Quote:
Originally posted by onetime2
As it stands, the vast majority of employees are provided with healthcare from their employees. They are responsible primarily for copayments.
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I don't think this is true. According to my work experience, most of the people I know (they are service workers), and my text books, most of the labor force is being worked at under capacity (I may be using an econ term incorrectly, my apologies, but I'm a criminologist, not an economist).
A few people are promoted or hired as managers, but most service workers (in fact, only organized labor and small (family) businesses are an exception to this) only work as part-time workers. Now I don't know what events occurred first, I have my belief, but some workers need to work part-time since they have multiple jobs. The result is that corporations have multiple workers who perform the same job, they can deal with unreliable workers, they have high turnover rates, and very few full-time or well-paid employees. I have seen both ends of this spectrum: people only given 4-6 hours per week to intentionally only giving 36 hours so the worker doesn't qualify for company coverage.
None of those workers receive health care unless it's out of the kindness of the CEO's heart--AFAIK, CEO's can't really abide by their heart, however, because they are responsible for generating profit for their shareholders.
As to the cost of implementing a national health care plan:
Reasonable people can differ on this. I don't share your value of the dollar. I value the quality of my life in terms of health rather than money. I pay more for quality food, and I adhere to what I believe to be an extremely healhty diet. I pay more for quality merchandise, and I try to find locally produced goods or at least spend my money at locally owned stores. I'm willing to pay more for guaranteed health care. In fact, given that our medical care is top-notch, I'd be willing to pay as least as much as Candadians or Europeans. I've heard that our medical care ought to be the envy of the world--I just can't afford to buy any of it.