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Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

peri.umass.edu

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Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#21

Post by ams6110 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3
entee wrote: post #2

One thing that sometimes gets lost in the "health care is inefficient" discussion is that one person's inefficiency is another person's living. The cost controls the paper appears to advocate for literally mean someone is making less money, that someone will advocate strongly against it. I've spent the past 3.5 years in healthcare, everyone is convinced they're not the problem, that they're underpaid or overworked or…

> One thing that sometimes gets lost in the "health care is inefficient" discussion is that one person's inefficiency is another person's living. You are not entitled to a living as bureaucratic waste. We should of course help retrain those who lose their jobs, just as we're doing for coal workers who are going to be out of a job within the next five years. I want my healthcare dollars going to healthcare providers (…

Only a few generations ago, healthcare was not so ruinously expensive in the USA. We've never had taxpayer-funded universal care. So what caused the explosion in costs?

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#22

Post by wilde »

ribble wrote: post #13

| Medicare for All could reduce total health care spending in the U.S. by nearly 10 percent, to $2.93 trillion, while creating stable access to good care for all U.S. residents. how? by taxing a few earners to pay for everyone else not earning. is that fair? in that light, a ten percent reduction in cost is meaningless.

Earnings aren’t due to merit, so sure, why not?

http://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2017/article/never-...

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#23

Post by toomuchtodo »

ams6110 wrote: post #21
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that sometimes gets lost in the "health care is inefficient" discussion is that one person's inefficiency is another person's living. You are not entitled to a living as bureaucratic waste. We should of course help retrain those who lose their jobs, just as we're doing for coal workers who are going to be out of a job within the next five years. I want my healthcare dollars going to healthcare providers (…

Only a few generations ago, healthcare was not so ruinously expensive in the USA. We've never had taxpayer-funded universal care. So what caused the explosion in costs?

TL;DR Lack of cost controls and unnecessary administrative costs.

> In the U.S., they point out, drugs are more expensive. Doctors get paid more. Hospital services and diagnostic tests cost more. And a lot more money goes to planning, regulating and managing medical services at the administrative level.

So, we're all getting a lower quality of care for a lot more money, due to how the healthcare "market" is configured.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/upshot/united-states-heal...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/22/the-real-reason-medical-care...

https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/health/health-care-spending-s...

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/11/it-is-t...

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#24

Post by ekianjo »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #6
entee wrote: post #2

One thing that sometimes gets lost in the "health care is inefficient" discussion is that one person's inefficiency is another person's living. The cost controls the paper appears to advocate for literally mean someone is making less money, that someone will advocate strongly against it. I've spent the past 3.5 years in healthcare, everyone is convinced they're not the problem, that they're underpaid or overworked or…

And a lot of this is administrative overhead. Coming from a country outside of the US, I was also shocked by the price of medecine, every medecine magically seems to be 5-10x more expensive in the US.

The prices help pay for the huge cost involved in developing drugs. How many drugs were developed in France in the past 10 years compared to how many were developed in the US? You know the answer.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#25

Post by educationdata »

How can they assume this will not change how everything else works?

Yes. You can say statistically we did the comparison by holding everything else the same, but it only means "statistically". It definitely does not mean in reality you can hold everything else the same. There is no way when the policy changes, the system still works as before. This kind of study is totally delusional.

A policy works in other countries does not guarantee it will work in the U.S. For one thing, U.S. doctors make much more money than other countries. There are also other many differences. How can you assume you can simply move a policy successfully from other countries without making other important changes?

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#26

Post by nickysielicki »

zjaffee wrote: post #7

My biggest fear of a bill like this is even should we have the most progressive anti corruption government implement this law originally, whats to prevent this from becoming incredibly wasteful just like our military is. I.e. we spend a trillion dollars over decades trying to develop some drug that turns out to take us nowhere, while enriching pfizer shareholders this time instead of lockheed martin ones. I absolutel…

This is why the scope of government matters.

I do not understand why people have this idea that it's the job of the government to do things like speculate on the economy via quantitative easing, or save money overall on healthcare costs. The federal government ought to have a few simple jobs --- the ones laid out in the constitution, and everything else can be left up to the people and to the states.

I would rather live in a country where healthcare maybe costs more than it otherwise could, and where the economy maybe recovers slower than it otherwise would have, than to live in a country where the government takes lots of our money trying to fulfill promises that it cannot keep.

Medicare is projected to be insolvent in 2026, and Social Security is projected to be insolvent 8 years later. We're due for an economic downswing in the next few years (if not the next few months). Our economy will not keep up with the developing world powers; NATO is increasingly irrelevant and the petrodollar is threatened.

What are we going to tell the people who depend on these dying programs? "I know that you worked your whole life in a factory, and I know that you are too old to work, and I know that you paid into this system your entire career, and I know you aren't getting enough to get by. But we had the best intentions in mind!"

America is rich because we won WWII, not because of American Exceptionalism. The comfortable life that American culture was built on (while the rest of the world needed half a century to recover) is going away quickly. The social programs that we already have in place have less than 6,000 days remaining before they fall apart, and in these last hours, we're seriously talking about adding on?

No thanks. I'm okay with living in a poor country. I'd prefer for my government to not fail as a result, though.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#27

Post by gmueckl »

agumonkey wrote: post #19
ams6110 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real cost is not so much in the hardware but in the certification requirements. Medical devices need to be built to and work at a higher standard than consumer electronics, for obvious reasons.

Of course, but the interface and connectivity part of that EKG machine wasn't even up to 2005 cellphones standard. On that point, it's a scam.

So you would trust a random baseband chip to never ever in a thousand years lie to you about the success or failure of its operation or its internal status? Or to behave in an unexpected way that interferes with the core function of the device? E.g. by suddenly sending random junk to the main CPU?

How do you verify that the display controller is not acting up and not blanking out a region of the display that contains essential data?

If you cannot prove things like that for your medical device, you won't be allowed to sell it.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#28

Post by tareqak »

ribble wrote: post #13

| Medicare for All could reduce total health care spending in the U.S. by nearly 10 percent, to $2.93 trillion, while creating stable access to good care for all U.S. residents. how? by taxing a few earners to pay for everyone else not earning. is that fair? in that light, a ten percent reduction in cost is meaningless.

In the documentary "Requiem for an American Dream", Noam Chomsky mentions the elite class tirelessly lobbying over decades for funding cuts programs to social security because they don't benefit the rich. The attitude that you expressed is similar.

What is legal is not always fair, and what is fair is not always legal.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#29

Post by pdq »

Hypothetical economic studies and analyses are almost worthless. In normal science, you need something to be testable, verifiable, and reproducible. I'm quite sure none of these are possible.

Just as a counterpoint, the US public primary school education is state run and funded, and has both poor outcomes and is the most expensive in the world [1]. Just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will magically be either efficient or high quality.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education...

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#30

Post by Analemma_ »

ekianjo wrote: post #24
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of this is administrative overhead. Coming from a country outside of the US, I was also shocked by the price of medecine, every medecine magically seems to be 5-10x more expensive in the US.

The prices help pay for the huge cost involved in developing drugs. How many drugs were developed in France in the past 10 years compared to how many were developed in the US? You know the answer.

Personally, I would’ve liked to be asked whether I consented to paying 10x the price that every other country pays, in order to subsidize drug development, cause I definitely don’t recall ever agreeing to that deal.
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