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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

#541

Post by AuthAuth »

scoofy wrote: post #534
AuthAuth wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Socializing healthcare isn’t going to get an huge portion of the population out of their cars and get them walking as a primary or secondary mode of transportation You would think so but once healthcare cost becomes a government policy issue people complain about its spending and they are forced to try and bring that cost down. One of the ways they did that in my country was to promote biking to work and build bike…

Did I mention the 100° summers or the fact that people usually live 20+ miles from where they work? I agree with you generally on the incentives, but it took us 70 years to paint ourselves into this corner, and we’re not going to get out of it because of a third-order incentive.

Thats not every where nor is it everyone. Im not saying it will specifically be bikes but the government will be incentivized to have a healthier population. It could be higher tax on cigs, or sugars, it could be more annual leave it could be any number of wellbeing policies.

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

#542

Post by tavavex »

GuB-42 wrote: post #337
brandonb wrote: post #113

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…

Only the American mind can comprehend leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of your own people for the sake of 3% of your economy. As long as the line goes up.

If we're taking the $1T figure seriously, let's take the other figure seriously too. Let's slash it to be more conservative while we're at it and say it would only save 90k lives. Do you think 3% of your economy is worth sacrificing to prevent the equivalent of 30 9/11s? And that's before considering that other people here already explained how these 3% are offset by other gains - if not completely then still substantially.

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

#543

Post by joquarky »

HEmanZ wrote: post #406
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.

You can search for more reports, because they do vary based on methodology. But the median hospital in the US makes between -1% (yes, negative, they lose money, because a huge percentage are non profits) and 4% depending on the source. When the hospital charges you $37 for an aspirin, that singular pill might have a crazy profit margin in isolation. But your entire treatment could very well be losing the hospital mon…

Not buying any of this when the world is now full of dark patterns¹ and the ultimate result is that people in charge keep getting richer, faster.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

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

#544

Post by tga_d »

nradov wrote: post #520
avgDev wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wouldn't nationalized healthcare help with this? The amount of uninsured individuals would drop drastically.

Nationalized healthcare might help with certain things but it can't create capacity out of thin air. Just because the government theoretically covers everyone doesn't mean that services are actually available when needed. In general the countries with the highest levels of nationalization also have the most problems with shortages. When everything comes straight out of the government budget there's always a political…

> In general the countries with the highest levels of nationalization also have the most problems with shortages.

Do you have any citations for this? I've heard this rhetoric before, but every time I look into it, searching around for studies on google scholar or the web, I can only find studies and reports indicating that health outcomes trend better in countries with more universal coverage. There are think pieces with anecdata of course, but no actual peer reviewed publications I can find.

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

#545

Post by Obscurity4340 »

cactacea wrote: post #471
roncesvalles wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should consider emigrating to a country with universal healthcare such as Canada.

Funny enough there's a very good chance I'm a Lost Canadian. I filed my application for proof of citizenship in February and am still waiting to hear back. Hopefully soon.

Keep us posted. Seriously

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

#546

Post by doom2 »

iambateman wrote: post #129
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…

When I was a kid, my parents would say “with that attitude, you’re right.” We can and should expect a lot out of the people around us and especially the ones who choose civil service. Our grandparents ended slavery, got votes for women, established a merit-based civil service, fought fascism, passed equal rights legislation, and created the most dynamic large economy in history. We have problems, too, but we are not…

> We have problems, too, but we are not powerless to fix them.

Indeed. Even as some of the more mainstream methods to address our current problems become less effective, we should be open to other ways change can come about. Among your list, many of those achievements had their roots in various approaches that didn't involve legislators.

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

#547

Post by no-name-here »

johndevor wrote: post #283
no-name-here wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the study we are discussing -- as well as the results from every single other developed country I believe? -- more efficient when it comes to healthcare, yes.

If the government is so efficient, why don't we just have them run all our industries?

Because both studies and real-world results from every other developed country show gov is more efficient at healthcare, is your argument that means gov is more efficient in every field?

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

#548

Post by 93po »

joquarky wrote: post #543
HEmanZ wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can search for more reports, because they do vary based on methodology. But the median hospital in the US makes between -1% (yes, negative, they lose money, because a huge percentage are non profits) and 4% depending on the source. When the hospital charges you $37 for an aspirin, that singular pill might have a crazy profit margin in isolation. But your entire treatment could very well be losing the hospital mon…

Not buying any of this when the world is now full of dark patterns¹ and the ultimate result is that people in charge keep getting richer, faster. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

This is immediately what came to mind to me. You can be extremely profitable but paying out tens of billions in dividends, or a million other things.

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

#549

Post by _heimdall »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #317
_heimdall wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disconnect between prices and end consumers is itself a huge problem. I should know what care costs before I get it, and I should know how much my instance company is paying on my behalf before I get care. For prices to be sane we need people being able to compare prices, decide what care they want and can afford, etc. Our prices are so high because its a closed market acting as though it were a free/open market…

I think that’s a reasonable model to want, but it’s what we call “preauthorization”, and many patients along with most doctors absolutely hate it. In order to know with certainty what your care will cost and how much your insurance company will pay, the doctor has to contact them in between deciding what treatment you should have and giving you the treatment. You can and I do solve that annoyance with an HMO, where t…

Preauthorization is a bit different, and yes I can see care providers hating it.

Its possible for a provider to know ahead of time that providing a saline IV costs $60, for example. Its also possible to have health care policies that approve any treatment deemed necessary at any healthcare provider, or at any healthcare provider in network if that concept was still a thing.

We don't have to have a preauthorisation step where doctors are expected to ask insurance companies if they will approve a certain treatment for a certain patient before it can be done. That is a particularly terrible implementation if you ask me.

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

#550

Post by _heimdall »

nradov wrote: post #362
mindslight wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also caused by absurd nonsense like how doctors can't tell you how much anything they're proposing to do actually will cost (a necessary condition for entering into a contract !), but then the system makes up arbitrary bills after the fact - with fraudulent amounts that nobody actually pays! No other industry works like that, as it's not the foundation of a market in the first place. Imagine if going to the groc…

That's all true, but from a practical standpoint providers really have no way to accurately estimate a patient's out-of-pocket financial responsibility in advance. The current HIPAA adopted standard transactions don't allow for sending a prospective claim. So all they can realistically do is perform the procedure, submit a claim to the patient's health plan, wait for it to (maybe) be paid, and then send a bill to the…

Nothing stops a doctor or an office from saying "treatment X costs $Y."

Doctors can't say how much an insurance provider will cover or what a patient's out of pocket will therefore be, but that is a separate issue further downstream of clear pricing for treatment.

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