You two socialist freedom-haters are not making allowances for Rugged Individualist tycoons who are masters of negotiation.* Such superior beings, who can haggle in their sleep (or unconscious and bleeding in this scenario) don’t need insurers of any sort to cover health care for themselves or their children.
[bracing myself for a discussion about how country doctors were paid by their patients with chickens or bushels of onions in “the good old days”]
[* it’s far from clear if the person you’re responding to is one of them. This is an observation about a general type.]
It seems to me that any practice that only takes the simplest of cases is not going to be able adequately to deal with hidden problems, even in what they would call an ideal patient. They simply won’t have the experience. I bet they quickly shove such cases off to the public hospital, then wash their hands (so to speak) of the matter.
Insurance plans do negotiate. The thing is they still extract a lot of money in the process made up by uninsured/under-insured people.
Of course, the federal government was forbidden to negotiate drug prices in creating Medicare D to cover drugs. Really stupid (well, smart for the pharma companies).
NZ has private insurance, and it’s kind of a scam. It provides what it does in other countries - nominally shorter wait times, fewer plebs coughing on you, plusher rooms, and nicer surroundings for core healthcare, and it covers a few gaps in the public system (vision, dental, pseudo-medicine like acupuncture and chiropractic). AFAIK, the doctors are all working in both systems - 3 or 4 days a week in public, 1 or 2 days a week private.
Frankly, despite it being a fairly small part of the overall healthcare system here, I’d like to see it gone. When everyone must use the same system, everyone is motivated to ensure that the system works. When the wealthy can opt out they’re perversely incented to minimise their input (read: taxes, but also outrage when the system fails) to the public system, and they also hide some of the total healthcare demand, both of which spiral the public system downwards.
This is something people need to understand. Years ago NYT comparison of many routine medical procedures in NY and Ontario found that they cost 5-10 times as much in the US. What would happen to house prices if we all let your fire insurance company negotiate the purchase price on your behalf?
The greater the value of the thing being insured, the greater the profit of the insurance company. If both sides of a negotiation profit from the price going up, the price is going to go up, up, up.
Many years ago, when I was in high-school and none of the rest of you were born, Jonathan Miller gave a lecture in my little po-dunk ag college town as part of some book tour.
Brilliant lecture, of course, but he included in it an exhortation to move the United States to a proper system of socialized medicine. My mother, a brit, asked him if he thought that socialized medicine and privatized medicine could co-exist, and he gave a long rambling answer about the NHS and private hospitals in the UK. After the lecture he came up to her and said something like, “Sorry about that, but look around us: most of the audience are physicians in, of course, private practice, and I’m trying to get them on board with the idea of expanding healthcare availability. But the real answer to your question is: no.”
$2 trillion over 10 years ($200 billion/yr) matches up well with 10.6% administrative cost difference on $1.7 trillion a year (180 billion/yr). It’s still just a ~5% decrease in national spending, not some of the big numbers people assume, or that we really need.
People on both sides are getting worked up far more than necessary.
Sadly, all too many people do see it as $0 cost to them. They know it’s being paid for, but don’t realize they are, just in a different way. I’m for single payer because, like you, I agree it will be more efficient. But it’s still wise for people to understand the pluses and minuses. Like a flu shot. It’s not painless, but it’s worthwhile.
You seriously don’t see an easy out for insurers/employers?
Here’s your key term: that duplicates
In general, there’s no law against offering something better than what the law offers. And if libertarians (et al.) want an opportunity to point honestly to a case where government coverage is inferior to that of the private sector, this is the brass ring.
How many?
You keep saying that “too many” people see it that way, but i’ve never met anyone like that and that attitude certainly has no home here, so i have to ask: what percentage? Is it a serious and documented issue or are you just pulling this out of thin air?
Australian Medicare is primarily funded via general taxation revenue, supplemented by a specific Medicare Levy (2% of income).
However, low income earners (below about $20,000) are exempt from that levy, and Australian income tax also doesn’t kick in until you’re over $18,000.
My income these days is low enough that I pay neither the levy nor any income tax.
If you want to get insanely nitpicky, I do contribute somewhat to general taxation revenue via the 10% GST that everyone here pays when they buy things.
it’s not too much of a leap to say that under the current system people are literally dying ( while others are losing jobs, or going into bankruptcy, or having simple illnesses unnecessarily compounded. )
public healthcare isn’t just about things being more efficient with single payer ( though it will be. ) it’s about saving lives.
it’s a moral issue first, and an economic issue second.
Under a single-payer system, workers could benefit from universal, publicly-financed healthcare. The system would completely remove involvement by workers’ compensation insurance companies and employers in the administration of benefits.
i kind of can’t understand why amazon, walmart, etc. aren’t putting their full lobbying weight behind a bill like this.
I haven’t said it in awhile but I really think we won’t have single payer/medicare for all/etc till the big companies finally go fuck it we don’t want to deal with it anymore. Which sucks.
I have met people like that. Some have literally said “the rich will pay for it with higher taxes.” They tend to be younger and not understand government funding. Since anecdotal is frowned upon, and I can’t find a better study, how about a Harris poll that shows half of people over 50 think Medicare Part B is free. This would seem to be a group that would have a vested interest in knowing the cost since they are getting close to qualifying. It’s not stretch to imagine people under 50 being even more clueless.
Far too many people in the US who do know they’re paying for it one way or another object to the fact that it’s also paying for those “other” people’s healthcare. Of course, that’s generally the way insurance works, but loads of true 'murcans would rather limit the pool to people just like themselves. Screw the rest.
Given your miscalculation above, are you sure you don’t misunderstand what those people are saying? Because if what they are really saying is, “the increase in costs to cover everyone will be paid for by higher taxes on the top tax brackets,” they’re probably right.
