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Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a year: study

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Re: Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a year: study

#2
Is this Bernie's plan? I know there are subtle but important differences between all the different varieties of "universal healthcare" that exist in the world.

The Twitter account @BadEconTakes enumerated something about this in a recent post: https://twitter.com/BadEconTakes/status/1228143455399858176/...

Excuse their obvious bias against it; I wonder what the difference in expected savings (money + lives) might be between all these different variations on the same theme.

Re: Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a year: study

#5
It’s hard not to appreciate the cost savings, saved lives, and benefits employees and employers would see from universal healthcare.

Has anyone seen any studies on the potential impact it would have on insurance and medical administration industries? i.e. lost revenue, jobs, etc.?

Re: Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a year: study

#7
In the study, nearly all the computed savings comes from two sources.

1. Decrease in pharmaceutical costs as a result of better bargaining power.

2. Decrease in administrative overhead, calculated by extrapolating the overhead in medicare to the entire US healthcare economy.

I don't have an informed opinion on either of these estimates, but my intuition is that #1 seems reasonable while #2 seems unlikely. The justifications they give include lower executive salaries and decreased fraud. From what I have been told by healthcare professionals, medicare has less incentive to negotiate cost, less incentive to investigate fraud, and therefore lower administrative cost.

Re: Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a year: study

#8
Pretty disingenuous study.

If you move to a Medicare for All policy it would shift employer health care costs to the government. Which they would never be able to financially support especially with the challenges of an ageing population and excessive debt. And so when they say it saves $450b it's not taxpayers. It's mostly employers.

There is a reason that countries that started with M4A e.g. Australia, UK have all transitioned to a public-private mix because it's simply not sustainable otherwise.

Re: Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a year: study

#9
post #2

Is this Bernie's plan? I know there are subtle but important differences between all the different varieties of "universal healthcare" that exist in the world. The Twitter account @BadEconTakes enumerated something about this in a recent post: https://twitter.com/BadEconTakes/status/1228143455399858176/... Excuse their obvious bias against it; I wonder what the difference in expected savings (money + lives) might be…

The fundamental challenge of any universal health care system is that to cut our spending on health care to the level of other western industrialized countries will take $1 Trillion of annual revenue out of the existing system. There's going to be a lot of disruption and people who need new jobs when that revenue goes to other things in our economy.

Re: Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a year: study

#10
post #2

Is this Bernie's plan? I know there are subtle but important differences between all the different varieties of "universal healthcare" that exist in the world. The Twitter account @BadEconTakes enumerated something about this in a recent post: https://twitter.com/BadEconTakes/status/1228143455399858176/... Excuse their obvious bias against it; I wonder what the difference in expected savings (money + lives) might be…

Yes. The summary explicitly references the "Medicare for All Act", which is technically Pramila Jayapal's bill in the house[1]. That is the specific legislation Bernie is campaigning for when he says "our plan". It checks all four of those boxes in your linked tweet. The study also directly cites Sanders twice (to explain where they get their parameters).

[1] - https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1384

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