Originally Posted by Sini
Originally Posted by Kaotic

Can you define the limits of "access"?


Typically, countries where universal health care is practiced use some variation of "healthy years per $" metric. Similar approach should be used here. For example, I don't want to see multi-million dollar end-of-life treatments for seniors, but kidney transplant for a young adult might be reasonable ask. Personally, I want to see two-tier system - basic medicare-like system for everyone, then premium insurance or fee based medicine for people willing to pay.


This is where we disagree. I think that opening up insurance markets across state lines will foster competition thereby bringing down the costs of insurance for everyone. Sini thinks it is the government's responsibility to provide that coverage for each citizen, thereby forcing those who pay taxes to cover everyone who doesn't.

I'm actually not completely against Sini's idea of basic health care provided by the government, but don't we already provide that in the form of medicaid (let's pretend for a minute that I'm completely ok with how that is run)? Can the impoverished not apply for and receive medicaid? Wouldn't that cover the basics?

I think we've all seen just exactly how that works with the ACA (note, the first "A" is for affordable) which has increased premiums by over 140% for the average family. All those healthy people who were supposed to prop up the system have decided that it's cheaper to pay the penalty than to get insurance. Who can blame them? I am a 40 year old non-smoking male with no medical conditions and so far this year I have paid $2,168.14 for my health insurance. Compared to ~$1,800 this time last year and ~$1,600 to this date in 2015. Why wouldn't a 20 something choose to pay the fine? I probably would have when I was younger and invincible. It's also worth noting that I have had health insurance (other than my parents') since I was 19 and started one of my first jobs at Wal-Mart. Yes, great big evil Wal-Mart offered health insurance to a peon making minimum... Oh wait, they also never paid me minimum wage. I started there making a couple dollars above minimum wage. At which time I was living with two roommates, completely independent of my parents and paying for college (while choosing as a rational human not to have children). But I think I'm heading down the "living wage" road and getting distracted.

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