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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:37PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:37PM (#826773)
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:12PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:12PM (#826858) Journal
    Nonsense. For example:

    According to the 2016 Allianz Global Wealth Report, “which puts the asset and debt situation of private households in more than 50 countries under the microscope,” the United States’ Gini score is about .81.

    So no consideration of one's earning ability. Wealth inequality, presented this way, is a huge scam. The poorest people in the world by this measure would be high income people who borrowed a lot of money. Think about why it's really stupid to claim they're poorer than a developing world person in deep poverty who only owns the clothes on their back and barely earns enough to eat. Yet that latter person is wealthier than the collective 30% poorest people [observer.com] in the world by the above metric.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:43PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:43PM (#826889)

    I think this quote from the article is particularly apropos:

    Needless to say, inequality is not good for society. The authors note,

    Among the many known effects of inequality on a society are social unrest, a decrease in health, increased violence, and decreased solidarity. Unfortunately, Kohler points out, humans have never been especially good at decreasing inequality peacefully—historically, the only effective methods for doing so are plague, massive warfare, or revolution.

    The important thing to add here is that those greedy 1%-ers will typically not be the ones to pay the heaviest price when the revolution comes; most of them will helicopter out of here to somewhere else to enjoy their ill-gotten gains while they watch us plebes from afar as the revolution gets into full swing. It is mostly going to be ordinary shmoes like khallow (and me, and most everyone else reading this) who will likely get caught up in the revolution. When the rage machine is turned on and the pitch forks come out, the teeming masses will be looking for blood and those folks are typically rather undiscerning as to who they turn their ire against. So, sleep well tonight, khallow. You never know when it might be your last night of restful sleep.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @10:44PM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 09 2019, @10:44PM (#827145) Journal
      Or we could just make a better society. All this blather about inequality misses two very important things: 1) you're not measuring inequality - you don't even know what it is; and 2) we are making the world more equal instead of less. Sorry, the Narrative is nonsense.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @12:07AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @12:07AM (#827166)

        Do the same thing and expect different results, khallow. That will guarantee you a good sleep.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 10 2019, @02:27AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 10 2019, @02:27AM (#827219) Journal

          Do the same thing and expect different results, khallow.

          Like assuming the world is going to hell in a handbasket, shoehorn imaginary data into the necessary straightjackets, ????, and profit?

          It's funny how I'm getting all this great advice from people who need to follow it more than I do.