People say we should have a national healthcare program. Why should my taxes pay for your health?

Question

This is the real Oparh!

Answer 1

I'm sure Oprah would know how to spell her own name.

"Why should my taxes pay for your health?" Because humanity says so.

Answer 2

Good question. We have the workers who make enough money or work for an employer that subsidizes the health care. Then we have the "poor" who get state funded aid.

What do we do about those in the middle that fall between the cracks? Our case is a good example. Several years ago, my husband want through a period of time where he was frequently unemployed. He is a softwear anaylist, employed by companies that in turn contracted him out to clients Typically the contract would last 1 year then he would be let go. In a 2 year period he was unemployed more than he was employed. I was an independently contracted pet groomer. No benefits there.

We typically used $1000 worth of prescriptions a month. He was drawing about $800 on unemployment every 2 weeks. We both ended doing without our medicines because we couldnt afford it.

I say that to tell you this, I dont know what the solution is but I can tell you there are people out there just like us.

By the way, if you are the real Oprah, love you and the show. How come your name is misspelled?

Answer 3

That's a mountain of bad logic with two slippery slopes.

BY the way, why did you stop there?
Why should you pay for other people's education, trash collection, police services, or even their armed forces? For example, when you retire, or when your kids grow up, aren't your taxes paying for the education of kids that aren't yours? And if you go down the list, there's always a way to rationalize how "others" are taking your tax money for "their" purpose.

Meanwhile, back at the reality ranch, someone may ask, "Hey, ain't I paying for your health now, even if there isn't a national plan?" Do you really think your dinky premiums can totally cover you medical expenses? How do you think private insurance works? Would you join a private plan where they'd refuse payment when the amount you contributed equals the expenses you incurred? "Your kid's got what? ...Sorry you don't have enough in your account. Next!"

To make a long story short, private insurance takes your money AND my money to cover the costs of YOUR medical care. They have no choice.

Since you seem averse to this method, you certainly have the option of chucking your policy and paying all your own expenses. However, for those of us who know there's only one way to implement insurance (through pooling), it is well worth evaluating if a national version would be superior to a multiple-carrier version.

To my mind there's still research to be done on this, but, for example, we already know that the existing (multi-carrier) method spends an incredible percentage of its resources on administrative costs - yes, a much, much greater proportion than say, Medicare. (Interesting, huh?)

Answer 4

Preventative medicine can do an incredible amount of good, and unfortunately, those without healthcare in our current system most often do not receive this kind of medical attention. If a person has to pay for the entire doctor's bill on their own - or if a person can't pay at all - it is unlikely that he or she will actually go to the doctor for routine healthcare. That means no mammograms, no Pap smears, no checks for colon cancer, no cholesterol checks, no blood pressure monitoring... the list is quite lengthy. These are all tests that could catch serious medical problems early enough to treat the patient effectively and efficiently. Without these tests, people don't know that there is a problem until full blown disease is has onset. Once disease is onset, a person without health insurance has no choice to go to the doctor to try to survive. Treatment for full blown cancer is by far more expensive than the preventative tests and early treatment. Families go into debt trying to pay the bills for treatments until there isn't a penny left to squeeze from them and the state and/or the hospital wind up footing the bill. The state gets its funds from taxes - from you.

If we go back, and the same individual knows that they can go in for preventative medicine and catch the same disease early on, odds are that the individual will survive, and that the treatment will be far less expensive than it would have been otherwise.

This is particularly important in our current age of obesity. Obesity is a direct cause of a huge list of health issues. Helping people to maintain a healthy weight could cut healthcare costs by possibly billions. That's billions of taxpayer money saved, just by treating one issue.

Thanks for putting the question to us. This is an important issue facing us today, but I don't believe that it gets the attention that it deserves.

Answer 5

IT amazes me how peoples minds work. No one complains about the government spending 2 billion dollars to go catch some space dust from a comet and who knows how many billions more on the shuttle flights or the billions being spent scoping out Mars or the other billions spent to send a probe to the outskirts of this universe which wont even arrive back with the data for over 100 years. All that money came out and is coming out of tax payers money and no one says a word. Everyone pays taxes not just you who ever you are. I know I do and I would rather my tax money be spent on helping out some one who is sick than be paying 1/2 a million dollar salaries for those holding office or screwing around in space.

Answer 6

National health care is a bad idea in my opinion... actually there is limited health care for the poor (medicade). But back to your point, if someone wants to drink, smoke, eat junk food, have multiple sex partners, not exercise, etc. then when they get sick and diseased, I should not have to pay for it. What I would favor is no health insurance at all except for extreme situations such as an auto accident or some other trauma. Health care costs would go down, empolyers could save money, and hopefully pass the difference on to employees.

Answer 7

Because sometimes my taxes will pay for your health. Having the system take care of health care will insure same quality of health care to a larger range of people. People will not have to worry about getting sick if they are not insured or they have a not-so-good health insurance. You know there are most advantages on this issue. Disadvantages is that free healthcare makes alot more patients overall. People will need treatment for smaller "issues", the way to hospital gets shorter.

Answer 8

Because many healthcare problems are contagious--that means if you leave the poor untreated, they infect the middle class and rich and become a public health concern--and one that is usually way more expensive to fix once it has become widespread than it would have been to provide propper preventative and early stage healthcare to stop the problem at its roots.

So, you see, you needn't have compassion for the poor to understand that their health can have a direct imapct on you. Mere enlightened self-interest is enough.

Answer 9

Because the taxes of working class americans go to pay for welfare recipients who have no intention of getting a job, as long as they can milk the system. Why shouldn't the working class be given healthcare we are not going to receive social security.

Answer 10

I agree, wealthy people can pay for all of their own healthcare, along with everything else, so they don't need taxes to help them. Why should poor people get financial help only to keep them alive? "Decrease the surplus population."

Answer 11

They shouldn't!

That would be communism. We should all pay for our own healthcare and health. If the prices of services were proportionate, It shouldn't be a problem for an operating capitalist system.

Unfortunately, our whole system is out of whack?!