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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.
[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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:29PM (9 children)
You gotta trust someone. Why not trust a single entity that all eyes are watching, and who, by law, has to be transparent with its constituency?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:32PM (8 children)
Like a business? Government has plenty of ways it can be non-transparent, legally and not. And I don't buy that "all eyes are watching" an entity like the US government. It gets away with way too much for that to be true.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:51PM (1 child)
Like what, exactly? And if the answer is "I don't know because it's classified", how do you know that the US government got away with it, rather than didn't do it?
If you're wanting to understand what's going on in civilian agencies, you can follow any of them on https://www.regulations.gov/ [regulations.gov], and you'll start to get a pretty good handle on what they're doing. It's not like they're allowed to keep most of that stuff secret.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @03:51PM
Such as the US government repeatedly insisting it's not spying on its citizens and allies and then repeatedly revealed via high risk leaks doing so without consequence?
Most businesses have websites too that allow you to understand in a similarly superficial manner what they do as well.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:53PM (2 children)
With the US government, at least the population has *SOME* opportunity for control and oversight. The reason folks don't trust the government is because they eventually find out what is going on. Likewise, they have the opportunity to vote people in or out, and make issues of things such that elected officials take action in order to save their jobs.
With a private company, 9 times out of 10, you never even find out about something until something catastrophic happens. Do you remember Equifax? That's a private company. How much stuff do you think goes on there that we STILL, to this day, do not know about? Do you want them in control of this country's health care? With a private company, the customers, have no insight and no say whatsoever. At best, they are left to vote solely with their feet if something goes amiss, and we've already seen what that is like.
When is comes to people's health and well-being, there needs to be strong accountability, transparency and plenty of oversight from folks who know what to look for when spotting problems. This is why the US gov makes the news almost daily. people are watching and getting the word out when things aren't as they should be. I agree that something like that is only the first step, but simply knowing is half the battle with these things.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:02PM (1 child)
You don't need control and oversight of a business. You just need a pot of money to sue. They can't hide behind sovereign immunity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @06:02PM
Was that actually intended to be ironic? Ah, justice for the rich and well-connected. Or were suggesting you can just hire a lawyer to do some ambulance chasing for you? Of course, you yourself won't ever see any of the money your lawyer manages to win from that big pot. Lawyers like to win big money for themselves by suing other big pots of money; they don't typically like sharing the won settlement with their clients though. Gotta love it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @11:11AM (2 children)
https://www.foia.gov/ [foia.gov]
Good luck filing a FOIA request with a private business.
You're such a piece of shit, Khallow.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 12 2019, @12:06AM
This happens during the discovery process during the lawsuit. No need to file anything like an FOIA.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:14PM
Also, let us keep in mind the many accounting restrictions that a private business undergoes. For example, if the US government were following GAAP-based law as it is followed in the US, somebody would be going to jail for the crap accounting that is done.
These accounting rules means also that businesses have a much harder time hiding assets from lawsuits and sometimes even reveal the wrongdoing itself.
OTOH, governments don't even need to try.