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

thelancet.com

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

#11

Post by jkingsbery »

> "Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans"

From many anecdotes I've read about medicine in socialized countries, it's unwise to assume that having insurance is the same as access. Many procedures are made unavailable due to being considered cost effective by The Single Payer, and the wait time for specialists can often be long.

Further, what counts as "costs" in US health industry is kind of funny - health care providers have a book-price that is often inflated, so that insurance companies can claim to their customers (mostly employers) what a good job they do in reducing costs.

For the opposite perspective, some of these points are discussed in much more detail in these two recent EconTalk episodes:

* https://www.econtalk.org/marty-makary-on-the-price-we-pay/

* https://www.econtalk.org/keith-smith-on-free-market-health-c...

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

#12

Post by aaomidi »

threeseed wrote: post #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…

No, it's because big interests have paid them to decrease taxation on the top earners.

There is a reason the income gap between different classes of the population is growing larger. That income gap is what should be funding these.

Policies of austerity are a direct result of the rich getting richer, not that it's not sustainable.

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

#13

Post by three_seagrass »

threeseed wrote: post #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…

That's why the Medicare for all will still be funded, in part, through a business tax. The difference being you've removed the for-profit middlemen, so the healthcare costs are less for businesses than the privatized hybrid version we have now.

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

#14

Post by ameister14 »

mgraczyk wrote: post #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 justifi…

I believe they say $100 billion will come from the lower average reimbursement rates, something that is also pretty unrealistic to think will continue.

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

#15

Post by newguy1234 »

What I don't get is how do 37 million Americans not have health insurance when the ACA was suppose to fix that issue? All of the plans are adjusted based on your income level and you get a tax credit if you are low income. If you are very poor then you get free healthcare....

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

#16

Post by jkingsbery »

jays wrote: post #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.?

Many of us appreciate these benefits, just we think that they would not come to fruition.

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

#18

Post by notatoad »

jkingsbery wrote: post #11

> "Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans" From many anecdotes I've read about medicine in socialized countries, it's unwise to assume that having insurance is the same as access. Many procedures are made unavailable due to being considered cost effective by The Single Payer, and the wait time for specialists can often be long. Further, what counts as "costs" in US health industry…

>Many procedures are made unavailable due to being considered cost effective by The Single Payer

whether the insurance is coming from a single payer or a private company, access to health care does not mean unrestricted access to any medical procedure you want. Private insurers also deny treatments that aren't considered to be cost effective.

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

#19

Post by bduerst »

mgraczyk wrote: post #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 justifi…

I worked in the EMR software industry and have certifications that involve hospital & lab billing, among others. I've been on site with healthcare providers, and there are entire buildings full of people whose job it is just to code and scrub claims, and cover disputes/negotiations with private insurance providers.

Consumers do not see it because it's typically off-site from the main hospital care facilities, but believe me, the administrative savings potential is real.

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

#20

Post by fernandotakai »

lwb wrote: 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…

i'm not american, so excuse me for the lack of knowledge, but i've heard that bernie plans to ban private insurance.

is that right? i mean, that seems like a really bad idea -- if you have money, why wouldn't you get better health care?

edit:

btw i live in a country with the largest public health care system in the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistema_%C3%9Anico_de_Sa%C3%BA... and we never banned private health care because... well, even with the best public health care system, you will still have to wait a lot to get any procedure done. so if you can afford, you can pay for private health care and get stuff done faster.

it doesn't mean that public health doesn't work -- it works quite well, it's just that you have to wait a lot sometimes for some procedures.

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