I’m pretty sure they’ll hold out to the bitter end for the elimination of the employer requirement. If by hook or crook they can swing another Republican Congress and president, I think they may get it.
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At least GoFundMe’s CEO isn’t a fucking ghoul when people ask him what he thinks about medical treatments being one of the platform’s biggest segments…
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Almost nobody broaches this topic the same way stuff like the military is covered, since—come what may—the country must be defended and the public will pick up that check no matter what.
I don’t think this is talked about enough: concerns of private insurance industry get put into pretty clear context whenever it comes to military defense, because if you can socialize the cost of defense of the country, you absolutely can socialize the cost of anything.
Why libertarians aren’t falling over themselves in order to prove how the private sector can be so much better than a government-supplied option is beyond me, unless they know they’re filled with blueberry-flavored bear pucky.
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Unfortunately…
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-military/338172-yes-trump-is-privatizing-the-va
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We’re not paying for it now.
Oh, but we are.
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Of course, bringing in Medicare for all compared to the current system would leave people asking what to do with the extra money that results in the decrease in costs.
Seriously, the way Americans run healthcare is drastically more expensive than how everyone else in the world pays for it. America spends more public dollars on healthcare than Canada. If you could wave a wand and get Canadian healthcare no only would you stop paying for private insurance but also there would be a small ($200B) fund to allocate.
A couple years ago I wrote up a modest proposal for how to spend it to keep everyone happy.
https://humbabellasgamery.blogspot.com/2017/12/solving-american-healthcare-debate.html
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i think it should be possible to estimate the number of people who die in horse riding accidents. then we could get free ponies and maintain our terrible life expectancy.
vs 
actually, it’d be cool if your medicare card came with a check box. height, weight, organ donation, assassin or pony. let the people decide.
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Only if you gave Medicare the ability to negotiate prices! Otherwise, you’re simply cutting a big check to Big Pharma - and little pharma, such as Turing and Marathon.
I’m pretty sure it is presently cheaper. Right now the government is cutting a check to big pharma and giving private insurers a cut. The government’s no-negotiating policy is an obvious gift to drug manufacturers, but private insurance drives up drug prices as well.
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I completely agree. However, when I try to discuss it with anyone who objects with “How will we pay for it?” I find that they flip their lid when I respond with, “It will pay for itself.” And to be fair, usually anything that uses that line is full of poop.
What I like to point out is that, even if it is cost neutral, the current level of care (which they usually insist is “teh Bestest”) can be covered by a single-payer system by simply shifting the amount individuals and employers currently pay for private health care from private insurers to taxes, 1:1, then also add the savings of the 15% or so that goes toward all the people who will be put out of work in the private health insurance industry (or we can just keep paying them, to pick up the administrative gap) and the profit of that industry.
It used to be that there was a pretty big number of uninsured people who would represent an increase in coverage that would have to be picked up by universal single-payer, but that’s pretty much gone away with the ACA. If, however, universal single-payer does increase the coverage pool, that increase in coverage would be paid for by 1. the afore-mentioned profit zone of the private health insurance industry, and/or 2. relatively minor increases in taxes to the wealthiest Americans, if needed. Frankly, if that’s needed at all, it would be simple enough to just eliminate the cap in Medicare taxation limits, which are pretty low.
Any improvements in efficiency or costs would just be frosting. As you pointed out, once the system equilibrates to the standard efficiency demonstrated in other single-payer systems, there should be more frosting than cake.
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Medicare already pays less than most private insurance for healthcare delivery. Drug prices are separate, but you’re right, that loophole needs to be eliminated.
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I had a conversation with a kool-aide Republican once that made me realize there was no compromise when I explained all this and he still said he would rather pay more as an individual for a private system than ever pay higher taxes.
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Yeah, I avoid using that phrase. It’s not that it will pay for itself (it won’t, it will be paid for from public money), it’s that all evidence from reality says it will be less expensive than the current system, which is currently being paid for out of public money.
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I’m pretty sure that as a soon-to-be retiree, I’ll pay a hidden tax in that the value of my index-fund portfolio will go down by the fact that the securities from that particular industry segment will tank.
To me, that’s a small price to pay for the peace of mind of knowing that my insurance rates will be predictable, my insurer can’t drop me arbitrarily, and I can’t stumble into the situation where the only in-network hospital in town has no in-network anæsthesiologists - they all have privileges only at the out-of-network hospital. (My insurer actually did that, a few years back. Thankfully, the situation got fixed before anyone in my family needed surgery!)
To say nothing of the fact that it’s just the ethical thing to do. I don’t judge everything by the impact it will have on my taxes!
Uhm. ACA decreased the number of uninsured by about a third. It’s still a huge number - over 10% of non-Medicare-eligible adults in the US have no health coverage, and the number is growing again with the repeal of the individual mandate.
Have you confused the Medicare tax (which has no upper limit) with the Social Security tax (upper limit of $132,900 in 2019)?
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One reason to think that it won’t pay for itself is that healthcare costs started to soar with the introduction of Medicare.
And soared far, far higher in America than they did in all the other developed countries that do have socialized medicine. Healthcare costs are going up in every developed nation, but they go up the fastest the US. It seems that increasing healthcare costs are being driven by something else and that single-payer systems are a check on that.
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