Donnachaidh]

10. there is NO *affordable* healthcare for people who are SICK

Or have physical problems that are genetic in nature.

It doesn't even have to be something you are sick with your entire life. You develop something like diabetes, and you are MARKED for life. You are STUCK with the insurance you have, because you CANNOT find another insurer who will off the same insurance for the SAME PRICE.

And your own insurer is looking for ways to cut you off from their insurance.

The only truly FAIR health care is UNIVERSAL. Then we can cut the blood-sucking profit-driven insurance companies OUT of the equation altogether.

[MissMarple]

11. Both, but I don't think single payer will work any time soon.

Requiring everyone to have health care insurance and making it available to even the poorest through some sort of program like Medicaid, might work in the near term. Of course, that means we would have to actually fund Medicare and Medicaid. In Colorado Medicaid reimbursement in something like 23% less than cost. Less than cost. What away to reduce cost. Just don't pay the doctors and practitioners, try telling that to your plumber or electrician.

[chaska]

12. FREE for ALL. Or none at all, until we can get it free and for all.

[Squatch]

13. Shit...it's absolutely NO PROBLEM to cut your premiums...

I doubt if the coverage will be as comprehensive.

How about Affordable & Universal healthcare with standardized minimum coverage requirements.

[ComerPerro]

14. Affordable healthcare is meaningless as long as people can be denied

[flaminbats]

15. if healthcare was affordable, it would be universal..

exploding demand with a tight supply.

healthcare for all taxpayers is a necessity now that even one bottle of insulin has become unaffordable for the average worker. But we need to break the AMA's restrictions and increase the supply of doctors and nurses in the market.

Caring for the sick and elderly will become a growing source of employment as babyboomer retire. So instead of restricting the field and overcharging for sorry services, lets make solving this into the cornerstone of laying a new deal for the 21st century!

[Toucano]

16. They have to go together. Affordable Universal Healthcare. n/t