re: USA will have Socialized Medicine in 20 Years - It's Inevitable

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Bronc, you progs get back to me when your message becomes UHC combined with promotion of personal responsibility. "We're going to have UHC in place by 2026, but to do that Americans are going to have to start taking responsibility for themselves, their families, their neighborhoods. That means cutting the obesity rate and not soft pedaling around that issues with notions of food deserts or other distractions. That means the 50% of you who don't pay income taxes are going to pay more. That means those of you who aren't working are going to have to start."

You can't credibly argue for it while simultaneously telling the country that those who don't have health insurance are being discriminated against based on race/gender/etc. and that the people who pay into the system are actually evil and selfish.

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Congrats on the straw man argument?

You do realize this is not some new concept, and that if you want to play comparative analysis, UHC systems in advanced economies almost all have healthier populations, lower obesity rates, and better mortality rates and that has, in part, to do with having cradle to grave access to much of the health system without crippling financial burdens. And many do take steps to incentivize healthier habits because it has a direct effect on expenses and taxes. So the system literally becomes aligned with promoting health as a political battle because the party that achieves it can claim reducing public healthcare spending or taxes for it's constituents.

Many, such as France, Denmark, Finland, England, and authoritarian conservatives wet dream country, Hungry, use a combination of taxes, subsidies, and/or pricing mechanisms to promote better health and drive the right incentives. Nothing is stopping America from doing the same on a national level except political willpower.

I disagree, people should be able to take home MORE of their paychecks AND have basic universal healthcare. The money is already there, the desire to provide the care is not.

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This would require health care providers to be transparent about costs....we can't have that now can we?

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Do you mean doctors? Hospitals? Insurers?

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Do you mean doctors? Hospitals? Insurers?

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All of the above is a problem for a various number of reasons.

Though what the poster in question seems to want(or imply, even if he isn't aware) is to transition America to an entirely POS(point of service) system, which, I guess you could do through federal regulation, and there is probably some validity to the underlying logic(not sure it's the best solution overall) because the asymmetrical nature of the market and the often unexplainable variances in pricing from even hospitals nearly across the street from one another is a real problem. Not to mention one of the dynamics once thought true, that larger health insurers benefit from better negotiated reimbursement rates is often not true, and for inexplicable reasons. Economies of scale and competition, which is often a defense used by people defending for-profit private insurance, is completely broken in the employer insurance space specifically. The entire pricing dynamics in health care are incredibly broken and warped. Anyone that tries to apply normal economic assumptions to this space is showing their ignorance to how much of the market fits the economic definition of a market failure. Not their elementary understanding of perfectly competitive markets that you almost always hear uninformed status quo defenders apply to these conversations to dismiss calls for reform.


Anything investigated by Sarah Kliff is pretty good at illustrating how broken the system is

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The only way around it, and I am doubtful because republicans had their chance and did nothing, literally nothing, when they were in full control for Trump's first two years, is (1) make health insurance portable regardless of your job situation and (2) have upfront pricing like veterinarians do and (3) make HSA's universal, whether you have a HDHP or not. In fact, make HSA's mandatory like SS.

That's the only thing that will save the existing system.

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Not to mention one of the dynamics once thought true, that larger health insurers benefit from better negotiated reimbursement rates is often not true, and for inexplicable reasons. The entire pricing dynamics in health care are incredibly broken and warped. Anyone that tries to apply normal economic assumptions to this space is showing their ignorance to how much of the market fits the economic definition or a market failure.

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To further illustrate your point, my experience recently with having an EGD (upper endoscopy):

I have Humana commercial insurance. I had to have a scope done to verify whether I was having bile reflux (potential complication from last year's gallbladder removal). Really simple, common, procedure. Outpatient takes less than 15 minutes for the scope itself.

Night before the hospital calls me to tell me that the insurance company had still not verified my procedure that was occurring the next morning (and had been scheduled almost two weeks before). I had already paid the $1,800 they estimated would be my up front (due to having not met the deductible).

They proceed to tell me that if my insurance doesn't cover the procedure it's ok, as the hospital would consider it covered by my $1800 pre-pay as a negotiated deal.

The insurance did cover it, the total bill was over $10k and I'm now being billed an additional $600 by the hospital because the insurance does not want to cover the small biopsy they did of my stomach lining (I've had a history of gastritis, so it was a valid biopsy).

The same exact procedure was performed on my cousin, who has Medicaid, and she paid nothing.

Make it make sense, y'all. I'm having a hard time seeing where the government could do much fricking worse.

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Congrats on the straw man argument?

You do realize this is not some new concept, and that if you want to play comparative analysis, UHC systems in advanced economies almost all have healthier populations, lower obesity rates, and better mortality rates and that has, in part, to do with having cradle to grave access to much of the health system without crippling financial burdens. And many do take steps to incentivize healthier habits because it has a direct effect on expenses and taxes. So the system literally becomes aligned with promoting health as a political battle because the party that achieves it can claim reducing public healthcare spending or taxes for it's constituents.

Many, such as France, Denmark, Finland, England, and authoritarian conservatives wet dream country, Hungry, use a combination of taxes, subsidies, and/or pricing mechanisms to promote better health and drive the right incentives. Nothing is stopping America from doing the same on a national level except political willpower.

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It's such a straw man argument that you ignore the political messaging portion of my post to skip over to the successfully installed collective healthcare systems that largely lack (at least prior to the last decade), the leech problem we battle?

I offered you a reasonable trade off, are you agreeable to it?

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All of the above is a problem for a various number of reasons.

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How are doctors not transparent about costs? I can and do tell a patient exactly how much I charge for an office visit, procedure, etc. If a hospital is involved, I then tell them it's anybody's guess about what the rest will cost due to copays, coinsurances, and the shell game that the hospitals and insurance companies play about how much something actually costs.

When you say cant afford. Do you mean in addition to the new vehicles, new homes and vacations?

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Humana commercial insurance

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I see that you're obviously not one of them, but for all the people who love their "private" insurance delivered by a publicly traded company: is their priority your health or shareholder value?

I think the answer to this problem is an extremely complicated one, but the first step in my opinion would be to not allow your health to be balanced against shareholders' desire for profits.

In your case, the biopsy is reasonable, but in its desire to make money, Humana declines to reimburse your biopsy. They then give everybody involved a bunch of hoops to jump through hoping you'll find it not worth your time and just pay it out of pocket. Shareholders rejoice.