Current Events > "Medicare for all will be cheaper! No premiums, deductibles, copays!!"

(+) Yeah! (+)

This is a dishonest statement.

What about the people who don't pay much or anything for premiums because their employer pays the brunt of the premiums and the deductibles/copays are low? What about those people who are underinsured or still don't have insurance because it's too expensive? What about the people who are healthy and don't mind low premium high deductible plans since they don't get sick and thus save money that way?

A lot of people are going to end up with less money over-all because of the extremely high taxes we'd have to impose in order to fund medicare for all. So it's misleading to say that most people will save money. These people I described will have less money in their pocket because they'll lose a benefit or they'll have higher taxes despite not having gained anything from Obamacare to begin with.

This morning's CNN article on Bernie Sanders' plan to pay for it even said that the average person would save just $6,000 over an entire decade. That's a really low amount of "savings" and it commits an error leftists always accuse conservatives of committing when conservatives talk about average wage, average household income, etc. (IE not focusing on median, but focusing on average).

Not to mention that in this scenario, you'd be displacing millions of employees from the current healthcare industry which employs a shit ton of people and drives a significant portion of the economy. Without guarantee of controlling costs any better, maintaining quality, passing on savings to the people, etc.

It's just mind boggling how stupid the entire proposal seems. Instead of focusing on ways to automate and digitize healthcare and incentivize people to live healthier lives so that we don't spend 30% of our yearly healthcare expenditures on obesity and smoking, leftists want to tank the economy while increasing taxes to fund moar gubmint.
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Haha you spent all this time typing that and I didnt read it
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free healthcare is free, it's in the name
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YUHH posted...

Haha you spent all this time typing that and I didnt read it

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Doom_Art posted...

YUHH posted...

Haha you spent all this time typing that and I didnt read it

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NinjaBreakfast posted...

Doom_Art posted...

YUHH posted...

Haha you spent all this time typing that and I didnt read it

I didn't really think people would be proud of that meme where the guy sticks his head in the sand and says "La! La ! La! I can't hear you!!"

But...here we are lol
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

What about the people who don't pay much or anything for premiums because their employer pays the brunt of the premiums and the deductibles/copays are low?

Why is it my employer's responsibility to provide for my health?
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Tyranthraxus posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

What about the people who don't pay much or anything for premiums because their employer pays the brunt of the premiums and the deductibles/copays are low?

Why is it my employer's responsibility to provide for my health?

Who said it was? It's a benefit offered by employers to attract and retain talent.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Tyranthraxus posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

What about the people who don't pay much or anything for premiums because their employer pays the brunt of the premiums and the deductibles/copays are low?

Why is it my employer's responsibility to provide for my health?

Who said it was? It's a benefit offered by employers to attract and retain talent.

I mean I can think of a lot more things I'd like my employer to use for benefits with the 2 million dollars they're spending on our policy yearly.

So to answer your question, for the people who are already paying very little because of their employer, they would receive a different benefit with an additional monetary value that compensates for the small amount of increase they would see assuming they saw any.

It's just a bookkeeping trick at that point, with the only difference is if I lose my job I don't also lose my health care.
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Tyranthraxus posted...

So to answer your question, for the people who are already paying very little because of their employer, they would receive a different benefit with an additional monetary value that compensates for the small amount of increase they would see assuming they saw any.

Source?
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https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.html
About $11000 per person per year would cover everyone.
The problems begin when half of everyone expects the other half to pay $22K each. Disaster begins when we expect that so-called 1% to pay $1,089,000 each.

It's pretty fucked up already when the poverty line just barely covers the average health care, but that's been brewing for well over a hundred years.

The 1% wouldn't be paying that much. Instead, regular people like us would just end up paying 15% more of our incomes to the gubmint.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

The 1% wouldn't be paying that much. Instead, regular people like us would just end up paying 15% more of our incomes to the gubmint.

Don't let logic and reason get in the way of perfectly good hyperbole.

Would it even be that much, considering there'd be no need for the VA, medicaid, and current medicare under a fully socialized system? We'd be replacing three redundant programs with one big one.

FLUFFYGERM posted...

Tyranthraxus posted...

So to answer your question, for the people who are already paying very little because of their employer, they would receive a different benefit with an additional monetary value that compensates for the small amount of increase they would see assuming they saw any.

Source?

Capitalism.

If an employer doesn't offer those benefits the employees will leave to go work for one who does.

Same thing with really small employers who don't offer health care as a benefit.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

The 1% wouldn't be paying that much. Instead, regular people like us would just end up paying 15% more of our incomes to the gubmint.

Don't let logic and reason get in the way of perfectly good hyperbole.

Would it even be that much, considering there'd be no need for the VA, medicaid, and current medicare under a fully socialized system? We'd be replacing three redundant programs with one big one.

Honestly, I don't know what it'd be. If someone could provide me with a concrete and data-based answer I'd be happy to look at it and take it seriously.

Hell if it ends up being a modest 5% increase in federal taxes I might even consider it, but then we'd need to first plan for what to do when the economy collapses because we just unemployed millions of people who work in health insurance and related sectors.

Tyranthraxus posted...

Capitalism.

If an employer doesn't offer those benefits the employees will leave to go work for one who does.

Same thing with really small employers who don't offer health care as a benefit.

The economy would collapse if we suddenly outlawed United Healthcare, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc.
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YUHH posted...

Haha you spent all this time typing that and I didnt read it

i lol'd
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

The economy would collapse if we suddenly outlawed United Healthcare, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc.

Were third-party payers somehow magically banned, the price of heathcare would substantially decrease immediately.

I mean it took literally less than 30 seconds to type that up. Certain posters are admitting more about their own intellect than they realize whenever they laugh at YUHH's post lmao
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Questionmarktarius posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

The economy would collapse if we suddenly outlawed United Healthcare, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc.

Were third-party payers somehow magically banned, the price of heathcare would substantially decrease immediately.

Or it could skyrocket. Doctors and dentists routinely bill 3x to 5x or more of what insurance companies actually end up paying them. The insurance companies negotiate down the bill hard.
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The USA National Health Care needs to be a Non-Profit oriented National Health Insurance model.

The USA NHI should literally be treated like a "Utility" with different choices in monthly premiums that directly affects % coverage when a severe medical incident occurs.

If we aggregated all the Health Insurance members into a National Model, we can wield virtually insurmountable power against Big Pharma, crooked Medical Practitioners, and those who would seek to over charge the system for personal gain.
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how come other countries are able to support single payer healthcare without having their economies collapse
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

we just unemployed millions of people who work in health insurance and related sectors.

Wouldn't this be an issue with automating as well? Ya, jobs get created but jobs get lost as well.

Also, why do you seem to think automation of the healthcare industry is not something that people are working towards?

Edit;: not saying those lost jobs don't matter, they do.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

The economy would collapse if we suddenly outlawed United Healthcare, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc.

Were third-party payers somehow magically banned, the price of heathcare would substantially decrease immediately.

Or it could skyrocket. Doctors and dentists routinely bill 3x to 5x or more of what insurance companies actually end up paying them. The insurance companies negotiate down the bill hard.

I would guess that the prices would drop by about two-thirds or four-fifths.
If you bill a dollar but only get paid forty cents, you're charging $2.50 next time - just to get the dollar you actually wanted in the first place.

Romulox28 posted...

how come other countries are able to support single payer healthcare without having their economies collapse

america is all about the multipayer experience
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

The economy would collapse if we suddenly outlawed United Healthcare, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc.

No one is talking about outlawing private insurance. Better options will always exist for people with more money to afford them.
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Romulox28 posted...

how come other countries are able to support single payer healthcare without having their economies collapse

fake news
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emblem boy posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

we just unemployed millions of people who work in health insurance and related sectors.

Wouldn't this be an issue with automating as well? Ya, jobs get created but jobs get lost as well.

Also, why do you seem to think automation of the healthcare industry is not something that people are working towards?

Edit;: not saying those lost jobs don't matter, they do.

Automation doesn't happen over night.

And government doesn't care as much about automation and efficiency as the private sector. They have no reason to care, because funding is virtually unlimited thanks to all the tax cattle and there's no competition to drive efficiency.
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NinjaBreakfast posted...

Doom_Art posted...

YUHH posted...

Haha you spent all this time typing that and I didnt read it

Lol, Fluffygerm is such a waste of time.
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halomonkey1_3_5 posted...

Romulox28 posted...

how come other countries are able to support single payer healthcare without having their economies collapse

fake news

Other countries like the UK?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/02/nhs-is-facing-year-round-crisis-says-british-medical-association

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/24/nhs-needs-2000-in-tax-from-every-household-to-stay-afloat-report

It's basically a money pit. You always need to plan on raising taxes.
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YUHH posted...

Haha you spent all this time typing that and I did read it

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glitteringfairy posted...

YUHH posted...

Haha you spent all this time typing that and I did read it

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Imagine the fucking arrogance to say that a system that works in almost every other first world country won't work because *insert stupid soundbite you got from Fox News*.

Medicare for all is the way to go, unless you're a heartless monster.

_Rinku_ posted...

Imagine the fucking arrogance to say that a system that works in almost every other first world country won't work because *insert stupid soundbite you got from Fox News*.

Medicare for all is the way to go, unless you're a heartless monster.

It's barely staying afloat in the UK and they're going to have to raise taxes again to keep it going.

Good work admitting that all you've got is an appeal to emotion tho
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

This is a dishonest statement.

What about the people who don't pay much or anything for premiums because their employer pays the brunt of the premiums and the deductibles/copays are low? What about those people who are underinsured or still don't have insurance because it's too expensive? What about the people who are healthy and don't mind low premium high deductible plans since they don't get sick and thus save money that way?

A lot of people are going to end up with less money over-all because of the extremely high taxes we'd have to impose in order to fund medicare for all. So it's misleading to say that most people will save money. These people I described will have less money in their pocket because they'll lose a benefit or they'll have higher taxes despite not having gained anything from Obamacare to begin with.

Okay, as long as you also acknowledge that tons of people would save money, too.

I've made this exact point that you're making, as well, but the problem is more complicated than this. You're only giving one side. There are a ton of high needs folks that would save money, and even more who don't have high needs but have major accidents or catastrophies that would save money.

FLUFFYGERM posted...

This morning's CNN article on Bernie Sanders' plan to pay for it even said that the average person would save just $6,000 over an entire decade. That's a really low amount of "savings" and it commits an error leftists always accuse conservatives of committing when conservatives talk about average wage, average household income, etc. (IE not focusing on median, but focusing on average).

Not to mention that in this scenario, you'd be displacing millions of employees from the current healthcare industry which employs a shit ton of people and drives a significant portion of the economy. Without guarantee of controlling costs any better, maintaining quality, passing on savings to the people, etc.

There's definitely a guarantee of controlling costs better... Something like 90% of physicians currently accept Medicare because it is such a large share of the market, and it is currently only like 1/5 of the market. If you made it 1/1 of the market, that 90% figure would go up (and costs overall would go down)

FLUFFYGERM posted...

It's just mind boggling how stupid the entire proposal seems. Instead of focusing on ways to automate and digitize healthcare and incentivize people to live healthier lives so that we don't spend 30% of our yearly healthcare expenditures on obesity and smoking, leftists want to tank the economy while increasing taxes to fund moar gubmint.

I mean way to wrap up your more or less reasonable post by sounding like a total ideological hack
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Balrog0 posted...

I mean way to wrap up your more or less reasonable post by sounding like a total ideological hack

What is ideologically hackish about pointing out that effectively banning a huge sector of the economy would collapse the economy? It'd be another Great Recession because you'll have introduced millions of highly skilled people into the labor market.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

emblem boy posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

we just unemployed millions of people who work in health insurance and related sectors.

Wouldn't this be an issue with automating as well? Ya, jobs get created but jobs get lost as well.

Also, why do you seem to think automation of the healthcare industry is not something that people are working towards?

Edit;: not saying those lost jobs don't matter, they do.

Automation doesn't happen over night.

And government doesn't care as much about automation and efficiency as the private sector. They have no reason to care, because funding is virtually unlimited thanks to all the tax cattle and there's no competition to drive efficiency.

There's no reason to think a policy like this would happen over night either... Is there?
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

_Rinku_ posted...

Imagine the fucking arrogance to say that a system that works in almost every other first world country won't work because *insert stupid soundbite you got from Fox News*.

Medicare for all is the way to go, unless you're a heartless monster.

It's barely staying afloat in the UK and they're going to have to raise taxes again to keep it going.

Good work admitting that all you've got is an appeal to emotion tho

It's only having trouble because your kin in the UK are trying to kill it.

Nice try though. You do understand that emotion is important when it comes to human lives, right? Or do you only worship the almighty dollar?

Doom_Art posted...

YUHH posted...

Haha you spent all this time typing that and I didnt read it

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FLUFFYGERM posted...

What is ideologically hackish about pointing out that effectively banning a huge sector of the economy would collapse the economy? It'd be another Great Recession because you'll have introduced millions of highly skilled people into the labor market.

A surplus of labor isn't what caused the great recession.

The M4A proposals I've seen have some kind of response to this in the form of job training or job guarantees (not to mention you'd need a lot more federal employees to administer the program)

But it is true that single payer works else where, and technology if anything makes health care more expensive (biosimilars are going to explode prescription drug prices, for instance)
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Balrog0 posted...

A surplus of labor isn't what caused the great recession.

But millions of overqualified people competing for morsels worsened it. And if you effectively ban a huge sector of the modern economy and then introduce all those people back into the labor market, you'd create both an economic downturn and a massive labor surplus competing for scraps.

Balrog0 posted...

The M4A proposals I've seen have some kind of response to this in the form of job training or job guarantees (not to mention you'd need a lot more federal employees to administer the program)

There's no way you can guarantee people work. Don't tell me you think we should dig up holes and then fill them a la some modern New Deal just to keep people employed on paper?

How many of the existing employees would become federal employees? What would happen to their incomes?

Balrog0 posted...

But it is true that single payer works else where, and technology if anything makes health care more expensive (biosimilars are going to explode prescription drug prices, for instance)

lmao nope. Technology makes healthcare much less expensive in the long run.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

But millions of overqualified people competing for morsels worsened it. And if you effectively ban a huge sector of the modern economy and then introduce all those people back into the labor market, you'd create both an economic downturn and a massive labor surplus competing for scraps.

I don't think the data bears that out at all, honestly.

FLUFFYGERM posted...

There's no way you can guarantee people work. Don't tell me you think we should dig up holes and then fill them a la some modern New Deal just to keep people employed on paper?

How many of the existing employees would become federal employees? What would happen to their incomes?

I dunno. What is your plan to help the hundreds of thousands of people who go into bankruptcy over medical debt every year?

FLUFFYGERM posted...

lmao nope. Technology makes healthcare much less expensive in the long run.

Just look at the price of prescription drugs over the last 30 years and get back to me.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Technology makes healthcare much less expensive in the long run.

Yet prices are worse than ever . . .
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Balrog0 posted...

I don't think the data bears that out at all, honestly.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5959048/

Balrog0 posted...

I dunno. What is your plan to help the hundreds of thousands of people who go into bankruptcy over medical debt every year?

that's a topic in itself, but the answer isn't to implement a disastrous and overly expensive system that doesn't solve any of the actual underlying issues plaguing the system, like government bureaucracy, obesity, and smoking

Balrog0 posted...

Just look at the price of prescription drugs over the last 30 years and get back to me.

the FDA just barely approved the first EpiPen generic today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/08/16/fda-approves-first-generic-version-of-epipen/

it isn't technology that is making it more expensive. it's government and monopolies that make it hard to enter the market and compete.

technology has literally made everything else cheaper, so you're really going to try to argue that it makes healthcare more expensive? lmao
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Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

Technology makes healthcare much less expensive in the long run.

Yet prices are worse than ever . . .

That's such a blatant elementary logical fallacy. "Technology is responsible for making healthcare expensive" does not follow from "healthcare is expensive"
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Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

Technology makes healthcare much less expensive in the long run.

Yet prices are worse than ever . . .

Some magical combination of torts, patents, and regulatory morass is the cause.
By the time your new "miracle" drug makes it to market, you've blown millions or billions even getting permission to sell it, and your patent is probably nearly expired now. Also you're going to get sued anyway, which is what the protracted regulatory approval bullshit was supposed to avoid in the first place.

FLUFFYGERM posted...

it isn't technology that is making it more expensive. it's government and monopolies that make it hard to enter the market and compete.

technology has literally made everything else cheaper, so you're really going to try to argue that it makes healthcare more expensive? lmao

In a word, yes.

Health care isn't like other markets.

You can say that this is due to government interference, but to the extent that is true, what you're really saying is that we need government to underwrite the technological break throughs we've had in health care over the past century or so

I mean, you only need to go back a little over 100 years to get to a place where medical professionals were literally recommending bloodletting. Since that time, we've made huge leaps with respect to evidence based medicine and that is reflected in a ton of statistics regarding our mortality

But every time a new, more effective discovery is made, the prices go up because there is a shitload of latent demand in these products. Every time you discover a new, more effective treatment, costs go up because people would rather not die than die regardless of the cost

Without a government subsidy, how do you imagine these treatments get discovered and then become accessible to the public in general? It's not like computers and internet where the downside of you not getting it is that you can't watch youtube or w/e. The downside is that you die.
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The biggest problem with single payer is the fact that Republicans would increase the deficit as an excuse to cut back on it and idiot voters would let it happen because abortions and guns are their only concerns when voting.
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King_Hellebuyck posted...

The biggest problem with single payer is the fact that Republicans would increase the deficit as an excuse to cut back on it and idiot voters would let it happen because abortions and guns are their only concerns when voting.

That's why Single Payer wouldn't work, it's based on taxes funding it.

Why do you think I've been pushing for a US NHI (National Health Insurance) run as a Non-Profit government organization where you pay monthly for your medical insurance to cover things.

And we let it take over all Health Insurance for US Citizens and mandate it to provide coverage.

All Non-Citizens can go get Private Health Care from Private Health Insurers.

If the US NHI has it's own separate Budget, Separate Bureaucracy, self run with no interference from congress.

Run by Medical Professionals, for the sake of US Citizenry being Healthier.

It has one goals, Increase Coverage / Health Care, lower costs to only as needed.

Create more Medical Staff so our existing Medical Staff can work fair hours and provide quality care instead of being over worked all the time.

Use technology to increase the efficacy of all medical Staff.
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Caution999 posted...

@FLUFFYGERM

I didn't really think people would be proud of that meme where the guy sticks his head in the sand and says "La! La ! La! I can't hear you!!"

But...here we are lol

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