Total wages and benefits are based on bargaining power. If the employers did not provide health insurance they would provide the same money which they buy group insuranc to indivual workers in wages. Workers would then either buy inferior health insurance or buy more expensive health insurance.
>
> > So single payer
> >health would be better for workers even if financed 100% via
> >regressive taxes , not only collectively but individually in the
> >majority of cases.
>
> I can't see how this is logical either. Taxes are of course paid by
> the employing class, either directly or indirectly by having to pay
> higher nominal wages to compensate for higher taxes that workers
> might nominally pay. (So who pays taxes is really a dispute between
> different sections of the employing class, one the working class need
> not takes sides in. So long as someone pays them.)
OK now I see where you got your first point from. You are assuming
worker consumption is fixed and can't be cut - that workers in the
U.S. have aready been forced to absolute subsidence level. As bad off
as they are they have not. Again, workers wages is based on
bargaining power - not bare survival needs. Workers have as much as
they can extract from employers. If something changes so their wages
don't go as far (they have get insurance at individual rather than
group rates, their taxes rise) they don't automatically have the
bargaining power to force their wages up to match. My third post
today -so if it is still not clear maybe someone else can explain it
to you.
>
> > That is most currently insured USAians would be
> >better off under a regressively financed single payer plan than under
> >the current system. True?
>
> In the sense that health care and related services would be more
> equitably distributed and more conveniently accessed. But in the
> sense that health care is a socially necessary part of the cost of
> living, it is an unavoidable part of the cost of labour so the
> employing class has to pay for it one way or the other. If they want
> to pay the inefficient way, it will obviously cost them more, but the
> inefficiencies will be at the expense of profits on balance.
>
> That, as I understand it, is the marxist position anyhow, which seems
> to make sense.
>
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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