..they have no heath insurance. But bright-idea Bush wants to spend how many BILLION to send man to the moon and spend how much on promoting marriage ? I understand that we all won't agree on the method to insure all Americans can get the medical care they need, but how can anyone justify spending billions on a moon mission instead of addressing issues that challenge millions of Americans each day? When will America make Americans the top priority again? U.S. Advisers Call for Universal Health Care Wed Jan 14,12:19 PM ET By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saying 18,000 people die every year because they lack health insurance, federal advisers said on Wednesday the U.S. government must come up with universal health coverage by 2010. The Institute of Medicine (news - web sites), an independent, non-profit group which advises Congress and the federal government on health matters, said taxpayers are paying for 43 million uninsured Americans anyway -- and footing a much bigger bill than they would if those people had decent health care. "The president and Congress should strive to achieve universal health coverage in the United States by 2010," the institute said in a statement. "Uninsured Americans get about half the medical care of those with health insurance," it added. "As a result, they tend to be sicker and die sooner." The institute, one of the National Academies of Sciences, said it was releasing the report in an attempt to influence the November elections. "This report appears at the beginning of an election year," institute president Dr. Harvey Fineberg told a news conference. He said he hoped health insurance would be a major national issue. "This report ... is our contribution to a reinvigorated discussion," he said. Congress has struggled with the issue for more than a decade. Since 1994, when then-President Bill Clinton (news - web sites)'s comprehensive health care initiative collapsed in Congress, lawmakers have adopted a piecemeal approach to the problem of the uninsured, creating programs to expand coverage for children or make it easier for people to stay insured when they switch jobs. And late last year the Republican-led Congress added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare in legislation that Democrats are already attacking. But lawmakers have not tackled another sweeping initiative. It is costing money, the institute said. "Tax dollars paid for an estimated 85 percent of the roughly $35 billion in unreimbursed medical care for the uninsured in 2001," it said. It said some hospitals had closed because of the burden of having to treat very sick people for free, leaving some communities underserved. "The United States loses the equivalent of $65 billion to $130 billion annually as a result of the poor health and early deaths of uninsured adults," the institute said. "HEALTH CARE COVERAGE SHOULD BE UNIVERSAL" The institute said it would not recommend any particular form of universal health care. Congress may choose to extend the Medicare and Medicaid programs, for instance -- the joint federal-state health insurance plans for the elderly, poor and disabled. But it laid out several principles that should be followed. "Health care coverage should be universal," it said. "Health care coverage should be continuous ... affordable to individuals and families ... affordable and sustainable to society," it added. "And it should be "effective, efficient, safe, timely, patient-centered and equitable." Former Republican senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole agreed it was time for some form of universal health care but said the idea faced formidable obstacles. "How do you pay for it and how do you make it work?" he asked at the press conference. "The federal government can't carry the entire load for everything." Dole noted that some states had begun designing their own systems, and said people also had to take personal responsibility. For instance, he said he discovered a woman working in his home had no health coverage. A Dole staffer later said Dole had bought the woman private health insurance.
All we need is about $300 per month per person, and we've paid for the entire health care system. Not including drugs, though. Of course, nearly 12 percent of the money people pay for health insurance goes toward administrative expenses rather than health care benefits. Medicare's administrative costs are only about 3.5 percent. Just finding a way to get those administrative costs down to what the often inefficient federal government spends would be a way to make health insurance more affordable. The thing is, though, unless there is a compulsory health insurance requirement, there will always be people who simply choose to not have health insurance because they don't want to pay for it (which, in my opinion, ties into the discussions about debt and how people often live above thier means. For a lot of people, paying for health insurance is just not a big enough priority, something that seems wasteful until you need it). Heck, my former mother-in-law didn't carry health insurance on her kids when they were in high school even though she was a nurse at a hospital that offered a very cheap health care plan and she made close to $50K per year working 24 hours per week most weeks (this was during a nursing shortage in the city and the hospitals paid nurses very well, especially the ones who volunteered to work weekend nights). That's not to say that there aren't plenty of people who wish to purchase health insurance but just can't afford it, but I just think you'll never get 100% coverage until it's "free" or otherwise compulsory.
Isn't our deficit this around 17,000 dollars per person in the United States. What's another 300 dollars a month.
The deficit can't be $17K per person. The debt might well be, but unless the deficit this year is $4.2 trillion, that probably isn't the case, especially considering that the total budget is just over $2 trillion. And even for the debt, that's a little high at present. The current total budget is roughly $650 per person per month. So adding another $300 per person per month would be a considerable expense. EDITED TO CORRECT SOME MATH.
And even for the debt, that's a little high at present. Just FYI, U.S. debt is $7+ trillion, and increases by $2 billion per day . http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ <I>The estimated population of the United States is 293,041,617 so each citizen's share of this debt is $23,925.30.</I>
We don't need to add the full amount. We already pay for a lot of healthcare through Medicare and Medicaid. The gov will also create a new tax for businesses that will be offset by their decreased healthcare expense. Not such a big deal.
Nearly $3 trillion of that is what the Government owes itself. Less than $4 trillion is held by the public.
Nearly $3 trillion of that is what the Government owes itself. Less than $4 trillion is held by the public. But how does the government get the money to pay off what it owes itself? Ultimately, in order to get the debt down to $0, it would need to get $7 trillion from the people, right?
That was administrative costs borne by the insurance companies, not including the administrative costs borne by hospitals, etc. I don't know the details. There was an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about it (comparing administrative costs in Canada vs. the U.S.) Just finding a way to get those administrative costs down to what the often inefficient federal government spends would be a way to make health insurance more affordable. Due to the inefficiency of health care, much of those admin costs are for tracking, measuring and improving the quality of care and also to implement costs control mechanisms. I imagine some of that is also for malpractice fees and settlements. W/o administrative oversight, costs skyrocket and quality plummets. [/B][/QUOTE] Like I said, that didn't include overhead, etc. for the hospitals. I don't know how much the insurance companies' overhead and administrative costs go to improving the quality of care at hospitals, etc.
More stats 1 month of US operations in Iraq, during the Spring/Summer 2003, cost: around 3-4 billion. (source: CBO) 10 years of Orrin Hatch's prescription drug plan, cost: around 977 million (source: CBO)
I don't know. If you borrow $50 from your 'going to concerts' fund to buy the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5 set, do you have to get a raise from your job to make that $50 up?
Its more like your parents giving you money for rent for the whole semester and you borrow november's rent for beer in september. Yes you will have to get extra money to pay it back or you will be evicted.
I don't know. If you borrow $50 from your 'going to concerts' fund to buy the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5 set, do you have to get a raise from your job to make that $50 up? If my GTC fund had $50 available, then no. If my GTC fund was already being used for other purpuses, I would now need $50 in new cash to get back to zero overall, I would think. I guess I don't know whether the government borrowing from itself is borrowing from real money it has, or borrowing from money it doesn't have. If it's the former, the debt shouldn't ever be reported as $7T. It should be that we have liabilities of $7T and $3T in assets, meaning a net debt of $4T. Since it's not reported that way, I'm guessing the government actually needs $7T to get back to $0.
It wouldn't be like that at all because the only money borrowed came from the government itself. If I lend myself $1, I technically owe myself $1. I could even write up a promissary note for it to make it all official. But I owe it to myself. If I pay the money back, it merely goes to me again, creating a wash on the balance sheet overall. If the money is paid back, the specific budget accounts would change, the the overall budget would not.
It wouldn't be like that at all because the only money borrowed came from the government itself. If I lend myself $1, I technically owe myself $1. I could even write up a promissary note for it to make it all official. But I owe it to myself. If I pay the money back, it merely goes to me again, creating a wash on the balance sheet overall. But if you borrow $1 from yourself, and then spend it ... how do you pay it back? You have to go generate a new $1 in revenues, right? That's the equivalent of needing $7T from the public to pay back the debt, however the debt is technically accounted for.
I wonder when they started doing that. The OMB's page on the 2000 budget talked about the debt being $3.6 trillion and how it would be paid off by 2018 (based on their then-current projections). But if they included all the debt, the figure would've been $5.6 trillion and would've taken a significantly longer time to pay off. If I can find that again, I'll post it. But hey, either way. Even if it's just under $4 trillion. That's entirely too much (and it is getting bigger every day).
They essentially get the money from us. Or they get the value of the money, at least. By printing up billions of dollars a week out of thin air, the Fed Reserve simply devalues the US dollar currency in order to, among other things, pay off the routine interest on the gigantic federal debt. The same dollars that you and I and Jack and Diane across America have to work hard to get, the US government basically prints up at their own leisure. They are able to do this because there is no longer any gold backing to worry about and because up until now the world has needed to maintain a stockpile of dollars themselves in order to purchase oil. So in other words, the US government has gotten a free ride off the word's float of the US currency. There is a reason why a nickel or a dime or a dollar doesn't buy you half of what it would say just a few decades ago. Most have been trained to accept inflation as a benign certainty just like death and taxes. History, however, has shown that government abuse of fiat paper money always ultimately leads to government larceny/embezzlement of its citizens capital in the form of currency devaluation.
