We already do:

The money families pay for college now, the money they pay for tuition, they would pay in taxes.

The money families pay for health care would be similar to Obamacare but go to non-profits rather than to profit-making entities for the most part. That is my understanding of single payer insurance based on having lived in four countries in Europe.

Neither healthcare nor college become magically free just because the government allocates the money for them. Rather, the money now paid, let's say for college would be paid to the government, either state or federal, and be paid by the government rather than by the student to the state universities, technical schools and colleges. Rather than pay interest on your student loan, you would pay taxes along with all other citizens, same taxes, according to the tax rate imposed on your income.

That is a re-allocation of money we are already spending.

It would be a collection of new money.

Obamacare is one step toward this system for healthcare.

One of the sad things in recent decades is that fact that we now charge tuition for land-grant colleges in the states lucky enough to have been awarded land-grant colleges. That is shameful.

And California's unwillingness to tax itself to pay for free college tuition is also very sad. We used to do that.

And California's unwillingness to tax itself to pay for free college tuition is also very sad. We used to do that.

whether they still exist; we did a lot of our own cooking and each one of us did chores to keep the house clean) and the tuition was not an enormous hurdle though we paid a little. I did all those things.

But back then, we started to work very early. I was a powerhouse of a babysitter, worked in a drug store as a soda jerk, worked in day care, all kinds of jobs. My philosophy is to take any job and do it. I always learned something from every job I did. But now it is harder for young people to just get jobs the way I did. That makes going to college tougher from a financial point of view too.

...in his SC town hall? (on CSpan)
He said he would pay for free college with a tax on 'too big to fail' banks that sunk our economy. A transaction tax on those derivative products.

http://www.c-span.org/?gclid=Cj0KEQjwmNuuBRDTu5rDjr2kxJsBEiQAWlm6UjgDIwUW6PPTroeBQoFsa_jBFWDpgGMAlolAN1UqPMsaAh-g8P8HAQ

Now he's saying its going for college instead??

on Wall Street would cover college for every person in America with money left over.

They trade a lot and very, very fast. There is a lot more money in America than you and I realize.

this for infrastructure?

You have to apply and have the grades and test scores and recommendations, public service, etc. That would not have to change.

The free education would be in state schools. You can apply to the school that you want to attend.

Both Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements or Military spending. S/S and Medicare are insurance policies. Everyone who works has an amount taken out of his/her paycheck based on what they earn. Like all insurance policies, you receive your money back when you reach a certain age. These two programs pay for themselves and will continue to do so in full until somewhere around 2035. Then payouts would have to be slightly reduced. The payments however could continue to be paid in full, far into the future, if the the 1%ers paid their fair share. During the Reagan era the 1%ers got their S/S deductions reduced so they pay taxes on the first 100,000 or so then the rest is tax free. Reagan also did us "Baby Boomers" a favor when he and Tip O'Neal (Speaker of the House) saw that the S/S Fund would go broke because not enough was being put in to cover the Boomers. So Congress upped the contributions of the Boomers so that the fund would not go bust. It almost succeeded save for Republican dipping into the system to help balance the books. That is why today the 1%ers want to do away with S/S for all. They don't want to pay any "damn taxes" to put back that which they stole.

but it does present an interesting question:

http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-amount-spent-per-year-on-university-tuition-in-the-United-States

higher taxes after they leave college?

Either they pay student loans or taxes but they still have to pay for it.

Assuming a "normal" career path, they'll be making more money later in life. So they will be paying more for education later in life as their tax rate goes up.

You're also effectively spreading the payments over their working life instead of the first decade or two of their working life. That lowers overall payments.

structure the student loan as such?

40 years with ballooning payments at the end?

And it spreads the cost of a student's education across society.

Why should the individual student have to pay his/her college or technical school costs?

It is society that gains from an educated electorate, an educated workforce?

And not all jobs that are worthwhile pay enough for a person to ever make enough money to repay college debt, raise a family and perhaps cover the costs of living as a person with an unexpected disability or a disabled child.

Bernie wants to spread the cost of education across all taxpayers.

I think it is a good idea.

I went back to school at the age of 50 because I needed it in order to be able to work. Without my advanced degree, I was constantly turned down when I applied for jobs because people said I was over-educated or did not have the right education.

For that reason, a lot of people have come to me asking for advice about going back to school at the age of 50. These were generally people who had to quit a line of work because it was physically too demanding for their age or who were not making enough money to survive or who had lost jobs because their company closed, or for example, teachers who were fired for one lame reason or another.

I told them my opinion: you can only go back to school and retrain if you retrain for a field in which you are almost assured enough income to repay your student loans.

That should not be a concern for someone in his/her 50s who needs to retrain in order to adjust to a new job market, in order to earn a living.

Rather than set up a complex bureaucracy to cover the cost of retraining for older people, rather than set up a complex bureaucracy to make sure students repay loans (federal courts used to have piles of complaints trying to collect from against former students who were in arrears on their education loans; don't know whether that is still the case), why not just collect slightly higher taxes on people who are earning lots of money (often because of their education whether paid for by themselves or their parents) during the years they earn good money and fund free education for those who need and want it? It would be very efficient in my view, more so than our current system.

Currently, since I think 2005, our Bankruptcy Laws do not allow a discharge in bankruptcy on student loans. Trump can run a business into the ground, a corporation, and relieve his corporation of its debts in bankruptcy court. In fact, I understand that he has done that. But a student who goes to the state college or university or technical school in his state and borrows money to pay tuition cannot relieve himself of his debts in a bankruptcy court under most circumstances.

The student debt, tuition system we now have is one of the many traditions or institutions in our society that is exacerbating the extreme disparity in wealth that we have. If your daddy was a millionaire, you can go to college and then drop out and live in India in an ashram or start a business or become a nurse in Appalachia and never worry about the money you spent on college. If your dad worked as a bus driver or even a taxi driver or maybe shining shoes or is a plumber or lost his job thanks to NAFTA and you have to borrow, you are for the most productive years of your life burdened and tied down and prevented from doing many useful or even not so socially useful things. Forget about starting a business. Forget about teaching children in Africa. You were born poor. You have to grovel to pay back the loan for your education.

The rich have a choice. The poor do not.

It's a question of whether you think that daddy or mommy's money should give one kid such a huge advantage in life and hold another kid down.

Health care and education should be free for all. No loans. No strings attached. Maybe for housing and food, students could take out small loans, do work-study programs or live in co-op dorms (as I did in college, worked and lived in co-op dorms) or repay the loans with public service jobs like Americorps or the Peace Corps, but I think that is not such a big problem. Paying for tuition is a really big problem.

Student loans are forcing many young people to look for money when they graduate rather do jobs that need to be done but maybe don't pay so well. That's the social value of free education rather than student loans.

but then, I already agreed with you.

This has already been done.

In the 60s - 70s, ANYBODY could attend the State College (4 year),
and graduate DEBT FREE it they were willing to work a part time job.

So we already know what works.
All that is lacking is a Political Party that represents the Working Class, Poor, and Students.
In the 60s, we had one of those.
Sadly, it died in 1992.

getting grants and loans to go to college. And will graduate in debt. I find it so offensive to see all these people wailing " how will it be paid for???"

Hint: that's a Republican talking point, not a great rebuttal here.

Sure - everyone will pay a little bit more in taxes so that we can provide college education to our young people. The benefit is that anyone who qualifies can get a degree, not just the rich kids, and college graduates won't have crushing debt after they graduate.

An added benefit is that tax dollars go to public programs, which benefit the public. Student loan interest goes to private corporations, which benefits private corporations. (But, then again these are Hillary's biggest donors and her most important constituency, so it makes sense that you would support this.)

So, given the two options:

Grossly expensive college education funded by predatory lending practices which profit the financial industry, resulting in many Americans being unable to afford college even though they are qualified

vs.

Free college tuition funded by the public, with no profit margin for corporations, resulting in many more Americans being able to obtain a college education

I'll gladly take the second.

corporations can extract, refine and sell oil and gas and transport cargo safely around the world. Part of their profits should be used to help defer the imposition on our national budget that our securing their trade routes and their investments in the world places on us.

The medical bills not paid by those who do not have insurance is really added to the bills of insurance and absorbed, so yes everyone who gets medical care and pays through insurance and out of pocket pays. There is an old saying, "There ain't nothing from". Somebody has to pay.

They are hidden in our costs.
id
That is not true of college costs. The student a this time. If the student is from a wealthy family, great. But if the student's parents have no money, the student has to either be competitive enough and lucky and smart enough to get a really full scholarship, or his/her life is determined, limited and restrained by the need to replay a loan plus interest.

This exacerbates the disparity in wealth in our society and depresses our economy as people in their beginning years, the years in which they would normally buy a house, furnish a house, have their children, are, if their parents were not rich, required to repay a loan that may be equal to their annual salary or far more than that.

Somebody has to pay.

True. Bernie's view is that society as a whole should pay because in the end it is society as a whole that profits from having a high proportion of educated citizens.

My husband who understands these things says that a penny or so on the speed-trading done by big brokerage houses and hedge funds on Wall Street would probably fund a college education for every American kid who wants it. And I include universities and trade and tech schools as well as training in all areas in the word "college." It's just short-hand.

The only reason we stopped is we became a nation of small, greedy people. (Or at least the majorities that elected our politicians are)

I worked and lived in a co-op dorm. But those alternatives were possible then.

We just don't get it." ----Dennis Kucinich

If we had ONE NATIONAL Health Insurance Policy,
we could put immense pressure on the Pharm Industry and out of control Medical Costs.

As long as we are stuck in a divided, 50-State Health Insurance Private program,
we have no REAL collective bargaining power.

And besides the per-patient savings, we would save a ton on administrative costs. My doctor's office has at least 5 people who do nothing but deal with insurance. Medicare takes about half of one of those people's time.

Yes, covering everyone under 65 would mean a lot more claims, but there's also no battle over eligibility, complex details about each program's differences, and so on.

the truth about our healthcare system.

Doctors, hospitals, and other providers would not have to deal with all the different insurance companies' paperwork, requirements, etc. They wouldn't have to make sure that the patient is covered for something, or how much that insurance company will allow. One set of regulations instead of the mess we have now.

Add to that what happens when you take the profit out of the insurance industry. There are no stockholders to please. There are not the private sector salaries for CEO's and their minions.

Collective bargaining power is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the savings we could see.

....but instead of being run for thee common good, it will be run by private corporations for private corporations

We need to cut the military budget by half or more and put that money into building infrastructure, education, strengthening the safety net, expanding Social Security, Medicare for all, and research.

Also by raising taxes on the urber wealthy and forcing corporations to repatriate their money as well as ending subsidies for corporations and put them into renewable energy.

Yes, and hell yes!

1) All the money is spent on providing services… not profiting insurance based corporations. Look at the difference in cost of delivery. Margins currently to administer through private insurance companies are between 20 to 30 % (depending on where services are delivered) whereas Medicare is between 3 and 4% to deliver same services.

2) Service delivery at the MOST EXPENSIVE end is eliminated because Emergency Departments are used for emergencies, not primary care crises management.

3) Services are easy to administer when all we have to do is expand Medicare. Yes, there are certain things about Medicare that need to be addressed to reduce medical errors which are in place but not fully. Electronic charting is part of this.

It IS common sense JD!

… the vantage point over 40 years helps!

… you can't herd them!

(actually, they's just pix of other cats, as my adorable Mr. Mickey is getting up in his old age of 18.5 yrs.)

We really need to focus more on policy that is this specific and has specific funding like this.

Backwards tax cuts and "revenue neutral" schemes are just ways of concealing the cost and forcing us inevitably into cruel bargains over deficits that make us try to pick which of our darlings we have to put down.

Yes, we need a financial service tax. Yes, we need to tax capital gains properly. And Yes, we need to eliminate the cap on social security taxes.


And we also need to stop giving out tax holidays to rich bastards and corporations that have stashed their profits overseas.

to cover health coverage for everyone, but they just don't see that the money is coming out of one pocket or the other either way.

The company that I worked for had a really lousy insurance policy with very high deductibles and co-pays. They had 50 employees covered, and paid approximately $400 per employee for the coverage. It worked out to be about $240,000 a year just for employee health insurance.

I know that if a company with 50 employees is asked to pay additional tax of about a quarter of a million dollars, they would scream bloody murder, but they are willing to pay this much to the insurance company. It really makes no sense if you pay attention. The same goes for the employees...the co-pay just to see a primary care doctor was $40, specialists were $100, the individual deductible was $6000 and much worse for families. We were lucky to have no payroll deduction for employee coverage, but the families had to pay the full difference between the individual coverage and the family plan---and that was about $100 a week (or $5200 a year). How can you be upset about transferring costs away from the insurance and medical costs to tax costs? Because every person in the country would be covered, the poll is huge, and the costs would be much less than the ones that all of us are paying already, even if we don't think about it that way.

company insurance for a small pool of employees.

The bigger the employee pool, the more the insurance costs are spread across a larger number of people, the cheaper the insurance will be.

We also have a huge problem with companies firing older workers. One of the reasons for this that would never be admitted is the fact that older workers' insurance may cost more even after Obamacare. Older workers may make insurance more expensive for companies that offer insurance.

That is yet another reason for just creating very large pools or one huge pool of people for insurance coverage. Single payer insurance is not just one organizational model. The countries I lived in organized their single payer insurance in different ways. But in each everyone was covered and money was taken from tax revenues.

My husband assures me that a penny or so tax on the fast-trades that big brokerage houses and big investors and hedge funds make would probably cover the cost of college for every American who qualifies academically to go. And by college I also mean trade-tech and other kinds of post-secondary education.

It amazes me that things can be so easy and relatively painless to solve so many problems with our deficit and funding the things that really help people...but it still can't get done.

Defense spending is in excess of $600 billion annually now.

(according to the FY 2015 budget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_budget )


Cut it to $250 billion annually. That gives $350 billion to "play with".


Annual college costs for the US for all students in public universities is about $150 billion.

That is an average of $10000 annually for 15 million college students.

Under Bernie's plan, with the federal government paying 2/3 of $150 billion, that's $100 billion.


We have $250 billion left.

Use $100 billion annually for roads and infrastructure.


We have $150 billion left.

Use $100 billion annually for expanding Medicare (i.e. Medicare for all)


We have $50 billion left.

Use that final $50 billion to pay off some of the federal deficit. Over 10 years, it will fall from almost $500 billion to near zero. Any tax surpluses can also be used to pay off the federal deficit even more quickly.


And all this without drastically increasing the federal budget demands, as it remains nearly the same overall.

tax loopholes.

Furthermore, make corporations pay their fair share of taxes. Right now, 26 companies record large profits and pay no income taxes. GE, Boeing, and Verizon each recorded more than $20 billion profits and pay negative federal income tax. That means not only did they pay zero tax, they even got some federal subsidies on top of their gigantic profits!

That will add much more tax revenue that can be used for various social programs.

WE WILL RAISE TAXES ON THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE THE MONEY, THE RICH. They should pay their fair share.

BUT THERE ARE OTHER WAYS TO ADD TO THE REVENUE:

WE WILL CUT OUT THE UNNECESSARY AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TAX BREAKS FOR THE RICH AND SUPER RICH.

WE WILL ELIMINATE THE TAX HAVENS AND THE LAWS THAT MAKE THOSE HAVENS POSSIBLE.

WE WILL USE NEW OR DISCARDED SOURCES OF REVENUE LIKE A TRANSACTIONS ON WALL STREET.

WE WILL FERRET OUT THE MONEY THAT'S LAYING AROUND SOMEWHERE NOT BEING USED, LIKE FOR EXAMPLE: the 8.5 TRILLION dollars that the Pentagon has apparently lost track of.

We have to spend the money on this. We have it.

Health care is utterly essential for every person in the United States, including those who are homeless, those with substance abuse problems.

If we can pay for all those drones and pay the people who keep the drones flying, we can surely pay for health (including dental care) for every man, woman and child in this country.

It is a question of values.

Many people like to claim that we are a Christian nation. Well one of Jesus' main occupations was healing the sick. As a nation, we need to heal our own sick to the extent humanly possible. It isn't a choice. It is a moral obligation.

Maybe fewer rooms in the new mansions being built on the beach in La Jolla or Malibu and elsewhere would help fund healthcare for some of the poor, working people in East Los Angeles.

Somehow, I think that would be a good thing.

Bernie is for justice. It is a very challenging concept for some but the reason he is catching on as he is is that he stands for basic justice, and people feel the Bern! The fundamental justice and the American values that Bernie stands for.

Love thy neighbor as thyself is the commandment that our country has forgotten to follow.

We'd have less police brutality, less greed, single payer healthcare, women's and children's rights, free post-secondary education and a slew of other excellent community efforts if we just loved our neighbors as ourselves. I think that the Pope would support Bernie on free post-secondary education and single-payer health insurance. No question in my mind about that.

There is such a thing as social morality. And Bernie understands it.

Many great comments. K &R

Like even Vermont who announced they simply couldn't afford to reduce systemic costs by about what billion dollars aka near 50% of expenditures.

This was not responded to en mass with a what the holy fuck are you talking about but rather just swallowed whole and turned into a talking point of pretty much "see it is impossible, even Vermont can't make it work" which is absurd folks but we including Democrats have swallowed soooo much voodoo economics that many or most can't even think straight or even do basic subtraction.

If you spend 5 billion today and go to a system that cost 2.5-3 then my only possible interpretation is you can't afford not to make such a move and everything else is a rationalization to continue to be stuck on stupid.

(yet) overcome the cost issues--and they were MOTIVATED to find a path to success. I think your argument is way off-base:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/01/25/costs-derail-vermont-single-payer-health-plan/VTAEZFGpWvTen0QFahW0pO/story.html

We ALL need to go back to the drawing board and look at all the sources of unnecessary inflation built into the system.

Let me make a basic point, if there were not big money to be made from providing health insurance, there wouldn't be health insurance companies and big for-profit hospital systems and Big Pharma.

So there are ways to keep costs in line if there were public counterparts that were not driven by the inflationary expectation of profits -- but were just designed to provide health care.

why see a doctor when a PA or a nurse will do? Why is that ointment prescribed? Why is that pill so expensive? Could a generic do the job better? Cheaper? The military does this--the civilian sector needs to follow suit.

Now you're fighting with the AMA and Big Pharma--that's a big part of the problem, here. And just telling them "Well, you're gonna have to stop it," ain't cutting it. There's likely to be a huge amount of battling back and forth to make them see reason, and the old guard just might have to die off before a new paradigm can develop. I see this as a long-haul fight.

Many of the little things that go wrong with us could be handled by them.

I'm with Kaiser, and I like the way they do things. It's a little like European single payer insurance.

makes most of the rules concerning healthcare.

but maybe you can answer questions that pop into my mind.

Did they raise taxes already when this went into effect to cover the cost of the single payer plan? When I think of the amounts of money paid to insurance companies by employers and individuals, for premiums and co-pays and deductibles and drugs, then I think that none of that would be needed, that allows for a big tax increase and still a savings to everyone.

Seriously?

But when you have true universal health care---not health insurance, there are a lot of advantages.

1. You will no longer have the premiums involved, so that money could be transferred to taxes. Right now, my insurance premium for the year is more than double my tax burden, so doubling my taxes and doing away with premiums would still save me money.

2. That does not include all the co-pays and deductibles I have to pay for doctors or drugs.

3. Hospitals will no longer have to deal with writing off all the bills that cannot be paid, since every person would be covered.

I could continue, but I am not sure that the people who are opposed to doing away with insurance companies are listening (like the people at Forbes).

The VT plan was totally flawed, and that is because they were NOT making a universal, single payer system like they have in other countries. There plan was not revolutionary, nor was it a copy of other systems that do work elsewhere. I am not going to list the problems with it, since Forbes did a good job. What Forbes didn't say is that this was just another morph of the system we have had for years in this country....health insurance instead of health care.

TRIPLED. That's what the failure was, here. The numbers did not add up. It's not the fault of "Forbes" either. The bottom line is that the math doomed them. You can't have more money going out than coming in.

And that's why the governor of VT--not me, him--abandoned the plan. He looked at it six ways to Sunday, he ran on trying to make it work, and the numbers didn't add up. He had a choice between revealing the awful truth or getting tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.

He wasn't stupid--he knew that people who made no money and paid no taxes would love the plan, but the people who just made a decent wage and were 'just' getting by would be CRUSHED by this. CRUSHED. See, not everybody is sick, they aren't paying all sorts of co-pays and deductibles, so that's not an everyday expense for them--that is the EXCEPTION, not the rule.

Obamacare started out as Romneycare. It is SOP to do a trial run of a program to ensure operability. No one is going to roll out national single-payer without doing a test run first. Just won't happen.

It is called Medicare.

VT didn't even try to do it right.

of VT and a bunch of his liberal buddies helped along by a bunch of left-leaning number crunchers set out over the course of four long years to sandbag/screw over the effort.

But hey, think the worst.

But Obamacare does not cover everyone. That is the problem. If we could have had a really affordable public option that covered everyone not covered by the qualified plans, then we would have had total coverage, ant this would not be such an issue.

The problem is whether we have the right to say to our fellow Americans that they don't have the money or the job or whatever is required to be able to pay for the Obamacare insurance so they don't get to have health insurance.

As someone mentioned above, when a person has to have urgent and necessary healthcare, they go to the ER, and the hospital swallows a loss for the care.

Similarly, if someone is uninsured and gets care, they can go into bankruptcy and renege on their medical debt. That happens a lot.

We have community clinics, but they are limited in their services.

I remember as a child going to a community clinic to have a tooth pulled. My anesthetic was ice water. Really. Ice water.

We can do better than no healthcare, no family doctor for so many Americans.

Single payer would cover those not covered now. I prefer non-profit providers, but even the system we have could somehow be regulated so as to provide care for all. Everyone needs healthcare.

We are not poorer than many other nations that provide universal healthcare. If not through single payer, how would you insure everyone?

Or do you think that is what is impossible?

And if you think that is impossible, how do you justify not insuring some, mostly the poor?

I'm not talking about forcing people who have religious objections to medical care to be insured.

I go on the train to San Diego. Every once in a while I see Amish people traveling on the train with me. I asked the conductor why they were on the train in California, and he told me that they go to Mexico to get medical treatment. Now I wonder why they do that? They should be automatically covered for health care in the US if they are going because they can't afford American health care. That's my opinion.

He is deliberately taking his very liberal message into the South and areas in which Democrats don't win as much as we should. That's great.

All these nice little digs at the left -- INCLUDING at the guy who an architect of OBAMACARE.

On my cable TV system Fox News is at channel 202. Just saving you some time for futrther research,

Crabbing about the source doesn't change this simple and plain FACT--the NUMBERS didn't add up.

Cripes. This isn't about "digs." It's about MATH, and math is not petulant.


http://www.vox.com/2014/12/22/7427117/single-payer-vermont-shumlin

money back. In this country, too much of the tax money goes for defense.

Also programs that are for everyone regardless of income in Europe, like Kindergeld -- a small amount of money paid per child for every family -- are not income tested. It is so much better if everybody gets the same help and then people who have more money pay higher taxes. It works so much better than needs-basing all benefits. There were also needs-based benefits in European countries, but everybody could say they both paid taxes and received assistance from the government.

The European system works well. It really did not seem limiting or intrusive at all.

We could change doctors every three months in Austria as I recall. My youngest had a difficult problem and we had to look around and try doctors till we found one who had the experience to help her.

That's why they go elsewhere for care. They hold CHARITY events to raise the money to go abroad for care.

The very rich are able to preserve their wealth, and the poor and lower classes have a helluva time getting ahead. The system has flaws. It's the same everywhere--rising costs, a gap between wishes/expectations and the ability to deliver what people want, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/05/nhs-finances-crisis-rising-demand-budget-cuts-30-billion-pound-deficit-2020

They have to swallow their losses.

Also, was the state acquiring the money now being paid in Vermont by individuals and companies, all insured people, and applying that toward the cost of single payer?

If everyone in Vermont is now covered by insurance as they should be, as they would be in a country that is just, and the money now being used to cover them in for-profit insurance plans is taken and applied to buying single payer insurance, say with non-profit companies (doesn't have to be government run but could be), then it is only a question of collecting enough tax revenue to pay for the currently uninsured.

And that is being done with Medicaid or in California Medical programs to some extent already.

This story does not make sense to me. I don't think they were organizing their single payer system very well. A lot of people want to keep their private insurance that they get with their employer or that they buy. They should continue to have that option, but the companies should be brought under the single payer umbrella and become non-profit.

Every European country does this. And they have single payer insurance for less cost than we pay for our insurance. Yet they cover everyone, and we don't.

I lived in four European countries (my husband and sometimes I were working there). We enjoyed the single payer insurance systems although, in the UK, we did not discover until we were about ready to leave, that it existed. We were so trained to think in American terms, that we never thought to ask about a national health care system.

The system worked very well in all the countries in which we lived.

We need it here.

The experience of Vermont makes me think that they were doing something wrong. Other countries take this for granted. We can certainly afford it. The results of our healthcare system are not particularly impressive. They are doing a better job and for less money.

Shame on us.

They were MOTIVATED to make it work, and the numbers just refused to crunch.

I used to live in UK, and if you call that "success" I have a bridge for sale. A four hundred dollar refrigerator in USA costs four hundred POUNDS in UK--and it's smaller and crappier. Thirty dollars is way too much to pay for a pizza hut pizza and drink in London. Someone is paying for that national system, and it's not the uber-wealthy---they moved to Ireland or USA, or Switzerland, or Dubai, though some were enticed back home with tax breaks for the rich. And some benefit from quirky laws that benefit the wealthy.

It's the British equivalent of Joe Sixpack who is shouldering the biggest burden and he shoulders it every time he pays the oppressive VAT on basic purchases. The look of wonder on the faces of British tourists visiting places outside their country isn't due to the fact that other countries are more "modern"--often they are much more backward. Their look of awe is due to the cheap, cheap PRICES. I have friends from UK/Wales/Scotland who are proud US citizens now--and they will never go home save for a visit. They'll tell you--the prices are outrageous. The costs are absurd. They are economic refugees, and they aren't rich, either--they're solidly middle class.

Shame, my big left foot. If you don't think the poor--those "lower classes" ( for the irony-impaired) are pinched, constrained, kept down, and limited--encouraging a bogus "class system" of forelock-tugging serfs with broad accents who think a big night out is a run through the KFC Drive-In, because they pay so much for essentials that are taxed to death, and their "betters" (more of that because some won't get it without it) with posh ones--then you're only looking at one side of the system.

And even at that, yes, essential care in UK is covered, but why, then, are people from UK FLOCKING to India for hip replacements, and to USA for cerebral palsy operations? Why is "private insurance" on the rise in UK? Maybe because the wait lists are outrageous in some cases, and in other cases, the treatment is just not available?


http://www.businessinsider.com/india-is-becoming-a-hub-for-medical-tourists-2014-6

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/feb/01/health.india

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/10178774/How-selective-dorsal-rhizotomy-SDR-allowed-a-cerebral-palsy-sufferer-the-chance-to-walk.html

The solution is not simply to "tax the rich." They won't stand for it--at least not at the usurious levels that are being proposed. They can eventually be convinced to give a little more, but not enough to make up deficits that are equivalent to an entire state's earnings over the course of a year. And they'll get their way, too, because they have money and they know how to spend it to keep it. And push come to shove, they'll offshore it, and that won't help anyone. Even "liberal" icon Alan Grayson is on his rich high horse on this score--amazing how no one here is going after him for his perfidy on this issue. But my point is this--you can't get him to play ball, you're pretty much screwed.

That whole "Robin Hood" meme is a tunnel-vision exercise doomed to failure (and let me make it clear, I am not rich, not even close to it--and what little money I have I spend on my family). The solution is to bring costs down. The AMA has an interest in limiting the number of doctors in USA to keep their salaries high. They like to also limit who can touch a patient and how much guidance or medication they can give. They like to make simple things difficult, to induce an aura of rarity around what they do, in order to keep them in the stratosphere in terms of their paychecks.

Until the system is fixed, and costs are lowered--and who knows, maybe it'll take those dreaded ROBOTS to do that--we're at the "as good as it's gonna get" juncture. I'd like to see it happen, but I simply do not see a PATH to it. Money doesn't grow on trees, and you're not going to gouge the wealthy for it. They won't sit still for that.

If VT, with it's higher-than-average cost of living, more generous paychecks, and homogenous population full of "healthy lifestylers" can't make it work, how will poorer states like Mississippi ever even start to manage?

We hear a lot of complaints about their system, but then i loved the French, German and Austrian systems. No problem. Did we pay high taxes? Yes. But we got free half-day kindergartens, free medical and dental care, excellent schools, inexpensive transportation, lots of good things. My husband was teaching. Teachers who were citizens got subsidies for buying houses. We, of course, were not of course eligible for that.

It's a matter of values.

If people are comfortable with the fact that many poor people, good people who are poor, whether in Vermont or Mississippi live without being able to see a doctor when they need to, I just don't understand how they can look themselves in the mirror.

If people think it is OK that one talented kid graduates from college debt-free because his mom and dad have lots of money, while another talented child graduates from college debt ridden because his mom and dad have not money, then again, I just don't understand.

Everybody needs health insurance, health care. For the good of our society, talented people need education if they want it.

It's a question of values. If a person's values are me, me, me, well what happens to the society around that person? It ends up with a huge prison population (who get medical ccare at the taxpayers' cost at least), with a gun mania and an aggressive population prone to mass murder, always, of course, the work of someone with "mental problems."

We pay for the lack of compassion and balance in our society. We pay dearly. And our reluctance to take care of each others' needs reflect our lack of compassion and balance.

Oh, but at least we always have lots of money for military adventures, don't we? And diplomatic giveaways called "trade agreements."

poor get marginal care they have to wait forever for.

It's all going in the wrong direction, and that's down to RATIONING. That's really the bottom line, here. Until 'medical care' becomes something that everyone can access, instead of a sterile and exclusive visit to a legalized Big Pharma drug dealer, who has the knowledge and talent to remove a tumor when all you really need to see is someone who can cut off a wart, we're never going to fix what ails us. And that applies not just here, but in Europe and other nations as well.

I won't deny that our health care distribution system sucks, but there are other countries seeing the same issues creeping up on them, too--and they pay a lot more for crap service.

More money might help, but throwing money at a problem (and again--the military is heading towards pre-WW2 end strength--which was smaller than the military of PORTUGAL at the time) is not the only answer. You need to get a handle on costs. We've had no incentive to do that, at least not yet.

Claire McCaskill was talking tonight about a Constitutional amendment to get money out of politics. Maybe we need one to guarantee health care, too--that will slice a lot of the gross profiteering out of the game, perhaps.

One you mentioned: the use of nurse practitioners for the small work, caring for infected wounds, even some sore throats, etc.

Two: cutting the education costs of doctors by offering free education to them and then lowering their salaries since they don't have enormous student loans to repay. This would also help to attract more students to the professions that support doctors.

Three: making health care insurance companies strictly non-profit as a transition to single-payer. When I was growing up, a lot, if not most health insurance was non-profit. Take the profit-making out of hospital ownership and the processing of health insurance claims, and we will soon have more people insured.

Remember, the goal is to make sure everyone has access to healthcare/health insurance. That is the important thing. The competition we now have between hospitals and health insurers is not, in my opinion, that bad. It is the profit-taking and the fact that we have so many people without insurance or access to good health care.

The few have nose and boob jobs for purely cosmetic purposes while many have no insurance or cannot pay the co-pays and deductibles on the policies they have.

We can do much, much better.

If we provide a public option for the currently uninsured, it would be a good start.

Typical "OMG!!! Republicans won when we tried to be like them! We better be more like them!!" response that our party has given for the last 40 years.

a curious definition of the term.

You can't get blood from a stone.

The ball got rolling in 2010, and the economic modeling work started shortly thereafter--well before anyone was worried about 2014. So your premise is just way off. They FINISHED doing the math in 2014, they didn't START doing it then.


http://www.vox.com/2014/12/22/7427117/single-payer-vermont-shumlin

We can do that everywhere especially in the South. The number of people without health insurance in Texas is appalling.

In Massachusetts, the number of insured people is very high.

There is a chart of this. I posted the link below. I was disappointed to see what a large percentage of people in California lacks insurance.

To say nothing of the rest of the defense infrastructure?

The "problem" is that there's no one holding those "cut the budget" scissors who is inclined to do as you flippantly demand.

It's the Military - Industrial - CONGRESSIONAL complex, as Ike tried to warn us.

The President has no power in that regard.
He's not a king.


All appropriations begin where?


Answer--Ways and Means...in the HOUSE. They control the purse strings of our nation. Not the POTUS. And who controls the House, these days? Even if we were able to take it back, we'd need more than half to see things your way. Our military, right now, is tracking on a glide path to become smaller than it was before WW2.

Back to the drawing board.....problem NOT solved.

By supporting people who want to cut the grip.

This is NOT rocket science.

The people who have the ABILITY to 'cut the grip' are there--not in the Executive Branch.

You are correct that it is a multtifaceted challenge. However Sanders repeats and emphasizes that in his speech and interviews every time.

We import most of our consumer goods. We don't even make much fabric, not even much cotton any more. So if the military is also smaller, that would not be anything different.

Thank heavens. A lot of doctors volunteer at clinics, and that is a good thing.

We should raise taxes to pay for college up front and forgive a lot of the unpaid student loan debt.

at a cost of twenty grand for eight months. Of course, that kind of stuff fuels their bottom line and enables them to build more high-end dorms and recruit more students with fluff and shit that has nothing to do with actually learning.

Private colleges, especially, are more in the business of supplying "luxury campus experience" to students than actually teaching. Students are choosing schools based on the quality of the dorms rather than the quality of the faculty. Parents are shelling out for this rarified experience, too.

We export plenty, too--the US economy isn't in danger of collapsing. No, we don't have poor people picking cotton, or poor people standing in hot, sweaty factories making fabric anymore, but that's not a bad thing. IMO.

Shouldn't be the rule for students who commute from home. I understand that the university doesn't want 17-year-olds living off campus on their own for the first time in their lives. But if the students can live inexpensively at home, they should be allowed to cut their costs.

And that was 10 percent. Liberals and conservatives both hated sequestration. So how do you cut the military of 10 percent was unpopular?

Thanks for the thread, JDPriestly.

that is added on to our homeowners, auto insurance and direct it to the pool of funds.

costs would be pretty much a thing of the past. You would still have the disability insurance costs, but all of the hospital and medical care aspects of a lot of personal injury liability would be included in the single payer coverage. That would save a lot of money, I think. It would cut they paychecks of personal injury attorneys, but all for the better.

"How are we going to pay for it?" is right wing rhetoric.
That's what citizens pay their congressmen for.We tell them what we want and the government policy wonks figure out how to pay for it. At least that's the way it's supposed to work. .

Its the will

There is plenty of money around to expand Medicare to create a National Health System.

Is there a detail of Senator Sanders, (I) from Vermont, complete proposal on this? I would enjoy reading it.

Thanks in advance.

I think we are years from this happening, but at least the dialogue is there.

We are already paying for universal health care--we just aren't getting it. Paying for health care is one of the few policy issues where doing the morally right thing is also doing the cheapest thing. Same for ending the War on Some Drugs.

So there is plenty of money, if we just stop letting the insurance comapnies grab 2/3 of it on the way to the providers.

These questions raised by the DINOs/corporatists/Hillarians are stupid. What's more, no matter how many times you answer them, they still repeat the question week after week.

Finally, these "how will you pay for it" moans are exactly what hate radio is always asking. Hate radio and the DINOs