How about cap a household's healthcare-related spending at 10% of income?

[Virginiá]

Does this system address the price gouging and other unscrupulous activities from the healthcare industry? If not, then no, definitely not acceptable. I'm not very fond of any reform that doesn't at least attempt to address this part of the problem.

[Virginiá]

Does this system address the price gouging and other unscrupulous activities from the healthcare industry? If not, then no, definitely not acceptable. I'm not very fond of any reform that doesn't at least attempt to address this part of the problem.

Last paragraph:

This system would also make it easy to see where those cases of households that owe over 10% of their income for healthcare-related expenses are, and what the causes for that are, so better policies can be put in place to treat those causes instead of only treating the symptoms.

By treating healthcare-related expenses like taxable income, it will make it extremely easy to track down any and all cases of price-gouging, and it would give new motivation to fiscal conservatives to do so.

But that assumes that new policies will actually be implemented in the future to address such instances of price gouging. Any large healthcare reform should address that issue as thoroughly as possible at the same time, less they punt it and we find ourselves never reigning those bloodsuckers in because the political will is no longer there; no doubt drowned under a wave of lobbyists and campaign contributions.

Anyway, I'm mostly locked into solutions like Medicare-for-all. I see that as the next step, and I'm quite tired of this whole debate. I wouldn't be likely to support this.

[Virginiá]

And this can be the model for single-payer, and make the transition to it be very smooth. Future debates can be about raising or lowering that 10% cap. Maybe in a decade or two it would be lowered to 8% or 5% or 2%. 0% would be single-payer.

I'm not necessarily saying your idea is bad or anything, but I definitely don't think it's as good as something like Medicare-for-all (or a similar solution)

When I say I'm tired of this debate, I mean this healthcare debate has been dragging on for too long and been too costly, and it is particularly aggravating when so much of the world has blown past us on this and we are still squabbling over this.

Whenever Democrats even try to restructure healthcare in America, we tend to take a beating in the next election. The fact is, another big change really needs to be something final like universal Medicare because the party is likely to get hit hard as America adjusts, unless it somehow goes really smoothly. I'm not willing to have Democrats get chewed up election-wise again for some sub-par plan. I'm done with these small steps. I don't want any more baby steps to single payer-type solutions.

Just my 2 cents anyhow.