Reimbursement is regulated through uniform rates. The financing is supported by employers, employee contributions, and personal income taxes. The working population has twenty percent of their gross salary deducted at source to fund the social security system.

20 percent of their gross salary JUST for health care. TWENTY percent.

Health care is not free…..and the democrats are going to slip thru a mindbogglingly expensive plan and saddle America for ever with socialism and extremely high taxes.

Frankly America cannot afford health care…Period. We cant balance our budgets so why should we have health care for all? Truth is we cant…not without going bankrupt.

Already there is a lot of cost-shifting from public plans – Medicare and Medicaid – to families enrolled in private plans. Private plans do not compete with private plans on a level field. For example, public insurers can enforce contracts using criminal courts, whereas private insurers must resort to civil courts. Unlike private insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid cannot fail; they are backed by the U.S. Treasury. Government can use its monopsonistic power to set its own prices, while private insurers cannot.

According to a 2002 study, the French system was more than 76 percent publicly funded. Yes, due to rising health care costs everywhere, private “complimentary” plans are on the rise there, but these are only boutique plans. They do not compete with the government to provide the large “basic” coverages. The public plan has no competition within its domain. Then, private insurers compete against other private imsurers for the leftover, complimentary market.

In contrast, the Dutch model is public funding, paid to private insurers. Again, no competition between private and public plans. I’m still not seeing much evidence that private insurers can compete and/or coexist with government in the same market.

Also, I haven’t seen anyone here make a slippery slope argument, such as “a public plan will inevitably lead to socialized medicine.” Actually, the path to social democracy is being laid out clearly in front of us and health care is moving in that direction: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/deficit.jpg. But, yes, if the American people have the will, they can go back in the other direction. It’s just that it’s a lot harder to go in reverse than forward.

and admitting that this will drive private insurers out of business and ultimately result in single payer system

Advocates for single payer may hope so and some on the right may fear so, but I think that the evidence of systems currently in operation show it to be unlikely. The French have had their system for decades and yet private insurers remain and even thrive. The system proposed here is more limited in scope than is the French system. The same is true in Germany. The same is true for people in this country covered by Medicare.

The quote from Obama expressing support for single payer was from 2003. I think it quite possible that his position has changed in the intervening years.
Later he supports moving away from employer provided insurance to something more portable. As mentioned earlier I think this would be best, but is not a political possibility at present.
His comments (out of context) are interspersed primarily with an activist for single payer with no clear connection to Obama or the legislature.

Yes, it was, and it was certainly treated that way by critics.

Two separate points. The fact that the CBO has been quite consistent and has not held back information quite damaging to the party in power then or now indicates to me that they are considerably less partisan than you implied (“the Democrats’ own CBO). The most common political use of CBO reports during the Bush years was by Democrats pointing out the disparity between WH predictions and CBO predictions (this while Republicans still controlled congress). If the CBO reports comported with WH predictions they were ignored by Dems (or dismissed as partisan) and if they strayed from WH predictions they were trumpeted (the inverse was also true). I predict the exact same responses now with roles reversed and lo and behold initial returns look promising for my prediction.

Come on now. Was it the Republicans’ CBO 3 years ago? No, and it’s not the Democrats’ now.

Yes, it was, and it was certainly treated that way by critics. Yet somehow the reciprocal treatment now is intolerable?

Anyway, any entity which claims to be non-partisan should be treated with skepticism. People For the American Way claims to be non-partisan, as does the National Rifle Association and MoveOn.org. Let’s not be (or pretend to be) naive.

And if you don’t think that the people who work at the CBO know which side butters their bread at any given point in time, I think that’s naive.

This does not mean that the CBO numbers are wrong or intentionally biased, just that we should consider them only as part of the available information and remain open to new analysis or questions about methodology and assumptions. Appeals to supposedly definitive and unbiased sources are usually the province of the intellectually lazy.

I’d be interested to hear your response then to the following videos which indicate that the plan being pushed right now is a thinly veiled attempt to incrementally impose a single payer public health care system.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/12/video-the-public-plan-deception/

http://www.verumserum.com/?p=6413

If the people who developed the current plan, when speaking to friendly audiences (those who favor single payer), admit openly that they know that such a system can’t be sold to the public so they should instead create a Trojan horse of a ‘competive’ model with public and private options- and admitting that this will drive private insurers out of business and ultimately result in single payer system, then why on earth should we believe that Obama and the Democrats who support his plan aren’t attempting to do exactly that?

Under the current proposals from what I’ve read the plan will insure the roughly 39,000,000 Americans who dont have insurance now but let another 36,000,000 fall thru the cracks.

Where did you come by those figures?

What will stop employers from simply dumping their health care benefits programs under the assumption that employees could now simply sign up for the “public option”?

Among other things state laws.

Doesn’t the argument about cheaper auto manufacturing assume that the auto companies will do exactly that?

That is not an argument I have made.

Well that’s not because of the evil corporations and insurance companies, though, Jeb.

If you look back at my comment you will see my stated reason that it is not a political possibility. Hint, it has nothing to do with evil and is only tangentially related to corporations.

It is not, in fact, the case that the only reason that the grand schemes of health care purists have not been fulfilled is because the people who disagree with them are just bad, evil people.

Why do you keep at this ‘evil’ nonsense? I have not once implied evil intent. It is firm ideological disagreement. Please respond to what I write rather than painting over it with what you imagine I mean.

I thiknk they did little to nothing on the truly important parts of the issue because there is no political benefit to actually addressing the practical problems of designing a health care system that can actually be run and paid for.

When the party in power is ideologically opposed to the proposition nothing will be done on that front. I submit that the likelihood of a Republican controlled congress or WH passing a universal health care plan is about as likely as a Democratically controlled congress or WH building a complete border fence. Their ideology determined their action, not evil intent. I have been repeatedly explicit about this, yet you continue to put words in my mouth. Again, I would appreciate the courtesy of response to my actual words rather than response to imagined intent.

even the Democrats’ own CBO says

Come on now. Was it the Republicans’ CBO 3 years ago? No, and it’s not the Democrats’ now.

Under the current proposals from what I’ve read the plan will insure the roughly 39,000,000 Americans who dont have insurance now but let another 36,000,000 fall thru the cracks.

So essentially we destroy the American economy and end up right where we are now.

Talking point. I don’t know. I’m not even remotely qualified to talk about health care reform, but I do Know one important fact about life…..NOTHING is free. Everything costs and the plans being thrown out fast and furious after debating this crap for 50 years is junk.

The politicians in DC are trying to give us health care for FREE….well its not free but they are trying the old smoke and mirrors approach to it….hide the cost, delay the fiscal impact and then later on when the PEOPLE begin feeling the real pinch of paying for the poor……..They just all blame it on the other side and the American people buy it because they can’t possibly believe that their favorite Democrat or Republican that they voted for could possibly have messed up.

Nothing is free and this health care fiasco is guaranteed to be the greatest fiasco in a 100 years because we are rushing it thru and trying to hide the impact and cost in double talk.

Employer based health care will remain for bottom up coverage unlike in France.

What will stop employers from simply dumping their health care benefits programs under the assumption that employees could now simply sign up for the “public option”? Doesn’t the argument about cheaper auto manufacturing assume that the auto companies will do exactly that?

I think that we would be better off decoupling employment and health care, but I am afraid that is not a political possibility.

Well that’s not because of the evil corporations and insurance companies, though, Jeb. It is because no one has the slightest idea how to pay for a single-payer health care system, especially given the deplorable fiscal state of our country right now.

And let’s not forget that the infamous Clinton health care plan which you apparently believe to have been a fine proposal combined the worst elements of complete government control with “employer mandates” that tried to force business to foot the bill for the 100% government-controlled bureaucracy. It is not, in fact, the case that the only reason that the grand schemes of health care purists have not been fulfilled is because the people who disagree with them are just bad, evil people.

What did they do about it from then until the last year or two?
Why do you think that is?

I thiknk they did little to nothing on the truly important parts of the issue because there is no political benefit to actually addressing the practical problems of designing a health care system that can actually be run and paid for. Activist groups have generated rafts of studies for comprehensive health care systems using implausible and ideologically purist hypothetical funding schemes like extreme tax rates on “the rich” or near-total elimination of all military spending, but I don’t consider those proposals to be sound foundations for practical reform.

I think Congress has been doing pretty much what health care purists are doing now — championing the rhetorically easy parts of health care reform when it is politically convenient to do so, but kicking the real problems of paying for it down the road forever. The vast disconnection between what President Obama says his health care plans will cost and what even the Democrats’ own CBO says it will cost if proof positive that the funding issues are not being honestly dealt with even now.