As given by the CBO, here and here.
No, this does not include the added costs of our current presidential candidates healthcare promises, this is the cost before those are added.
It reminds me of this challenge from economist Arnold Kling, “Many on the Left argue that other countries have better health care systems with more government involvement. My challenge to the Left is this: see if you can get Medicare and Medicaid to work as well as you believe the French system works or the Canadian system works or whichever you think we ought to be striving for. Only then should you reach for additional government responsibility.”
It is easy to get caught up in numbers and pretty graphs outside of context.
So lets look at this qualitatively, numbers that may not be convenient to display but likely exist. I would say that there has been a significant decrease in employee provided health care benefits in the united states.
Now if you are talking about a working class that can not count on it employers to provide healthcare for their children then aren’t we closer to behaving like a third world country instead of a socialist one?
If employers and corporations are not somehow regulated or legislated to provide healthcare to its employees and dependents then wouldn’t these same households move into poverty? Then requiring government assistance and healthcare?
There was a time, when a working class family could survive and provide their families with healthcare, a home, and even private schooling if they chose.
In the last twenty years the working class has been targeted for elimination in my opinion. If employers provide neither a living wage nor benefits then are they not behind the increased government dependency?
Do capitalist, the wealthy, and middle class actually subjugate the working class to increased governmental dependency?
A couple of comments on your well written post.
First, in my ideal world employers would not have any part in healthcare. So I consider the move towards a reduction in employer responsibility of healthcare a good thing.
Why? The reason is that it is precisely employer provided healthcare that has contributed to the drastic rise in healthcare costs - in other words, it is employer provided healthcare that reduces healthcare affordability for the poor.
Economists explain it this way:
More can be found here.
So if healthcare affordability is your goal, the trend towards a reduction in employer provided healthcare should be celebrated, not condemned.
That’s one thing. The second thing I wanted to comment on is that all political sides, whether the left or the right, to a large degree supports government assistance for the poor. What we disagree on is government assistance for everybody else. For example, the left feels that Warrent Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, is entitled to free government healthcare simply because of his age. The right strongly disagrees.
Or to make a broader example, take the difference between medicaid and medicare. Medicaid is healthcare for the poor, medicare is healthcare for the elderly. Why should the elderly, independent of how much they make, get free healthcare simply because of their age? I have no problem with medicaid (though I have some quibbles on how better it should be ran) but medicare I cannot understand. The basis of healthcare should be on income not on age.
Furthermore, the way things are done now, “Medicare gets the gold (more political clout in the over-65 population) and Medicaid gets the shaft (absolutely no political clout in that population)”. Why do you think that is? The reason is votes. The elderly vote much more consistently than the poor does and as such medicare gets all the financing and medicaid gets the shaft. A clear reduction in ’social justice’, if there ever was one.
This brings me full circle to my original point. Government run healthcare is no solution to the poors healthcare problems - It is inefficient, costly, and will not lead to those who most need healthcare receiving it. This has been the experience of healthcare as it is today, and I have no reason to think it would be any different tomorrow.
If the U.S. is made up of only the rich and poor then you have answered my question, we are definitely on our way to becoming a third world country. The elimination of the working class will mean that class migration will cease to exist and those that have will have more- while those who do not have, will be unable to avoid government dependency.
If this is what you are saying then we obviously have lost our intellectual and rhetorical ability to construct viable healthcare models for U.S. citizens. We would be unable to emulate the healthcare systems of Cuba, Canada, or France since we lack the intellect to assimilate their practices!
Has the U.S. caused its own ‘brain drain,’ by not developing enough of its own intellectuals to take on careers in science, technology, engineering, and medicine? The answer is yes, the lack of high school and college students taking on S.T.E.M. careers is well documented in the literature. This may have something to do with our public education system. We are not educating or cultivating the minds we need to sustain our own healthcare needs.
If we have less people with healthcare then obviously we will not see the frightening shortages we are facing. A finger in the damn, is a perfect analogy for the state of U.S. healthcare today.
I am not saying that…I have not addressed the issue of “The elimination of the working class”, I am only here discussing healthcare and how to make it more affordable.
Btw, with regard to the “elimination of the working class”, I completely agree that our public education bares the bulk of the blame. One of the many reasons why I am an avid supporter of charter schools and vouchers.