Ted Rall for August 30, 2008
Transcript:
Why hasn't there ever been a woman president of the United States? (Man: With jsut 120 million women to choose from, it's impossible to find one as qualifiedto be president as, say, bush.) Why doesn't the U.S. create a national health care system? Most people want one. (Man 2: Each year, 18,000 Americans die due to lack of health care... saving the rest of us HMO stockholders tons of cash!) Our president is incompetent and a liar. Why don't we impeach him? (Woman: Because impeachment is off the table because we don't wanna.) Why... (Man 2: What do you think this is... Pakistan?)
ConservativeBob: “This supposed “most” of the people that want universal healthcare is a farce or otherwise we’d have it.”
Yes, if only there were a way to actually quantify the opinions of the American people. Perhaps by asking the same question of a small but representative sample, then extrapolating to the opinions of the whole? What mad, mad science!
Oh, wait. Go see www.pollingreport.com/health3.htm and note the consistent roughly two-thirds majority supporting government-provided universal health care.
“Why would we want a system that will raise our already large tax burden?”
Government-provided healthcare is cheaper. Nations with socialized health insurance have a healthier population and spend less to get it. (Of course, they don’t have an insurance industry growing fat off the overhead.) The sensible comparison you should be making there is between paying for healthcare with taxes and paying regular insurance premiums, along with the constant threat of losing said insurance if you lose your job. Unless, that is, you think that money you spend on necessities is somehow magically different from tax money that goes to the same program.
“Not too mention that a large portion of these poor poor uninsured people […] simply don’t care to pay for yet another bill (ie: healthy young people that don’t even need health insurance yet)”
This is exactly why health insurance fails if not everyone has it. Here, I’ll explain the adverse selection death spiral.
Health insurance costs money. A certain proportion of young, healthy folk bet that they won’t get sick, and save money by not getting insurance. The average premium has to rise, because there are fewer young, healthy people subsidizing it. More people are priced out of being insured. Premiums have to rise until only the very sickest will bother paying for it, and you’re back to having almost everyone uninsured. That is why socialized health insurance has to include mandated coverage; it’s the same reason why you can’t just opt out of social security if you feel like betting that you won’t need it.