US people pay more for health care, die sooner than people in other developed countries

But, but, uh… lazy Europeans! No? Um, death by bureaucrat! Uh, record-level output for less money! No, wait. Uh, work hard and retire rich like your grandparents! That’s not it.

Give me a minute. I’ll think of something to justify this.

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What? Is that a thinly veiled derivative of the USian “death panel” rhetorics?

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The Fox News denial effect is strong with those people

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Do a Google search for “alt-right” talking points about health care. That should give you plenty of stupid shit…um I mean…“facts” that you can use!

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That’s the “Christian” way!!

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My guess is that the exchanges were set up to give the insurance companies several years of rich, ripe pickings as a way to get them to buy in to the legislation.

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She doesn’t. She wants employer based insurance with some protections around it. Or, at least, she doesn’t think single-payer will get through congress. From the debate:

Look, we are in a situation in our country where if we were to start all over again, we might come up with a different system. But we have an employer-based system: that’s where the vast majority of people get their health care. And the affordable care act is meant to try to fill the gap between people who are too poor and couldn’t put together any resources to afford healthcare, namely people on medicaid. Obviously, Medicare which is a single payer system which takes care of our elderly, and does a great job doing it, by the way, and then all the people who were employed, but people who were working but didn’t have the money to afford insurance and didn’t have anybody, an employer or anybody else to help them. That was the slot that the Obamacare approach was to take. And like I say, 20 million people now have health insurance. So, if we rip it up and throw it away, what Donald is not telling you is we turn it back to the insurance companies the way it used to be. And that means that insurance companies get to do pretty much whatever they want including saying look, I’m sorry, you have diabetes, you had cancer
—Cooper : —Your time is up
—Clinton : —Your child had asthma, you may not be able to have insurance because you can’t afford it. So let’s fix what’s broken about it, but let’s not throw it away and give it back to the insurance companies. That’s not going to work.

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I assume you’re right. In each year, the company I’ve gone with has joined the Marketplace for exactly one year and then pulled that policy. I’m sure the statistics make sense: in the first year they’re probably pocketing most of the premiums and don’t have to worry about long term medical issues because they won’t be around for those costs.

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And now, in some cases, they are dropping out, leaving some parts of the country with no choices and a company with a monopoly in an area.

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So how do we pay doctors less, and will there be any unexpected consequences?

I take my grandmother’s death as a lesson. She had health problems for decades, but she still enjoyed time with her great-grandchildren and had a reasonable quality of life. But her last six month or so were spend shuttling back and forth between the cardiac ICU and a “rehab” center. Her heart was operating so poorly that she had little awareness of her surroundings and terrible quality of life. I hate to put a dollar value on things but since she was only partly aware of her surroundings. Personally, I don’t want a boatload of money spent on ME just for a few miserable months stuck in a hospital bed when I don’t even know where I really am.

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I’m perfectly happy with my silver plan, and not for political reasons.

Sure and lots of people are. Doesn’t mean what @chgoliz said isn’t also true.

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Absolutely. I sell insurance, but I’m under no illusions about the nobility of these companies. I’m with a non-profit; they’re considerably better.

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Increase admissions to medical school, and decrease tuition (and the accompanying debt). You get more doctors and lower prices. There is definitely a chance that some of the people you admit are not as good, but you get more medical care to people who weren’t getting any before, and you presumably still have the good doctors. You also probably cut down on mistakes made by over-tired resident and fellows working 80+ hour weeks. Also, while increasing admissions may lower the standards, there are definitely people today who are qualified candidates that don’t pursue medical school because of the 6+ year hazing ritual that is medical school and the subsequent training.

Of course this is the one medical reform opposed by most doctors for obvious reasons.

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Alcoholics and liver transplant, see here…

I often hear about “Medicare for all”. Well, here are a couple of things Medicare has done recently.

Medicare enforces billing rules which will prevent some unnecessary implants, but also cause some necessary and life saving implants to not be done because the hospitals and doctors are afraid of criminal prosecution if they do so.

http://cardiobrief.org/2015/10/30/trick-or-treat-hospitals-haunted-by-doj-icd-investigation-settle-for-250-million/

Medicare is creating a new bundled payment plan for orthopedic and cardiac surgery which will penalize hospitals if their patients use more than the average amount of hospital, physician, and post surgery care. I can easily forecast that one major result will be that providers will figure out all kinds of ways to delay and avoid treating patients with high risk, such as the 450 pound knee replacement candidate.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1210823?

I see no reason to doubt that a single payer system will continue on that path of reducing the amount of high-acuity services currently available under Medicare and most private plans.

And I would welcome a candid discussion of exactly how much rationing we need to apply to American health care.

There just is not enough money available to give everybody platinum level coverage without rationing care delivery, or without reducing provider reimbursements to the level that many of them retire or close their doors (which is rationing without the guts to admit it).

The recent Vermont initiative is a clear case in point.

But wait, Donald Trump was just saying how Canadian healthcare sucks and people are flocking to the US for healthcare. Are you trying to say He was wrong?

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Medicare has capped the number of subsidized medical residencies (without the Medicare support, residency programs at hospitals without rich endowments would not exist) since 1997.

And Medicare is the good guys, right??

Ya probably think that global warming is real as well…

Wrap your pretty little head around this FACT: It snowed on the day that my 99 year old grandmother died. BENGHAZI!!!

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Simply expanding the Medicaid program and making it available to more of the working poor and unemployed would have solved 90+ percent of the problem, without mucking with the insurance coverage and costs for everyone else.

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