Debt Limit - Paying for that which was already spent

A safety net is what leads to debt because everyone does not want to contribute to a welfare program helping the few who need medical assistance from the government.

By socializing the system everyone including the wealthy will have to contribute to a general expendature fund which covers everyone equally with care and this will solve the debt limit because the US will not have to borrow to pay for future medical debt.

During the Soviet Union days physicians accepted their jobs without much issue because it were seen like any other job and not glorified with high pay as it is today in the USA.

 

This is false and it was actually government programs that have killed many private charities especially related to providing general medical services. In the 1960's there was a rapid growth of free clinics in cities across the US because people cared. Doctors and nurses donated their time. Landlords donated clinic space. Medical equipment companies and medical service provides donated equipment to these clinics. People donated money and held fund raising drives.

And then came Medicaid and apathy set in. Why should the People do that which the government says its going to do. Medicaid promised to provide health care services for those, that through no fault of their own, couldn't afford the medical services they required. Why should a person volunteer their time and money to something they're being taxed for so the government can provide it instead?

Government programs create apathy because it removes personal responsibility from the individual to provide for the needs of others.

So this is a proposal to revise the tax laws so 38% of all households that currently don't pay income taxes will? The wealthy and most of the middle class are already paying more than their fair share and if everyone is going to contribute then we must assume that really includes everyone.

Actually they had a choice. Do what the government ordered them to do or be sent to the gulag where they could take care of prisoners in Siberia. Of course the physicians in the Soviet Union lived in poverty but they were provided with a far better lifestyle than the average Russian.

 

Then, there are unintended concequences. What happens to charitable giving if the home interest deduction is killed? That one deduction shifts a lot of people from the short form to the long form, and the long form allows deducting charitable contributions.

It actually goes beyond that. Like regulation, the "governments" accepting responsibility gives the false impression that it is being handled.

Now, when someone is poor and sick, instead of wanting to help, we are saddened by someone too lazy to seek the governments help.

I wonder if free clinics are possible today, or is there regulations that prevent them?

 

The only way that works is if taxes and insurance costs go throught the roof...

The number of people received government paid healthcare, far exceed the number that "need" government paid healthcare.

When the healthcare debate started, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the cost of health care in the US got to twice the rest of the western world. Why medical costs are increasing at several times the rate of inflation.

Obummercare did nothing to address rising medical costs, in fact, it has assured costs will continue to rise.

Therefore, the deficit will remain high, and the debt continue to increase.

 

You have something to back this up with?

The US health care system is not designed to contain costs, only pay expenses. As the health care provider industry moved from non-profit to for profit there was no mechanism to control their ability to increase expenses, which they did by inflating their own costs through massive capital expenditures, expanding through acquisitions and expenditures on expensive equipment that would be underutilized, thereby increasing costs so they could justify raising rates. It continues.

All the cost controls were stripped from the bill in a futile effort to gain republican votes. If Obama had accepted the fact that the republicans were going to negotiate only to emasculate the bill and then vote against it anyway the program would not be so wimpy.

 

This is incorrect in reality as FICA/Payroll taxes have collected far more than expendatures but that money was borrowed for other general expendatures. When general revenues are used to redeem Treasury Securities in the Social Security Trust fund they are not "paying for Social Security" but instead paying for prior general expendatures.

This is, of course, only true so long as the Social Security Trust Fund has Treasury assets and it is rapidly being depleted. When the Trust Fund is depleted then Social Security and Medicare become bankrupt as they are not funded from general tax revenues.

The flip side of this is reflected by Democrats that call for raising income taxes on the wealthy because of the future insolvency of Social Security and Medicare. Since Social Security and Medicare are expressly funded with FICA/Payroll taxes raising the income taxes on the wealthy does nothing to address the future insolvency of these programs.

 

1. Many government employees get free or very lost cost health care, when they are fully capable of contributing the same as any, equally paid, employee.
2. People that receive Medicare / Medicaid that are scamming the system
3. People in this this country illegally
4. People that needed a safety net, and ended up trapped by our welfare system.

Do you believe everyone the government helps, are incapable of helping themselves?

You are commingling medical insurance with medical providers.

Wal-Mart, the tech industry in general, Microsoft is specific, are all for profit businesses where prices have fallen compared to inflation, often with better performance.

Such as?

 

As I recall not a single Republican member of Congress voted for the HCR bill and their votes were not required for passage. The Democrats ram-rodded the legislation through completely ignoring provisions offered by Republicans that would have not only reduced the government's costs but would have also lowered the cost of health care for Americans.

Were are the provisions for health insurance to be sold nationally across state lines like car and life insurance?

Were are the provisions that allow the importation and purchase of prescription drugs from Canada?

Were are the provisions for reasonable tort reform?

All of these provisions would have reduced the cost of private health insurance, prescription drugs, and the overall costs of health care. The Democrats intentionally ignored any legislation that would reduce costs in passing the HCR bill.

 

You are correct, Obamacare was too liberal for many Democrats, thus the Louisiana Purchase and a few Executive Orders were necessary.

I was surprised how little the cost of malpractice insurance was. But, you identified two of the three cost drivers.

But, you missed the biggest cost driver, the regulation that insurance companies must spend 80% of their income on medical care - they are assured a 20% operating profit. Collusion by regulation.

Unlike competitive companies, winning business with lower prices, all insurance companies charge $10,000 for an $8,000 procedure.

Without competitive pressure, there is no pressure to negotiate for better prices. In fact, the more expensive a procedure, a drug, a new machine, the more money they make. Their reaction to a doctor doubling prices - WONDERFUL!

POSITIVE FEEDBACK, prices just keep on rising.

Now is when the Liberals bring out "single payer" as the savior of mankind. Government just sets a much lower price - problem solved.... The Liberal use regulation on insurance companies to create the problem, then their solution is to eliminate the insurance companies.

Until there are no doctors that accept government patients.

 

I don't have a clue where these beliefs that insurance companies establish billing costs or that these companies strive for higher billing costs because they earn more profit come from. With virtually all private insurance I've had the insurance companies seek to obtain the lowest costs by negotiations with "preferred providers" in a network.

It is true that private insurance does have higher adminstrative costs than programs like Medicare but they also have far less fraud and abuse. As I recall about $40 billion in Medicare expendatures are related to fraud and abuse and that should be counted as "adminstrative" costs as it is the lack of administration that allows the fraud and abuse.

Yes, the malpractice insurance costs are relatively small but the costs of unnecessary and duplicate tests that doctors require to protect themselves from malpractices lawsuits is huge. The doctors are "running scared" and that drives up the cost of health care as they seek to protect themselves from liability. There are far too many malpractice lawsuits that are exclusively related to attorney's seeking high malpractice awards from juries that are truly illogical and unreasonable. Reasonable tort reform is very justifiable but the Democrats refused to even address it.

One thing that was found through investigative journalism during the health care debates was that there was a huge disparity in costs between hospitals performing the same medical procedures and often these hospitals were only blocks apart. For consumers to make intelligent choices they need the information required to make informed decisions. Finding out how much "Hospital A" and "Hospital B" charge for a procedure is certainly required if market forces are going to affect selections by the individual. In the investigation they found that costs were has much as double the cost for the same procedure between one hospital and another hospital.

Congress could have addressed this with a simply law/regulation requiring medical providers to provide public pricing for the procedures they perform on the internet and/or by posting that information publically. We, the consumers, regularly do price comparisons on products and services we need but this is almost impossible to do with medical services. This information is not easily available and it should be. Given this information consumers could make an informed decision when they choose one hospital over another and this would force those hospitals that charge up to twice as much as their competitors to reduce their prices or go out of business. For market forces to drive down costs the consumer needs to be informed and currently most are not when it comes to medical services they require.

I will not argue with the fact that it is very possible that the Democrats created "Obamacare" with the hopes it would fail or be so expensive as to drive a "single-payer" system in the future. They avoided anything that would actually lower costs.

 

When the consumer pays the same co-pay, they have no incentive to find the best price.

Unintended concequences result. If I can pay the same for the same service, and one is much more expensive than the other, then it must be better, so I'll go there....

 

This is because the republicans will not allow a fully operational socialized health care system therefore the democrats were forced to create a welfare system that is not far reaching and creates debt..

In the good european countries such as Germany everyone depends on the government health care so there is no need for apathy, even in the bad ones like Britian who are more capitalist still have most of their citizens depend on some government subsidization to their health care needs...

Private charity programs are not secure they depend on the good faith and morality of citizens and that changes at the drop of a hat so it is paramount to follow up further with President Obamas prescription to the health care debt with more socialist policies that redistribute wealth instead of borrowing wealth.

 

This is why I actually support 80/20 insurance plans where the consumer pays a percentage of the costs and not a flat fee for services. Then knowing the prices of the cost of the procedure is very important to the individual.

BTW related to health care in the United States the following statistics were apparently published by Investors Business Daily although I received this secondhand and have no link.

Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65%
England 46%
Canada 42%

Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%

P ercentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:
U.S. 90%
England 15%
Canada 43%

Percentage referred to a medical specialist who see one within one month:
U.S. 77%
England 40%
Canada 43%

Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million people:
U.S. 71
England 14
Canada 18

Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health":
U.S. 12%
England 2%
Canada 6%

People love to bad mouth health care in the United States but in many ways it is far superior to socialized health care in Canada and England.

 

Your list only totals up to %75.6. Who holds the other quarter?

Dems controlled both halves of Congress throughout GHW Bush's presidency.
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm
What's your partisan spin on that situation?

 

That was actually the Business Insider list and I would assume that the last 24.4% is held by misc categories that comprise only a very small percentage of the total debt.

The SS Trust Fund actually mandates that the government borrow from it from what I understand as only special Treasury securities that can be purchased by the government are in the Trust Fund. Of course it could have been held as lawful money (American Gold and Silver Eagle coins) but that isn't technically an investment and the funds have to be invested.