Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

ysph.yale.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 1001 posts

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#51

Post by etc-hosts »

afavour wrote: post #15

In a more sane world the Republican Party would be in favor of universal health coverage. How many potential entrepreneurs stay working at BigCorp because they need the health benefits? How many small businesses are crushed by the cost of providing healthcare to their employees? It would be great for business to remove any involvement they have in personal healthcare. But I suppose they are the party of big business,…

The Parties and Capital have multiple tools for disciplining Labor, health insurance tied to your employment status is one of the more effective ones.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#52

Post by t-writescode »

triceratops wrote: post #37
solaarphunk wrote: post #19

What about quality of care tradeoffs? In Canada, for example, you are forced to use the government system, and if it doesn't deem you important enough, there is no private option.

Does American private insurance pay for everything? And if you say "but they can pay out of pocket", well Canadians can come to America and pay out of pocket too.

No.

For a lot of people it very much doesn’t. And the cost is very prohibitive for people getting any care at all when insurance doesn’t cover it, so they end up not getting necessary care and then ending up on disability for life.

A healthy population *makes money for taxes and buying things*, too.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#53

Post by greenpizza13 »

The US is far too broken for such a thing to ever come to be. Politicians are bought and paid for, and the impact on the insurance companies and their profits make this impossible.

US legislators will never, ever, ever put the needs of the people above the needs of corporations, not as long as corporations can wield their massive wealth as "free speech" in the form of lobbying and political donations.

Sounds nice, though.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#54

Post by otterley »

skuzye wrote: post #32
solaarphunk wrote: post #19

What about quality of care tradeoffs? In Canada, for example, you are forced to use the government system, and if it doesn't deem you important enough, there is no private option.

Same here in the UK. If you need to see a specialist, you regularly have to wait months, assuming you can even get a referral in the first place.

This is frequently true in the USA as well. My provider's dermatology department is pretty backed up and couldn't make me an appointment for an excision until November. Fortunately it's not urgent.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#55

Post by spicymaki »

poncho_romero wrote: post #23
afavour wrote: post #15

In a more sane world the Republican Party would be in favor of universal health coverage. How many potential entrepreneurs stay working at BigCorp because they need the health benefits? How many small businesses are crushed by the cost of providing healthcare to their employees? It would be great for business to remove any involvement they have in personal healthcare. But I suppose they are the party of big business,…

In what world is the Republican Party pro entrepreneur/small business enough to make these rhetorical questions meaningful?

That wing of the Republican Party does not exist anymore, they are now centrist Democrats.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#57

Post by intuitionist »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #33
jonplackett wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1 trillion less profit.

Not really. Private health insurance would still exist alongside for the more wealthy (including nearly everyone on HN) that doesn’t want to wait a year for their public system MRI. Same thing that plays out in other countries. The U.S. already has a form of this in so-called concierge / premium providers too. Lots of profit to be made.

This isn’t true of the Medicare for All Act, for what it’s worth. That would ban private insurance altogether. Personally I think that’s a bug, not a feature, but if you’re very concerned with fairness then you probably think the opposite.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#58

Post by loeg »

What UHC proponents never honestly admit is that these headline figures require incredibly optimistic assumptions and also much more rationing of care than our current model. We spend a lot on healthcare because we consume a lot of services. To save money, you have to buy fewer services. Yes, you can squeeze providers a little bit ("Medicare-level payments to providers" -- which they will absolutely hate, by the way), and you get another little bit by disposing of insurance provider profit margins ("reduced administrative overhead"). But the vast majority is coming from rationing, which people hate. And it would also cost massively increased taxes on the middle class, which voters also hate.

"Fewer avoidable emergency department visits and hospitalizations" -- sheer optimism. "Less fraudulent billing" -- no reason to believe this would be true. There could be even more fraudulent billing! Medicare fraud has been a big problem, and solutions are largely reactionary.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#59

Post by java-man »

elictronic wrote: post #9
karakoram wrote: post #2

>A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace, according to a new preprint study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health.

[flagged]

and what about the third yacht? who could afford the third yacht then? huh?

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#60

Post by lapcat »

triceratops wrote: post #27
lapcat wrote: post #3

This is why it doesn't happen: politicians get bought. "Jeffries co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation between 2013 and 2021, but in August 2026, he stated he shifted his stance and stated that he no longer supports or co-sponsors the proposal." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakeem_Jeffries#Healthcare

One of two major political parties, and the one that currently holds all 3 branches of federal government, has labelled it un-American and communist. And yet you point the finger at...a Democrat.

> the one that currently holds all 3 branches of federal government

The key word here is "currently". When did Democrats ever propose or pass single payer when they were in power?

Moreover, when the leaders of both parties are opposed to single payer, how in the world do you expect it to ever pass? Jeffries wants to be Speaker of the House after the midterms. If he's opposed to single payer, then there's no hope for it.

The majority of Democrats support single payer. That's why I'm pointing the finger at a Democratic leader. I don't expect Republicans to support single payer. What I expect is for Democrats and Republicans to have opposing views, not the same views.

Post reply on HN