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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

#871

Post by evan_a_a »

jennnnx wrote: post #868

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 bal…

Healthcare worker shortages are a problem in the US and other developed countries with universal systems. The type of system doesn't really influence the waiting time.

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

#872

Post by limagnolia »

Jimega36 wrote: post #854

Switzerland has the system closest to the US in my experience, but with universal coverage. As individual, you buy basic insurance costing roughly $500/month with a $2500 yearly deductible (LAMal/KVG). Applicants must be accepted even with pre-existing conditions. Post-deductible, you pay 10% co-insurance capped at roughly $800/year (no medical bankruptcy). Insurers operate basic plans as non-profit. They make their…

Where are you getting the 150 to visit a Dr. in the US? The copay is usually much, much lower than that.

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

#873

Post by jennnnx »

jayess wrote: post #87

Who's gonna tell the doctors and nurses that they get a 50% pay cut?

Cut their pay by 50% and get rid of malpractice lawsuits. Have some other system that doesn't incentivize lawsuits where doctors are still held accountable but I think that's a deal most doctors would take in a heartbeat.

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

#874

Post by eclipticplane »

nradov wrote: post #679
gizmo686 wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter what they charge if the patient doesn't pay it; which is what often happens with uninsured people showing up at the ER. > Any excess money at the end of the year should be moved to the pool for the next year, not as a bonus on CEOs' 100m+ salary Under the ACA, excess money in the pool must be rebated to policy holders. In practice, this worked for a few years, but eventually insurance companies ende…

It often happens with insured people showing up at the ER as well. Many patients don't pay their bills, either because they can't afford it or are just deadbeats. As overall healthcare costs have increased, insurers and employers have shifted more costs to plan members through higher deductibles / co-pays / co-insurance. So hospitals end up with a lot more bad debt, and this in turn causes further price inflation.

Carriers and providers don't make this easy, either.

I had a recent doctor's visit, with very good healthcare coverage, that was an in-network facility but an out-of-network provider. Coverage would have kicked in if I had a referral from my PCP, but my PCP recently retired and I was advocating for my own health for a small dermatological issue. They said it was cosmetic, my old PCP said it was not. I got a stack of 10 bills over many months all stating different things -- everything from $0 EOB to over $2k in uncovered expenses. No one would take ownership of sorting out what I was on the hook for. No one I talked to was empowered to actually solve it. It wasn't an affordability problem over $2k (but would be for my elderly grandparents on fixed income). Even asking "If I give you $2k does that resolve the debt?" was answered with "we won't know until we apply the payment" type non-answers.

Burn the whole stack down -or- earn enough you can operate on cash for the tier of care you want. Nothing inbetween seems to be working.

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

#875

Post by HeavenFox »

Jimega36 wrote: post #854

Switzerland has the system closest to the US in my experience, but with universal coverage. As individual, you buy basic insurance costing roughly $500/month with a $2500 yearly deductible (LAMal/KVG). Applicants must be accepted even with pre-existing conditions. Post-deductible, you pay 10% co-insurance capped at roughly $800/year (no medical bankruptcy). Insurers operate basic plans as non-profit. They make their…

So basically as long as someone is alive in Switzerland they need to pay an insurance company $500/mo?

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

#876

Post by viccis »

Jimega36 wrote: post #854

Switzerland has the system closest to the US in my experience, but with universal coverage. As individual, you buy basic insurance costing roughly $500/month with a $2500 yearly deductible (LAMal/KVG). Applicants must be accepted even with pre-existing conditions. Post-deductible, you pay 10% co-insurance capped at roughly $800/year (no medical bankruptcy). Insurers operate basic plans as non-profit. They make their…

>A doctor's visit is a $150 minimum, similar to the US.

It's $20 to go to the doctor on similar priced insurance in the US.

Your $500/month is just a tax for healthcare. Your only advantage over the US is that it's not tied to employment. Ours is both a tax and a cudgel to force people to work.

We have the worst of all worlds because ours is a tax and a cudgel, but then we also have to pay tax to the state to fund the healthcare for others who can't or won't work. I wouldn't call yours the best of both worlds. It sounds like you're getting fleeced to a lesser extent, but still not great.

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

#877

Post by forestrywat »

limagnolia wrote: post #872
Jimega36 wrote: post #854

Switzerland has the system closest to the US in my experience, but with universal coverage. As individual, you buy basic insurance costing roughly $500/month with a $2500 yearly deductible (LAMal/KVG). Applicants must be accepted even with pre-existing conditions. Post-deductible, you pay 10% co-insurance capped at roughly $800/year (no medical bankruptcy). Insurers operate basic plans as non-profit. They make their…

Where are you getting the 150 to visit a Dr. in the US? The copay is usually much, much lower than that.

Depends on where you work. And what "see a doctor" means.

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

#878

Post by thelastgallon »

Cuba achieves similar life expectancy and infant mortality rates to the U.S. despite spending a fraction of the cost, focusing heavily on free community prevention.

Cuba has one of the highest doctor-to-population ratios in the world—roughly 6 to 8 physicians per 1,000 people: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/r468au/oc_...

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

#879

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

nradov wrote: post #847
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When patients are harmed by quacks, it is a true problem and those quacks should be incarcerated and never allowed near medicine again. If there are too many quacks, then this is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed completely separately from malpractice and professional insurance. When patients are harmed by medical errors caused by non-quacks, that's just tough luck. Not everyone can be saved. Creating a g…

That's a silly comment. There's a huge difference between establishing civil liability versus a criminal conviction, and rightly so. The quacks aren't going to be incarcerated.

I think instead of my comment being silly, it's just difficult for you to understand because your Overton window only allows people who agree with you but differ on how much compensation should be allowed and the particulars of how that compensation is decided and doled out.

I'm used to this though.

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

#880

Post by JuniperMesos »

annzabelle wrote: post #859
cortesoft wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The way a lot of other countries deal with this is that the government calculates out a benefit vs cost assessment for every new treatment and only covers ones that come out ahead. But, that ends up with things like new targeted chemotherapies being unavailable for years after their initial release, vs in the US where they are available to much of the population once the right prior auth is filed. There is also more…

People hate it when faceless bureaucrats decide that some health care expense is too expensive for the large faceless bureaucracy to cover, when they have a medical issue that they would like the large faceless bureaucracy to spend money on. Perhaps in that world, some insane guy with a back injury who's unhappy about the quality of his care assassinates the Secretary of Health and Human Services, rather than the CEO of a medical insurance corporation (and hey, a lot of people hate RFK Jr. anyway, so maybe that assassin still becomes a folk hero for doing it).
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