Single-Payer Would Cost a Third of Current Health Care Costs per Family | Hacker News Reader

Single-Payer Would Cost a Third of Current Health Care Costs per Family

calitics.com

Dear people in the USA. You are behaving like you have to reinvent the wheel. There are good examples of health care systems financed by taxes all around the world. Take a look at some countries in Europe. At the end you'll find out that affordable healthcare won't succeed by any laws you make without a fundamental change in your mindset regarding taxes, capitalism and the role of the government in all of that.

Yes but not all of them (heck not even most) use a single payer system.

Most of Europe either uses a tiered system or mandated insurance.

Europe also hasn't switched to universal health care overnight or at the same time and there isn't a universal health care which is globally applied across the EU.

A state by state switch to universal health care with national level funding similar to how Medicaid works now is probably the way to go. The argument that you can simply copy a system is flawed. This isn't just a question of mindset but also of an actual implementation and solution. What do you do with all the current HMOs and insurance companies? How do you transition from a privately operated health care system at this scale to a state run one. How do you ensure employment of all current medical professionals while not forcing an industry worth trillions to go bankrupt overnight.

Some seriously fishy math here. $400B is the total projected cost which includes existing health spending — the $100B is additional, not total. Yet when getting to their $208 per month number, it's based off the $100B, not the $400B. Yet they claim that this would be the grand total, and that premiums, co-pays, etc. would be entirely eliminated. Seems like the calculation should result in a number closer to $800/mo per individual. Am I missing something?

The $100B is from "new revenue" needed to fund the system. Presumably, the other $300B comes from existing revenue and "savings". But, as they point out, this "new revenue" can/would be swapped for existing healthcare premium payments, which are on average actually much higher than $208/month.

Single payer should be expected to cost less.

Not just because data all around the world in every industrialized country shows this.

But because it's simple economics: when buyers compete, prices go up. After all, buyers compete on one thing only: price. It's a rare buyer who offers piano lessons to the doctor's daughter in exchange for knee surgery.

Just think of patio and how he always says there will be someone paying your increased fee if yu position yourself right.

What a single payer system or public option does is eliminate competition for the basic level of product between buyers. It creates a monopsony that lowers prices similar to how a monopoly raises prices.

Compare the prices Medicare in the USA gets from doctors vs the other, smaller insurances, or average out-of-pocket costs.

Fiscal conservatives, there aint so such thing as a free lunch and that works on a societal level. Just 'cause you're not paying taxes to pay for someone's health insurance does not mean you don't need health insurance. The same goes for many other things. Single payer systems can make things cheaper for the kinds of things 95% of people want.

The real question is, do we really need single payer to be provided by the US federal government, or the EU, etc? Can't it be on a state or city basis? After all the costs of living in rural Wyoming are differet than NYC.

I mean this not just with respect to health insurance, but money for education, food, housing etc. which is all inevitable when robots and AI lower demand for human labor further and wages for many drop below the level to pay for these things.

Single payer health care already exists in one form, The VA. How is that working out?

"VA health care is NOT considered a health insurance plan."

https://www.va.gov/healthbenefits/cost/insurance.asp

I think Medicare is a more apt comparison.

But whatever we come up with, single payer or not, will fail. Because it will not be a bipartisan bill, and like any large bill (such as Medicare in the early days), tweaks will need to be made as people begin using it. And let's face it, Congress is no longer interested in working together for the common good. Much better to let a healthcare plan fail than to allow the other side (and the American people) a win.

But what if the house, the senate and the president are all in the same party? Well... so far we have a bill that would be a handout to insurance and financial services companies, raise premiums, strip protections, and basically bend consumers over a chair.

So how is that working out?

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