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Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

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Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#71

Post by maxxxxx »

darawk wrote: post #69
api wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America seems to have a huge problem with everything it does being incredibly costly. It's definitely true in the public sector and universities and also in large areas of the private sector. American healthcare being more expensive than anywhere else fits the pattern. It also apparently costs more to build a rail line or any other work of infrastructure here than anywhere else in the world. I'm not sure why this is,…

America has high costs anywhere that government is involved. Healthcare, infrastructure, etc...The pure private sector is quite efficient here.

How about internet access or cell phones? Is that the government's fault too?

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#72

Post by sedor0115 »

okaram wrote: post #66
anarchimedes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

What is 'fair' is always debatable, but ... let me tell you one way I look at it. I see democratic governments as an extension of society; and their most important service is a reasonably stable, safe society (with a few exceptions, there's no rioting; I can walk around the streets without fear of getting killed; I don't even worry about whether I lock my hour or car doors). Given a live a nice upper/middle class lif…

This answer assumes that your nice neighborhood is somehow provided by the government with the tax dollars you give them. The government, especially the federal one, provides extremely little to upper/middle class neighborhoods. The real beneficiaries of government are the poor and the very rich.

Your neighborhood is only nice because of the people who live there :)

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#73

Post by maxxxxx »

dragonwriter wrote: post #64
maxxxxx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that people disagree along the lines drawn by parties. Most political fights are artificial constructs to keep the people busy while the the people in DC and their donors stay in power.

> I don't believe that people disagree along the lines drawn by parties. There is plenty of evidence that they do, and also that (by comparing to other democracies and over time) this is directly a product of the party system—an electoral systen supporting small number of signficant parties results in a small number of significant viewpoints, mostly divided on the same lines that divide the parties. > Most political…

"Even to the extent that is arguably true, that a fight is an artificial construct or a distraction does not mean that the people at whom it is directed don't deeply buy into and incorporate into their identity the side of the fight they have been propagandized into.

"

Most people don't bother understanding an issue or building a real opinion but just follow the part line Just watch the deficit discussion. When Obama was in power, a lot of people thought deficits are bad. Immediately after Trump came in the same people started worrying about deficits. The propaganda put out by the parties is finely tuned and very effective but that doesn't mean that the effects are lasting.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#74

Post by travisoneill1 »

rednerrus wrote: post #56
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-...

This accounts for less than 10% of the difference between healthcare spending between the US and other OECD states. See this report for a much more detailed analysis:

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Healthc...

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#75

Post by slg »

maxxxxx wrote: post #71
darawk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has high costs anywhere that government is involved. Healthcare, infrastructure, etc...The pure private sector is quite efficient here.

How about internet access or cell phones? Is that the government's fault too?

In a word, yes. Those industries already have a high barrier to entry which stifles competition and can lead to high prices. However the governments response to that has not been to try to innovate or subsidize new competitors to lower barriers. Their response has been to establish rules that make it harder or even impossible for new competitors to enter the market.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#76

Post by travisoneill1 »

ams6110 wrote: post #62
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost problem in healthcare is exactly that: many pigs at the trough, and everyone points at the other pig for being the problem. Healthcare administrators! Drug companies! Device companies! Trial Lawyers! Insurance companies! Doctors (especially specialists)! They're all the problem, and yes lots of them should make less money. I know cardiologists pulling down 500k+ and that is ridiculous. I can see highly skill…

> I know cardiologists pulling down 500k+ and that is ridiculous. I can see highly skilled surgeons making that much, but pill pushers? I don't know about you but I'm not willing to be a student until I'm in my mid 30s, working crazy hours, likely accumulating a significant amount of debt along the way, without some kind of a substantial payout on the other side.

Which is a good reason to not make doctors spend so many years in school. The Europeans don't and their doctors are just fine.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#77

Post by epicureanideal »

ams6110 wrote: post #11
agumonkey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's work shouldn't be reduced, but drugs and devices should be to an extent. Firefighters told the portable EKG costed thousands of dollars (5 or 10 don't recall). That thing had bad 2G connectivity so the graph coudn't be sent to a cardiologist. The sensor/dsp part is worth money, the rest would cost 100$ from any smartphone maker today with better performance and portability. I'm sure the price is rigged for m…

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.

But if the cost becomes so high that people simply go without the devices, is that really a good tradeoff? Maybe a device with 1 in 10,000 failures is better than no device at all, for some subset of illnesses?

Also, I suspect this is FUD by some entrenched medical devices companies who know how to play the game of complying with standards. Anyone here ever gone through compliance testing with software? I've seen systems pass that are worse than what I would have just thought up in 30 minutes and coded up for fun. It's just a warm fuzzy feeling.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#78

Post by sedor0115 »

marricks wrote: post #20
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.

Uhh, you’re aware hospitals don’t turn people away who are injured and often end up with a lot owed to them they just can’t recover right? Also if everyone has healthcare they’ll get treated earlier before a condition blows up and... they get stuck at the ER getting a bill they’ll never be able to repay. Our US healthcare system just sucks compared to other countries UNLESS you are well off. I wouldn’t short change a…

Look up 5-year cancer survival rates by country. That metric at least attempts to measure the performance of the healthcare system. The studies that say our healthcare system "sucks" are looking at overall health of each country's population, not the performance of their systems.

To condemn the healthcare system based on the overall health of a nation that spends all day watching TV and shoving cheeseburgers in its face is absurdly disingenuous.

Re: Economic Analysis of Medicare for All

#80

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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.

That's crap, often 80% of the price of a drug is marketing and profit.
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