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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 09 2019, @12:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the But-I-*like*-getting-50-different-invoices-for-one-hospital-stay dept.

There is an instinct among political pundits to confuse caution for practicality — an assumption that those who advocate for incremental change are being reasonable, while those pushing for bold reforms aren’t. This is seen most starkly in the debate around health care reform, despite the fact that the “practical” pushers of limited reform fail to address the real problems in our health care system.

We all recognize that the status quo isn’t working. We spend more per person than any other country on health care, but we aren’t getting any bang for our buck. We have lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality rates and more preventable deaths, and too many personal bankruptcies are due at least in part to medical bills.

[...]Time to get real. As an economist who has spent decades studying our health care system, I can tell you that Medicare for All advocates are the only ones who are being reasonable, because theirs is the only plan that will control health care costs while finally achieving universal coverage.

The problem with incremental plans, whether they are public options, buy-ins to Medicare or Medicaid, or pumping more money into subsidies in the Affordable Care Act's individual marketplace, is that they preserve the private health insurance system weighing down our health care. [...]they are leaving the main reason for our system’s dysfunction in place: the multipayer, for-profit financing model.

Commercial insurance companies are nothing more than middle men. They add no value to our system, but they do drive up costs with their bloated claims departments, marketing and advertising budgets and executive salaries. We pay for all of these things before a single dollar is spent on the delivery of care.

They also create extra costs for providers who need large administrative staffs to deal with billing systems, accounting for as much as $100,000 per physician.

Any plans short of Medicare for All leaves these costs in place. In other words, they leave hundreds of billions of dollars a year in savings on the table.

[...]Gerald Friedman, a health care and labor economist, is an economics professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst and the director of The Hopbrook Institute.

Medicare For All

[Related]:
Democrats' promise of Medicare for All is remarkably misguided and unrealistic

Trump wants to drop a neutron bomb on Obamacare. Over to you, 2020 voters.

Take it from me, tweaks won't fix health care. Dems should focus on Medicare for All.


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  • (Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:57PM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:57PM (#826732) Journal

    Demand for healthcare is remarkably inelastic; people still get sick whether an aspirin is pennies or dollars.

    But they will buy and use less aspirin as a result, if it's more expensive. But I suppose that would imply that health care is less remarkably inelastic than you assert.

    In fact, without proper regulation, we'll be back in the days of radium toothpaste and heroin syrup for babies; it'll be "your money AND your life, sucker! Whaddaya gonna do about it?!"

    I suppose we should have "proper regulation" then. Sigh.

    And that completely ignores the knock-on effects of a sick population. Healthy people are more productive, less likely to riot, cost emergency services less, and do better work. By ensuring healthcare, the benefits to be reaped extend far beyond simple first-order effects on the balance sheet.

    One could use that babble to support the present system just with more vaccinations.

    "Free market" principles simply do not work when demand is this inelastic, constant, and growing, and you'd need to be either blindingly stupid or outright evil not to understand that after it's been explained to you. No more of that, okay? You're better than that.

    And once again, someone just asserts that "X doesn't work!" without actually trying X.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:03PM (1 child)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:03PM (#826898) Journal

    And once again, someone just asserts that "X doesn't work!" without actually trying X.

    Those regulations weren't formed by the Big Bang. We tried the full Free Market and started creating regulations because it kept killing people.

    What we HAVEN'T tried here is the proven solution of socialized medicine.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:15PM (#826909)

      Nono, THIS time we have Trump who will cut through the deep state that loves regatory capture and we will all be blessed with affordabke care. Oh wait, this came from khallow who doesn't see anything wrong with massive wealth inequality?

      Woops.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 09 2019, @06:53PM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @06:53PM (#827005) Journal

    You don't know your history very well, do you? Go research the era of patent medicines and radium in the toothpaste and privately-run asylums. That is, at BEST, what your approach would return us to.

    Look, I get it, you are a slave to your ideology and nothing as silly as reality or history or facts or evidence is going to get in your way. Fair enough. Just don't expect me to humor you when you start pissing in the meme pool.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 09 2019, @08:00PM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @08:00PM (#827044) Journal

    Which is why scammers perennially run amok.

    The Obvious Rebuttal is, khallow just posted in response. Wait a minute!