People pay $300-500 a month per person for premiums out of pocket, then have deductibles of $2000-3000, after the employer contributions. For most people, that’s a hell of a lot of money. Once the deductible is fulfilled, they are still kicking in 15-30%. Do you really think that wouldn’t cover Medicare?
Citation needed. Plus, no one is saying that it would be feasible without increasing taxes. But taking those deductibles and premiums and converting them to taxes, and you’ve got it more than covered. It’s simple math: Take what we spend on healthcare, which includes the direct costs and the insurance, subtract the insurance, and you’ve got the direct cost = Medicare for All. You could even keep all the administrative workers employed in order to manage it, and you’re still saving a ton of money by eliminating the profit, “shareholder value,” and ludicrous executive salaries. If that’s still not enough, convert the employer contributions into corporate taxes (net zero) and now you’re running at a surplus.
Did you even read the article you linked? 46% of Canadians can see their doctor next day. Holy crap, that would be a lovely dream. I’m lucky to be able to see my doctor next month, and I’m on one of the cushiest employer-provided health insurance plans. Also, that rate is 76% for New Zealand and 77% for The Netherlands - both countries with socialized medicine.
ETA: That doesn’t even factor in the frequency that private insurers capriciously decide to not cover a procedure after the fact, even if it’s pre-approved or clearly medically necessary. I had two visits to a specialist that were pre-approved by insurance, but because the specialist’s office manager billed it to my old insurance by mistake, it crossed a magical barrier of 90 days and the new insurer won’t pay it. I told them it was their mistake, but now, not only am I not welcome at that office, they have half-heartedly threatened to send it to collections.
Can confirm… And then when it comes time to get anything of importance done, you have to struggle to get them to cover it, which is frankly a waste of my time and effort.
“People pay $300-500 a month per person for premiums out of pocket, then have deductibles of $2000-3000, after the employer contributions. For most people, that’s a hell of a lot of money. Once the deductible is fulfilled, they are still kicking in 15-30%. Do you really think that wouldn’t cover Medicare?”
Quite simply, NO! When I recently was paying for private insurance my premiums were $700+ per month, with a $7,200 deductible.
I thought it was well known that Medicare has been operating at a deficit for quite some time. So will SS in the not too distant future. Fixing both will require a tax increased, or significant benefits reductions, which is why it hasn’t been taken care of via legislation.
Private insurance is not going away, even Medicare allows the purchase of private insurance.
Really, well over half of Canadians have to wait to see their doctor. When I had private insurance I never had to wait for more than a day or two to see my doctor. Do you think adding millions of more patients via Medicare for all will decrease the current waits here in the US?
Not to mention that the process has left a situation where the prices keep inflating because they can. So we literally have medical costs that balloon just so that more money can be made, and anyone who isn’t insured at the time they go to the hospital gets charged that inflated rate. So yeah… it’s broken. If you have a decent PPO it’s costing you more for less, if you have nothing it’s costing you a lot more for a lot less. Everyone is getting shafted to some degree. I don’t think it will be that hard to push people to take a step forward into sanity once enough of them start losing their family members or life savings to a broken arm or a run in with a major but treatable illness.
Moving money from our pockets up to those of insurance execs…
I hope so. Ideology can be a strong force, but sometimes reality can be a strong counterweight, especially when it comes to life and death issues (or what was it, half a million bankruptcies a year?). People just need to connect the dots…
It’s free at point of service. There is no bill. If you get hit by a car, you won’t receive a $2,000 bill from the ambulance driver who takes you to the ER, because the very concept of it is inconceivable in literally every other developed country but America. If you go see the doctor, you don’t have to panic about whether the office co-pay is going to overdraft your checking account, because there isn’t one.
Our “Free” K-12 public education system is also technically not actually free, but there isn’t an accountant standing at the front door that you have to pay $40 (or $120 if you’re out of network) before your kid is allowed to go to class.
Yawwwwnnnnnnnn. Your arguments are specious and wrong. No one said it was free. It’s paid for by taxes. Which is manifestly cheaper and more efficient than the way America does it. It is, however, free at the point of use, which means sick people do not go bankrupt. I like my free at the point of use health service. You may not, and that’s fine, but I think people ought to ignore your objections, as they are poorly thought out and unhelpful.
That’s the fucking point! Private insurance is more expensive than single-payer. EVERY DAMN TIME. In the US, our private, for-profit healthcare system costs more than double the median of OEDC per capita, for demonstrably worse outcomes.
Most of the countries with socialized medicine also have private supplemental health insurance available. It covers beyond what the single-payer service covers, including aesthetic and elective procedures as well as physicians and clinics that either only take private patients or give preference to them. What it doesn’t do is supplant single-payer. Everyone has single-payer and everyone contributes taxes toward it.
Specifically, from the article you cited, 56% of Canadians had to wait more than 48 hours. What doesn’t show in the statistics for the US, which is at 52% wait >48 hours, is that those numbers only cover people who are insured, and ignores the people who are uninsured or under-insured.
Yes, but not magically, and not overnight. Another weakness of the US healthcare system is intentional, planned scarcity. We don’t train enough physicians and nurses, and that’s intentional. The AMA wants an under-supply of physicians in order to keep physician pay high. That will need to change. The good bit is that all the time physicians spend on stupid business administration will be greatly reduced. The physicians with the highest job satisfaction are ones in systems like Kaiser Permanente, where they don’t make as much money as private practice but they have very low paperwork burden and zero business management stress.
This guy’s shenanigans appear to go beyond sucking up to the insurance industry and promising that there will be no serious movement on Medicare for All. He’s also trying to de-fang any legislation aimed at giving Medicare Part D the power to negotiate prescription drug pricing:
tl;dr: He wants a third-party that would be granted the power to negotiate non-binding, voluntary pricing on a select number of high-priced drugs, instead of binding prices on all drugs, negotiated directly by the government.
Since I strongly doubt that Pelosi has so little control over her staffers and aides that they could be wandering around Capitol Hill pushing for this stuff without her knowledge and/or consent, I have to assume that the woman who has total control over what sort of legislation gets to the floor of the House is totally okay with once again starting on 4th down with the football in their own red zone when they go to the negotiating table.
Some universal health care systems (like Britain) do allow private insurance and private hospitals, but many don’t. And it is far from clear that the two-tiered system that Britain has is really a benefit. Until quite recently Canada banned private medical insurance (they allowed dental insurance for obscure reasons) because they feared the development of such a two-tiered system where the public hospitals were just for poor people.
