THESIS:
The difference between Europe and the US is this. Let’s say that you’re paying $1,000 per month for private health insurance. The government comes to you with a bargain: we’ll tax you an extra $600 per month, but in return you’ll get better health insurance than you’ve got right now, so you end up ahead by $400 per month. Europeans look at that bargain and think it seems like a very good deal. Americans look at that bargain with great suspicion.
Very well said.
Hypothetical Dystopia
I’m going to eliminate every non-essential, expensive program I can find, that includes Obamacare,
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Republican presidential candidate MITT ROMNEY, essentially telling 30 million Americans without health insurance that they’re “non-essential.”
Good job, Mitt.
Let’s see, what would Republicans consider essential?
The military. Tax cuts for the rich. Subsidies for oil companies. Creationism.
Everyone else? Sorry, the Republicans don’t care.
(via liberalbutnotpartisan)
(Source: inothernews)
In Rwanda, Health Care Coverage That Eludes the U.S.
“One key reason that Rwandans are so much healthier today is the spread of health insurance. In 1999, Rwanda’s health facilities sat unused, as the vast majority of people couldn’t afford them. In response, the Health Ministry began a pilot project of health insurance in three districts. In 2004, the program began to spread across the nation. Now health insurance — called Mutuelle de Santé — is nearly universal. Andrew Makaka, who manages the health financing unit at the Ministry of Health, said that only 4 percent of Rwandans are uninsured.
Mutuelle is a community system — premiums go into a local risk pool and are administered by communities. Until last year, Mutuelle’s premiums were about two dollars a year. This system turned out to be untenable — even two dollars a year was too much for a lot of people. (If you are a rural farmer with an income of some $150 a year, you have to spend every penny on food.)
Last year Mutuelle adopted a sliding scale. For the wealthiest, premiums essentially quadrupled, to about $8 a year. Each visit to a clinic has a co-pay of about 33 cents. If you need to go to the hospital, you pay a tenth of your hospital bill.”
(Source: The New York Times)
Obama’s great achievement is not any one element of the health care reform law — not even the now-upheld individual mandate compelling individuals to have health insurance or pay a fine. The important thing is the law’s underlying assumption that every American, rich or poor, should have access to adequate health care.
In the rest of the industrialized world, this simple idea is taken for granted.
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Eugene Robinson, in his column, The Bigger Picture: The Physical and Moral Health of the Nation
Yes. This is the bottom-line point, and it should be the starting point for any future discussions on this issue.
(via bohemiansouth)
View Larger What happens if a state opts out of Medicaid, in one chart
If governors opt their states out of the health law’s Medicaid expansion — as many are now threatening to do — it’s the poorest Americans who would find themselves getting the rawest deal.
