Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we're talking wages here, what are the options exactly? Is there anything bigger than 401(k)? This is ignoring charity, which I believe is available to anyone anyway.
401k, HSA, 529s for state taxes. You can give children gifts up to $28k, which is taxed at the kids rate. There are games you can play with home equity loans. If you own a business there is a thousand ways to do it. One thing I’ve seen is people’s businesses “donate” to private schools and then get “merit” scholarships for their kids. You can accelerate depreciation of up to $500k of assets, etc. If you’re smart, you…
NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
501–510 of 569 posts
Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
Switzerland has private insurance just like the US and people I know that live in Zurich love it.
> Switzerland has private insurance just like the US and people I know that live in Zurich love it. Profits are regulated (sometimes down to zero) in CH. Profits are unregulated in the US.
Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most Americans have never experienced a system like that, and will fight tooth and nail against things they don't understand or have experienced. They are told by billionaires who run the media empires that universal healthcare is expensive, will ruin the country, will remove their ability to get appointments scheduled. Of course coming from any other country, this is ridiculous. But it goes to show you how out of to…
>Most Americans have never experienced a system like that, and will fight tooth and nail against things they don't understand or have experienced. They are told by billionaires who run the media empires that universal healthcare is expensive, will ruin the country, will remove their ability to get appointments scheduled. My wife, a practicing physician, did fellowships in multiple countries like this. I asked her for…
Same as in the US. Three months is the minimum.
Hell, I couldn't even schedule a tooth cleaning with a new dentist less than six months out - I called close to 10 dentist offices.
Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In fact it's entirely possible for a significant increase in tax rates to make rental units a poor investment, causing housing prices to plummet and rents to drop. How does this logic work? Building apartments becomes a bad investment. Then developers don't build apartments. And somehow constrained supply is supposed to result in lower prices?
What if developers built too many apartments so there is no shortage? What if the builders all decided to tear down the cheap apartments and build a bunch of Luxury Condominiums when the the housing market is full broke college students who can't even afford to cover the taxes on individual units? You can say the market won't let it happen, but the second case is the current real estate market for the town I went to…
Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
Costs $20k for a family.
Just interestingly - the average per capita cost of Canada’s system is $4,000. Of course in the US, there are costs beyond just insurance, but if you had to pay for coverage out of pocket it would be $16,000/yr for a family of 4.
Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why the medicare for all plans need to ban private healthcare. Norway and UK has free healthcare for all, but still private options available for people that want to pay extra. That is also reducing the load on the public system so I can't really see why it is negative.
A lot of providers won't accept medicare because what they pay out is significantly lower compared to private insurance. That's why Obama's "If you like your doctor, you get to keep your doctor." promise was such a big deal.
[0] https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-many-physicians...
Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a not doctor I don't understand this: > It will likely strain these systems even further, as reimbursements from Medicaid/Medicaid are insufficient to run large health systems which depend on higher rates from private insurers Time ran an article a few years ago about hospital billing and whatnot. One of the things that they pointed out was that Medicare reimbursement rates were based on the actual cost to provide…
1. It’s just a fact that if all reimbursement was currently Medicare-level, the existing hospital systems in NYC would run a massive deficit and couldn’t provide the services they do now. They wouldn’t be in business barring massive reductions in staffing, hours, services, salaries, etc. I don’t know what you read in the NYT but this is well-known in healthcare. Hospitals lose money on Medicaid/Medicare patients in g…
The payor mix narrative has attractive qualities: it makes the private insurance companies sound like they're subsidizing care, the logical implication is that if we made these atlases shrug with M4A, the local PCP would go bankrupt. In reality, the narrative is at best reductionist and at worst misleading. But it rhymes with the truth, so it has a lot of mileage.
Private insurance reimbursements are negotiated in multiples of medicare because insurers and hospital groups alike expend tremendous amounts of money each year in administrative costs to challenge claims back and forth.
A surprising proportion of private insurance payouts are never reimbursed at the negotiated price. But hospital groups are OK with this, because it allows them to deduct the difference as a loss. Accountants rejoice!
Medicare/Medicaid prices are "low" because (1) the government has a strong bargaining position, (2) the population served by those fees has confounding variables of age and disability which raises the relative price of care (3) the government does not play claim-challenging games anywhere close to the extent of private insurers.
Private insurance companies and big hospital groups benefit the most from the status quo, and have the most to lose from medicare for all. But it would not be doom and gloom.
Medicare can adjust their prices to match the new population and tax base, hospital groups can stop running mini debt collection agencies, etc. There are real cost savings in M4A.
I think what's most likely to happen is an expansion of medicare advantage, (ma4a?). Since it's a program that effectively nationalizes the existing regime of private insurance.
Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Fair" is highly subjective and no one can agree on what that means. Most of us think the fair option is to raise other people's taxes.
"most of us" don't understand the basic concept of marginal tax rates, and "most of us" don't understand the idea of marginal utility. "most of us" have in some form or another been doused in a firehose of "the only good tax rate is a lower tax rate" propaganda generated over (at least) the last 40 years. For a long time, the USA (like many other post-industrial revolution countries) has accepted that "fair" means us…
Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
I figured, but with the "Most HN comment" meme and Poe's law providing context, it can be hard to be sure someone isn't suggesting something a bit more... extreme . :)
Lol first time my thoughts on banning health insurance is the less extreme option haha... For reference, the idea is to optimize for public good. Banning insurance would drop fees dramatically because people would get less unnecessary work done. At the same time, hospitals and others would be willing to offer loans provided you could pay it off. This would drive down costs to the point even the poor can get some dece…
Or we could just offer free healthcare without relying on unfettered capitalism to "work".
>unnecessary work
With capitalism as the driving force, anything unprofitable becomes unnecessary. Probably goes without saying, but focusing on profitability likely won't drive the best healthcare outcomes.
Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think if states become more heterogenous (and SCOTUS seems to be on that wavelength) the idea is "if you don't like the new laws, relocate". Which sounds great; more diversity of laws, more states that are likely to fit my values more closely. But this impacts poor people disproportionately. If you're poor it'll be hard or impossible to relocate.
It also impacts people who consider themselves something other than "rootless cosmopolitans". I do happen to proudly put myself in the rootless cosmopolitan category, but I've had some interesting interactions (even here on HN) with people for whom community, place, family ties, family history etc. are much more important than they are to someone like me. "Relocate" is a particularly jarring edict for such folk.