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NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

nysenate.gov

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Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#71

Coming from a country that has this, there should be caution: it gets more affordable, but you get what you pay for. In my country of origin, you get a partially-paid-for ride to the emergency room, where you pay for things like casts, non-ward rooms, dental care out of pocket. There is no prescription coverage. There is no optometry coverage. I would wait significant chunks of a year for procedures and diagnostics.…

Two points:

1) In the USA, one must be pretty well situated to get the quality of healthcare you describe. MANY people go without prescriptions, and get inadequate care already.

2) If you add up what we pay in health insurance premiums plus employer contributions, especially if you have a family, we're generally in the same league of paycheck-subtraction as a European country with universal healthcare.

So while I agree with your overall point that it could end up worse than where we started, I don't think thats a guaranteed outcome.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#72
post #4

With California and New York both exploring statewide single payer healthcare it looks like the Overton window is moving closer to legitimate discussion of a nationwide single payer plan in the US. It’ll be interesting to watch, since this is such a hot-button topic here on many levels.

Why would you want it nation wide? Even if you “support it”, I’d much rather watch the implications from the various experiments across states. Then we can select the best option. Personally, I’d like to see some states ban healthcare outright. Others have full coverage and everything in between. Then wait 10 years and we can see the results. I strongly suspect there would be states willing to do this.

[deleted]

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#73
post #30

it will be interesting to watch NY (and/or CA) put something like this in place and observe from afar. i strongly feel that states should be much more aggressive running policy experiments if their constituents desire them, and at the national level we all get some benefit of seeing how things turn out in real time. all that said, assuming there is some tangible tax increase, NYC high earners are going to be knocking…

NY should pay for single payer in part by raising real estate taxes, it's the only clear way the state has to avoid capital flight in the way you're describing here.

This said, a big thing NY benefits from is that a lot of people work in NY state temporarily as consultants in addition to the bridge and tunnel crowd that come in from NJ and CT, this gives them a much larger tax base than the population living there brings in on its own.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#74

Coming from a country that has this, there should be caution: it gets more affordable, but you get what you pay for. In my country of origin, you get a partially-paid-for ride to the emergency room, where you pay for things like casts, non-ward rooms, dental care out of pocket. There is no prescription coverage. There is no optometry coverage. I would wait significant chunks of a year for procedures and diagnostics.…

Would healthcare overall in e.g New York be equivalent though? In Canada, we have "free" healthcare but literally have no other option so it's the Soviet style mess you'd expect a government monopoly to be. But would this bar paid healthcare? Couldn't people still have health insurance and get private care? Is there something preventing that?

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#75
post #30

it will be interesting to watch NY (and/or CA) put something like this in place and observe from afar. i strongly feel that states should be much more aggressive running policy experiments if their constituents desire them, and at the national level we all get some benefit of seeing how things turn out in real time. all that said, assuming there is some tangible tax increase, NYC high earners are going to be knocking…

New York is losing population at a breakneck pace. Our government is to blame.

I am for single payer to some extent, but if done poorly medical staff (who are already leaving due to pandemic policies) will just pick up and leave.

We recently expanded the privileges of nurse practitioners which is great, but two large nursing unions are less than 60 days away from striking.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something is going to have to change. As it stands, there isn't a plan on the national insurance exchange that I can buy that's even remotely as cheap as my company's plan (actual premium, not just the fraction paid for by employee).

Probably because your company can negotiate and control the population characteristics (unlike the exchange). Or is self-insured, meaning they aren’t profit motivated. Insurance on average is always more expensive than not having insurance on average. The question is given that risk, how much of a premium can / will insurance companies take. Turns out they like high profits and low risk.

Are health insurance companies allowed to discriminate customers by their health status, that includes age? With a good deal of populace morbidly obese and not even bothering to exercise, it's expected that healthy 25 yo are going to pay crazy insurance payments. Corps, on the other hand, absolutely do discriminate by all sorts of characteristics and insurers know what they are signing up for. Offer health insurance tiers by age and BMI and watch premiums getting reasonable again (for some).

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#77

Coming from a country that has this, there should be caution: it gets more affordable, but you get what you pay for. In my country of origin, you get a partially-paid-for ride to the emergency room, where you pay for things like casts, non-ward rooms, dental care out of pocket. There is no prescription coverage. There is no optometry coverage. I would wait significant chunks of a year for procedures and diagnostics.…

> If NY does this, the near zero chance of my moving there ever would go to absolute 0.

Are they proposing kicking you off your insurance? From the bill:

> SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS:

Every New York resident will be eligible to enroll, regardless of age, income, wealth, employment, or other status. There would be no network restrictions, deductibles, or co-pays. Coverage would be publicly funded. The benefits will include comprehensive outpatient and inpatient medical care, long-term care, primary and preventive care, prescription drugs, laboratory tests, rehabilitative, dental, vision, hearing, etc. all benefits required by current state insurance law or provided by the state public employee package, Family Health Plus, Child Health Plus, Medicare, or Medicaid, and others added by the plan.

As someone that has lived in NYC for 15 years, I'd really love to see this happen.

Edit:

> Private insurance that duplicates benefits offered under New York Health could not be offered to New York residents.

So yes, I guess it would be kicking those off of their current private insurance. It sounds like it'd force private insurers to offer plans that would augment off of a base of public care.

I'm still fine with this.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#78

Coming from a country that has this, there should be caution: it gets more affordable, but you get what you pay for. In my country of origin, you get a partially-paid-for ride to the emergency room, where you pay for things like casts, non-ward rooms, dental care out of pocket. There is no prescription coverage. There is no optometry coverage. I would wait significant chunks of a year for procedures and diagnostics.…

>> but you get what you pay for. Americans are already paying more than most places for healthcare but not getting a good return.

Is this true even for individuals? I think one version of the problem might be that we pay too little for some peoples healthcare and too much for others, but do the people who pay the most still end up with worse results?

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#79

"Died in committee" I assume will be the final result, official in a couple weeks.

ha lol, one sponsor, in committee yeah I don't consider this kind of thing news, but it did open a conversation that I wanted to have

maybe I'm misunderstanding but I see at least 4-5 cosponsors that are members of the health committee?

not saying I think this will come to pass necessarily but there's like 30 cosponsors listed and the NY State Senate is 63 members.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not seeing the downside.

The downside is that you could be paying more taxes for something that you already had.

Then perhaps it's time to unlink employment and health care coverage entirely.
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