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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

#271

Post by tptacek »

epistasis wrote: post #75
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 possibil…

I agree with you about the ACA (as an opponent of single-payer). Prior to the ACA, members of my immediate family were uninsurable on the individual market --- not insurable at a higher rate, not insurable with exclusions, but literally uninsurable: their only options were employer-provided group coverage or state catastrophic safety net coverage programs. The twist: neither has any chronic health conditions. The underwriting refusals were based on symptoms reported in previous engagements with the health care system.

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

#272

Post by satnhak »

Come to a country with universal healthcare (England) and realise that if you work then you're paying 5x the market price for the worst healthcare imaginable. MRI scan - we don't know, one month wait, maybe two. Operation - are you going to die tomorrow with out it? No, ok then that could be years.

You need to pay rock bottom wages to doctors to make it work, so guess what all the good doctors leave for private healthcare and you end up with the dregs from the third world.

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

#273

Post by tptacek »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #264
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…

ACA also greatly increased costs. As an entrepreneur at the time, insurance premiums increased 25% overnight for the same plan. Many people had similar experiences. That the ACA forced a large number of people to pay a lot more for literally the same product is not a good outcome for those people. Too many people try to pretend this didn't happen.

No it didn't. The ACA slowed cost growth, which was already skyrocketing by the time it passed.

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

#274

Post by hx8 »

_heimdall wrote: post #245
hx8 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with US healthcare isn't who pays for it, its how damn expensive it is Saving $1,000,000,000,000/yr is directly addressing how damn expensive it is.

(1) we don't know the claims of the study will be accurate if implemented and (2) we would need studies modelling cost savings of alternative approaches to actually compare anything. Obamacare made wild claims about cost savings as well. That didn't work out for many reasons that could show up again with another universal healthcare push.

1. Do any of the cost savings recommendations you address come close to $1T/yr impact? This is the scale we should be aiming for.

2. If you think this modeling is inaccurate or incomplete you can directly discuss that. That would be a much more interesting discussion than "it might be incorrect."

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

#275

Post by strictnein »

blitzar wrote: post #252
strictnein wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Too many people think snark is a substitute for insight.

The major GOP complaint about the entire thing was that it was the federal government forcing people to buy a product from companies. The Supreme Court ruled that it had that power.

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

#276

Post by Hikikomori »

consensus1 wrote: post #200
jonplackett wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1 trillion less profit.

Total profits for US health insurance companies in 2025 were $50 billion. The other $950 billion has got to come from cutting: 1. money to providers 2. overall healthcare consumption 3. bureaucratic redundancy and waste 1 is going to piss off medical providers. 2 is going to piss of the general public. 3 is going to piss off the 20 million healthcare industry workers who are not direct care providers. So pick your po…

And overhead of running the insurance company like salary and office, then wasted time for doctors.

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

#277

Post by Telemakhos »

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.

I don't know that "inclination to judge" is a necessary component of religious charity. Religious charities beyond healthcare give out a lot of "free shit no questions asked," and usually without any attempt at proselytization. Catholic hospitals are not known for turning down patients due to moral judgements.

If there's a benefit to religious charity, it lies not in the "inclination to judge" but in maintaining a multiplicity of authorities. Combining everything under the government umbrella gives you a totalitarian society; a liberal democracy restrains the power of government while allowing for competing authorities in other spheres, like medicine, religion, academia, and the press. Giving the government the power to mandate or withhold medical treatment for political opponents (think Soviet "sluggish schizophrenia" as a diagnosis for removing dissidents from public life) seems more worrying than strippers getting free healthcare.

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

#280

Post by tptacek »

_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…

This paper is based on numbers from the CMS NHE. Here are those numbers summarized (up to 2023):

https://nationalhealthspending.org/

I haven't finished reading the paper and have no opinions on it (other than that most successful universal systems aren't single-payer) but if we start from actual numbers the discussion will be better.

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