unless u have an HSA or pay cash u already are paying for the sick for most americans. afaik even private entrepreneur single employee contractors are further pooled on the insurer's end to reduce their risk pool calculation. my work has had 3 premature babies, several cancer treatments, and several major illnesses in the risk pool. costs keep going up.

the larger ur risk pool, the smaller the tax on the healthy if another in that pool gets sick.

i understand the rest of what you're saying logically, i just havent read any analysis that agrees. at the bold specifically, doesnt that mean they make the most profits per sale here? bit confused what u mean by that.

If you don't want to have insurance, you don't need to, right? Last time I had insurance, I was paying $900/month. That was NOT for the top tier plan. Do the math based on a year: 900*12=$10,800. Now, tell me, what would a healthy 20 year old come down with that would cost $10,800? I can actually provide an answer. Not playing "gotcha" here. The average healthy 20-40 year old would be most likely to end up with an appendectomy, assuming they still have an appendix. So, that surgery, if you pay 100% out of pocket, all costs included, ranges from $10,000-$35,000. Now, tell me, why would someone spend $10,800/year for 20 years ($216,000), for a surgery with an out the door cost of $10K-$35K?

The problem with your assertion regarding risk pools is that the prices went UP for insurance with the mandates, not down, and a whole ton of elective shit was thrown in. Like, why does every plan have to cover transitioning, or live birth, or pre and post natal care? Why does every plan have to cover anything not tailored to the individual? Now, a big thing to note regarding my prior insurance plan: It was a group plan via the employer. The "marketplace" aka non-group plan for the same exact thing would have been $1500/month. Why? Now, I can look up properties all across the country for under $216,000. Why am I spending a house on somebody else's health, and what, if anything, is my eventual return. Let's take that 20 year old, and make them 65. They're now retirement aged, and have dropped (assuming no price differences ofc, which is also naïve), 45*$10,800=$486,000 into the financial services industry (insurance). What have they received in return? Literally, have they received a half a million worth of care or product? I'm guessing not, as according to the National Institutes of Health, the average LIFETIME healthcare cost per capita is $268,700 for men and $361,200 for women. And let's not forget, just because you've retired doesn't mean you don't still have to pay for insurance.

So, where's the return on investment, exactly? You're telling me that it'll cost less. What I'm telling you is that the medical supply and pharmaceutical companies will have a captive market that disallows most forms of foreign competition and will promptly raise prices, and healthcare workers will unionize for immediate higher prices. Meanwhile, financially savvy people who avoid insurance at all cost, and at most use an HSA, otherwise have, you know, like a savings account? Will find that they're being taxed as much or likely more than what they had been saving.

End result? Young people spend their working life to pay for the healthcare costs of old people, literally giving up the opportunity to buy a HOUSE so that some boomer they don't know or care about can sit around and watch CNN while talking about "Damned kids these days". How about the boomers pay for themselves. They certainly forced the Greatest Generation to cover their own costs, waiting until the majority of them died before introducing the ACA to steal from their own children and provide for themselves.

Sir, while I do normally agree with you, I have to say that in my country, where we have socialized healthcare, people seem to be happy with it. An anecdote: my dad's been diagnosed with cancer, and he has had to go through many tests, MRI, CT scan, ultrasound, endoscopic something where they inserted a tube down his esophagus to take a few samples, and he has had to go through many treatments, so numerous in fact that I cannot keep track. All of this cost us not one cent. Yes, I know all these things mentioned above are subsidized by other people in my country, but I have to say that if we had to pay for all these out of our own pocket, we'd be bankrupted.

I won't attempt to tell you guys how to run your own country, however I do feel that there is something wrong with the fact that so many people in your country literally can't afford to get sick. IMHO, such a thing should never happen in a first-world country.

Respectfully.

You did pay for it. The government adds it to your taxes and inflation.

Insurance is fairly cheap.

Partially, yes. But if my dad were to tally up all the taxes he has ever paid to the government, he would find that what he is taking from the system is far more than what he put into. The end result is still someone else subsidizing his care.

You basically just described why capitalist healthcare is bad.

Yes. Other people died because you took services away from them while paying nothing in return.

Try not to use sarcasm please. I am trying to have a real conversation with you.

As EndlessSky said, you did pay for it. Just to use some completely made up numbers, given I don't know where you're from, let's assume that your effective tax rate is 50%. Yet you're pulling in $100,000 per year gross. So you're paying $50,000 in taxes, netting you $50,000 a year. Simple enough, no? Now, let's say you work at the exact same wage for 20 years (unlikely). After those 20 years, you've now made $1,000,000. BUT, you've also PAID $1,000,000. Now, here's where it gets interesting. At precisely $100,000, post returns, the average state+federal income tax is going to vary between 17%-25%. While it can get higher depending on the state, it usually won't. Now, let's take that 25%, the high number. Let's disregard the fact that it includes things like FICA which includes medicaid/medicare. We don't care about that. W'll just call it 25%. Now, that would say that half of your 50% tax rate is going directly towards your public option. As was your fathers, as was your mothers, as were your siblings. Now, that equates, in just 20 years, to $500,000. Now, let's add 20 years worth of your father's income, and your mother's income. That's now $1.5 million.

So, do you believe that $1.5 Million would have paid for his procedures? In the US, lifetime costs of cancer treatments vary from $150K-$282K on average, which fits still as the "less than" on insurance costs. How about taxes?

But, let's go with an even more fun experiment. Let's say that we could work magic, and we can do a public option for just a 5% non-returnable add to income tax. Pretty easy, right? We'll apply this to a working career spanning from age 20 to 65 (retirement). We'll then say that you started lower pay, ended somewhere in the 6 figures, but your average across your working career came out to that magical number of $100K/year. So, that means after 45 years of working, you've made $4.5 million. How much is it that'll be removed from taxes? $225K. Plenty more than enough to pay, on average, for that cancer treatment. But again, let's toss in the income from your father and your mother... What do you think?

Now, none of this is to say that you make $100,000/year. None of this says anything much, really, since we're using random numbers. The point is, depending on the tax levels involved, assuming you saved your money or invested wisely, you could quite easily invest either what the cancer treatments cost, or indeed, your full lifetime's worth of care, and far more. So what's happening really, in the US, is that the Boomers, who were able to go insurance-free, had low cost medications and procedures, had relatively low FICA costs, and were able to invest their savings in houses, properties, and whatever they wanted, now want their children and grandchildren to pay more, NOT have that money to invest, NOT have that money to get a house or creating their own health savings accounts. Meanwhile, these same boomers are SELLING their properties to developers for as much as 20x what they purchased them for and pocketing the cash, then claiming to be victims because their kids don't want to "pay their fair share".

Sorry mate, if you were in the US, and your father was anything like mine? "If you can't afford the care, that's your problem. I'll disown you before I help you with shit." Thankfully, my father is dead, to disgrace this world no more.



And here I've described how public healthcare is just as bad. #winning!

Also, "capitalist healthcare" would not involve the protectionism and government regulation that drives prices up. Foreign medications and medical equipment would be allowed to compete on our markets, etc. It's not "capitalist", merely "broken".

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Sep 9 2021 03:38pm

I won't argue the numbers with you, cause I am not good at math. I also fail to see the point of trying to figure out whether people would be "getting their taxes' worth" in terms of treatments. Two things I do know: 1. people are healthy in my country and they seem happy with the system we have; and 2. there are people in your country who can't afford to get sick.

But it's like I said, I won't attempt to tell you what to do or jeer at you like many lefties would. I just think that socialized medicine has been adopted by so many countries in the West. Surely it can't be all bad. Although I have to agree with you that it is indeed that the healthy are subsidizing the care for the sick.