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

ysph.yale.edu

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

#71

Post by loeg »

_heimdall wrote: post #64
jvanderbot wrote: post #21

We've been down this road. ACA was predicated on studies like this, to no avail (it turns out that intense opposition chips away at it over time regardless of these studies). I'm of the opinion that, if your solution requires perpetual majority control of legislative, executive, and judicial branches, your solution is in fact a campaign slogan. I'm not saying that this is what is happening now , but I am saying that…

These types of studies, and the goals they aim to support, always frustrate me as solving a surface-level problem rather than root cause. The problem with US healthcare isn't who pays for it, its how damn expensive it is. As always there are multiple factors at play, my list would include corruption, lack of legal accountability/responsibility, and a population that is much less healthy than reasonable. Go after any…

Americans just consume a lot of healthcare services. Any substantial cost savings requires providing less healthcare service.

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

#72

Post by mapt »

jvanderbot wrote: post #21

We've been down this road. ACA was predicated on studies like this, to no avail (it turns out that intense opposition chips away at it over time regardless of these studies). I'm of the opinion that, if your solution requires perpetual majority control of legislative, executive, and judicial branches, your solution is in fact a campaign slogan. I'm not saying that this is what is happening now , but I am saying that…

"If your solution requires addressing the slow-burn civil war, your solution is just a campaign slogan".

Essentially, all solutions require addressing the slow-burn civil war, which is today capable of of subsuming any issue. Not a single policy issue can realistically be addressed while the rabid 800lb gorilla is in the room. That gorilla is not Trump, that gorilla is Heritage, Fox News, Koch, et al.

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

#73

Post by nxm »

otterley wrote: post #54
skuzye wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have any more evidence than this anecdote - pretty much any specialist is available this week in my area. Did you check ZocDoc?

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

#74

Post by jalapenoj »

RajuChacha108 wrote: post #42
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,…

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

#75

Post by epistasis »

jvanderbot wrote: post #21

We've been down this road. ACA was predicated on studies like this, to no avail (it turns out that intense opposition chips away at it over time regardless of these studies). I'm of the opinion that, if your solution requires perpetual majority control of legislative, executive, and judicial branches, your solution is in fact a campaign slogan. I'm not saying that this is what is happening now , but I am saying that…

ACA has saved tons of lives. Due to the intense opposition, it was not structured in a way that could save money, but rather structured in the way that it could get through congress.

Additionally, as somebody who was around pre-ACA, I can not tell you how much better, in every single way, the post-ACA healthcare world is. Pre-existing conditions? Access to healthcare as an individual? These are life-changing possibilities, especially for entrepreneurs.

There's a very clear type of fallacy you are engaging in here that only works in politics: you're taking a vague general idea X, ignoring all particulars, and then lumping an idea Y together as if they identical and that any change in that general direction of Y could ever be different than what happened with X. There's no intellectual rigor or honesty in that sort of thinking, yet it somehow pops up throughout all of politics.

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

#76

Post by mmooss »

juiceland wrote: post #10
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

Universal healthcare doesn’t happen in the US because a certain subset of the American population would rather have worse health outcomes than guarantee abortions, HIV prevention, and gender-affirming care. Also, ~150M people with employer coverage plus seniors on Medicare fear disruption more than they value expansion.

There's also a racist element (I know that's a politically incorrect word here, but such things happen). People don't want to fund services to the lazy ______s - fill in one or more of many groups toward whom hate is promoted.

When a similar bill was voted down years ago, someone I was with laughed and said, 'no way were we paying for healthcare for the Blacks'. It fits the divide and conquer strategy to divide poorer people with hate so that they don't unite and vote for all these things - why do you think leaders promote hate?

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

#77

Post by Tepix »

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.

So the government provided healthcare covers everything then? If not, you cannot legally get it by paying for it by yourself? Curious.

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

#79

Post by bluecalm »

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,…

Decoupling health insurance from your job and going single payer are separate things. You can have one without the other. You can have a very healthy system with private insurers (like in Switzerland) and you can have completely dysfunctional single payer system (like in Poland and I guess many other countries).

Main problems are elsewhere: doctors gatekeeping the market, lack of transparency when it comes to pricing, regulation making it impossible to compete for smaller players etc.

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