How can so many people become uninsured?

@LeopoldBloom Businesses sponsored healthcare plans as a benefit. Part of looking for a new job was looking at benefit packages, employers paid that cost. I have looked at jobs doing the same type work, I am an aircraft mechanic, I have found wage differences as much as 30%, more money but less benefit. The company I work for now picks up 70% of what my insurance costs. Making a single payer system would dump that cost on the worker. Not to mention, relieving a great financial burden from businesses. Employers bore the burden to keep better employees and reduce turnover. There isn't any way that a single payer system comes out cheaper for the employee that I can see.

@Roadsterrider The current system is great if you have a job that provides those benefits, not so great if it doesn't or if you lose it and can't get a comparable one. The reason single payer works out better is economy of scale, since you have one large insurance provider that is able to negotiate nationwide. Other countries that have single payer or combination systems have lower costs and better outcomes than we do.

The problem is that Bernie Sanders is a terrible salesman. He made it sound like people would be paying for a government plan on top of their current one, which of course makes no sense. Your employer would continue to pay that 70%, or they would give you back part of it and not only would your overall cost decrease, you'd get what amounted to a raise.

Anyway you don't have to worry as it's not going to be enacted anytime soon. All Biden intends to do is tweak the current system.

@LeopoldBloom It only requires hospitals to treat those in immediate life-threatening danger. People who are going to die if they aren't treated, but not in the next hour or so, get booted out all the time.

@Roadsterrider [quote]There isn't any way that a single payer system comes out cheaper for the employee that I can see.[/quote]

And yet it does in every single country that has one.

@OggggO Correct, it's "treat 'em and street 'em." Aside from the fact that anyone with a chronic condition isn't going to be helped in the ER unless they're having an acute crisis, the ER is also a terrible way to deliver primary care. One reason hospitalization is so expensive is because they have to recoup costs from the paying (i.e. insured) customers, and the insurance companies go along with this because there's no alternative.

@OggggO I have talked to some from those countries, they are taxed at a higher rate, they don't have as good quality of care, you can find them in the list of countries that pay the highest tax rates. Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, how they do it is to tax the hell out of productive people and business to support the rest. I know many people from Canada who have moved to the US because of taxes in the great north, I know 4 people who have immigrated from the Netherlands in the last year because of the way their government is run.
I have listened to the politicians explain why it is the perfect system based on what other countries are seeing, but the people who come here from those countries don't quite see it as the do-all end-all type set up.

@Roadsterrider Our taxes are pretty high here, too. As for the standard of care, outcomes are objectively better in those countries. It's hilarious how conservatives idolize Israel, when they have a socialized medical system that goes far beyond anything even Bernie Sanders has proposed.

I can't comment on the immigrants you know, but it may be that if you're wealthy, you're better off in the US. Most poorer immigrants to the US are coming from other places besides Western Europe.

@LeopoldBloom I would agree that most of our immigrants come from other places, they come here and burden our welfare system by almost $120 billion annually according to FAIR. If the outcomes are better in other countries, why do people who can afford to come to the US for treatment? Even Castro from the Cuban workers paradise came to the US for health care. I work in aviation, most of our interns come from Europe and Canada. When they go back, it seems like the first thing they want to do is find another internship back in the US.

As far as Israel, I don't idolize Israel but they have been an ally and before you turn your back on an ally, you should have a good reason or you won't have any allies left.

The question asked was how 43 million people could lose their insurance through loss of their job. More than twice the number of people who were insured through the enactment of the ACA. I think it is democrats in office hell bent on shutting down the economy at the peril of the citizenry. Just my opinion but there aren't many republicans trying to keep things closed up.

@Roadsterrider The contribution of immigrants depends on who you ask. If an illegal immigrant pays taxes (which most of them do) but never files to get anything back, I would count that as a net gain for the US economy. I would agree that the Cuban health care miracle is overblown, but you don't find too many Western Europeans coming here for health care. Health care in the US is great as long as you can afford it.

Israel's health care system and their alliance with the US are two completely different issues. I'm just pointing out the irony of how American conservatives idolize Israel without understanding anything about it other than Jesus was born there.

Like everything else, the response to COVID has been politicized, with liberals pushing for a slower reopening to save lives, and conservatives pushing for a faster opening to save the economy. Even the wearing of masks is politicized. But accusing Democrats of wanting to damage the economy just to hurt Trump is as ridiculous as accusing Republicans of wanting to kill grandma to save the Dow. Everyone is acting based on incomplete data and even less understanding of how this pandemic is playing out in the long term. I don't agree with the liberals who accuse Trump of murdering 100,000 Americans either, even if he's made some poor decisions and his leadership has been abysmal.

@LeopoldBloom Estimates for taxes paid by illegal immigrants is about $28 billion annually, so we are out roughly $90 billion out if the $120 billion that illegals get from the government, YAY. I feel much better about that. And the money made by illegals and sent back to Mexico put more money in Mexico's economy that tourism or oil and gas exports.

COVID 19, since the beginning in Nov 2019, 98% of cases are mild not requiring hospitalization, 2% requires medical treatment with 90% of those hospitalized recovering, that translates into a 0.2% fatality rate. It has been overblown since the beginning, mostly pushed by democrats, and the only way they could see for Biden to beat Trump is with a tanked economy. We have had 100K in fatalities from COVID 19, that is 0.03%. Less than influenza. The whole sham is to give Biden a chance in November. The democrats have sacrificed 43 million jobs and as many without healthcare in a bid for the White House. It isn't a sure thing yet so they are still trying to slow economic recovery. I am happy to see more and more people from the black and latino communities that Biden is counting on, going public with denouncements of the democrat party. They are finally understanding that democrats don't want to see them succeed, just for them to get by so they will be ready to vote democrat again in the next election. Three years of Trump showed the lowest unemployment rates for minorities in decades. They aren't buying the scare tactics.

The truth about this virus is it is hell on older people and those with underlying issues. For most of us, it is a nasty cold, but not life threatening. Businesses should have never been shutdown.

@Roadsterrider Of course the people who leave because the didn't like it, didn't like it. Try asking the people who don't leave what they think of it.

[quote]according to FAIR[/quote]
Dude, quit getting your info from hate groups.

[quote]COVID 19, since the beginning in Nov 2019, 98% of cases are mild not requiring hospitalization, 2% requires medical treatment with 90% of those hospitalized recovering, that translates into a 0.2% fatality rate.[/quote]
Pretty much every word in that statement is wrong.

[quote]We have had 100K in fatalities from COVID 19, that is 0.03%. Less than influenza.[/quote]
In [i]3 months[/i]. The influenza numbers you are comparing it to are for 12.

@OggggO If you don't agree, it is wrong or the info is from a hate group? A fatality rate is a rate, it is half a percent for 1 month, it will be half a percent for 12 months. Half a percent of cases is just that, you don't have to wait a whole year to see that.

@Roadsterrider It's not about whether I agree, it's about them being a fucking hate group dude. As for the fatality rate, it's currently 13% in the USA, and the death toll exceeds the annual flu average for the last 9 years by 73,000 and climbing. Again, it's been only 3 months.

@OggggO As of today in the US there have been 112,576 deaths, there have been 2,011,503 confirmed cases of COVID 19, do the math again, that is 5.6%. We aren't even testing to see how many people had a mild case and didn't go to the doctor so that 5.6% will drop dramatically when we have tested enough to get an accurate number of total cases. FAIR is a progressive media watchdog group, they generally present the liberal side of the argument, as far as I know they haven't been involved in any "hate group" type activities. Not liking their articles doesn't automatically classify them as a hate group. And again, if you take 100 incidents in one month and 10 of them have a different outcome, that is 10%. At the end of the year, you have 1200 incidents and 120 of them are different, it is still 10%. You don't have to wait till the end of the year to have a fatality rate. Total number of cases will change but if 0.5% have a different reaction, that isn't going to change 6 months from now, unless we develop a vaccine or the treatments are improved and then that number will go down, not up. As the number of total cases includes those who test positive showing that they had the virus and got well on their own, the fatality rate will drop. Check out the numbers from worldometers, I don't know if they are a hate group or not but they have numbers of confirmed cases since this ting started. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

@Roadsterrider Of those 2 million, over 1.24 million are still ongoing and so cannot be counted as survived or death. 875,000 cases have concluded. Of those, 112,00 died. That's 13%.

[quote]FAIR is a progressive media watchdog group,[/quote]
Hardly. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/federation-american-immigration-reform

[quote]Check out the numbers from worldometers[/quote]
That's where I'm getting my numbers.

@OggggO That is only confirmed cases, and world wide is a much larger sample. World wide, the fatality rate for confirmed cases is 5.7%, slightly higher than the rate in the US. Again, that is for confirmed cases, countries that were in the game earlier are now testing for antibodies and finding that 98% of people have a mild case that doesn't require hospitalization. The fatality rate over all can't be more than the remaining 2%. Going by the numbers in your example, the 800K hospitalized represents the 2% of the total that need acute care. If 87% of those who require treatment survive the fatality rate is 13% of that number. That comes out to a 0.15% fatality rate. Your examples confirm what I said. The SPLC is a liberal think tank, I would consider just about anything they come up with as anti American. The article was long on accusations and short on proof.