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

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

#561

Post by DrScientist »

loeg wrote: post #558
DrScientist wrote: post #230

As I understand it - ~30% of US federal spending is on health care. In the UK it's about 20%. Yet apparently the UK is mostly nationalised under the NHS, while in the US there is huge additional spending on private insurance. Can somebody from the US explain to me how that's the case and why American's still put up with it?

US federal budget is 23% of GDP, while UK is 44% of GDP. You can't compare fractions of the fractions directly. (Total spend is something like 11% vs 18% GDP.)

Sure it's difficult to compare - but from your figures - the 11% is UK and the 18% is US ( total spend )?

With the UK spend roughly 80:20 government:private and the US spend about 50:50.

So as percentage of GDP government spend is about the same percentage of GDP but the much bigger private spend in the US what makes the difference.

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

#562

Post by s1artibartfast »

tga_d wrote: post #544
nradov wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One way to begin is look for studies on wait times or procedures of a given type per capita.

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

#563

Post by s1artibartfast »

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

many hospitals are run by non-profits or the government (e.g. universities)

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

#564

Post by s1artibartfast »

vlabakje90 wrote: post #335
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.

That overlooks the 27 million uninsured Americans. Uninsured cancer patients are more likely to be diagnosed at a late stage, less likely to receive treatment, and have substantially higher mortality than insured patients.[1] They also have worse survival, even after accounting for cancer stage.[2] So excellent U.S. outcomes among those who access care don't rule out preventable deaths caused by barriers to accessing…

entirely beside the point.

It is fine to look only at patients with insurance/ access to refute the claim that US doctors dont cure cancer so they can make more money.

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

#565

Post by MrSkelter »

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…

Healthcare reform isn’t actually hard. Every advanced country has done it bar the United States.

In every case costs have gone down and outcomes have improved.

You always build on what you have because you can’t pause healthcare for very obvious reasons.

Hence a lot of different systems all with the same aim. Controlled costs and universal coverage.

The idea the US is somehow different and cannot make the change is the result of propaganda and a mistaken belief that the current Us system is the worlds best despite its costs.

Healthcare reform is easy and there is an ocean of prior art.

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

#566

Post by jtbayly »

QuercusMax wrote: post #284
jtbayly wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plan was cancelled because of ACA requirements. I had had it for several years prior. Yes, plans change, but this was different.

Which requirements made them cancel it? Was it a high deductible scam plan?

It was a high deductible insurance plan, not a monthly subscription to all your healthcare needs. Why would you call that a “scam”?

And for the record, it was not as high a deductible as most “silver” plans on the exchange currently.

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

#567

Post by thiht »

jimt1234 wrote: post #372
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…

My favorite part of the ACA is that the nickname, Obamacare, was created by Republicans, thinking it would fail and the nickname would make that failure stick to Obama better. Problem was, the ACA helped a lot of people, particularly people in red areas. So, then Republicans started complaining that Obama and the Democrats were being arrogant for putting Obama's name on the ACA.

There's been tons of short interviews showing MAGA people having no idea ACA and Obamacare were the same things. They cheered when Obamacare got repelled even though they were beneficiaries of it. MAGA propaganda is powerful

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

#568

Post by thiht »

hilariously wrote: post #46
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 Republican party is not a Conservative party, its a Reactionist party of capital, so generally anything that threatens the interests of capital will be absolutely crushed.

As a reply to Helloworldboy (sibling comment marked as dead), the US is not even in the top 10 of best countries to live in terms of quality of life. It's not even close to the top in any QoL metrics: life expectancy, child mortality, education, poverty/wealth gaps, air pollution, food quality...

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

#569

Post by jaltekruse »

Aunche wrote: post #153

People talk about policies like they're something like can be picked up off the shelf at supermarket. If you could take the policies and Sweden copy-paste them to the US, then sure, we could save $1T and a hundred thousand lives. This would be a very difficult thing to replicate if you're a country without any existing healthcare system. It is impossible in a country with an extremely mature healthcare system, which…

The US already has a national health insurance network that pays the vast majority of all providers, and as far as I know it is widely popular and covers everyone legally present in the US for a portion of their life, Medicare. Old people experience just about every ailment young people do, we can just get rid of the age restriction on Medicare, it's already fully integrated with our medical system. No need to copy-paste from Sweden.

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

#570

Post by jaltekruse »

alanwreath wrote: post #481

If this were at all true, now read it like the big wig or law maker holding the on/off lever who’s eyes see “Universal Health Coversge Could reduce $1T in available/taxable income”. Did you notice the gorilla walk by? They sure didn’t.

Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole? - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JnX-D4kkPOQ
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