
California Senate passes universal health care bill - fred256
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article153931299.html
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ZeroGravitas
Why is the level of conversation on this topic so low?

There's two top level comments here that effectively say: "Healthcare costs
money! You didn't think of that did you, commie!".

And this is on a forum full of intelligent techies who are interested in
business. I shudder to think what the opinion of the average Republican voter
is. Some fever dream involving death panels no doubt.

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dreamthtwasrome
This won't pass the house, the Property class won't let it. (Their two
departments are the Democrats and Republicans.)

If it were possible, in a hypothetical sense:

Raise corporate taxes, they're much too low to be sustainable.

Care would need to be more efficient than Cuba or UK NHS in order to be cost-
effective, this means preventative medicine and QALY will be front-and-center.
The question will be how to pay for major operations and expensive, ongoing
conditions without ending-up with Greece-style finances and IMF bailout
austerity conditions. Even with cutting costs to rest of the world prices (1/4
of current prices), it would still be hundreds of billions per year. It's not
impossible, but it would be an up-hill climb all the way and might not be very
good with compromises, loopholes and back-room deals that will likely infest
it.

Maybe there's enough rich corporations and wealthy people with taxes to raid,
but their lobbyists on both sides of the aisle won't allow anything more than
crumbs and getting back to sucking the blood money out of poor people.

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adiabatty
Last I checked both houses were over 2/3 Democrats. Is this not the case now?

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ams6110
_The bill does not include detailed language about how the state would come up
with hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for health care coverage for
nearly 40 million residents._

Perhaps they expect to go bankrupt and let the rest of the country bail them
out?

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digitalzombie
You mean the red states that California have been subsidizing to help us out?

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dreamthtwasrome
California is indeed a profit-center in the United $tates.

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valuearb
$400B a year with no way to pay for it.

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toomuchtodo
Instead of everyone paying insurance premiums, they pay through taxes. And no
need to argue: almost every other first world country provides universal
healthcare funded by taxes. It's both financially possible and prudent.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_unive...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_universal_health_care)

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dragonwriter
> And no need to argue: almost every other first world country provides
> universal healthcare funded by taxes.

Almost every other developed country provides universal healthcare, but
there's a mix of systems and all-public systems are not overwhelmingly
dominant. Mandated-purchase with public safety net programs are not uncommon.

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toomuchtodo
I think we're in agreement? There is a basic level of care in those UHC
countries, but then private insurance/services/etc for above and beyond.

~~~
dragonwriter
In some the model is very similar in outline (but superior in execution) to
the US ACA model: everyone is required to buy insurance with certain minimum
standards, with subsidies and/or a public fallback program for the indigent.
In some there is a universal public baseline program that everyone is on that
you may be able to supplement on top of, as you describe, but that's not at
all _generally_ true.

