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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

#441

Post by lovich »

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…

I would never have had healthcare as an adult without the ACA due to an illness as a child that was expensive enough that I’m sure some insurance exec was only able to get a 26 foot yacht instead of a 30 footer.

It was a great success for people in my boat(no pun intended)

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

#442

Post by devilbunny »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #67
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,…

The original universal healthcare plans were promoted by the GOP until Hillary got involved and it became a political football.

… in Massachusetts. New England Republicans are not the bulk of the party, and that’s not all bad - remember, the phrase was “banned in Boston”, not “banned in Bakersfield”.

Bill Clinton was a once-a-century skilled politician, but if you translated his policies without his extreme personal charisma to today it’s unlikely he would make it through the Dem primaries.

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

#443

Post by GuB-42 »

missedthecue wrote: post #349
GuB-42 wrote: 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…

Well it wouldn't "vanish". The $1T savings (if produced) that were once spent on healthcare would instead be spent on anything else.

Yes, it will, but think about the supply side. If people spend $1T less on health, health professionals will earn $1T less, it means, as GP said, layoffs, cutting salaries, etc... Not just doctors and nurses but also drug researchers, medical equipment manufacturers, etc...

These people will now have to do the "something else" that will be spent on, let's say gardening. But you don't turn a nurse into a gardener just like that, that's the kind of "wide ranging repercussions" I mentioned, and the painful transition period where nurses become gardeners. "Nurse to gardener" is just a random example, it can be "drug researcher to petrochemist", and some transitions we may be happy to see, like "health insurance lawyer to burger flipper", but overall, many good people will suffer in transition, many powerful people too, which make such transition unlikely.

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

#444

Post by 0xy »

yibg wrote: post #409
0xy wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you reconcile this with skyrocketing Canada to US medical tourism?

Those with money and those without. Gap between Canada and US life expectancy overall: ~3 years in favor of Canada Gap between Canada and US life expectancy for top 10% economically: ~0

Life expectancy is a function of demographics, which averages ignore.

Income is also an assertion not supported by data. For simple procedures such as a knee or hip replacement, many people earning under $80K CAD opt for US treatment.

Likely because Canada has extremely bad waitlists which are continuing to deteriorate. That coupled with a lack of specialist medical options and lesser quality.

In Canada, a woman with breast cancer could be waiting 2 months to even start treatment. In the US, you'll be starting next week.

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

#445

Post by missedthecue »

jayess wrote: post #112
FireBeyond wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, even with "platinum" healthcare in the US, urology referral, 4 months. "You should start PT immediately" after a car accident, "we can see you in 5 months". "Oh, your septum is deviated ~90% on the right. Surgery? No, first you need to go on these nasal sprays for a few months so we can decide they didn't reshape the cartilage in your nose before your insurance will decide whether they want to "allow"[1] surgery…

I got my urology referral last week and had an appointment this morning...

This was my experience too. GP referred me to a gastroenterologist and the appointment they offered was so soon it was almost inconvenient.

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

#446

Post by tptacek »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #416
tptacek wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We spend more on pension and benefits than we do on wars. The United States government is a benefits manager with a standing army.

The evidence shows we could spend less and deliver more within the scope of healthcare delivery (this piece). We actively choose not to. The Pentagon hasn't passed an audit eight years in a row, I hear little that "we cannot afford to keep funding the military at these levels and with such inefficiency." https://usafacts.org/government-spending/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-of-the-federal-budget... https://…

I don't want to sound like I'm fundamentally arguing with you, because if I could swap our system with Germany's I'd do so in a heartbeat. But (a) the "money that should be going into health care and education is going to military" argument is highly rebuttable, so I'd be careful hanging my hat on it, and (b) everybody, literally everybody (except the AMA) agrees we're spending too much on health care --- the problem is that money goes to practitioners, so it's very tricky to talk about clawing it back.

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

#447

Post by chermi »

Aurornis wrote: post #380
nullocator wrote: post #345

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.

Insurance pays the higher of their negotiated rate or the billed charge. Medical facilities set their billed rates so high that they’re guaranteed to be higher than all negotiated rates, ensuring that they get paid. When you see $37 aspirin on the line, nobody actually pays $37 for it. The billed amount is replaced with whatever insurance rate is allowed for that. If someone is cash paying they get a large discount.…

It almost seems like obscurity is the goal with the current system. Basically, job security (for admin, insurance) via obfuscation.

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

#448

Post by tptacek »

detourdog wrote: post #426
tptacek wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I thought that is what I’m saying.

Or maybe I'm reading it backwards! Has been known to happen. :)

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

#449

Post by lovich »

QuercusMax wrote: post #198
jtbayly wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost my individual healthcare plan, and I couldn’t afford the new ones. Remember when they said you could keep your plan? Yeah, that’s the one I lost.

There was never a guarantee that you were going to keep your plan anyway, was there? Insurance companies are changing plans from year to year.

It’s reminiscent of the screeching about how single payer healthcare would have death panels deciding who lived or died like that’s not a word for word description of insurance company actuaries or financial employees making the same decisions.

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

#450

Post by HDThoreaun »

ryaniscool wrote: post #383
tptacek wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has top-tier cancer survival-after-diagnosis outcomes. We spend too much to get there, and other countries in our cohort would "argue" that we get those numbers in part by diagnosing earlier and that our outcomes are broadly similar, but if you're going into these debates with "the US private health care system causes cancer deaths", that's a pretty rebuttable argument.

This is a cherry picked statistic. We still have lower life expectancy, high infant mortality rates, and one of the highest rate of preventable and treatable deaths among developed countries

Life expectancy tells you very little about healthcare without controlling for confoudners
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