Well, Chez, at least we can agree on some of the economics. But in varying degrees. Maybe american govt sucks at business, as it has often been proven. Maybe Great Britain does it better. Which would illustrate my point in perhaps a slightly less antagonistic way. Every time the american govt tries to control or fix something, they screw it up and bury it in red tape. So, at least in the America, the solution, to me and a large majority, believe it or not, is to have less govt control. We could fix our healthcare through free market with a minimum of taxes and save a govt option, limited, for those who are truly poor and destitute. For those making a decent wage, they could afford their own but it would require less taxes and allowing us to invest our own money in, for one thing, HSAs.
(H)ealth (S)ervice (A)ccounts. Right now, thanks to fed govt regulation, you can only get one if you already pay a high premium policy and then, you can only build value up to $ 3,000 USD per year. Get rid of that stupid limit. An HSA is essentially a managed investment fund, similar to our 401 (k) retirement fund. In your 20's, you could start out literally putting in just dimes and nickels. As you grow older and make more money, you could put in more. Employers could offer as one of their benefits, a participation in your HSA like some of them do with your 401 (k). I worked at one company where we didn't have paid holidays but the employer participated up to 15 % annually in your 401 (k) until the yearly contribution had reached $ 10k and then you could continue contributing for that year as you please. And he also contributed when there was massive profit on a project. I received just such a profit sharing event from him and they had set up a 401 (k) account for it for me. By the time you are in your 40's, when you are more likely to need some healthcare (it's called growing old and falling apart), you could easily have $ 1 M in accrued value. At that time, you could take some out and buy catastrophic health insurance and still have a large cash base left over for ordinary health care. If you die and there is still value in your healthcare account, you could leave it to a beneficiary. If they roll it over to their HSA, they pay no taxes. If they cash out, then they pay taxes.
Right now, in America, you can't take your insurance policy from one state or job to another. You have to get a new one when you move. And that is thanks to fed regs. If we made insurance portable, then all the companies would be competitvely wrangling for your dollar and it would keep rates down and benefits up. Also, by having tort reform and placing a limit on malpractice suits, you would limit the cost of doctors' and hospitals' insurance cost, which would make their costs managable, and therefore managable to you, the consumer. With HSAs, most of us wouldn't need medicaid and medicare and that could be largely left to just the truly indigent.
But those aren't likely to happen just now because we have an administration who cannot, even by the admission of the admin's own financial officers, stop from raising taxes.
The solution to getting healthcare for more people is not in having the govt assume the operation of it, it is to have the govt step back and let the people get their own.
I was going to say that maybe Europe is doing it better but then I see what is happening with the Euro and Germany and Greece and think maybe that would be premature to say. Greece is merely saying that they might have to reduce some of the benefits to surviving relatives of deceased govt employees and the people are going to riot. The problem is, Greece simply doesn't have the money to pay for what they promised. Just like America currently doesn't have the money to pay what they are promising with this administration. And raising taxes will kill jobs. It then becomes to expensive for a company to operate and they simply go out of business and now, you have a hundred to several thousand people out of work and no way to pay for their upkeep or the govt taxes that will have to be imposed to pay for this.
I understand that you have it in for our wartime actions and you think that support vets is tantamount to supporting our military policy. My view is different. We need a military to defend us and we need to take care of the vets who paid the price for freedom. It's one of the few things I don't mind paying taxes for. So, we'll just have to disagree on that.
But we may agree that at least some of the govt regulation on business is excessive and detrimental. But we are currently stuck with a president who sees more federal control as the solution and no one can seem to shake him off of that.
