How do we clean up the American health care mess?

I know what you mean, but it still sounds funny to me when you say “introduce private payment” while people are paying significant amounts outside of taxes. :2cents:

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You’ve been caught out already making false claims that it’s in deficit. You’ve absolutely no evidence that NHI increased costs. Costs to who exactly?
Is that another alternative fact you were trying to intoduce?

Then you claim it was great before NHI came in which is simply not the case because lots of people weren’t covered.

And yes it’s a big government run program. It proves that big government run programs can work if implemented correctly. It’s only one of many such national insurance schemes around the world.

Any more rubbish you want to make up?

Huh? I’m a business owner and it’s common knowledge that the NHI was running a chronic deficit until premiums increased in 2013. Just ask any knowledgeable Taiwanese person about the issue.

[quote]Except for the first three years since implementation (1995-1998), annual growth in expenditures in Taiwan’s NHI had typically outstripped revenues. In the period 1996-2008, for example, NHI revenues increased at an annual rate of 4.43 percent while expenditures increased at an annual rate of 5.33 percent.

A major health care reform—the Second-Generation NHI (G2-NHI)—implemented in January 2013 reversed the NHI’s financial difficulties. Prior to the G2-NHI reform, the NHI’s revenue was derived primarily from payroll-based premiums. But payroll represented just 60 percent of total national income in Taiwan. The G2-NHI reform established a supplemental premium base. Supplemental premiums now are levied on six additional sources of non-regular-payroll income, namely, bonuses, rent, interest, dividends, professional fees, and pay from second jobs. With the additional supplemental premiums, the total premium base now covers 90 percent of Taiwan’s total national income. The reform has enabled the NHI to not only cover its annual health care expenditures, but also to eliminate accumulated deficits from prior years. In fact, the NHI now has a sizable surplus, something it had not seen since 1998. The NHI’s sound financial status is expected to last through at least 2017. [/quote] – The Brookings Institute

I wasn’t talking about you Winston but its well known that the NHI is not in deficit.
A simple google search away…

I do find it interesting that there is still plenty of untaxed income e.g.rent that could be chased up to keep it in the black.

Out of committee by one vote:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article138850348.html

The harder a time they have passing this, the better likelihood they’ll be forced to address all the problems.

Last time around, they were supposed to sort things out in reconciliation, but that didn’t happen. Too much unity on partisan lines. Doesn’t look like we’ll have that particular problem this time around.

But still, it’s hard to do worse than what came before.

Don’t let the facts get in the way of your moral outrage, Brian.

Don’t mix up facts and fiction to spin a web made of shit :2cents:

A simple admission that you are ‘talking bollocks and have not even done the slightest research to back up the bollocks’ will do :rofl:.

[quote]
According to the Department of Health, total health expenditures increased steadily over the past decade, from 3.96% of GDP in 1981 to 4.93 of GDP in 1994, but jumped up to over 5.27% in 1995 with the introduction of National Health Insurance. During the same period, the annual growth rate of per capita health expenditures averaged below 10%, but reached 15% in 1994/1995, suggesting that there was a considerable increase in health care utilization and health expenditures with the implementation of NHI.[/quote]

This is from the government’s own statistics. And now, annual healthcare expenditure is over 6% of GDP. Like I said, don’t let the facts get in the way of your moral outrage…or drunk-posting. And again, I’m not against the NHI, so I’m not quite sure what you’re blathering on about (well, I have my theories…).

6% of GDP is a great statistic internationally compared to quality of healthcare delivery.

You really aren’t coming out of this discussion too well. :slight_smile:

I’d just get just get back to posting random bollocks about the US if I were you.

The fact remains that expenditures went up after the implementation of NHI. You said I have no evidence, I obligingly provided it. [quote=“Brianjones, post:189, topic:80578”]
You really aren’t coming out of this discussion too well. :slight_smile:
[/quote]

I provide facts, you provide foul-mouthed tirades. Yeah, not much of a discussion. Who it reflects poorly on is pretty obvious. I’ll refrain from the puerile name-calling though.:wink:[quote=“Brianjones, post:189, topic:80578”]
I’d just get just get back to posting random bollocks about the US if I were you.
[/quote]

See you in the funny papers.

Can anyone explain to me why medication cost more even with insurance in the US than when I pay for the same medication out of pocket without insurance here?

yes, because the drug companies are allowed to do so. Because I believe the politicians are all in the pocket of big pharmaceutical companies and they look out for companies profits more than they care about people.

Trump met up with Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings to talk about just this.

http://www.ntmarkets.com/2017/03/trumps-war-prescription-drugs-todd-horwitz-cms-bubbatrading-com/

Of course the Healtcare expenditure went up straight after NHI was initiated in 1995 as coverage had to increase of the population.

That it’s only jumped from 5.2% in 1995 to 6% in 2016 is absolutely remarkable especially given Taiwan’s growing population and aging population in that period along with more expensive drugs, treatments and medical devices.

Plus a real metric is quality and access to healtcare versus cost. Not just cost. It means nothing of itself.

In fact there is a good argument that costs should increase to allow nurses and doctors get more rest and deliver a higher quality service. There is no problem to tax more grey income to fund those increased costs in my opinion.

http://www.redstate.com/prevaila/2017/03/26/replica-successful-2015-obamacare-repeal-languishing-committee/

There are no price controls in the USA. American drug companies are in it for pure profit all over the globe. They sell worldwide, but cannot sell at a consistent price worldwide, so they jack up the price in the USA where they are legally allowed to do so.

Other countries have price controls and drug companies cannot legally do the same with pricing there. So the American consumer gets screwed and subsidizes medicine for other countries outside the USA.

Plus I’m sure local salary is also a factor in prices here.

That’s backwards. In America the government has been fighting generic drugs by all sorts of devious mechanisms. The free market would make things cheaper.

The Donald negotiating his own deal?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TRUMP_HEALTH_CARE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-03-28-20-17-03

We’ll see,

They wanted to sign the TTIP to force other countries to pay inflated prices for drugs. Luckily that has been ditched.

Luckily we’re expats who live in a country which doesn’t pay inflated prices for drugs, hospitalization, physician care and malpractice lawsuits. If we did we’d undoubtedly be in the same mess the U.S. healthscare system is in now.

Uncle Sam is probably looking into ways to “clean up” that “problem” though à la FATCA but for now we’re okay.

[quote] . . . according to Center for Public Integrity data . . . businesses and organizations that lobbied on health reform spent more than $1.2 billion on their overall lobby efforts. The exact amount they spent on health reform is difficult to quantify because most health care lobbyists also worked on other issues, and lobby disclosure rules do not require businesses to report how much they paid on each issue.

From an industry perspective, it was money well spent. A close look at the health reform bills that passed the House and Senate show lobbyists were apparently effective at blocking provisions like a robust government-run insurance program, and blunting the effect of cost-cutting measures on health care companies. . . .

The number of lobbyists working Congress on health reform more than doubled throughout 2009 from more than 1,400 in the first three months of the year to nearly 3,700 in the final quarter, when attention focused on the Senate bill.

“They cut it. They chopped it. They reconstructed it,” Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University professor of public affairs, said about health reform lobbying. “They didn’t bury it. I don’t think they wanted to.”

The lack of serious cost controls in House and Senate bills are a direct result of health industry lobbying efforts, Zelizer said.[/quote]

Undoubtedly that’s the main problem, unfettered capitalism cectrwcred its pound of flesh st every point of the healtcare continuum. Just like housing nobody can avoid needing healthcare so it’s a captive market.