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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

#81
post #28
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.

Massachusetts may try it as well: https://masscare.org/ It'll be a very interesting experiment, if it works, other states will copy it. If it fails wealthy people will leave those states for places with lower taxes, and poorer people will move in to gain free health care. There's a reason the most populous states (CA, NY, MA) are the ones trying it first, and it's not because it's cheaper.

Vermont tried it first, and it is tiny, and stopped it because it was unaffordable. I would say the correlation is with how Democrat a state is, not how populous it is. And while it is good for political campaign slogans, I highly doubt CA/NY/MA legislators actually vote it into law.

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is dead in the water. The Republicans show no sign of supporting broad non means tested or non age gated taxpayer funded healthcare, and they hold the cards in the US Senate. On the state level, any broad based benefit that does not discriminate is also futile because benefit recipients can move into the state and payers for the benefits can move out of the state. See Vermont for the previous trial of this: https:…

You really think people are going to flee NYC and the large cities in CA over this?

OP sounds to be arguing the opposite. One lives in a low tax state while earning money / paying taxes, then retires to a rural part of NY / CA to receive tax-payer-backed benefits without paying for them.

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

#83

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.…

I live in Iceland. ETR is about 40% for me but I'm in a high tax bracket. None of the Scandinavian countries even have 60% marginal tax rate.

EDIT: My MTR is ~42% so my ETR can't be 40%. I don't have a payslip to calculate and searching the interwebs isn't helping a lot right now.

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

#84

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.…

> Coming from a country that has this, there should be caution

It's big world - without knowing which country, this is of little help. I'd like to see a comparison of people forced into debt, bankruptcy or death due to the respective medical systems

This hits home because I have a friend that got cancer with "good" U.S. insurance and if he did not fight the insurance company he'd be in debt for 1mm+

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is a lot of cosponsors, I was reading the page wrong

(Govtrack’s site and Congress houses have a slightly different format for showing sponsors and cosponsors together)

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

#86
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.

Yep. I vehemently oppose federal Healthcare initiatives but im very receptive to state options.

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

#87

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 wil…

[deleted]

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

#88
it appears that this bill does not actually deal with the funding mechanisms for single payer, which will undoubtedly be contentious. From the Campaign for New York Health:

> this legislation can be passed outside of the budget as a standalone bill - the #NYHealthAct is intentionally written to first pass on human rights principles - that care should be equitable and available to all. Then we pass the funding mechanisms in the following session - that is when NYHA becomes part of the budget battle) - begins implementation of systemic long-term change to guarantee universal, comprehensive, single-payer healthcare to everyone who lives or works in New York

from: https://www.nyhcampaign.org/

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

#89

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.…

I understand where you're coming from related to this. We (in the US) hear this critique with regards to the NHS or the Canadian healthcare system.

The part you're missing is that there is an arms race of pricing between healthcare corporations (there have been massive mergers of hospital systems) and insurance companies in terms of prices. We, the patients, are caught in between the giants while prices are going sky high and we are at our most vulnerable.

The hope is this will fix prices to a reasonable level so if we choose to go for private care, those prices will also be reasonable. A lot of specialists that I see ask for cash payments and don't accept insurance. They are also overbooked because a lot of healthcare providers are being driven out of industry from the conditions.

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

#90

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?

This bill doesn't ban private insurance, it does however have this rule:

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

So in other words, private insurances can only be offered if they provide benefits that surpass whatever the public option has.

I imagine that private insurances will logically offer more benefits regardless, otherwise why would someone pay extra to use them over the public option?

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