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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

#391

Post by burkaman »

macinjosh wrote: post #310
burkaman wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare is not and cannot ever be a free market. You cannot have price transparency when a buyer may be unconscious at the time of "purchase". You cannot have price competition when buyers are frequently forced to immediately purchase a good or service if they don't want to die. Hospitals are chosen by proximity, not price. These are the consequences of being mortal human beings. If we were all immortal, and "heal…

> You cannot have price competition when buyers are frequently forced to immediately purchase a good or service if they don't want to die. The number of instances where this dire case occurs is minimal compared to every other instance. Sure, when its life and death its not practical. Perhaps those sorts of situations is where single payer or insurance makes sense. For humdrum things like physicals, wellness visits, c…

Hospital care is the largest spending category by far: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...

While the other things you list are technically not immediate life-or-death decisions, they still are not voluntary purchases. The presence of any kind of coercion distorts a free market.

Also, I don't want to live in a society where individuals must decide between vaccinating their newborn children or paying their electricity bill that month. Or between getting a flu shot and buying groceries for the week. The externalities of these "individual" decisions are obvious, and a free market has no answer.

Finally, let's imagine a system where emergency care is covered by a national single payer, but "humdrum things" are available in a free market. Now the poor can't afford basic physicals and flu shots, so we all end up paying more into the single payer system to cover such people being hospitalized for conditions that could have been prevented by regular medical checkups.

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

#392

Post by burkaman »

senordevnyc wrote: post #373
burkaman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read it? Also, are you familiar with any modern nations where a single-payer healthcare system has been tried? Perhaps we could use them to predict the effects. > Is waste, fraud, and abuse taken into account at all in this study? 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. F…

It doesn’t matter if it’s better. It’s fundamentally impossible to get to there from here directly . You can’t do it politically or economically, and honestly, given how much of our economy is built on healthcare spending, it’s pretty stupid to try. But again, it doesn’t matter, you can’t do it in a democracy. Just like a carbon tax, if you make too much of the population hurt in the short term, they’ll just replace…

How did FDR accomplish the New Deal in a democracy? How did the UK implement the NHS in 1948? How did Canada pass the Canada Health Act in 1984? How did Taiwan institute National Health Insurance in 1995?

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

#393

Post by onemoresoop »

tzs wrote: post #348
BurningFrog wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trap to be aware of here is that the fact that the current system sucks is no guarantee that any proposed alternative will be better.

You could put on a blindfold and then throw a dart at a map of the of first world countries, and if we just adopted whatever system is used where that dart lands it almost certainly would be a big improvement. If making a better health care system was a problem that everyone else sucked at also then I'd be more inclined to worry that trying to improve ours could make it worse, but with so many good examples--using a…

Good point. Wherever the dart falls is not corrupted yet. A new system comes into existence, it is efficient for a while then gets corrupted again and the cycle repeats

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

#394

Post by winstonewert »

What I wish is that everyone would be given a choice. Either opt completely out of all government regulations/taxes/programs related to healthcare or opt into a universal healthcare program. Think that you'd better off without government involvement in your healthcare? Put your body/wallet where your mouth is. Think you'd better off with a universal healthcare system, put your body/wallet where your mouth is.

But no, we'll just keep the crappy status quo which nobody thinks is a good idea.

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

#395

Post by ameister14 »

grecy wrote: post #296
onemoresoop wrote: post #79

I'm paying nearly 20k (parents+child) on insurance I don't have time to use (and luckily no serious need) and once my son went to see his pediatrician and our 'private' insurance company (that i'm not going to name) sent us bill of $500, for a check-up. We disputed the charge with the insurance and they agreed to wave the payment next month. Next month comes and guess what? The same letter comes in mail. We disputed…

I live in Canada, and haven't even earned $20k of income in a few years, but I still have excellent cover. I broke my nose, was seen within 5 minutes and it was straightened (after anaesthetic). I got hit by a car on my bike, was seen in 5 minutes, no worries. Needed and x-ray for my lugs to get residency. Took 10 minutes. Free. My brother broke his leg horribly. Multiple surgeries, a month in hospital, etc. etc. The…

If you make that little you may actually be covered in the US, too.

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

#396

Post by xtreme »

Balgair wrote: post #370
codegeek wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a family of 4, I pay total of about 20K per year as well (employer + employee cost) and even after that, we have a $5000 deductible AND on top, we have to be concerned about in-network/out of network bullshit. So for me, unless $25,000 has been spent, insurance company would not even come in the picture AND I am always scared if I wil get a bill that was out of network. This madness has to end and I don't give a…

I'll chime in with my anecdata on US health insurance: My SO has a condition that requires a pill to help out with. My SO has some trouble working regular hours due to this condition and takes one pill per day. Depending on the insurance, we have paid between $1 and $5 per pill in the past. This particular chemical is a part of horse feed. Like, how we just put Vitamin D in Milk, or Iodine in Salt; they put this chem…

Wow. At that point it makes more sense to fly out to another country, see a doctor there, pay for the medication in cash, and take a vacation at the same time with money left over.

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

#397

Post by Balgair »

xtreme wrote: post #396
Balgair wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll chime in with my anecdata on US health insurance: My SO has a condition that requires a pill to help out with. My SO has some trouble working regular hours due to this condition and takes one pill per day. Depending on the insurance, we have paid between $1 and $5 per pill in the past. This particular chemical is a part of horse feed. Like, how we just put Vitamin D in Milk, or Iodine in Salt; they put this chem…

Wow. At that point it makes more sense to fly out to another country, see a doctor there, pay for the medication in cash, and take a vacation at the same time with money left over.

Some already are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z2XRg3dy9k

~ the 7 minute mark

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

#398

Post by leetcrew »

jrs235 wrote: post #388
leetcrew wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on its face, I don't think this is as crazy as you make it seem. it's just that the complexities of medical billing has become too much for the doctor to understand and convey to the patient. can you think of any other role where a professional interfacing directly with customers wouldn't be expected to at least estimate how much the service will cost them?

I think I understand your point. However, a car body shop can estimate how much it will cost to fix up my vehicle after a collision with a deer. Those professionals can provide an estimate based on the amount of effort and materials they believe are required. But they don't sit there and try and tell me how much my insurance will pay and how much I will have to pay out of pocket or if my insurance will cover any of t…

that's a good point. I guess healthcare has a uniquely complex interplay between insurance payout and actual billed cost (eg, your car insurance does not negotiate with the mechanic for you).

I'll rephrase my statement. medical insurance/billing is too complicated to reasonably expect a doctor or patient to fully understand. this being the case, there should be someone working at the hospital/practice whose job it is to actually understand this shit and give me an estimate at each step of the process. doesn't really fix the underlying problem, but at least then I could make an educated choice between receiving care and being able to afford retirement.

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

#399

Post by dillondoyle »

onemoresoop wrote: post #219
dillondoyle wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm I love Kaiser but both the best and worst parts for me are the bureaucracy -> time/$ savers. Great when it's fast and cheap, can email Dr to get meds/treatment, get meds mailed 3 for 2 price - but frustrating when wait to see a specialist is more than a month or being rushed through in person visits like cattle. And I feel well taken care proactively with multi-DR/NP team. Plus they actually did a good jo…

Just curious, what are your total yearly expenses on Kaiser? And how much does the employer pays on top of that, do you know? Thanks

I own our company with a partner, so it's me paying for it either way. I buy on the market but company pays for it.

I think the overall costs are lower for Kaiser, I think I have one of the gold plans and it's only like $20-40 copay for fairly specialist visits and most medicine is really affordable. I pay labs costs and I think looking at bill I remember them being more than the actual Doctor and they seem fairly expensive.

In past years I've found I barely have any costs or recently with a 'high health' year a few of the more rate big costs helped me the out of pocket pretty quick.

Just googling found this: http://info.kaiserpermanente.org/healthplans/colorado/indivi...

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

#400

Post by foolbiter »

partiallypro wrote: post #294

I don't know why the idea of a "public option" fell out of favor with Democrats. It's a good stop along the way, and doesn't risk completely destroying an industry overnight...and therefore has a much higher chance of passing. Eventually employers would push people onto the public option plan, but it wouldn't be overnight. Bernie's plan, imo has so much room for error, it's not even worth considering without a stop a…

the end result of the public option is employer-based plans offloading their least valuable (and most vulnerable) customers onto the public option, leading to much higher costs for everyone. the abolition of private insurance is necessary for the efficiency and bargaining power of a maximalist medicare-for-all system.
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