Single-payer healthcare could cost $400 billion to implement in California

[Orlong]

Single payer addresses the inflated prices far more than the current method of doing absolutely nothing, friend.

Under a single payer system, there is only one customer, the single payer. If the single payer says "we will only pay $X for Y drug" (for example)... The company that makes Y drug can either take $X or they can fuck off and lose 12.5% of their business entirely (referring to losing California's business).

Which do you think they want? Making 90% of that 12.5% (by selling it for say, 10% less than before) or making 0% of that 12.5% (by refusing to do business with California)? Especially considering choosing the "fuck off" option, they would be vilified as evil greedy cunts and probably lose even more business.

Or they just dont sell to California and raise the cost for everyone else another 20% to make up for the loss. This is the major reason drugs are so expensive in the US. Other countries shortchange them so they jack up our prices to compensate

[Tic Tacs]

Do you really believe 10 million mostly hard working illegals is the issue here when we have over 65 million of obese people living in US? Besides the point, we already have single-payer healthcare called Medicare and Medicaid.

[Moadar]

As long as they immediately arrest and deport the scum after they steal treatment it's fine.

[Deleted]

Or they just dont sell to California and raise the cost for everyone else another 20% to make up for the loss. This is the major reason drugs are so expensive in the US. Other countries shortchange them so they jack up our prices to compensate

It seems to me the "other countries" are being smarter than you. Maybe you should do the same thing and have your federal government step in the marketplace and negotiate better deals with the drug industry? Didn't you elected Trump for this exact purpose..? To have the best deals ever?

[Independent voter]

California, Massachusetts and Vermont are interested in single payer, maybe they should group up? California has 33 million, MA has 7 or so million and Vermont has like 1 million.

[Theinquisition]

Pretty simple actually. ER visits are expensive. The same issue treated at an ER vs through a primary care physician is insane. Chronic conditions like diabetes can instead be managed because people have access to insulin instead of the much more expensive alternative of things like amputation and blindness, which also means a productive worker is taken out of the labor force. That alone will be a massive cost savings. Which is cheaper you think paying for my buddy who is a part time worker to get some basic primary care or the emergency care he had to receive resulting in a month long hospital stay with him hooked up to oxygen? Hint: primary car is a lot cheaper and giving people access to it reduces costs. And as others have said you're already paying for all these lazy uninsured and you're paying more to do it because of our jacked up insurance system and how they negotiate prices with hospitals. The exact market force employed at a small scale gets magnified with a single payer.


The literal only problem with it is the words government and taxes. Your fear of the evil money sucking immigrant/poor person and the idea that government does nothing right, even though programs like Medicaid and Medicare are generally ran well the issue is demographic changes, have caused you to accept a system where because of the limitations on denying emergency care and the weaker negotiating power of individual insurance companies than a single payer fuck you over harder than the demon your ideology tells you to fear.

Put more simply folks like you, orlog, and zenkai come across as the types who'd gladly pay higher premiums just to not pay taxes even if it means overall lower healthcare outcomes. Healthcare doesn't follow typical supply and demand rules and people need to stop acting like it does.

Well, i'll put my feelings on it simply. I don't trust our government, as it's currently structured, to effectively administer a universal or single payer healthcare system.

[minteK917]

The entire united states could easily, very easily actually, implement single payer. However Washington balls are very tiny in front of corporation lobbying and its not because of Donald Trump either. Single payer requires a government to actually use negotiation balls and fix pricing and massive take overs. It requires political will and not economical will. Washington has not had this kind of actual power for decades now. Who ever you elect are just there to mess with the little people, their political will does not exist. They just want to be a public figure that suck people above them dicks.

[Pterodactylus]

Well, i'll put my feelings on it simply. I don't trust our government, as it's currently structured, to effectively administer a universal or single payer healthcare system.

A government, of, by, and for the people? Maybe if corporations weren't people, my friend - it would be better.

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The entire united states could easily, very easily actually, implement single payer. However Washington balls are very tiny in front of corporation lobbying and its not because of Donald Trump either.

Healthcare spending is almost 20% GDP - so there are a lot of lobbying dollars out, there is no doubt. Whole sectors of the economy would go extinct, so there is a lot of inertia in the system too. Nobody knew healthcare was complicated until Trump told us it was, but it's not as easy as removing the lobbying dollars to get single payer on the table. The ACA, with a public option, would have been a great first step. The public option was in the original bill, but was killed pretty fast thanks to those lobbying dollars.

[Kellhound]

They are not immune. PERS is the big subject right now here in Oregon. Every time the dip shit State tries to increase taxes (that will help PERS) they camouflaging it with the children card. More and more people are starting to see the lies and even the democrats in PDX are tired of it. PERS can't sustain itself and will eventually collapse. Better to start fixing the holes now before the state becomes bankrupt. Best way to do that is through ballot measures and legislation putting caps on retirement. I would even go as far as removing assets from the retirees who benefited most form this - namely the ones who put PERS in place back int he 70s. They are probably dead now though.

How can the union sue if there isn't any money? It is like trying to sue a homeless person for a million dollars because he stole and totaled your car. I mean if god forbid the stats files for Bankruptsy, they will be protected.

Given the size of the bond measure just passed for Portland schools, I would say Portlanders are still fine with taxes.

there is money, if taken from other programs.

[Nadiru]

Single-payer in CA wouldn't cost $400bn to implement if you removed most of the redundant administrative sectors. Granted, this causes unemployment to surge by several million people now formerly in high paying jobs, but CA's all about fucking over small groups to help the whole.

[crazyfool319]

What? But they skip out on the payment and get it for free.... They clog the system, make other people wait, and make everyone else's costs go up to make up for them. My "white" friend had cancer but his parents had to sell their house to pay for it meanwhile some illegal shits line up out the door to get free treatment. I don't care if it isn't "PC". Fuck that. They can all die for I care. They don't belong in our country and we shouldn't suffer for them.

Actually you cant get free cancer treatment as an illegal. Long term health care is insanely hard to get as an illegal without a valid SSN. Emergency healthcare is what you are likely thinking of. Hospitals dont turn away people, so they get their emergency care, leave the bill and dont pay it and somehow thats covered by taxes. Its not really anything to do with them being illegal, you could do the same thing if you wanted to risk being popped for theft.

The costs dont really go up because we are making it up for them, the costs go up because there is absolutely no regulation in healthcare. The profits are ridiculous in this country. Thats why you get stories of single pills of aspirin selling for absurd amounts of money. There is literally nothing to stop health care providers from gouging. Its a completely free market and not many politicians want to risk the huge sums of money that health and insurance companies donate to political campaigns to stop it and the country doesnt want to vote for anyone who actually wants to stop it because they think those politicians are socialists because the politicians that want the campaign contributions label them as such and because people are so unfalteringly stupid they believe it and vote for the big R or the big D without actually doing research into what that guy does. Then they vote for him again because he promised to either ramp up gun control and legalize abortion or he promised to ban abortions and introduce a bill allowing more people to have guns.

[Deleted]

This will cost CA so many jobs, it will drive people into poverty in record speed.

Venezuela on the US West coast.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I should, I guess when I have the time, it's easier for some folks who don't have a job and live in moms basement

It's pretty simple, you could even do it with the time that you're rapidly catching up to my post count despite only having been a member for half the time.

The short version is, universal means the government handles building the hospitals and clinics and hiring the doctors and nurses, handling the quality, etc. Single payer is where all of the health care entities are still private and still compete for favor - to a degree. But when it comes to emergencies, health care will almost never have a competitive element, in that you're going to be taken to the closest hospital which can save your life in an emergency.

The VA is an example of the former, medicare and medicaid examples of the latter.

But despite the VA's failures, let us not forget that several countries run very successful universal healthcare systems. The VA is plagued with corruption, mismanagement, and gross underfunding. Our country is woefully undereducated, unaware, and just tends to not give a shit about the struggles of veterans with permanent injuries and disabilities. And on the other side, most conservatives, especially military members who have landed themselves cushy office jobs that pay well and require virtually no skill beyond two firing brain cells, are completely undereducated, unaware, and tend to not give a shit about the struggles of other citizens because "Fuck you, I got mine."

[Louisa Bannon]

I honestly hope that those of you that oppose universal healthcare pay the biggest price for your miserly ways inasmuch as it should be your mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters and sons that die first in the next pandemic. That would be justice enough for me.

That probably makes me seem like huge jerk. But hey, this is exactly what you want. This is how you think. This is how you vote. This is all the stuff you hand-wring over. "How can we make things tougher for the poor...?"

I want you to get exactly what you want.

In a world where the population is quickly approaching 8 billion people, you are your brother's keeper because that's just how it is. It's factual.

From the film Fight Club:
Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us.

[triplesdsu]

http://www.latimes.com/politics/esse...1&noRedirect=1

Interesting, even after applying money spent on existing healthcare systems, the cost would still be between 50 and 100 billion a year. That's a lot of money.

CA is CA and im all for states passing their own laws, I wonder what the mentality is behind spending tax payer money on illegal immigrants being covered under the single payer plan. Seems like a huge cost that wouldn't get paid back into the system.

Im really starting to hate this state. Once my youngest son turns 18, Im retiring, selling my house and gtfo. Sen. Lara is really the champion of terrible legislation.

[Deleted]

About those arguments about how universal healthcare would cost the US so much money:

We already spend more tax money than every single country other than Norway. When you add in private funds we dwarf every other country. All of that money and the system is still a heaping pile of shit. Everyone bitches about how much it would cost when the real problem is how we spend the money we already allocate. Proper universal healthcare paired with a healthcare system that wasn't managed by a 4th grade art class would most likely save us money.

Spot on.

And add to this the issue that the USA is the ONLY first-world country where people still die due to lack of healthcare... 45,000 on average per year. Its zero in EVERY other country on that list.

Oh and i believe that the USA is the ONLY country where a person can go bankrupt due to medical bills... a disgraceful fact in the richest country on the planet.

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This will cost CA so many jobs, it will drive people into poverty in record speed.

Venezuela on the US West coast.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Dramatic much?

Yes any change in the system will result in some jobloss. But it aint gonna send the whole state into the dark ages. Its not like medical insurance is the main employer or anything...

[Katchii]

I'm all for a single payer system, what i'm not on board with is illegal immigrants who probably don't pay taxes being able to enroll in it. I'm not saying don't take care of them, but charge them for the services. If they're not paying into the system they shouldn't be able to benefit from it for free.

That said, the process to become a citizen needs to be revamped. There are people who are legitimately trying to do the right thing and can't become citizens because the system is so bogged down and they can't even go through some parts of the process for multiple YEARS. If the process were to be revamped and the population of undocumented/ illegal immigrants who live in California were able to become citizens and begin paying taxes I'm not sure this cost would even be a problem anymore.

[Xires]

http://www.latimes.com/politics/esse...1&noRedirect=1

Interesting, even after applying money spent on existing healthcare systems, the cost would still be between 50 and 100 billion a year. That's a lot of money.

CA is CA and im all for states passing their own laws, I wonder what the mentality is behind spending tax payer money on illegal immigrants being covered under the single payer plan. Seems like a huge cost that wouldn't get paid back into the system.

Because Democrats have even said that they want "more minority's" in California and this is a good way to do it. When you offer incentives to people (especially ones that don't belong here) then they are going to flock towards you. California has given them driver's licenses so that they would get insurance...only they let the insurance lapse and whenever they hit an American citizen, the cop lets them go and the citizen is stuck with a wrecked car.
They also gave them license to help them vote and lets be real....hundreds of thousands of people's identity are stolen every single year and it's because they are going towards people who need your identification to get into the country, under cut actual Americans in jobs, and then vote Democrat.

Now the American taxpayer in California will get to take care of those millions of illegals who said "fuck your immigration laws...I'm coming over". The flow of illegal aliens need to stop and our visa programs need to be completely overhauled. LESS people need to come in legally...we bring in 1.1 million people per year and we don't need to at all. 17% of the people born in this country are FOREIGN born.
I don't care what all those european nations say about their refugee program...NONE of them are bringing in 1.1 million people per year LEGALLY and on top of that the hundreds of thousands that cross illegally and overstay their visas illegally. Over 700,000 overstayed their visas just last year. This NEEDS to stop. The wall is nothing compared to what actually needs to be done to fix this.

[Independent voter]

Canada has about the same population as California, Canada spends like $150 billion per year at least that's what google is saying.

[Vash The Stampede]

California, Massachusetts and Vermont are interested in single payer, maybe they should group up? California has 33 million, MA has 7 or so million and Vermont has like 1 million.

You know it's bad when states are doing the right thing before the whole country. New York will have $15 minimum wage in 2018, and will have free college. Things that make you go hmm.