Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Medicare for all, once you reach medicare age you can't be covered by most employer based plans.
Supplemental medicare coverage is at the individuals cost.

Medicare cost is income based; with a $3,400 to$4900 out of pocket max plus 6000+ per year medicare plus 1200 per year supplemental from private insurance. It works out to 1000 bucks a month for me max, if I don't go to the doctor I can save $4,900 a year. I can get a free supplemental plan with higher out of pocket for things like going to the hospital, lab tests, emergency room visits. People over 65 should plan on paying close to $200,000 out of pocket once they retire over their lifetime on medicare.

If you go out of country you aren't covered so need a policy if you want to travel to third world countries like Canada or San Francisco where they don't take insurance at the emergency room and ream you.

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Originally Posted by joeyc77

Because they still would have to pay for it during the year.

Companies would still offer healthcare benefits as an incentive. They prefer to pay for healthcare vs wages. The government would only cover the individuals portion, which usually is deducted from a paycheck or paid out of pocket.

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Yeah ... no. Companies would not continue to spend money they could choose not to spend and have it cost their employees nothing.

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Originally Posted by Hawkeye15

is your contribution to the savings account a percentage of salary? Any max limits?

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Probably need it to be a minimum percentage, no need to be a maximum limit. The size of the account could be different depending on age or something, but could also be the same across the board.

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Originally Posted by dbroncos78087

If you can only deduct the costs as an individual, then businesses will stop providing the benefit. So the person will be stuck with that responsibility. The incentives you would create will react quickly.

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Why would businesses want to spend more money? Also, it’s not a deduction. You submit the claim based on the amount of money you paid for insurance either out of pocket or as a deduction from your check and you get that amount back from the government. It’s simple.

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Originally Posted by Scoots

Yeah ... no. Companies would not continue to spend money they could choose not to spend and have it cost their employees nothing.

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The reason companies offer healthcare coverage instead of wages is because it’s cheaper for them.

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Originally Posted by dbroncsinmo

Good for you. That doesn't happen at all with the current private system: Public and private hospitals alike are prohibited by law from denying a patient care in an emergency. The Emergency Medical and Treatment Labor Act (EMTLA) passed by Congress in 1986 explicitly forbids the denial of care to indigent or uninsured patients based on a lack of ability to pay. https://law.freeadvice.com/malpracti...l-patients.htm

But go ahead and instill that fear.

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There's also the Hippocratic Oath. I agree, thinking that under any new health proposal there's going to be the ability to refuse service to patients, be they legal or illegal, who need emergency care is fear mongering.

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Originally Posted by Scoots

I used to work in the health care industry and the waste, the red tape, and the systemic obfuscation of cost from the users were all extreme and rife in the system. Since Obamacare was signed it got MUCH worse.

Speaking of regulation screwing Americans ... the FDA's efforts to make sure nobody is hurt by drugs has always failed, and now the average drug costs $3B to get FDA approval, and since the 60s when the FDA got started toward this level of regulatory control the number of drugs approved have dropped quickly and consistently. That extreme cost of R&D and the FDAs likelihood of having it end up being wasted money is a principle reason medications are so expensive.

Also on the "benefits" of health insurance ... when Obamacare was proposed the law was 1/10th as long and the insurance industry HATED it (the health care providers liked it). Over the course of the first 9 months of Obama's presidency the law grew and changed and suddenly the insurance industry loved it. From that moment, when the insurance industry knew what rules they would be working under they started pushing up the cost of insurance as quick as they could, so when Obamacare became law years later we were all used to paying 30 to 50% more for our health insurance.

Health insurance providers don't do ANYTHING for you, they are money men and gate keepers on your health care, and they want you to thank them for it. Why anyone would want to put a layer of crap between themselves and a product they need is amazing to me, let alone that it's a system based on gambling ... and there is never anything corrupt with gambling right?

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That may have been true in the past, but that is not true now:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/10/why-...t-so-much.html

It suggests that, largely, costs have gone up because companies are raising the price of drugs that are already available.

“We found that, in the case of brand-name drugs, rising prices were driven by manufacturers increasing prices of medications that are already in the market rather than [by] the entry of new products,” lead author Inmaculada Hernandez, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, tells CNBC Make It.


The cost of drugs are so expensive because they can be. It's not because of how much they spend on R&D and FDA approval.

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Originally Posted by joeyc77

The reason companies offer healthcare coverage instead of wages is because it’s cheaper for them.

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Spending money is not cheaper than not spending money.

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Originally Posted by valade16

There's also the Hippocratic Oath. I agree, thinking that under any new health proposal there's going to be the ability to refuse service to patients, be they legal or illegal, who need emergency care is fear mongering.

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To try to clarify again ... I wasn't suggesting that would happen or had been happening, I was explicitly saying it should not and would not happen under any plan I was proposing.

And the Hippocratic Oath has been stretched beyond breaking too many times to count, but I get your point.

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Originally Posted by valade16

That may have been true in the past, but that is not true now:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/10/why-...t-so-much.html

It suggests that, largely, costs have gone up because companies are raising the price of drugs that are already available.

“We found that, in the case of brand-name drugs, rising prices were driven by manufacturers increasing prices of medications that are already in the market rather than [by] the entry of new products,” lead author Inmaculada Hernandez, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, tells CNBC Make It.


The cost of drugs are so expensive because they can be. It's not because of how much they spend on R&D and FDA approval.

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The failures of drug R&D and the massive expense are major reasons they are so expensive. Greed is also certainly a reason. And the total lack of transparency of the costs. When I had Kaiser health care the people in the pharmacy literally didn't know what the listed cost of the drugs were ... they could tell me what my co-pay was, but not the booked price. I found that one of the prescriptions I was filling for $50 a month Kaiser was booking an expenditure of nearly $6k a month for ... I don't believe they were actually spending that money but they got to report that they were.

The FDA is part of what is making things so expensive. The lack of checks on cost and the lack of transparency are also part of the issue.

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Originally Posted by Scoots

The failures of drug R&D and the massive expense are major reasons they are so expensive. Greed is also certainly a reason. And the total lack of transparency of the costs. When I had Kaiser health care the people in the pharmacy literally didn't know what the listed cost of the drugs were ... they could tell me what my co-pay was, but not the booked price. I found that one of the prescriptions I was filling for $50 a month Kaiser was booking an expenditure of nearly $6k a month for ... I don't believe they were actually spending that money but they got to report that they were.

The FDA is part of what is making things so expensive. The lack of checks on cost and the lack of transparency are also part of the issue.

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You have a difficult time convincing me that less regulation on a known predatory industry will lead to them being less predatory with lower costs.

The FDA isn’t tasked with the price of drugs. Their job is safety. We can argue whether they do a good or bad job, but they shouldn’t be judged on something that isn’t their job.

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Originally Posted by Scoots

Spending money is not cheaper than not spending money.

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Healthcare coverage is offered in lui of wages. Companies concluded the market has dictated a position is worth X. X includes (wages and benefits). Benefits include healthcare coverage. If companies decided to not offer healthcare coverage, the market would dictate that wages would increase for that position. A company would rather pay healthcare benefits in which they have the option to control and perhaps lower the cost rather than wages which will definitely increase over time. Please learn economics.

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Originally Posted by joeyc77

Healthcare coverage is offered in lui of wages. Companies concluded the market has dictated a position is worth X. X includes (wages and benefits). Benefits include healthcare coverage. If companies decided to not offer healthcare coverage, the market would dictate that wages would increase for that position. A company would rather pay healthcare benefits in which they have the option to control and perhaps lower the cost rather than wages which will definitely increase over time. Please learn economics.

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Healthcare is a benefit offered to employees as an incentive to make them happy employees. When someone offers to pay for something that is being offered for free it is no longer a benefit. Companies will certainly not pay money for health care if the same coverage is offered for free.

It's amazing to me that you are suggesting I need to learn economics while arguing companies will choose to spend money for nothing.

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Originally Posted by Scoots

Healthcare is a benefit offered to employees as an incentive to make them happy employees. When someone offers to pay for something that is being offered for free it is no longer a benefit. Companies will certainly not pay money for health care if the same coverage is offered for free.

It's amazing to me that you are suggesting I need to learn economics while arguing companies will choose to spend money for nothing.

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Again, the market determines what a position is worth to a corporation. Part of that worth is incentives. Companies would prefer to offer healthcare incentives instead of salary. Employees can choose to be in or out of the company’s plan.