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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: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:20PM (9 children)
and I'll show you a tyranny.
I'm not sure who coined the original phrase, but while I support medicare for all, it will concentrate a lot of power in the hand of some really untrustworthy individuals so some considerable checks and balances would be required for it to not get abused
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @06:11PM (8 children)
And really, if one thinks about it, the large government is the one more likely to be a tyranny because it has more people dependent on it and has a much easier time hiding misdeeds behind layers of complexity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @06:54PM (6 children)
Hahaha the Native Americans and minirities would like a word.
The company town denizens would like out of their makeshift debtor's prison, and a host of other issues. Not all the abuses were done by government, but it required government intrrvention to stop the abuse. Get a fucking clue already mr. Series of Contracts.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday April 09 2019, @11:15PM (1 child)
I tend to agree. I'd also add women didn't have voting rights so not only was it a tyranny of the majority (which some argue to be a form of democracy), but it was in fact a tyranny of a minority. Add to that rail road tycoons and oil barons runnig around doing whatever they'd like and it's pretty clear that representation was completely dysfunctional even for that minor section of the population that had a voting right.
The easiest way to qualify what's a democracy is to look at what got passed by the legislators and ask "Was it for the public good?" or at least, "Was it for the ruling majority's good?". Though lets face it, very few so-called-democracies pass this test.
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(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday April 10 2019, @11:15AM
How does the old saw go?
The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members [azquotes.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @11:24PM (3 children)
Still true. Things didn't get better for them just because the US federal government grew bigger.
Also irrelevant.
It doesn't require an order of magnitude growth in the size of government to do that. The original government was big enough.
And what of the abuses that can only be caused by large governments such as a worldwide military invasions or a global surveillance program?
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday April 10 2019, @11:16AM (2 children)
The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 10 2019, @01:22PM (1 child)
Unless, of course, that isn't true. France in 1938 treated its most vulnerable much better than France of 1941 did. But the latter came from the corruption and divisiveness of the former. Virtue in this one narrow area turned out useless to the future survival of France.
And since I Godwined this thread a little, I'll note that the US handles hate speech much better than Europe does. The latter creates a large class of vulnerable people who are persecuted merely for their speech and beliefs, which is much more serious IMHO than merely treating the physically and mentally handicapped somewhat less well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @03:32PM
You nailed it brother! We need to protect freedom of speech and freedom of religion!
Free Robert Bowers! Protect freedom of speech!
Free Dylann Roof! Protect freedom of religion!
We will create the America we deserve, and *no one* will replace us!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @12:47AM
The way capitalist libertarians measure the size of government tends to either miss the point¹ or is totally asinine².
¹ I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting that more bureaucrats is a good thing. However, the libertarian analysis tends to be blind to corporate bureaucracy, so it is incomplete.
² Measuring the size of government by the amount of wealth it "redistributes" while totally ignoring that the wealth the worker produces has already once been redistributed away from him by capitalism itself before the government can redistribute it again into social programs.
The problem with capitalism is alienation from the worker of the value he produces. Marxism (or some synthesis of Marxism with anarchist mutualism) is a better way to implement what capitalist libertarians are always claiming minarchist capitalism will deliver.
Brush aside the wishful thinking of the Libertarian Party, Republican Party, and Democratic Party and actually analyze the emergent behavior of capitalism. If you're not certain how to begin your analysis, I'd suggest starting a game of Monopoly. Observe what happens as the game progresses from early stage at the beginning, through the middle game, to the late stage with the endgame.
The Libertarian Party blames the emergent behaviors of capitalism on a "big gubmit" bogeyman. The Republican Party blames the emergent behaviors of capitalism on a "immigrants! darkies! mooooooslims!" bogeyman. The Democratic Party blames the emergent behaviors of capitalism on a "white men oppressors!" bogeyman. None of them get it right because they cannot admit that capitalism, for all the good it's done the world, is a fundamentally flawed system when it reaches the endgame.