The more I read about this stuff, the more I think we need some form of single payer/universal health care. The situation with Singapore and Sweden probably won’t work in the US due to a much larger population, probably less educated people to begin with and less overall healthy people. That said, I think a gov/public solution is the only thing which could help contain the costs as it’s been mentioned now already, the system we have now is crap. We pay the most for our health care and get the crappiest service.
This reminds me of that article in the UT about CA where we pay the most for education/tax/etc, but have the worst schools pretty much in all the US. It’s probably more complicated then that, but we certainly aren’t getting our money’s worth in health care now. If health care wasn’t something we had to have to protect against bankruptcy, most of us would just dump it.
I don’t know if the costs would actually be 12% of someone’s salary, but it seems like if EVERYONE working was forced to pay into the system, companies would be more than happy to just dump all their health care plans (they pay a TON) already and just find a percentage where it’s sustainable and still profitable for hospitals/doctors, etc…
Maybe that’s 12%, maybe 5%, but that seems a ton cheaper than what companies spend probably. I’ve heard companies would good benefits spend over 10k per employee. It could be taken from employee count, but that would make companies less likely to hire if it was a high per employee fee.
To make it palatable (sp?) to rich people, cap this tax at some income limit like SS and the multi millions don’t get taxed more. The ultra rich already have to pay that 3.2% medicare tax already. Remove that.
Make it sorta like in some countries, now, they FORCE you to contribute to your 401k. I think I heard it was Australia and forget which, but one in Europe as well.
Remember that these programs are used in nearly every industrialized nation other than the US and they provide coverage to far more people than here. Like with Maternity in pretty much EVERY country, the US has the worst help for new moms than every other advanced nation.
In the end, I don’t know if it’s due to American born people having an attitude that the US is the best and most of these people haven’t really lived/traveled outside the US, but plenty of other countries are doing more things right than people give credit for.
