Let’s try this a different way for the American audience.
The UK officially has three parties. But in practice only two parties rule. The Liberals side with the main party and modify their behavior. The Liberals never rule.
We have that now with the two parties we have. The third party is missing. So we have half the discussion.
Also reds in the UK versus the US could not be more different. Climate change, the public option etc…The UK does better industry and pay wise with Labour.
Re: Every other first world country
Is not correct. Germany has a two tier insurance system.
UK enacted their national health care system right after WWII. That was an era when socialism was in vogue. We are well aware of the limitations of that system. Including its current staff shortages.
I think we should have universal health care for all but restricted to basic care. Higher premiums for extras like private hospital rooms. How do we pay for it? Can we get it through Congress?
The UK and US have been under the supply-side ideology for around 40 years. Offshoring factories creates a decline in the national wealth. The opposite is happening now for the UK and US. We can afford much more over time.
Demand in a demand side economy begets wealth. Paying more and increasing benefits creates more wealth.
The debt to real GDP ratio drops for decades regardless of the nominal amount of debt. Unless a putzzzz decides he is doing fantastic and does not know he is blowing up the system.
Medicine can not be rationed the way you are describing.
But which lie will “play in Peoria”? The “JCs” are easier to satisfy, because their wants center around self-enrichement.
Steve
Bill Clinton answered that in dozens of ways.
80% of the voters are not blue or red. They think it is all lies. 65% of them vote on price stability. The remainder do not vote.
I think they believed that if they got abortion access into their Constitution that it would be safe even if they voted in anti-abortion legislatures. And they probably voted for those people for reasons aside from abortion. Of course, not sure this worked in Ohio, which did the same over a year ago, with the GOP saying “this isn’t over yet”. Ummm, yes it is, it was voted into your Constitution. But who knows? The GOP does not appear to be very concerned with rule of law anymore. It’s all anger and retribution. Nothing else. It’s these emotions that led to the Third Reich.
Missouri is a very red state except in its two urban areas plus its two largest college towns.
Voters apparently wanted less restrictive abortion rights but still voted for red anti-abortion representatives. Red candidate for moderate abortion rights are rare. Electing a blue candidate almost impossible.
Republicans have a super majority in both houses of the state legislature. They can easily overcome a veto if they vote together. But recently conservative sector known as Freedom Caucus has blocked some legislation by filibuster.
Laws to limit abortion rights in spite of Amendment 3 are high on the list of plans for the next legislature. Ballot measures are easily ignored or undermined. Courts refused to enforce previous anti-gerrymander ballot issue.
Now we have proposals to make ballot issues more difficult to pass. And plan to elect state supreme court justices rather than Missouri Plan which appoints them from an approved list with automatic recall vote every 10 years.
Dr Glaucomenflexcken comments that regardless of one’s personal reaction/feelings, there is now a broader, open, national debate about UHC and health care industry practices, that was not happening prior to the killing.
Is there a silver lining to this cloud?
ralph
The right is one of our parties. The center supporting the right is the other party. The left is not represented in the US.
It is in the UK. The right in the UK are more to the left than our centerists.
It is not a matter of breaking the law. The murders of innocent people are happening in the US just because it is profitable to ignore the damage done.
No, because it will all be covered up, and it will be business as usual.
time warp time. I watched the Stewart/Cramer interview the night it was on. Stewart took the financial media apart. Cramer was very contrite. Turned on bubblevision the next morning. Same old Cramer.
We did get the CFPB, but that is on the DOGE kill list now.
Unfortunately, the original Stewart/Cramer interview no longer seems to be on youtube. I did find this report about it. Is the outrage directed at the financial industry one bit less vitriolic than what is directed at the insurance industry now.
I see this as a good thing. Its a subject that needs some attention. Many have complaints about insurance companies, but most are satisfied with their insurance coverage.
I think we need some stats. How many coverage claims are denied? Are they more than reasonable? Are they aribrary?
Perhaps we need to revisit the rules. Maybe its up to Congress to look into it and decide.
Sorry about the murder aspect. If it draws attention to a problem that can be ok. Perp should still be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Or states. Insurance companies generally, and health insurance companies specifically, are typically subject to state regulation, and most states have a pretty established regulatory framework to handle disputes over health care coverage. They usually have a government agency (a “department of insurance” or something similar) that has oversight over health insurance claims.
Good point. But Medicare and Medicaid are both Federal mandates. Congress can set guidelines and minimums.
iirc, the ACA limits health insurance companies to a 20% skim. At the time of it’s passage, I was reading about how high the skim rate pre-ACA was. iirc, the article named one company, in Florida, that skimmed 60%.
The individual mandate was repealed some time ago. Any bets the skim rate cap will never be repealed?
Steve
Of course. That’s the core of the ACA. They could wade into the nitty gritty of claims administration and denial procedures, if they wanted to as well.
But it doesn’t have to wait for Congress - state governments are core regulators of health insurance, and have the ability to set/change the rules governing claim evaluation and disputes over denials.
And how many states are controlled by advocates of “pro-growth” (translation “unburdening the JCs”) policies?
Specific examples: Michigan used to have the strongest regulation of hot dogs in the country: 100% skeletonal meat only, no ground up lungs, spleens, or snouts. In the 70s, the meat packers whined about what a “burden” it was to produce hot dogs that were actually all meat. The reg was repealed.
Specific example: Michigan had a law that retailers had to mark the price on every item on the shelf, so, when the purchaser got home, they could compare the marked price with the price they were charged. “Too much of a burden” whined the “JCs”, so that reg was repealed too.
Steve
I think it’s unlikely it will be repealed.
The “skim rate” (the net cost of health insurance as a percentage of coverage) in 2008 for all private insurance was about 12%. It’s since fallen to about 10%. FWIW, that’s about two points higher than that of Medicaid (8.1%) and four points than Medicare (6%).
That might seem low - but as was discussed at length when the ACA was being passed, the really high “skim rates” were in the individual market. Most employer-based group health care plans had relatively low administrative costs. Employers had a lot of incentive and a little more market power to push back on those expenses and most large employers had the option to self-fund - which have very low administrative costs indeed.
Since most people with private insurance are in those self-funded plans (about 2/3 of employees in group plans), the overall market had more modest “skim rates” even if individual carriers/companies that focused primarily in the non-group market had very high ones. Advocates for the law talked about the really high skim rates - but those weren’t the plans that most people were in.
Since most of the major players don’t have (and never really had) “skim rates” that were above the cap, there’s probably not much political juice behind any effort to get rid of it.
This is true. But a person buying coverage on his own, as you said, has very very little bargaining power.
Take an extra $1,000/year off of each of those 21.3M people, and it will start to add up.
Steve
I mean - sure? That’s about $21 billion. Total private health insurance expenditures in 2022 (last data available) were about $1.3 trillion, so that’s would be about 1.6% of private insurance costs.
That 1.6% of insurance company costs would be 100% profit. US health insurance companies average 3-6% net profit, over recent years. A 1.6% bump would be roughly a 25% to 50% increase in profit.
Steve