Guarantee those numbers weren't made up.

$1673 for a 911 call in S.F. They sent 2 trucks each with 2 persons each. That's because of trial lawyers. They overprotect against malpractice.

Cost of transportation one block from the hospital to a nursing facility $511.

I'm with you.

You're right. It's private healthcare with government interference.

As a medstudent, I can assure you that high end specialty wages could take a huge hit and you wouldn't notice an appreciable difference in overall medstudent talent. Medstudents/doctors always like to talk about other career paths that would earn them more money, but realistically when your applying to medschool at 21, your more enamored with the concept of saving lives, reducing suffering or just really, really like human biology.

You can see the truth to that when you look at academic physicians, many of these people are the absolute best in their fields and are probably cutting their salary by 3-5x by not being in private practice. A family friend is in a high end specialty and he makes 200k in academics, he showed me an email from a headhunter offering him 600k at a nearby private practice along with something absurd like 10weeks vacation. He says his colleagues are also constantly getting these offers, but for many people in medicine the things that motivate them don't hinge on salary. (Obviously there are a subset of docs that would jump ship, but there are 10 folks clamoring to get into medschool for each of them)

UHC isn't a theory its already been implemented. The population overwhelmingly supported a democrat to take charge of it and the bill for it was passed through the house and senate to be enacted into law. Some random cherry picked poll where slightly over half the population views it as "unfavorable" shouldn't trump our entire democratic process.

Uh huh, but when it comes to health care there lies the potential that the states will actually cease to exist if they don't (i.e. everyone in the state will be DEAD). How does the precious Constitution address that, I wonder?

BTW the commerce clause trumps your 10th amendment anyways.

I don't know, but like I said, if you are opposed to government health, could you please have your representatives run for office on the platform of ending Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and the military health service because this current position of being okay with government health care up to point X but not up to point X+1 makes no sense whatsoever.

I am definitely in favor of ending those things. This is a simple question really. The supporters of UHC feel they are right so they should be able to force their will onto others (this isn't limited to UHC, the main point of elections is to capture government to force those that disagree with you to do what you want). Instead of it being UHC, make it any policy; what percentage of people need to disagree before it no longer "right" to use force against those that refuse to comply?

So to you a 53% majority is enough of a majority to use force to make the others comply with your wishes. What should be the limits of this force? I am pretty sure there have been times (maybe currently) that 53% of the people would favor some really bad things.

This is a but of a tangent, but aren't you really arguing about democracy?

Once 50+% wants something it will generally be passed in a democratic society.

RR, your view seems to me to be very simplistic. Your only answer to this seems to be: "It's never ok for Government to use 'force' to make people do things.". Except there are many of us that believe that will end up with a society that is significantly worse than what we have now.

So... as a matter of practicality I am in favour of sometimes using force to make people do some things. There's no clear percentage answer.

you guys keep comparing the us to the rest of the world. are we also going to have their tax rates to pay for all this? you think pl cant afford insurance now how bout then?

italy's lowest rate is 23%

Leo - what don't you understand about the US already paying WAY more than everyone else?

Edit: It seems this needs to be on every page:

[/QUOTE]

See how the US per capita spending is almost double the next highest countries?

Support for a public option polled consistently over 60% during the HCR debate. One of the major reasons the left is so dissatisfied with "Obamacare" is specifically because no public option was included.

Are you of the opinion that we need supermajorities to pass any laws whatsoever?

And if you run on that platform, what hope do you think you have of getting elected?

Yeah, democracy sucks, until you compare it to anything else. Sorry but that's old news.

look at france plus a 20% sales tax.
€0 - €5,875 0.00%
€5,875 - €11,720 5.50%
€11,720 - €26,030 14.00%
€26,030 - €69,783 30.00%
€69,783 and up 40.00%

We've been over this. The USA's lower taxes are offset by the amount Americans have to pay in health insurance premiums, co-pays, and direct payments. In a lot of cases its the low tax Americans who actually pay more, especially if they've ever needed any major health care.

When it comes right down to it, do any of you really care how you get health care, provided it's good care? I mean, if I said to you, just pay me like $XX a month and when you need any kind of care at all you'll get it, why does it matter whether I'm a private company or a government? What difference does it make?

Nearly the same for germany, added petrol tax, nicotine tax.....

But we get something for the money, healthcare, nearly free education, relative low rents, relative cheap food......

Bingo. All Americans get for our tax rate is fancy new bombs. People generally forget that health care costs often hold down wages in the US, and people generally don't consider out of pocket costs for care when they complain about the prospect of higher taxes.

Tax rates are a meaningless way of looking at the cost of health care. Say that over and over and over again until it sinks in.

Actual money spent is the way to look at it (Not sure why this is hard). Now - which country is spending way more than any other country in the world???

Found an article on bill for a 911 call in San Francisco.

The actual cost is $1673 per call.

why because private companies cant put a gun to your head and say pay or else you have a choice. private companies cant all of a sudden make fast food illegal because its costing the gov too much to take care of ppl that eat it.
lol at 40% tax at 80k salary. you dont think i could just pay cash for all my health care for 20k a year? i assigned 25% to try and get apples to apples minus health care then assigned 15% for the health care diff.

I don't subscribe to the libertarian meme that the existence of taxes equates to government use of force, just as I don't believe that the threat of arrest is the only thing keeping everyone from murdering each other.

HI TAXES THO

You do realize that with a salary of €80k a person would pay €19.5k in taxes in total based on that scheme?

People get other stuff than healthcare for their taxes.

Not to mention his whole premise that health care is the only difference in spending between France and the US is insane. So we have leoslayer failing to understand how taxes work, failing to understand the differences between the US and France, and failing to understand that how much money a government raises is not the same as how much money a government spends.

with health care the euro pays 32k in taxes. if you take out health care and get it down to 19k you could def self insure for that.
look i hate insurance companies just like everybody else. if i had my choice and money was not an object id likely self insure everything

Yes but some would argue that these health care costs are part of an employee's total compensation package (essentially they are 'wages'). But that is splitting hairs a bit, I guess.