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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

#251

Post by saghm »

dominotw wrote: post #156
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…

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 h…

> Now the acess to best hosptials is gated by a queue?

I mean, yes? Literally the same principle we all learned in kindergarten for how to make access to something fair. You didn't get to skip the line in lunch because your parents had a better job than someone else either.

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

#252

Post by blitzar »

strictnein wrote: post #232
czgov wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your linked to article does not demonstrate what you claim it does. Your reasoning is wrong. Medicaid expansion was a big part of the ACA.

> "Findings suggest Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act saved about 27,400 lives between 2010-22, including among younger adults." > "Their findings show that Medicaid expansions led to a 12% increase in enrollment and significantly reduced mortality—not just among older adults, but also younger ones, who accounted for nearly half of the life-years saved." Huh? Did you read it? My point was that we could…

> we could have just expanded Medicaid

Laws need votes.

If we are going to be unbound by reality then we could "just" put a medbed to cure all diseases, reverse ageing, and regrow limbs using quantum space-age tech in everyone's home.

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

#253

Post by jgwil2 »

consensus1 wrote: post #119
greenpizza13 wrote: post #53

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, 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…

> thankless job

His annual compensation was over $10 million.

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

#254

Post by johndevor »

jkestner wrote: post #236
johndevor wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is just corrupt politicians and lobbyists. You're fighting to give them more money and power.

The government is more directly accountable to me. The only way I have to influence what insurance companies do is through the government.

You can switch insurance companies, no?

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

#255

Post by tmgldn »

bpt3 wrote: post #147
t-writescode wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed (per capita please). Given that people constantly, literally AVOID care because they can’t pay for it until it’s such an absurd problem that it’s very, very expensive, I struggle to believe this, at all. And money amount doesn’t matter in this evidence because, again, Americans regularly avoid care until it’s catastrophic because they literally can’t afford it and/or have to wait for insurance to meet…

The people who avoid care they need because they can't afford it are a very small portion of the population that gets an outsized share of attention on the issue. Until public healthcare advocates understand this and make actual attempts to convince the majority of people who are satisfied with the current system that there are benefits, the status quo will remain.

I'm not convinced that your assumption that they are a very small portion of the population holds up, but I only have the same anecdotal evidence you likely have.

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

#256

Post by consensus1 »

GolfPopper wrote: post #154
johndevor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The perverse incentive of the politician / general / bureaucrat to favor their personal interest over the public interest is identical to the perverse incentive of the CEO to favor his personal interest over the same.

I would argue the government case is actually much worse because at least the CEO has the feedback mechanism of revenue because the company customer relationship is entirely voluntary on both sides. The public vote is supposed to restrain the government in the same way, but in practice it seems to be much less effective in restraining politicians than the customer is at restraining companies.

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

#257

Post by edoceo »

expedition32 wrote: post #211
epistasis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real problem with universal healthcare is that it immediately completely eradicates religious charity. Any single mom who works as a stripper can go see a doctor who doesn't have the slightest inclination to judge- you're just a number in a government database. Everyone's getting free shit no questions asked.

Where is the problem here? Religious charity exists in places with universal healthcare.

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

#258

Post by dylan604 »

strictnein wrote: post #232
czgov wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your linked to article does not demonstrate what you claim it does. Your reasoning is wrong. Medicaid expansion was a big part of the ACA.

> "Findings suggest Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act saved about 27,400 lives between 2010-22, including among younger adults." > "Their findings show that Medicaid expansions led to a 12% increase in enrollment and significantly reduced mortality—not just among older adults, but also younger ones, who accounted for nearly half of the life-years saved." Huh? Did you read it? My point was that we could…

Paid for how? The expansion of people not on medicaid to be paying in was supposed to be how expanding medicaid could be achieved.

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

#259

Post by _heimdall »

larkost wrote: post #203
_heimdall wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that this proposal would not solve all of the problems; absent more changes you would still see the creep up of healthcare costs at too high a rate. But slashing $1 trillion off of a $5.3 trillion costs is a pretty big bite of the apple. Even if you go with the more conservative $663 number, that is still a great first step. And both of those numbers are after adding the costs of covering currency uncovered p…

I understand that theres an argument for removing private insurance companies in favor of thr government can cut costs. It can also increase them.

I'd argue that the primary issue with insurance costs today is the lack of market competition, obscurity of what costs and prices are, and government protections that prevent insurance companies from being legally liable for many of the problems they cause.

Corruption and monopolistic practices is a big deal in healthcare, for example. We'd be better off, in my opinion, by solving that rather than killing an entire private industry and hoping our government can continue to do it better indefinitely.

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

#260

Post by dbbk »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #84
Tepix wrote: post #65

Earlier 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.

The Republicans have gone through two Trump terms now promising to repeal Obamacare and can't do it
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