Why are people thinking Obama can magically create jobs out of this air.

Thomas, Thank you for explaining the German health insurance system. I think I have a general grasp of how it works in Germany, and why it's evolved into the present system with the long history of health care in Germany.

Do you think a modified German system of health insurance will work in the US?

I'm curious because I've always been an advocate for universal health insurance, but believed from the beginning that Obamacare was the wrong one.

Yes---as a matter of economics and administration, I don't see why the AOK model wouldn't work here. (Things may be different as a matter of politics.) If each state introduced its own individual Medicare-for-all system, and if the US government added some federal regulations so policyholders could switch smoothly when they move from one state to another, why wouldn't such a system be effective?

I also don't see why cooperatives wouldn't be a good solution for providing healthcare in America. Americans liberals and conservatives both tend to forget that there are options for organizing people other than for-profit corporations and governments. Having lived on both sides of the Atlantic, I learned that the most powerful force in politics everywhere is lack of imagination.

Agree about the lack of imagination. However, in the current political climate, I'm afraid trying to legislate and adopt anything like Germany's health insurance program is almost impossible. I would love our country to adopt a similar plan as Germany's, but I'm not sure I'll live long enough to see it.

Thomas didn't respond to my points about ther cultural differences between the USA and Germany (and most European nations) particularly with respect to immigration and a tradition of top down management of social and economic affairs in Europe. I still believe these factors bear significantly on the problem.

I'm also still curious about how the system in Germany operates with respect to compelling everyone to buy some form of insurance. Presumably there is a default plan available to all at a subsidized price. but how does the compulsory aspect of it work? Is is enforced?

Even with a large majority in the Congress the Democrats finessed on this issue, levying only very small penalties on those who take a pass to save money and then count on getting insurance if they get sick from a company that under the new law can't refuse them, and additionally leaving a mechanism to enforce even these small penalties for a later action.

Finally, I don't see how, with our current levels of immigration - documented and undocumented, we can possibly sustain such a system.

To be blunt, I didn't really see this as a point worth responding to. All I saw was a bundle of circular reasoning. "I don't like Obama's universal healthcare program". "Why?" "Because it's not going to work in America." "Why wouldn't it work in America when it does work everywhere else?" "Because people like myself don't like it." What's there to respond to? Sorry, but as best I can tell there's no "there" there.

Your assertion does not hold empirically, either. Just look at a place as exotic as, say, Canada. It's culturally similar to the United States, is as open to immigration as the United States, and is doing just fine with its Medicare-for-all system. The generalities you're offering sure sound impressive in the abstract. But somehow they never seem to survive confrontation with real-world countries running real-world universal healthcare systems.


Yes. If you have a job, your employer automatically withholds your insurance premium from your salary and sends it to the health fund of your choosing. If you're self-employed, I don't know how enforcement works, but it is indeed enforced. If you're unemployed, your unemployment benefits cover your health insurance. As to the plan itself, there is a minimum amount of coverage mandated by the state departments of health. Health funds can cover more if they want, but in practice there are limits because there is also a maximum insurance premium. Because the premium is a fixed percentage of each individual's gross income, there is no need for government subsidies. It's the high-income policy holders subsidizing the low-income policy holders.

But your questions suggest to me that you greatly overestimate the need for coercion necessary to enforce universal coverage. The reality is that people stay in the German system mainly because it offers them a good cost-benefit ratio. Because coverage is mandatory, Germany doesn't have America's viscious cycle where the best risks opt out of the insurance pool, forcing insurers to raise rates, which in turn encourages the next best risks to opt out, and so forth ad infinitum. Absent this viscious cycle, you end up with a system that works for (almost) everyone. The need for coercion, then, is minimal.

I'm not sure about the details, but it seems to me that all the countries that have universal health care has very little or no problem with cost or denial of coverage. This is the impression I've carried with me for many years, and the reason I have always advocated for universal health care.

Everyone here has the right to life, but the health necessary to have life is your own lookout... How much capital the government gives drug companies and health care providers for nothing in return is the question of the moment...

No, you are wrong. You still live in the stone age with your thinking. Humans must learn to care for each other, and health is an important aspect of living a healthy and happy life.

It seems you are either too young to know, or never had a love one denied health care for lack of money. For shame.

What bothers me most about American pharmaceutical companies is that they either invent diseases to match the drugs they have created; elevate minor irritations to disease status; change the name of ailments to make them sound more frighteningly serious than ebola, or, all of the above.

And neither Obama nor the Democratic majority are currently trying. The legislation they enacted would merely produce a healthcare system as socialistic as Switzerland's, a country best known for its horrifying Gulags. The rumors you heard about Switzerland being a billionaires' paradise are obviously agit-prop---NOT!


Maybe not. On the other hand, how long a go weren't you sure you would live to see the election of a Black president? America may have a retarded healthcare system, but it's generally unwise to underestimate her ability to change.

Wie bitte?! Leave Switzerland out of this discussion - and the imaginary Gulag. Swiss Franc is latest victim of currency war:

U-oh---not seven minutes until the Secret Police shows up. Talk about Swiss punctuality!

Has paranoia taken over this forum? Your comment made me think of the James Bond character who says "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, third time is enemy action"; this 7-minutes-time-delayed intervention has only happened once!

Of course, that's exactly what you would say if you were James Bond!

<speed-dialing media advisor for suitable repartee; informed there is none, logs out of forum pretending not to have read Thomas's latest>

Always yapping about this supposed greatness is what greatly diminishes any idea of greatness. Countries the world over do this, have been doing this since forever but they don't go on and on about what great countries they are.

True about a black president in this country; I doubt many thought it possible before Obama threw his hat in the ring. But after JFK, it was only a matter of time.

I agree with you... Don't shame me... Public health has to be a public concern... Same with public education... When people are left on their own to suffer diseases that are often the result of economic forces like pollution, or chronic on the job injuries that are suffered over time, just to us two example, then those people look at society, not as a friend, but as an enemy, and as someone who takes but never gives... What of those who have diseases and spread diseases that might one day evolve into pandemics... What of those who must suffer overcrowding and misery, or suffer so much deprivation in youth as to injure them and make them dangerous to all or any??? The solution to public problems cannot be left to individuals who may clearly see the problems without a bit of the resources necessary to solve those problems...

A nation is made of unity of purpose and unity of affection... In every case, we put a price on union that is always beyond our budget... If you intend to work a man to death, then why should you plan for his retirement or long term health care... If you wish for a worker to think of nothing but his work, then why provide for him anything resembling a well rounded education... Those people, and we have them, who are enemies of the people, enemies of unity, enemies of peace and shared prosparity, enemies of public health and social progress, enemies of humanity may stand out as examples of the success of capitalism, but they will never be citizens of this nation in any but the most cursory sense... They would trade us just as they now buy and sell us... Our lives mean nothing to them...The United States of America is just a place they call home so they can exploit us... If this minority needs to die so this people can live I will stay out of the way...Too many have already for their pleasures...

Look at their warnings... Even on cigarettes... What kind of government allows such poisons to be made and marketed when it is clearly the gate way drug of drugs, poison, and deadly??? It is good because it is one of our major exports and pays some taxes here... Sure; leave it legal, and tax it into oblivion. But watch the commercials for prescription drugs... All of them are as dangerous or more so than the diseases they combat... They don't just cause gas... Some of them can kill, or put some one on the waiting list for a new, used organ... Behind so much of our physical disease is our emotional distress that people can hardly admit let alone deal with... We are living in hell, and if not by choice, then out of ignorance, since we are trying to change ourselves to adapt to a society that is dying, that is killing us with it, when, if we were healthy we would reject all and live naturally, in supportive communities, working as needed, resting and playing in just proportion... That would be 90% of our health issues right there...

fido, you're an idiot.