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comment by jadedog
jadedog  ·  2600 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why everyone hates the GOP's new healthcare plan

    So if it was up to me, children would be covered until 18 at least with a CHIPS-type program. It's a moral obligation to take care of those who can't take care of themselves for me. That would still leave the market to develop solutions and provide other options (which I don't think will look similarly to what we do now; it's unsustainable).

If the ACA was not sustainable, then Trumpcare as drafted so far will also be unsustainable. They're basically the same system. The only difference is in the amount of tax credit and how much the insurance companies can charge.

In this video , rep. Tim Ryan says that in Ohio, the head of the Ohio hospital association says that 1 million people may lose their coverage under the new Trumpcare as drafted at this point and 25% of hospitals will close.

If it's unsustainable to have insurers pull out of the market, it will be less sustainable not to have hospitals to give care at all.

Looking at a study the GAO did that was released in 2013, the factors of the growth of health care costs are the aging population, more people seeking health care under the new insurance programs and technological advancements in health care.

    Federal health care spending is expected to continue growing faster than the economy. In the near term, this is driven by increasing enrollment in federal health care programs due to the aging of the population and expanded eligibility. Over the longer term, excess cost growth (the extent to which growth of health care spending per capita exceeds growth of income per capita) is a key driver. Slowing the rate of health care cost growth would help put the budget on a more sustainable path. There is general agreement that technological advancement has been the key factor in health care cost growth in the past, along with the effects of expanding health insurance coverage and increasing income, but there is considerable uncertainty about the magnitude of the impact that the different factors will have on future health care cost growth.

Neither the ACA nor the proposed Trumpcare plan touches on these issues.

Hoping the market would develop solutions on its own when the healthcare industry is a monopoly is unrealistic. There's no incentive for the market forces to work.

The similarity of health care to Comcast is that they're both monopolies. The difference is that people can walk away from their internet service. People cannot walk away from health care. Their lives literally depend on it.

    I don't think the government is my friend. I think they are in the pockets of a lot of people. I think that if I can remove them from my life as much as possible it increases my liability and risk personally, but that is a cost I am willing to pay. So I don't want them in healthcare.

I'm curious how far you go with this philosophy. In this video , Obama talks with Bill Maher (could Bill Maher be any more in love with Obama?) about all the ways that government has socialized a number of institutions. Schools, prisons, retirement (social security) and elder health care (medicare) are some examples. Are you willing to allow the privatization of schools and prison? As Obama notes, if prisons are privatized, there will be a bigger incentive to incarcerate people. If schools are privatized, the rich will become the only people who can afford going to school, creating an elite class and an uneducated one.

Are you in favor of privatizing schools and prisons?

You mentioned single payer health care which is basically government sponsored health care. Are you in favor of single payer health care? If so, wouldn't this be more government intervention, not less?