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Comment by fzeroracer | Hacker News Reader

The only way to get around this inefficiency is in my opinion to move towards single-payer and circumvent the system entirely. Otherwise you'd have to excise all of the rent-seeking parasitical behavior in our current system which I don't think is possible.

Even if you attempted to make the costs of things more transparent to consumers, there's an inherent information asymmetry between a consumer and a insurer due to the economy of scale. There's also a lot of things a consumer can't know until it's too late.

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If your Congressional representative does not support Medicare For All (single payer), run against them in the next election cycle or donate & volunteer for a competitor who does. That is all that is getting in the way of policy implementation, having enough votes to pass the bill in the House and the Senate. We'll get there!

I'm working on a site that will obtain attestation from Congressional reps as to their support for M4A, and for those who don't attest support, campaign funding will be funneled to competitors of said representatives who do.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/112... (S.1129 - Medicare for All Act of 2019)

Medicare for All seems to be the way to go. If people want fancier health care they can add something on top but we need a base level of affordable and accessible health care.

weird that you're getting downvoted. probably for the use of the word "parasitical" which I assume some of the HN crowd deems combative or divisive. but it's just true. there's a whole pointless middleman industry whose entire purpose is to derive profit from healthcare by denying coverage and increasing premiums, which of course have real world consequences of people dying or going bankrupt.

In the absence of taxpayer funded healthcare, insurance companies are the only ones negotiating pricing and protecting their customers from being fleeced.

that seems plausible. but I consider that a reason why we need taxpayer-funded healthcare, just like so many other countries have had for years. not a reason why insurance is a necessary/lesser evil. I don't see how it's better for insurance to be fleecing people rather than medical providers

But ... doesn't medicare do a more effective job negotiating than the private insurance companies? Like, my understanding is that typically for a given procedure medicare pays the least, private insurance pays somewhat higher, the uninsured pay way more.

Unfortunately, the voters of the US have determined only people over 65 are eligible to receive that pricing.

Medicare might pay the least, but I assume they must still be a net profit center if healthcare providers accept them.

voters of the US overwhelmingly support universal healthcare and a majority supports medicare for all. it's not the voters. it's the politicians who are bought and who deceive voters into thinking they are on their side, who tell lies about what things are possible because it hurts their donors.

Clyburn, the congressman from South Carolina whose endorsement arguably delivered Joe Biden a landslide victory, has received millions of dollars from big pharma [0]

[0] https://khn.org/news/democrats-taking-key-leadership-jobs-ha...

Medicare does a better job of "negotiating" because they aren't really negotiating. The gov't simply passes a bill that says "Medicare will pay $X" and providers are left to either accept it or not take Medicare patients.

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