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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

#861

Post by clickety_clack »

bentt wrote: post #724

There are a lot of people making a lot of money on the inefficiencies of the US system. They won’t give up their revenue streams without a fight, and they are filthy rich on the backs of sick people. You better believe they will play dirty.

Not just the wealthy people on top. All the administrators and suppliers, and all the machinery of pharmaceuticals and insurance brokerage, even HR benefits specialists in corporations are all tied to the current system. That’s a massive block of voters to be overcome.

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

#862

Post by virgildotcodes »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #831
jasonfarnon wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm clueless about healthcare economics, but this sounds fishy to me. Why would insurers go along with that? In fact I would expect insurers to be in a much better position to bargain with a hospital than a private party. Actually it's if the hospital were billing the govt (not as motivated as a private party) where I would expect that overcharging to creep up and up.

Insurers can only spend 15% of premiums on admin spend (e.g. salaries, etc). That means if the CEO (and everyone else) wants more money, they need to pay more money to the hospitals, so their 15% cut grows. Also, for beyond that, unspend premiums have to be refunded, which also cuts into the potential admin spend bucket, so it's best to always ensure your paying as much as possible in claims. Plus, patients hate deni…

Hm, seems to be a bit of a contradiction between what you’re saying in terms of “insurers want to pay more” and the infamous tendency of insurers to deny claims as much as possible?

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

#863

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

Even if the headline claim is true (other people have already critiqued it), this would dramatically increase the federal deficit without massive tax increases - and as far as I know, none of the advocates of a M4A-style program have ever explained how they would pay for it.

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

#864

Post by platevoltage »

satnhak wrote: post #272

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 healt…

So the solution is get rid of private healthcare. I agree.

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

#865

Post by nielsbot »

cortesoft wrote: post #823
TuringNYC wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Medicare pays 50% less than private insurance. So doing this would require either layoffs, cutting salaries for doctors/nurses/etc, or both. This may well be the right decision for society as a whole--that's a big part of the debate here--but there's no free lunch. You arent considering 1. Hospitals eating the cost of the uninsured, which this would solve 2. Hospital spending tons on administrative duties fighting…

> Hospital spending tons on administrative duties fighting with insurers on coverage, which this would reduce Would this go away, though? Instead of fighting with insurers they would be fighting with the government insurer? I am very pro universal healthcare, I just don’t want to pretend there aren’t still going to be fights over what should be paid for. No matter what, there are going to be disagreements on what med…

> Instead of fighting with insurers they would be fighting with the government insurer?

1. I'd rather fight the non profit-motivated entity 2. We can probably compare to VA and Medicare and even other countries to see what the fight will be like. I'm willing to bet it will be a big improvement.

> No matter what, there are going to be disagreements on what medical procedures should be paid for and who needs them, as well as how much they should be billed for.

Government insurance has a service motive. Private insurance has a profit motive.

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

#866

Post by kulahan »

ajross wrote: post #807
kulahan wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things. -The US has had a lot of success by letting businesses run pretty free. This has produced some of the largest and most powerful companies on the planet. -The conservative party traditionally has been suspicious of a powerful, centralized government -In the US, there is a common thread of "government workers are impossible to fire" as well as a common thread of "government moves at a snail's pace". In li…

> there are many people who would prefer that healthcare is run by a private industry, The grammar is a little ambiguous around this, but you seem to be claiming that this is a majority position. It isn't. Single payer polls over 50% basically every time it's tested (the exception being some spun partisan reframings you occasionally see pushed), and has for decades.

I did not intend to imply it’s a majority, just that it’s not some ignorably-small minority

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

#868

Post by jennnnx »

As a Canadian ex-pat I've seen the following:

1) 2 friends had to wait over a year for gallbladder surgery.

2) A friend with autistic child had to wait 2 years for any type of therapy. He couldn't afford the $80k/yr for private care. Ontario has 70,000 autistic children on the waiting list for treatment.

3) Another friend had to wait several years to find a PCP in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. He has a golf ball sized lump on his head and he can't see anyone without a referral from his PCP but he has none and no one was taking new patients. He put himself on a list to get the first PCP available anywhere in the city. After that he has to wait a year for a consult and who knows when surgery is.

4) Another friend had to wait 9 months to get an MRI for a pain in his neck. After that it was another 4 months to see a neurologist.

You don't pay in money but you pay in time and suffering.

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

#869

Post by eclipticplane »

TuringNYC wrote: post #706
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…

>> Medicare pays 50% less than private insurance. So doing this would require either layoffs, cutting salaries for doctors/nurses/etc, or both. This may well be the right decision for society as a whole--that's a big part of the debate here--but there's no free lunch. You arent considering 1. Hospitals eating the cost of the uninsured, which this would solve 2. Hospital spending tons on administrative duties fighting…

> 2. Hospital spending tons on administrative duties fighting with insurers on coverage, which this would reduce

This layer won't go without a fight. Maybe it _is_ the layer we're fighting against. The owners will still make profit, the providers still have jobs.. but the middle layers are useless bloat. They don't have skills to provide care, they don't operate at the capitalist layer. They are useless today, and even more useless tomorrow.

And that is likely useless layer is millions? of jobs.

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

#870

Post by eclipticplane »

mirzap wrote: post #595
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the reason hospitals have to charge so much is that they take massive losses on uninsured people in emergency rooms. Medicare for all means they don't have to treat anyone for free.

They are not taking any losses; they just charge the regular price with a very tiny profit margin. US healthcare costs are heavily inflated. Insurance is a scam that lets the rich get richer. All insurance should be non-profit. We all contribute to the pool at a time when we don't need it so we can use the money when we do, not to make CEOs or stockholders rich. That is how an insurance pool should work. Any excess m…

> They are not taking any losses;

Not really accurate if you look at the closure of rural and smaller city healthcare facilities. They don't have the base to charge "regular price" to make up for the aging, less healthy, rural populations.

We all pay for it, but some pay heavier costs than others.

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