I posted the question about single payer insurance on Facebook. I asked simply what everyone’s opinion was about it, because, believe it or not Buck, I am open minded, and in spite of your irascible nature, when someone (in your mind) won’t listen, I was and I am listening. It just would be nice if you didn’t get your panties in a wad so easily because it is off putting to me. My first line of defense is to fire back at you and that is a great waste of time and of effort. At the very least, on some issues we could agree to disagree….with civility. If I have come at you with guns ablazin’, I apologize.

Anyway, on Facebook I am friends with Conservatives and Liberals alike, although I do not delineate this preference. They are my friends first foremost and that is that.
Because I make it safe for them to share an opinion, I get both sides of opinions. I love that.

A sampling of answers from my question posed on Facebook:

CATO. www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa532.pdf

Nothing good ever came from eliminating competition. Private Ins needs oversight but the fed can’t do it better.

If it happens they will control life expectancy

I believe in single payer insurance. I believe that it will be cheaper for us as a country in the long run to ensure medical care for all and not have to pay for all those that walk into a doctors office or hospital with serious medical conditions because they didn’t have insurance to prevent the illness they now have. I believe that some insurance companies now play God with people and their live expectancy by denying them important treatments and by denying them medicine that a doctor finds vital for their health. Health as with education should never be for profit as these things are dealing with actual human beings and the betterment of our country!

I appreciate your sentiment but we have. A single payer system in Medicare. Read my last post. Those are real data o how. It does or doesn’t work. When you have paid a premium and an insurance company drops you because of an illness, that is a violation of a legal contract. Just like nearly every other failure such as in the. Financial system, the. Gov failed to protect that persons rights against fraud. It is disingenuous for politicians to then say the system doesn’t work. Under the first actions. Of obummer are, my out of pocket premium at my last job increased 50%. I will repeat….only 1/3 of doctors take Medicare. It costs 3x what a private policy costs……I had several non citizen employees who insured their 70 yr old parents for 4300 each. Medicare costs 14000 each. Let cos sell a select what you wish policy, let people buy across state lines, let people create group policies for buying power, the only thing I would put in place is that insurance cos cannot deny coverage of existing conditions……if they can’t do this or make people do a physical, the risk gets spread. Medicare needs to be reverse auctioned to direct providers and insurance cos….and you can bet they will bid that down by at least 50%. Attach the money to the individual and let them pick the best. Insurance cos will scramble because th don’t want to be cut out by direct providers like keiser

one more thing…the education system is not a good example. Cost adjusted for inflation has doubled since 1975. The number of teachers has doubled while the number of students has only gone up 10%. While you commonly hear there are too many students per teacher….it’s 14 per teacher….hardly too many. And, the quality of test scores, the number of science and math sequenced students have both slid. So…both meds and education have risen at a rate much higher than inflation. That’s government. Private schools in the USA average under 7k while public is about 12k. The few charter schools in CA get only 7k, while the std schools get about 12k. Some get extra money such as in Oakland. But the charter schools beat them hands down. The American Indian school in Oakland graduated 100% of their kids to college and 70% went through the math sequence which included 12 th grade per calculous……that is unheard of. So, I still can’t understand why people have so much faith in the gov when all data shows they do almost nothing well.

Not in our schools it’s usually well of 20 per teacher and the inclusion of extreme behavior and special needs makes it very difficult to learn with just one teacher. Your school district is 1200 per student. In NY it’s not anywhere near 7 or 12 K per kid we are not even close to 2K the only schools that have more our private & rich districts.I don’t want the government running my school I want us to locally to be able to run our schools. I just don’t want for profit schools that end up being more concerned with profit than actual data. Also many of the charter schools are no more successful than the public schools but often times they can pick and choose their kids and keep the what they think are undesirable kids out of their schools. In many areas where schools have been closed due to race to the top we are finding through data it’s low income students, minorities and special needs students who get left our of charter schools and they still don’t perform as well as public. Charter schools also often don’t have to take the state tests that public schools do and they don’t spend time prepping like public schools do. Don’t miss understand me I want public schools as it will be the only fair way for a child to be educated I DO NOT WANT OUR GOVERNMENT RUNNING THEM as has been shown over the past ten years with 2 of the most destructive policies in the history of education #NCLB & #RTTT.

I still believe in single payer insurance because you can’t trust corporations to have ethics, morals or to look out for the betterment of our country over profits. That is never good. Capitalism works when ethics, morals and betting a community are at the heart of a company and it’s profits.

hmm…how’d that fanny and freddie work for you? How’s that congressional insider trading and all the other laws congress exempts themselves from work for you? How’d that violation of bankruptcy law work for you when obama stole the bondholder assets and gave them to the unions? many of those bond holders were retired people living on dividends. How’s that 15% of your income in soc. sec. for a paltry median of 12K/yr return for 11 yrs after retirement work for you? My data on schools is accurate and the charter schools in CA dont get to pick and choose kids…..they take anyone who applies first come first serve. Of course the cost varies nationwide and typically rural areas are cheaper to run…my data is nationwide data. The charter schols in CA get half the money because the teachers unions fought against them. They still do much better.

On corporations being unethical……..I’ve been in 6 different companies in the Silicon Valley over 30 years. None has been unethical. ZERO. I’ve been in marketing for many of those years handling all kinds of crappy paperwork due to regs. The laws have become more and more onerous on us to comply with millions of pages of regulations that did ZERO to stop any fraud that occurred during this recent down turn. Madoff was reported for 13 years straight to the SEC and you trust the Gov more than a corporation? Even during this down turn, almost none of the ills that fell upon us were illegal…..ZERO…..they all were approved and pushed by the gov like heroin! Yes….education should be local and paid local. The US Ed dept needs to be abolished. Ethics aren’t created by regulations. And fraud only goes away when people are put in jail. 99.9% of all companies comply with laws and are ethical.

we will just agree to disagree!

yep…..it always boggles my mind when the gov results are slapping us right in the face…..and people still trust the gov. As well as a person in biz for 30 yrs…ya have to wonder what we think when people pick up the media spin and say we’re unethical.

Medicare: I have a medicare replacement policy with Humana. It is a HMO. So far, (4 yrs) luckily I have had great doctors, great treatment and small out of pocket expenses. Medicare pays Humana $700 per month/per individual to manage expenses. Anything over that $$ Humana picks up. The amount of benefit to the DR is the same as medicare. My copay is $5 to my PCP and $20 to specialists. For example: I had my knee totally replaced in 2009. It cost $140,000. Humana did not pay an exorbitant amount to the hospital or Dr., but I paid $150 per day/for up to 7 days total (if I was in the hospital or rehab for a year, I would still pay for only 7 days). I was in the hospital for 6 days and in a rehab hospital for 6 days. I paid $750 out of pocket. I had home care after that, for which I paid nothing. My copays for meds are not extreme. Generics are very inexpensive,most of them $0. Name brands are more expensive. I do not pay for Xrays in free standing buildings (not hospitals), do not pay for blood work, none of the nickel & dime stuff associated with medical procedures. I got a home nebulizer and CPAP machine for $0 out of pocket. I really cannot complain at this moment. It is not the greatest. But I have had good luck with the Drs. At least I look for foreign Drs always and have had good luck. I had a bad mammogram this past year, (which I do not pay for) had to have a biopsy (again no charge), then saw the breast cancer Dr. Had to have lumpectomy. It all cost me $100 only. I think it is a pretty good deal. I know my former employer (prior to becoming disabled) is now toting a $5,000 deductible policy to keep their costs down. Either the employees choose that one or pay through the nose for better coverage. This is the USA ! What is happening in our country? It really is sad. Medicare is what it is. Doctors are milking the system because they are not being paid hardly anything AND they think they can get away with it. Many do. Some get caught. It is the same as other medical insurance. Years ago, I had Blue Cross Blue shield. I had to ask my Dr for my medical records for a lawsuit, it showed that he billed my insurance company for illnesses that I never had. Now what??

in some cases, maybe many, Medicare does ok…..but it’s cost is rising fast and only 1/3 of doctors take it. My doctor is 80….he hasn’t taken a Medicare patient in 28 yrs. has a sign tht says ” not accepting new Medicare patients” ….all his Medicare patients went on Medicare while under his care. With Medicare costs above market, not paying a reasonable fee, putting more people on it will cause more issues. Tax payers pay for this. Patients may not see the costs, but tax payers will see higher and higher costs. Our medicare deduction during our work time doesn’t adequately pay for it. Because many places in the world are socialized, our drug companies sell them drugs at rates well below what we pay. If our gov opened up the world market, drug prices would drop in the USA . And go up everywhere else. Costs of medical have risen more than 2x inflation and continue to do so. This entitlement will crash, just like the rest because no market pressures are driving competition and cost reductions. Same with education which is rising 4x inflation. Why does a telephone that has the power of a mainframe circa 1982 cost $100? Yet medical which uses technology costs just keep going up and up? Why does an MRI which my neighbor does cost 2500 when the machine price he uses has gone down from 30M in 1975 to 1M? Why does he charge only 500 for cash payers? Of course everyone who is on Medicare are afraid of changes…..just like social security. Why is it soc sec has a negative return even for the median contributor? While that same money in a 401 would yield over 4x the money in your pocket over the same investment period? All of these entitlements will fail….it’s only a matter of when. Markets and competition drive costs down, gov drives cost up. We need to use markets and competition to drive costs down and quality up. And relative to your lawsuit….I’m sick of hearing dumb asses like obama talk about an insurance company dropping someone because they get sick…..that is a failure of mthe one thing government should do….prosecute people who violate contracts….if your policy is in force…nobody can legally drop you.