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Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

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Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#51

Post by VikingCoder »

pdq wrote: post #29

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 mea…

Quick question:

What if America's education problem is that the children don't have parents who can nurture them?

Because we have stagnant or decreasing real wages? Because the cost of daycare, housing, health, and advanced education have all gone up? Because we're making it harder to declare bankruptcy? Because we're criminalizing activities, and ripping families apart?

Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that our education is ranked poorly.

And pointing to education, as though it's a system we can study in isolation, and claim that it's a failure, therefore other state-run systems must also be failures, isn't really being honest?

And maybe it's worthwhile to look at other countries with the economic conditions we're proposing. Like single payer healthcare. Because we can look at them.

You're absolutely right that "just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will magically be either efficient or high quality."

But people like you seem to delight in using that as an argument against government programs that have been shown to be effective, again and again, in country after country.

So then I can say, "just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will be either inefficient or low quality."

And we've both said something completely meaningless, and now can we please get back to looking at examples from other countries, and try to learn from them?

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#52

Post by rb808 »

Its such a fundamental change I doubt a study could accurately predict changes. I can't read the PDF but I know debate often misses things like: * A big boost for companies as unprofitable companies don't have to pay healthcare of employees. (assuming paid with taxes) * Free medical care means things like ambulance chasing lawyers are not required * Govt is more incentivized to look after the health of citizens as it has to pay for diabetes treatment etc. * People are more likely to retire early, or quit work and live cheaply.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#53

Post by ams6110 »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #40

It seems to me that industrialized countries the world round have different ways of organizing the relationship between patients, payers and providers. There's nearly 100% public models like the NHS in the UK and hybrid market systems like those in Singapore and Switzerland. But the one thing they all seem to do the same is how they keep costs down. They give the payer, whether that's the government or separate insur…

Price controls cause shortages. Simple economics.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#54

Post by specialist »

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…

"cost controls the paper appears to advocate for literally mean someone is making less money"

Reference Table S1.

Cost controls would account for ~14.5% of the total savings.

Hardly seems onerous. Medicare's medical loss ratio is approx 4% (?), whereas ACA caps private insurers at 15%. So clearly there's plenty of fat to be trimmed.

TL;DR: Single payer is cheaper, people live longer. Transition will be painful.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#56

Post by rednerrus »

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…

If we removed the profit paid to investors, isn't there additional money to be paid to people facilitating healthcare and to bring the costs down?

It looks like there was $47 Billion, (~9%) in profit in healthcare companies in the US in 2018. https://www.axios.com/health-care-industry-on-track-massive-...

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#57

Post by agumonkey »

monocasa wrote: post #34
gmueckl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If only. I work in the same town as a big medical device manufacturer, and several co workers over the years had worked there and immediately nope-ed out on moral grounds. Stuff like panics on anything out of the order in a morphine pump that defaults to full on while resetting. Apparently those killed a few people. Meeting the FDA guidelines is more about finding the cheapest way to technically meet the spec rather…

You know this mindset is becoming the norm. Everything is about doing the minimum to be legal and avoid lawsuit.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#58

Post by jayd16 »

nickysielicki wrote: post #26
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 l…

This is a really sheltered point of view. I I get the sense that you imagine living in a poor country to be eating instant ramen and not dying in a gutter.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#59

Post by rednerrus »

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?

The elastic nature of health care costs and the disconnect between the people making the purchases and the people paying the bills.

If you have insurance, chances are that you are not asking your doctor how much something is going to cost. You are not likely to shop around or work to get the best deal. As a healthcare provider, where is the incentive to bring costs down.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#60

Post by woofyman »

anarchimedes wrote: post #37
aczerepinski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High earners were on average raised by high earning parents. Is being born rich fair? Which stages of the game should be fair?

(C'mon downvotes!) I thought the idea of paying your "fair share" was in relation to the services provided by the taxes paid. I can take an extreme example that I've tried to steel man to hold up this point: Bill Gates. Does Bill Gates the man use more taxpayer provided military/healthcare/infrastructure.. than anyone else? Of those things that he does use more of, if he taxed by the volume of those services used (ex…

>How does that make it right to make him pay more money?

Because he can. And yes, he does use more Government services.

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