So say you successfully blow up the health insurance industry.

[Skidmore]

What the hell do you plan to do with millions more unemployed people? I want to know. How do you absorb all of these insurance people into an already bad job market? Has anyone thought of this side of the equation?

[mdmc]

1. It depends on what they did for the health industry

If they helped people to receive medical treatment, perhaps they can work in the medical field.
If they earned their income by denying people needed medical treatment, they can go sell cigarettes or find other noble work.

If they work they did had value, it will continue to have value elsewhere. If all they did was prey on the weak, they will get to work where they get to work.

Same thing for the drug war. IMHO, just because the prison population would be reduced does not mean that the drug war should not end. The world changes and should change.

[Skidmore]

2. I see, you know where to find millions of other jobs.

Where? Right now? Where?

[Captain Hilts]

4. Were you this concerned about auto workers? Coal miners? Tobacco growers?

Universities don't hire professors full time with benefits much any more.

Folks get mustered out of the military without being able to do their 20.

So, I can't worry about the health insurance industry.

[mdmc]

5. sure

invade Iran (soldiers), end the drug war (new business), and enforce the laws (violent offenders away). With socialized medicine we could have a new entrepreneur economy.

Again, if these people are making a living by denying people required medical treatment, they should get another job. We should not allow them to continue earning money by destroying our collective health, just to "keep them employed".

Let them become medical treatment providers and support staff instead of being an obstacle for medical care.

[RandomThoughts]

7. 20 hour work week, I just found all those jobs for you.

Of coarse comparable wages would have to go up so people are not working as much as 3 jobs.


Just showing that it is possible.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Those skills are transferable to other industries. They're not coal miners. nt

[MannyGoldstein]

6. US Businesses Would Become More Competitive

Due to lower employee costs, and could start to export more, thus employing more people.

Germany, for example, has little in the way of insurance companies and thus enjoys low health care costs, (and happens to be highly-unionized and a $10+ minimum wage), and they are the world's #1 exporter.

[Liberal In Texas]

8. Get retrained. That's what they told millions of displaced workers when NAFTA et al. was put into

place and they shipped the jobs overseas.

How about retraining for the renewable energy industry we should be developing like a modern day Manhattan Project?

[Junkdrawer]

9. Just like you can't have Peace....

What would you do with all those soldiers returning from war?

[Tailormyst]

10. Couple things:

The new system would need workers and the amount saved by employers, especially small business would allow them to start hiring again. Health care costs are the expense that is strangling small business more then any other.

Health insurance has done more to damage industry then people realize.

[tucsonlib]

11. H.R. 676 Addressed This Issue Early On:

(e) First priority in retraining and job placement; 2 years of unemployment benefits.—The Program shall provide that clerical, administrative, and billing personnel in insurance companies, doctors offices, hospitals, nursing facilities, and other facilities whose jobs are eliminated due to reduced administration—

(1) should have first priority in retraining and job placement in the new system; and

(2) shall be eligible to receive 2 years of unemployment benefits.


Ever read the bill? It'll bring tears to your eyes:

http://www.johnconyers.com/hr676text

[Donnachaidh]

12. Do you think the insurance industry shows such deep concerns for workers when they raise rates 60%?

Do you think those workers gave a shit when MILLIONS were losing their jobs, in many instances *because* of the burgeoning costs of health insurance?

Let them re-train. And let them stand in line with all the people who are already suffering because of their GREED.

[Vinca]

13. I don't think the lives of American people should be sacrificed

at the altar of big insurance because finding jobs for their employees might be difficult.

[pnwmom]

14. I think this is one reason Clinton, Edwards, and Obama all supported

keeping insurance companies while ADDING a public option. It provides for a more orderly and slower-paced transition.

As Hillary indicated more than once, the public option would only be a threat if it performed better than the insurance companies. But if it did, then more and more people would choose the public option and eventually that could lead to a single payer system.

[City Lights]

15. This NNOC/CNA study says a single-payer system would create 2.6 million jobs.

Single-Payer Health Care Would Stimulate Economy
posted by John Nichols on 01/14/2009 @ 08:58am

There is an unhealthy tendency on the part of politicians and journalists to see discussions about economic recovery and health care reform as separate debates.

In fact, one of the most important steps on the road to economic recovery – or, more precisely, toward a new, responsible and sustainable prosperity – involves the fundamental reform this country's broken health care system.

But it must be the right reform: the establishment of a national single-payer style healthcare reform system by expanding the existing Medicare system to cover all Americans. According to a new "Single Payer/Medicare for All: An Economic Stimulus Plan for the Nation" study released today by the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, such a reform would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues into the economy. This reform would, according to the study, add $100 billion in wages to the currently sputtering U.S. economy.

Indeed, notes the NNOC/CAN, the number of jobs created by a single-payer system, expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover everyone, parallels almost exactly the total job loss in 2008. "These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a single payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery," says NNOC/CAN c o-president Geri Jenkins, RN.

more... http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/396919?rel=hp_picks

[stray cat]

16. If they are not union members they don't deserve jobs

Isn't that the progressive value :sarcasm:

[CBGLuthier]

17. I do NOT care about THEM

I don't worry about the fucking fleas when I bathe the dog.

Parasites are parasites. They can get jobs with the new and improved department of health.

Do NOT tell me I can not have a decent health care system for this stupid reason.

[Dr.Phool]

18. If anybody deserves to lose their job,

It's somebody who sits in a cubicle all day long, and gets a bonus for denying legitimate health care claims.

And there is congressional testimony to the fact, that that's exactly what they do, and they earn bonuses for doing it.

[ThomWV]

19. Let them sit down at the table right along with all the Real Estate people who are unemployed

and from an industry that was nothing but a sham.

Remember, it was a Realtor that facilitated just about every one of those unsustainable mortgages.

[customerserviceguy]

27. Don't forget

there was also a highly-commissioned loan salesperson, too. In the case of the refinances, there was no realtor, there was only the loan shark.

[JVS]

20. Why should they get any more consideration than the other millions of unemployed that...

the government doesn't give a fuck about?

[AllentownJake]

21. I worry about CEO's mortgages too when I think they are paid too much

[retread]

22. Say we withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afganistan. What the hell are we going

to do with all those soldiers? By your "logic" I guess we'll have to stay forever or start some more wars.

[Stinky The Clown]

23. Their jobs will still be needed. Taking out the iinsurance companies is about the profit motive

Claims still need to be processed, payments made to providers, etc., etc., etc.

Some will, indeed, lose their jobs, and that's the bad part. But it would be transitional. People such as advertising, investing, etc., would be looking for work. But with universal health care (the outcome of blowing up the insurance companies), all companies become instantly more profitable and jobs will appear as the economy grows and changes.

[guitar man]

24. I don't know but...

I can't afford to support them anymore. Nobody seems to care that they are bleeding my paycheck more and more every year.

[whistler162]

25. I see a lot of Tom Delay "Democrats" are responding...

There is no good answer, and let them eat cake is not a valid response as many posters seem to think.

Some would be absorbed into the new bureaucy, some would retire, some would change professions, and some would be out of work for a long time.

[customerserviceguy]

26. If you blew up the health insurance industry

then you'd have to do that with a single-payer bureaucracy that would absorb most of the grunt workers in that industry.

As for those who got paid megabucks to market health insurance and steal healthy customers away from other companies, well, they'd just have to find honest work.

[RainDog]

28. no one cared about displaced union workers

no one cares now about librarians without jobs because of hiring freezes.

no one cares about IT people who get their jobs outsourced.

so why the fuck should anyone care about those in the insurance industry?

really.

they're not special. join the fucking crowd.

maybe if they hadn't been such greedy fucks people wouldn't be hoping for their demise.

[KittyWampus]

29. Politicians didn't seem to give a shit when NAFTA sent millions of jobs overseas.

[FarCenter]

30. They would find employment with the single payer system

Denying claims is an essential part of controlling health system costs, and someone has to do it.