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

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421–430 of 1001 posts

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

#421

I'd like to believe this, but the study makes a bunch of really hasty assumptions. The authors derive the $1T number from $1.3T in total cost savings and $304B in incremental spend (incremental spend is due to insuring more people). The $1.3T in cost savings come from five big buckets: lower pharmaceutical prices, Medicare-level payments to providers, reduced administrative overhead, less fraudulent billing, and fewe…

"Healthcare reform is hard."

People tackle hard things for nothing, never mind billions in savings.

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

#422
post #98

I'm honestly curious how we square this with the only experimental evidence we have on cost-sharing in the US, like the Oregon Medicaid Study and the RAND study which showed no impact on mortality or really any physical health outcomes at all.

UHC proponents are just excessively optimistic about impact on health outcomes.

No, they are excessively optimistic about the financial outcomes. Healthcare should not bankrupt people.

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

#423

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…

Before I went indie, prior to ACA requirements I researched private insurance and found plans for around $3K. This year I’ll pay over $20K for a bronze plan for my family. 700% increase in less than a decade. Aetna left the marketplace input state and no pediatrician in a 10 mile radius takes the most cost effective ACA plan. The pediatricians we found are actually just GPs who have training in pediatric medicine, bu…

I think it's generally gotten better for insurance companies, at the expense of both end customers and providers (with the exception of providers that have vertically integrated into the ecosystem, e.g. Aetna/CVS, etc. to capitalize on the advantages that brings).

Not debatable that it has gotten worse over the last decade, mostly due to one party in the government intentionally doing what they can to chip away at the efficacy of the program, which when it launched was incredibly compromise heavy and should have been viewed as a first step towards a better, long term solution.

I had a local primary care I really liked; I never saw the Dr. there, just the Physician's Assistant typically. They were independent, and last year they made the change to go to a membership model. Basically $50/month just to be able to be a patient of their practice, and then use your insurance for care. In their notification she laid out the economics of where they currently were and it wasn't sustainable for them, based on how much they were squeezed, mostly by not being also a facility to be able to double bill insurance for facility fees + care fees. Also mentioned that the other 3 independent doctors in our neighborhood had all closed in the last 2 years.

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

#424
they're tryna convince the populace who don't like to read with useless studies.

get rid of medicare etc, then let it be handled on a city / state level. if some states wanna provide for public hospitals clinics - let them do so. even more if cities too wanna provide for public healthcare. then we can gladly reduce taxes too. the amount spent on medicare vs outcomes is already scam level.

trying to solve this at a national level won't work - too many middleman, too much politics and perverse incentives.

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

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hospitals have an operating margin of 2-5% Very curious where this comes from and how accurate it is. For example the $37 a provider charges for an Aspirin seems like more than 2-5% margin.

Ever hear of loss leaders? Some parts of a typical hospital make money while others lose it hand over fist. The overall margin isn’t across the board, it’s after everything hopefully balances out. ER’s for example are money pits, but society really needs them. https://www.definitivehc.com/resources/healthcare-insights/h...

That's true, but obscuring the true costs through hidden cross-subsidies isn't helping anyone in the long run. We would probably be better off with state and local governments setting requirements for ER capacity in each region, and then running an annual reverse auction system where hospitals can bid on maintaining that capacity in exchange for cash payments.

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

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If universal healthcare just made access simpler with less paperwork it would be a major improvement. The flipside to fraudulent billing is that people that need care are denied. The fraudulent billing was perpetrated by the insurer.

No, fraudulent billing is the natural predator of insurance companies. You have this backwards.

I thought that is what I’m saying.

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

#427
post #337

I'd like to believe this, but the study makes a bunch of really hasty assumptions. The authors derive the $1T number from $1.3T in total cost savings and $304B in incremental spend (incremental spend is due to insuring more people). The $1.3T in cost savings come from five big buckets: lower pharmaceutical prices, Medicare-level payments to providers, reduced administrative overhead, less fraudulent billing, and fewe…

Yes, I consider big numbers like this to be red flags. The GDP of the US is $32T. Saving $1T will essentially make 3% of the US economy vanish. You don't vanish 3% of an economy without wide ranging repercussion, it would be a crisis similar in scale to that of 2008. With such numbers we are not "saving money", these are about rebuilding an entire economy, a painful process. So either the effect will be much smaller…

This is broken window fallacy. The $1T not wasted on healthcare inefficiencies would be spent/invested on other things, creating jobs there. Yes, there would be churn because a good number of people involved in the bureaucracy of private health insurance would lose their job and possibly their career. But these things get smoothed out. Social supports (should) exist to dampen the effects of such churn and keep the economy agile.

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

#428
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I consider big numbers like this to be red flags. The GDP of the US is $32T. Saving $1T will essentially make 3% of the US economy vanish. You don't vanish 3% of an economy without wide ranging repercussion, it would be a crisis similar in scale to that of 2008. With such numbers we are not "saving money", these are about rebuilding an entire economy, a painful process. So either the effect will be much smaller…

The US spends more than 16% of GDP on health. The UK around 11%. Shrinking US health expenditure by 3% of GDP while roughly maintaining health outcomes is eminently, obviously doable.

Sure, it's possible in principle. But the US also has a much higher GDP per capita than the UK. The UK is a (relatively) poor country and is increasingly being left behind.

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

#429
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UHC proponents are just excessively optimistic about impact on health outcomes.

No, they are excessively optimistic about the financial outcomes. Healthcare should not bankrupt people.

This study appears to just take observational mortality averages between insured and uninsured and then assume that UHC would close the gap. Patently absurd imo, but I guess I'm not a healthcare economist.

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

#430
post #337

I'd like to believe this, but the study makes a bunch of really hasty assumptions. The authors derive the $1T number from $1.3T in total cost savings and $304B in incremental spend (incremental spend is due to insuring more people). The $1.3T in cost savings come from five big buckets: lower pharmaceutical prices, Medicare-level payments to providers, reduced administrative overhead, less fraudulent billing, and fewe…

Yes, I consider big numbers like this to be red flags. The GDP of the US is $32T. Saving $1T will essentially make 3% of the US economy vanish. You don't vanish 3% of an economy without wide ranging repercussion, it would be a crisis similar in scale to that of 2008. With such numbers we are not "saving money", these are about rebuilding an entire economy, a painful process. So either the effect will be much smaller…

This seems a lot like the parable of the broken window but for inefficiency rather than destruction per se.
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