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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
Nothing is free, ever, someone always pays for things and the costs are just hidden where you can't see them.
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Of course, but in principle, if everybody is in, the gross costs will also go down. Further, since Americans aren't entirely heartless, no body is proposing repealing the laws implemented in the Reagan era requiring public funding of some ERs and neighborhood clinics, but this actually turns out to cost tax payers MORE out of the pocket than if low-income folks were given subsidized or even free healthcare. Further, when the hospitals and insurance companies have to pay for the care of uninsured, it raises the over all cost for all their policy holders. I've heard many people complaining that their insurance rates are going up, this is true in the short term and over the past several years, but those costs will never go down until more of the uninsured are covered. Basically, as you said, nothing is free, the question is how can we lower the costs for everybody and the answer is bringing everybody into the insurance system, whether through legal mandates, subsidies, or medicare expansion. The combination of the three should over the next few years bring down healthcare costs, and even if it doesn't (such as has been the experience in Massachusetts), at the least everybody's rates won't be climbing as precipitously.
If you ask me the flaw is not i the insurance companies systems but with our current educational system. In Germany doctors make around $90,000 a year, which is absurdly low by American standards, but then again, in Germany ALL public education is free, from kindergarten through medical school, so graduating physicians are shackled with the burden of $250,000 or more in debt like American medical students. Here at UCLA, a PUBLIC school, they charge an added premium of $20,000 a year to their medical school ON TOP of their regular graduate studies tuition. What the fuck is that shit? AT A PUBLIC SCHOOL??? Bullshit. Doctors have no choice but to charge exorbitant rates and fees for their services, because they themselves were gouged mercilessly to get their education. Doctors in Germany are more or less content with their much lower salaries because they don't have nearly the staggering amount of debt to repay. It takes American doctors almost 15 years on average to pay of their student debt. That is embarrassing. We spend over 20% of our GDP on healthcare in this country, conservatives tout that as an accomplishment, the rest of us see it as utter, greedy, almost mercurial waste. Going to the doctor is expensive because becoming a doctor is so expensive. Its a counter-intuitive system we have here, and in part, why in actuality the ACA will never truly work, so long as secondary education costs continue to sky-rocket exponentially. Doctors will get priced out of the system by their debt loads
