re: Sanders calls for Democrats to pass Medicare for All

And who’s going to pay for this massive expenditure Bernie. Your communist buddies. Heck, they don’t have any money.

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To be clear I am advocating for a true free market system. End health insurance and watch prices fall for everything.

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Here's the problem...prices wouldn't fall enough.

43% of Americans can't come up with $1,000 in an emergency situation.

So maybe a trip to the hospital with a heart attack—that results in a heart cath and a stent—comes down from $40,000 to $8,000.

The principle you stated is true, but you'd still be looking at half the country who couldn't pay for care like that even at a fraction of the current cost.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "So what? I don't care about all those poors. I have the money, I could get the care."

But you couldn't. Because the local hospital would have to close when half the population wouldn't have the money for their services. That kind of volume drop would be a huge re-set of the system.

It would still affect you, even if you were a billionaire. Your options for receiving care would be severely reduced. Most hospitals and many clinics would have to close, there wouldn't be nearly as many doctors and nurses, and research and development would take a serious hit. Not just for pharmaceuticals, but for high end medical equipment.

It would kind of be interesting, because I think what would happen is that real estate values would be dictated by proximity to viable health care centers.

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Healthcare must be considered as a human right, not a privilege

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First, we need to distinguish between Americans and non-Americans. Why doesn't Bernie send part of his paycheck to poor countries? They have a "right' to healthcare. That said, I don't have a problem with poor people getting basic healthcare, so long as they are American citizens and meet the income theshhold.

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You want a greater depression?

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Honestly if it meant I could send back home who I wanted I might make this deal.

Trump will sign it if people say nice things about him. All it takes to manipulate him is a few superlatives.

Price tag reported to be $30-$40 Trillion over 10 years.

Some estimates of a payroll tax of 32%.

Bernie is a genius.

Can I keep my doctor?

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This is dumb

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You know, I started to treat this post seriously and write a detailed and reasoned reply, but it's so fricking stupid that I stopped myself. I will say this...

Obamacare funnels massive amounts of money into clinics and hospitals the current healthcare system. It's the exact opposite of doing away with insurance.

Are hospitals closing? Sure, we had one close locally just this week. And that's despite the massive mountain of money that Obamacare doubtless funneled into it.

If it can't stay open under the current system, how much less could it stay open when the revenue coming into it was reduced by 90%?

Sure, you could downsize a building and cut staff. Absolutely.

But do you know how much an MRI machine costs? A standard 1.5T machine costs between $1 and $2 million dollars. We'll split the difference and call it $1.5 million. The markup—according to Google—is about 40%.

That's when they're selling the number of machines they sell today. What would happen if they suddenly started selling 1/10th of the machines they sell today? They would likely either mark them up even more or simply decide that it wasn't a viable business model anymore. They can't make up the markup with volume...even if they sold the machine at their cost, no profit at all, that's still a $600,000 machine.

Is this penetrating your dim intellectual haze yet?

Right now every hospital in American likely has an MRI machine. In a cash system maybe a very small handful of units would exist in any give state.

And that's just one example. CT/PET scan machines, ultrasounds, linear accelerators, X-ray machines, ECMO machines, anesthesia workstations, ventilators, integrated surgical units.

I could go on, but hopefully you (now) understand the problem.

He’s 85. It’s about time he got his affairs before he glitches, like Mitch!

Chump change! A wealth tax on 1200 people will cover that.

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Are hospitals closing? Sure, we had one close locally just this week. And that's despite the massive mountain of money that Obamacare doubtless funneled into it.

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Nope, it's because of Obamacare, not in spite of. One day you'll figure it out.