Earlier quoted context omitted.
$1 trillion more efficient in allocation of resources, freeing up money for consumer spending on everything.
They don't care about this stuff
The non-healthcare sectors of the economy do.
Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
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Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this quality improvements including or ignoring the 30-ish percent rejection rate of the most popular healthcare system, including such gems as insulin and pre-authorizations refusing surgery for necrotic tissue when “maybe they could PT it, have you tried?”
PT? Luxury! My daughter had PT referred by her pediatrician, then the insurance didn't pay all of it and when I asked the insurance company for the EOBs they said they were not allowed to give them to me because it would violate my daughter's privacy.
Our insurance paid for the bill from my wife's surgeon but spent 8 months refusing to pay for literally anything else, including the anesthesia. They said it was "medically unnecessary".
Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
#153People talk about policies like they're something like can be picked up off the shelf at supermarket. If you could take the policies and Sweden copy-paste them to the US, then sure, we could save $1T and a hundred thousand lives. This would be a very difficult thing to replicate if you're a country without any existing healthcare system. It is impossible in a country with an extremely mature healthcare system, which accounts for nearly 20% of GDP.
No politician is going to want to deal with the fallout of massive layoffs or millions of people having their coverage changed (e.g. no free chiropractor appointments or GLP-1s for weight loss), especially since the Democrats suffered one of the worst Congressional losses in US history the year the ACA was passed. There are ways to make this transition less painful, but the only people interested in health policy are those who make money from healthcare, so you generally only see solutions that involve throwing money at the problem. We need regular people to develop an understanding of health policy or else we'll end up with a policy that merges the worst parts of a planned economy and capitalism even more than today.
Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
$1 trillion more efficient in allocation of resources, freeing up money for consumer spending on everything.
Are you saying the government is an efficient allocator of resources?
The government does not have the peverse incentive of putting private profit above all other concerns.
Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
#155We'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…
The point of nationalisation is to address those underlying concerns. But it’s fair to say that in practice, nationalisation doesn’t always solve those problems.
The problem is you either need to regular or nationalise. And neither of those are particularly “American”.
Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
#156We'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…
can someone tell me this. Right now level of care is rationed by type of insurance you can afford. eg: northwestern in chicago downtown is inaccesible to ppl below certain income level.
In universal everyone has access to every hospital ? Why would someone go to lower level hospital if they can go to northwestern. Now the acess to best hosptials is gated by a queue?
I am not saying this is right but ppl who already have access to northwestern its in their best selfish interst to oppose universal?
i am just countering the point that "ppl opposing it are merely brainwashed by foxnews or are stupid" . Its no different than ppl preventing outsider kids from going to your school.
Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if your solution requires perpetual majority control I think once universal health coverage is established, it amounts to political suicide to try to take it away again.
I don’t think “political suicide” exists anymore.
It doesn't exist for politicians who hitch their wagon to Trump and MAGA; their base rewards loyalty. For everyone else, political suicide is still very much a thing (see the various conservative republicans who've chosen to go against Trump over the years and have been cast out in favor of new loyalist challengers).
Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
#158We'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…
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Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
#159The 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, th…
Nobody, including congress, gives a rat's ass about insurance companies and their profits. The truth is that someone has to approve or deny healthcare. Every universal system does it too, but by government policy instead of corporate decision. After the CEO of United Healthcare was gunned down in the streets for doing that thankless job do you think congress is saying to themselves "hey, maybe we should get into that…
Man I wish I could downvote a comment. This is what you’d see on Reddit.
“Thankless job” is a crazy way to describe United Healthcare.
No one cares about insurance companies and their profits?? This doesn’t even make sense, so many people rely on insurance and many stakeholders profit off the American insurance system.
Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
#160We'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 possibil…
Keep in mind, I made no value judgement on ACA at all, just suggested that we learn about its opposition and, as you rightly point out, the difficulty of passing such legislation that can last over time.
I agree that "To no avail" could be read as "was worthless" to an adversarial reader, but trust me when I say it was meant as "which didn't save it from being opposed and stripped over time". As in "the studies and facts don't move the politics"
It should be obvious the messaging is oppositional along party lines. Every chip away at ACA makes it a worse program, and is celebrated by half the electorate. This is a core problem with the legislation. A second iteration on top, or in place, would have to learn from this and work to make the program stickier.