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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

#171

Post by [deleted] »

Loughla wrote: post #45
notatoad wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That's what I've never understood about the arguments against single payer: >You can't pick your own doctor I already can't. If they're in network, I'm good, but if they're out of network - like my doctor was - then I have to find a new one. >You can't pick your treatments My spouse was denied medication by an insurance company because it was too new. So. >You don't get to have all the healthcare you want I already h…

[deleted]

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

#172

Post by bazooka_penguin »

riazrizvi wrote: post #136

Currently that money is flowing from the pockets of everyone into the pockets of investors, legislators and workers tied to the healthcare industry. What is the correct amount of profit? Who is to say the healthcare industry was making enough before they started hiking prices? Perhaps they saved their industry? Other countries have cheaper healthcare costs, but maybe they have less healthcare? Sure other countries mi…

Is profit the problem here? Not a horde of unnecessary make-work jobs and overpaid workers?

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

#173

Post by koolba »

Loughla wrote: post #61
secabeen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Real question, not snarky: Why is this sort of downsizing always wrong for white-collar workers when blue-collar workers have been dealing with it for decades?

There’s a huge difference between downsizing caused by economic forces of the private sector and downsizing caused by outright elimination of an industry by elected officials.

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

#174

Post by leetcrew »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #53
Olscore wrote: post #22

Fundamentally, it is disgusting we are forced by government to buy insurance products (e.g., car, health) provided by for-profit companies; however, I do not support universal healthcare either. The government has zero ability to control its expenditure, because the electorate vote themselves benefits. The long-term financial incentives to maintain a functioning society are all broken because of the misaligned short-…

> The government has zero ability to control its expenditure, because the electorate vote themselves benefits. Could you give me some examples of this? Living in a nation with universal healthcare, I've never seen this.

see pensions for municipal/state employees in the US.

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

#175

Post by aqme28 »

Olscore wrote: post #22

Fundamentally, it is disgusting we are forced by government to buy insurance products (e.g., car, health) provided by for-profit companies; however, I do not support universal healthcare either. The government has zero ability to control its expenditure, because the electorate vote themselves benefits. The long-term financial incentives to maintain a functioning society are all broken because of the misaligned short-…

> because the electorate vote themselves benefits.

Doesn't this cut both ways? Rich people voting for austerity is equivalent to the wealthy voting themselves benefits. You won't find the right balance if you always demonize welfare in favor of tax cuts.

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

#176

Post by charwalker »

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 ops support at a local heath insurance group of maybe 250 people. We had an entire floor the building next to us dedicated to billing and 30-40 billers with some of the older employees making upwards of $75k a year not to mention the infrastructure and systems to support that department.

With a universal system, those costs (and jobs) would evaporate to the tune of millions per year in salaries alone.

For the employees, each of them could quickly retrain or just shift into other departments as needed as most staff did when the company was acquired and IT admins moved to PM or lead roles in other departments.

#2 exists and would have a huge impact not only on the industry but your time and mine. I've spent maybe 8 hours this year already just working with medical billing groups to pay up and already spent close to $2000 between my partner and I with an estimate $4-6000 before the end of the year without doing a sleep study which I greatly need.

Universal is definitely cheaper. All we have to do is compare ourselves to just about every other western democracy to see ow.

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

#177

Post by jandrese »

ogre_codes wrote: post #111
xmly wrote: post #85

Universal Care = Medicare + Medicaid + ObamaCare + Employment sponsonered care ??? My opinion is that we should first optimize the existing system to lower the medical cost first. Health insurance is just prepaid medical costs. If the cost is lowered, no system would work.

No, this is talking about single payer healthcare which would mean the current insurance industry would be out the door. No Obamacare, just one government agency paying for healthcare. Employment sponsored healthcare will likely still exist in some form, perhaps to ensure speedier access to some care.

Probably no employer sponsored healthcare for the most part. That money would go towards the Medicare coverage. There might be some supplemental plans for people who want to skip lines but most people will just use Medicare.

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

#178

Post by codegeek »

rayiner wrote: post #77
bduerst wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bel…

Medicare billing isn’t any different, it’s just a different payer.

Yes but at least, Govt. is not looking to make record profits.

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

#179

Post by [deleted] »

burkaman wrote: post #28
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…

> less incentive to investigate fraud From the paper: "In addition to savings on overheads, a comprehensive database of health-care charges would facilitate detection of fraud, which extracts $85·7 billion every year. Following the transition to a single-payer system in Taiwan, an 8% reduction in overall national expenditure was attributed to the reduction in fraud. By moving from a fragmented health-care payment sys…

[deleted]

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

#180

Post by cmollis »

It’s a complete scam run by insurance companies who operate with ostensibly a government mandate (although with seemingly zero oversight). I work for myself and and have historically been paying about 20k per year in premiums for my family with a family deductible which I’ve never gotten remotely close to hitting. I have an hsa which I use to pay for out of pocket expenses pre tax and there is a tax deduction for health care premiums. This year I decided to test the system.. and didn’t purchase health care for myself. It turns out that many of the services and drugs we all pay through the nose for are so much cheaper If you ‘self pay’. I spoke to admins at both my doctor and the affiliated hospital and they all have programs to help alleiviate payment hardship if you don’t have insurance (translation: you’ll just have to pay the actual cost of the procedure. Not the bullshit one that the insurance company tells you that you saved a bunch on by overpaying for their insurance). Ridiculous. Inevitably someone will figure out that it’s the insurance companies ripping everyone off and do something that removes their intermediation state-sponsored fleece-job. Ultimately you’re actually paying for catastrophic insurance, oh and Medicaid and long term elderly Medicare, but the rip off of your standard, healthy consumer is a travesty. Maybe someone should be reviewing the actuarial models (or whatever they are) to determine an apporopiate cost for someone who’s ‘heathy’. Me? I’ll just continue to pay like I’m poor... and save some cash.
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