Ok, so I completely support universal healthcare. However, it still is true that you are paying for “someone else’s healthcare”. How?
Let’s assume that there’s a flat tax percentage - 30% for all. (Actually most developed countries have progressive tax systems, but let’s ignore that for now). The more your income, the more tax you pay. Therefore, some people pay more tax than others. This means, that some people contribute more to fund the healthcare system compared to others.
Some people have pre-existing conditions. Some people may just be unhealthy due to bad lifestyle choices. I might be incredibly fit. The probability of me falling sick would be very less. If there were a multi payer healthcare system, then perhaps I might not need to spend much money on healthcare. A universal single payer system might be forcing me to pay more for others’ healthcare. Therefore, saying that I’m paying for someone else’s healthcare isn’t inaccurate.
That being said, healthcare is a human right. Every human, regardless of financial status deserves timely access to good healthcare. That’s why I support it.
Right now we pay for other peoples healthcare and we also pay some shitty middlemen who tell us what treatments they think are necessary. If we cut out the middlemen its literally cheaper than our current system.
We pay the middlemen, yes. I don’t see how we pay for other people’s healthcare. The private insurance that I’ve experienced takes many factors into account (age, quality of health, pre-existing conditions and so on). Thankfully because I’m both young, and don’t have pre-existing conditions, I pay less insurance premiums than a kid born with diabetes.
Remember, we’re talking about technicality here. We aren’t talking about ethics. Strictly from a money standpoint, we’re not paying for other people’s insurance.
Yes you are. The insurance company takes money from healthy people, scoops some off the top for themselves, and then distributes the rest to pay for grandmas hip replacement.
Unless you use the same or more than what you paid into insurance, you are subsidizing someone elses healthcare.
If you pay for insurance you are paying for other people’s Healthcare. The whole reason to do insurance is that you have the ability to use more money from it than you ever put in, but will hopefully never need to. Otherwise it would make more sense to just have a health savings account.
What about the premiums though? Say the insurance premiums for x amount of coverage are 100 dollars. Doesn’t matter if I’m a billionaire or if I’m homeless. The premium stays the same.
In a single payer universal healthcare system however, the premium would be a percentage of my income (collected via taxes). Suddenly, the 100 dollars becomes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Therefore, from my perspective, I am “paying for someone else’s healthcare”. This is the technicality that I’m talking about.
Now of course, fuck my perspective because fuck billionaires. This however, is out of scope of the discussion.
You also have to consider that the healthcare is worth a lot more money to the billionaire than the homeless guy. Just like the roads and the protection of the armed forces worth more money to him. I’m sure the billionaire is a fan of price discrimination too, conveniently enough!
True. I’m playing Devil’s advocate here. These r arguments that I’ve heard that make sense technically, but not ethically. I’m not saying that real life me would want to give up my universal healthcare lol. It’s a safety net that I absolutely want in my life (for selfish reasons as well)
No. These arguments don’t even make sense technically. Hospitals generally don’t deny emergency care, often leaving people with huge bills after their stay. If someone doesn’t pay, insurance needs to recoup the cost by charging higher rates for everyone. On top of that, preventative care is often cheaper than emergency care, with poorly insured people usually receiving less of it.
Without socialized healthcare, you pay for the care of everyone that can’t pay through your insurance AND people receive worse care overall. The healthcare system functions worse, even when money isn’t as much of a concern. Unless you’re a billionaire with private doctors on payroll 24/7, anyone can get fucked over when emergency care is shit.
There is no logical argument for our system unless you believe wealth can always protect you. They think the foundation can rot away without ever hurting them, but that’s the fantasy of people who believe in perpetual free lunches.
Insurance premiums are flat. They don’t give a shit about your income. The insurance premium for a minimum wage worker and a billionaire would be the same for a given coverage.
When you make it universal and single payer, the billionaire has to pay more money for the same quality of healthcare compared to the minimum wage worker. Therefore, the billionaire is essentially subsidizing the minimum wage worker’s healthcare.
Now of course, you can argue about the ethics of private property, how the billionaire became a billionaire by wage theft and so on. The point is, within the capitalist system that we have, universal healthcare is still the rich person paying for the poor person’s healthcare. This is the technicality that I’m talking about.
Remember, I support universal single payer healthcare. I am merely talking about technicality here.
To address the emergency room situation, what happens when the person being admitted lacks any sort of insurance? If they can’t cough up money, then they go into debt. Their credit scores get screwed. Life becomes hell.
Well it also helps that it would be overall cheaper, with the only difference being that a few assholes wouldn’t be getting rich off it at everyone else’s expense.
Except the US clearly has a stratified society, even when it tries to lighten that with myths of fair pay, opportunity and get-rich-quick schemes (all the old American dreams before the post WWII townhouse family.)
Part of the rise of fascist rhetoric (targeting minorities like trans folk and immigrants) is to distract from the failure of these myths. Millennials and Zoomers know they’re probably never going to own a home, or get to retire well, which not only discourages the Protestant work ethic (see quiet-quitting) but also elevates civil unrest (see the Great Depression).
So the Republican response is to kill elections and install one-party autocracy backed by a police state. That way they don’t even have to listen to fellow Republicans, after they realize getting benes from being party loyalists are not actually soon to arrive. This is literally a return to monarchy, as Representative and constitutional historian Jamie Rasken has observed.
it still is true that you are paying for “someone else’s healthcare”.
Yeah but that’s ALREADY how it works. With private insurance some people pay their premium month after month after month and make no claims. Some people get paid out more than they’ll ever pay in. That’s how insurance works. Plus with private insurance toss in shareholder profits and millions of dollars in quirky commercials off the top of that.
Insurance premiums aren’t decided by my income. They are decided by my probability of needing the coverage offered. Therefore, if I am rich, I end up paying a smaller percentage of my income on insurance premiums for the same coverage compared to a poor person.
Single payer universal healthcare makes healthcare more expensive for rich people and cheaper for poor people. I’m not saying that’s bad ofc.
You’re already doing that with insurance premiums. Universal healthcare is that but cheaper because the government doesn’t have a profit incentive to price gouge.
Universal healthcare is that but cheaper because the government doesn’t have a profit incentive to price gouge.
Cheaper for everyone except higher income folk. They would benefit from a multi payer, private insurance system as they would end up paying less.
You’re already doing that with insurance premiums.
Insurance premiums aren’t decided based on my income. They’re decided based on the probability of me needing healthcare. Therefore, we kinda are not doing that right now. Universal, single payer healthcare would mean that healthcare expenditure would increase with my income. If I’m rich, I would be very sad.
But I’m not. Also, eat the rich. Healthcare is a human right. I am very happy with the universal healthcare that I have lol. I wouldn’t want it to go away at all. But again, I was talking about the technicality here.
Huh??? I never even presented my own ethical position. We were talking about TECHNICALITIES here. Suddenly u’r accusing me of holding a shitty ethical position? Fuck right off.
I rlly try to be as polite as possible online. But jeez r u guys fkin stupid. We’re having a logical argument about technicalities for fuck’s sake. I said a thousand times that I support single payer universal healthcare. I love it, and I don’t want to lose it. I’m just pointing at the economic exchange here and how it is different from a non-universal multi payer healthcare system. That’s it. But NOOOOOOO how could I do that??? Ugh
Oh fuck right off. My political positions r my political positions because I’ve formed synthesis by evaluating both, thesis and antithesis. I consider myself a leftist. This however does not mean that I shouldn’t talk about antithesis for leftist theses. We’re not in a cult, uk.
Ok, so I completely support universal healthcare. However, it still is true that you are paying for “someone else’s healthcare”. How?
Let’s assume that there’s a flat tax percentage - 30% for all. (Actually most developed countries have progressive tax systems, but let’s ignore that for now). The more your income, the more tax you pay. Therefore, some people pay more tax than others. This means, that some people contribute more to fund the healthcare system compared to others.
Some people have pre-existing conditions. Some people may just be unhealthy due to bad lifestyle choices. I might be incredibly fit. The probability of me falling sick would be very less. If there were a multi payer healthcare system, then perhaps I might not need to spend much money on healthcare. A universal single payer system might be forcing me to pay more for others’ healthcare. Therefore, saying that I’m paying for someone else’s healthcare isn’t inaccurate.
That being said, healthcare is a human right. Every human, regardless of financial status deserves timely access to good healthcare. That’s why I support it.
Right now we pay for other peoples healthcare and we also pay some shitty middlemen who tell us what treatments they think are necessary. If we cut out the middlemen its literally cheaper than our current system.
We pay the middlemen, yes. I don’t see how we pay for other people’s healthcare. The private insurance that I’ve experienced takes many factors into account (age, quality of health, pre-existing conditions and so on). Thankfully because I’m both young, and don’t have pre-existing conditions, I pay less insurance premiums than a kid born with diabetes.
Remember, we’re talking about technicality here. We aren’t talking about ethics. Strictly from a money standpoint, we’re not paying for other people’s insurance.
Yes you are. The insurance company takes money from healthy people, scoops some off the top for themselves, and then distributes the rest to pay for grandmas hip replacement.
Unless you use the same or more than what you paid into insurance, you are subsidizing someone elses healthcare.
If you pay for insurance you are paying for other people’s Healthcare. The whole reason to do insurance is that you have the ability to use more money from it than you ever put in, but will hopefully never need to. Otherwise it would make more sense to just have a health savings account.
What about the premiums though? Say the insurance premiums for x amount of coverage are 100 dollars. Doesn’t matter if I’m a billionaire or if I’m homeless. The premium stays the same.
In a single payer universal healthcare system however, the premium would be a percentage of my income (collected via taxes). Suddenly, the 100 dollars becomes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Therefore, from my perspective, I am “paying for someone else’s healthcare”. This is the technicality that I’m talking about.
Now of course, fuck my perspective because fuck billionaires. This however, is out of scope of the discussion.
You also have to consider that the healthcare is worth a lot more money to the billionaire than the homeless guy. Just like the roads and the protection of the armed forces worth more money to him. I’m sure the billionaire is a fan of price discrimination too, conveniently enough!
For some reason everyone thinks they are the healthy ones that don’t and never will need healthcare, not like those unhealthy everyone else
True. I’m playing Devil’s advocate here. These r arguments that I’ve heard that make sense technically, but not ethically. I’m not saying that real life me would want to give up my universal healthcare lol. It’s a safety net that I absolutely want in my life (for selfish reasons as well)
No. These arguments don’t even make sense technically. Hospitals generally don’t deny emergency care, often leaving people with huge bills after their stay. If someone doesn’t pay, insurance needs to recoup the cost by charging higher rates for everyone. On top of that, preventative care is often cheaper than emergency care, with poorly insured people usually receiving less of it.
Without socialized healthcare, you pay for the care of everyone that can’t pay through your insurance AND people receive worse care overall. The healthcare system functions worse, even when money isn’t as much of a concern. Unless you’re a billionaire with private doctors on payroll 24/7, anyone can get fucked over when emergency care is shit.
There is no logical argument for our system unless you believe wealth can always protect you. They think the foundation can rot away without ever hurting them, but that’s the fantasy of people who believe in perpetual free lunches.
Logical argument: profit
Edit for clarity: /s
Insurance premiums are flat. They don’t give a shit about your income. The insurance premium for a minimum wage worker and a billionaire would be the same for a given coverage.
When you make it universal and single payer, the billionaire has to pay more money for the same quality of healthcare compared to the minimum wage worker. Therefore, the billionaire is essentially subsidizing the minimum wage worker’s healthcare.
Now of course, you can argue about the ethics of private property, how the billionaire became a billionaire by wage theft and so on. The point is, within the capitalist system that we have, universal healthcare is still the rich person paying for the poor person’s healthcare. This is the technicality that I’m talking about.
Remember, I support universal single payer healthcare. I am merely talking about technicality here.
To address the emergency room situation, what happens when the person being admitted lacks any sort of insurance? If they can’t cough up money, then they go into debt. Their credit scores get screwed. Life becomes hell.
To reply to your devil’s advocate
Agreed. The ethical argument for universal healthcare triumphs everything else, assuming that we value human life equally.
Well it also helps that it would be overall cheaper, with the only difference being that a few assholes wouldn’t be getting rich off it at everyone else’s expense.
Except the US clearly has a stratified society, even when it tries to lighten that with myths of fair pay, opportunity and get-rich-quick schemes (all the old American dreams before the post WWII townhouse family.)
Part of the rise of fascist rhetoric (targeting minorities like trans folk and immigrants) is to distract from the failure of these myths. Millennials and Zoomers know they’re probably never going to own a home, or get to retire well, which not only discourages the Protestant work ethic (see quiet-quitting) but also elevates civil unrest (see the Great Depression).
So the Republican response is to kill elections and install one-party autocracy backed by a police state. That way they don’t even have to listen to fellow Republicans, after they realize getting benes from being party loyalists are not actually soon to arrive. This is literally a return to monarchy, as Representative and constitutional historian Jamie Rasken has observed.
Yeah but that’s ALREADY how it works. With private insurance some people pay their premium month after month after month and make no claims. Some people get paid out more than they’ll ever pay in. That’s how insurance works. Plus with private insurance toss in shareholder profits and millions of dollars in quirky commercials off the top of that.
Insurance premiums aren’t decided by my income. They are decided by my probability of needing the coverage offered. Therefore, if I am rich, I end up paying a smaller percentage of my income on insurance premiums for the same coverage compared to a poor person.
Single payer universal healthcare makes healthcare more expensive for rich people and cheaper for poor people. I’m not saying that’s bad ofc.
You’re already doing that with insurance premiums. Universal healthcare is that but cheaper because the government doesn’t have a profit incentive to price gouge.
Cheaper for everyone except higher income folk. They would benefit from a multi payer, private insurance system as they would end up paying less.
Insurance premiums aren’t decided based on my income. They’re decided based on the probability of me needing healthcare. Therefore, we kinda are not doing that right now. Universal, single payer healthcare would mean that healthcare expenditure would increase with my income. If I’m rich, I would be very sad.
But I’m not. Also, eat the rich. Healthcare is a human right. I am very happy with the universal healthcare that I have lol. I wouldn’t want it to go away at all. But again, I was talking about the technicality here.
Guess who tends to need Healthcare most often, the poor and the elderly, two groups that don’t tend to have much income to spend on health premiums.
But don’t worry it’s not like ‘you’ will ever be poor or elderly so you shouldn’t care about health coverage for those groups.
Spot on. This person isn’t playing devils advocate, they’re playing self defence of their own cognitive dissonance.
Huh??? I never even presented my own ethical position. We were talking about TECHNICALITIES here. Suddenly u’r accusing me of holding a shitty ethical position? Fuck right off.
I rlly try to be as polite as possible online. But jeez r u guys fkin stupid. We’re having a logical argument about technicalities for fuck’s sake. I said a thousand times that I support single payer universal healthcare. I love it, and I don’t want to lose it. I’m just pointing at the economic exchange here and how it is different from a non-universal multi payer healthcare system. That’s it. But NOOOOOOO how could I do that??? Ugh
Oh boo hoo the poor 0.01 percent erst and their extra thousand dollars going to Healthcare sure is going to ruin them.
Oh fuck right off. My political positions r my political positions because I’ve formed synthesis by evaluating both, thesis and antithesis. I consider myself a leftist. This however does not mean that I shouldn’t talk about antithesis for leftist theses. We’re not in a cult, uk.