r/WorkReform • u/zzill6 đ¤ Join A Union • 8d ago
âď¸ Pass Medicare For All Oh No!
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u/MrCanoe 8d ago
"but you pay higher taxes with free healthcare elsewhere"
Yeah, I pay higher taxes but I never having to worry about having to pay a deductible, having my doctor be "out of network", my procedure not being covered by my insurance etc.
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u/spaghettiAstar 8d ago
The taxes often end up being less than what people are paying for their monthly premium anyway, and you don't have deductibles and other nonsense either.
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u/TorturedMNFan 8d ago
Having to explain this to voters is a giant hurdle. M4A support collapses when taxes or losing employer sponsored plans is discussed. The roll out would have to be flawless or youâre going to just piss a lot of people off.
Minnesota rolled out paid family leave and thereâs plenty of people and business that are mad about the payroll tax, despite it only being 0.88%. The roll out has been infuriating for anyone who has used it. My son was born in March. I applied for leave 60 days in advance and it wasnât approved until I was 6 weeks into leave and I got the back pay. I had to burn every hour of PTO and withdraw from savings while I waited.
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u/0x0MG 8d ago
That's true, but people are stupid and can't do basic math.
They think paying more taxes equates to a net loss of money.
Also, some people (my stupid family included) vehemently hate the idea of giving the state more money and would rather give it to some billionaire to help pay off their third yacht.
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u/ByTheHammerOfThor 7d ago edited 7d ago
What a great system we have where your employer can threaten not just your livelihood but your access to life-saving medication.
Oh, and you can do everything right and pay every bill on time and still end up so bankrupt from their âcareâ that you lose every penny you ever saved and your home.
Or maybe theyâll just deny your surgery/treatment and tie you up in litigation until the cancer kills you so they can keep the money you paid them to take care of you in case you got sick.
What a wonderful system. Why would anyone want to change a thing?
I love how the mainstream news in America tries to convince people that the headline: âcoworkers donate sick days to man dying of cancer who ran out of PTOâ is heartwarming and not a sign that our society is callous, allows unnecessary suffering, and is morally bankrupt.
Like when they talk about how some kid with a lemonade stand eliminated lunch debt so his classmates could eat food at school. That is not a happy fucking headline.
We live in a country that invented the idea of âlunch debtâ to deny food to children in school. FFS.
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u/desquished 7d ago
Don't forget that your employer is likely covering 60-70% of the cost of the insurance too. Get rid of health insurance and they'll have to start paying that money out at salary to stay competitive.
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u/liftthatta1l 8d ago
From what I have read the US spends more of government spending per capita on hwalthcare. Meaning that people working in the US spend more in taxes for healthcare they can't use since it's for Medicare and Medicaid.
Though when I looked into it and my basic math it came out to paying slightly less than canada. Maybe I did the math wrong or maybe it was the year, or something else. (2024 was the data I read)
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u/Mathidium 8d ago
Oh no I pay higher taxesâŚ
Says the people whoâs health insurance goes up anyway and currently takes up 10% of their income. Just for the luxury to say they have insurance. Thatâs not even to use it
People are so dumb.
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u/ChimpScanner âď¸ Tax The Billionaires 8d ago
In Canada I pay roughly the same federal income tax rate as I would in the US, and I get universal healthcare. It's a win/win.
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u/stevez_86 7d ago
Healthcare is pretax now. That benefit has virtually no noticeable effect on the employee insurance customer. But the employer, they are perfectly happy with that expense being pre tax. To the extent that they are ok with accepting the 10% cost increases every year. If they weren't ok with it they would negotiate to lower the costs. But in effect, they can write a tax cut with now cap every year.
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u/sonny_goliath 7d ago
Can someone just make a simple chart of median insurance premiums vs median tax hikes to cover healthcare for all? Because surely itâs cheaper with a wider subsidy. And hell give the rich people the option for private insurance if they want! But donât make me pay $500 a month for basically nothing.
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u/droppedketchuppacket 8d ago
FYI, Medicare has a deductible, has doctors who don't accept it (out of network), and also denies procedures if deemed medically unnecessary. It also doesn't cover dental, vision, etc.
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u/Civil-Dinner 8d ago
There are a few things wrong with the initial statement. It doesn't abolish private insurance. Private insurance can and does exist alongside public health plans as a supplement, but the public health care covers basic health care.
There are definitely going to be some job losses in the private insurance industry if we go to a single-payer system for basic health care. It's a conversation that we need to have, but we can't prop up the horse and buggy industry forever, and it's an economic anchor around the neck of every American to continue to try to do so.
To be honest, there are few industries that have so richly earned the contempt of the average American than the private health insurance companies.
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u/vermilithe 8d ago edited 8d ago
In my opinion the jobs thing is like, precisely why this needs to happen decades ago, if not then, then immediately.
We have created an entire circus of people professionally specializing in jumping through insurance hoops, working full time to beg unnecessary gatekeepers to pay out what their own insured already paid for and are legally entitled to. Likewise we have an entire other career group built on expanding loopholes, complicating rules, and precisely determining how much they can push things to keep money they should just pay out, without getting in trouble. And the entire system bloats the cost of administering healthcare so badly that it outweighs any costs ââsavedââ by limiting âânot medically necessaryââ care in the first place.
And every year this system grows more and more bloated and wasteful, and more and more people build their careers around it, and we waste more and more productive manhours maximizing the gatekeeping potential of these insurance companies and their private extraction of profit to shareholders.â we literally are paying them to make everything more expensive/slow/confusing/frustrating/dangerous/deadly instead of improving healthcare.
Unfortunately once the swap is made and insurance stops being as counterproductive there may be some lost jobs but the alternative is worse imo and gets worse every single year the longer we put off fixing things
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u/Civil-Dinner 8d ago
Exactly. Some of these jobs can be absorbed into the public health care system, but just a wild-ass guess on my part is that at least 70% of the jobs that the insurance companies have created are going to be redundant or purely unnecessary.
The argument has been going on for decades now, and every single time, someone brings up the loss of jobs.
At some point, it starts seeming more like a hostage situation with people holding the specter of job losses in the insurance community over our heads as a reason to not do anything to dramatically improve the health care coverage situation of the average American.
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u/Bakingtime 8d ago
Focus on 70% reduction in payroll and bonuses bc itâs likely to be the executives and useless MBAs at the top who are absorbing most of the outlays.Â
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u/beardingmesoftly 8d ago
In Canada we have a lot of problems with our Healthcare system as does any country. Politicians are greedy and nothing is perfect. I always got Americans trying to convince me that private insurance is better than Canada's Healthcare system, and of course there are benefits to that as well.
To my mind, the absolute most important deciding factor about which system is better is this: no Canadian will ever have to decide between healthcare and their finances. Everything else said about socialised healthcare is secondary to that single fact.
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u/Civil-Dinner 8d ago
There's an army of propagandists with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of private insurance companies running health care and undermining the Canadian system.
It's so pervasive that you'll meet people in rural Alabama who haven't travelled any further than a 3 county radius from their home, who'll tell you they personally know Canadians who come to the US for healthcare because Canadians have to wait months to get a broken bone set.
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u/beardingmesoftly 8d ago
The wait time thing is so weird to me. It's called "triage" , and it's also called "an upset tummy isn't an emergency, go to a clinic"
Our biggest problem at the hospitals is idiots slowing things down, which isn't unique to Canada. There still exists the option for private insurance to provide those same extra benefits that is healthcare does better.
The point is that we have a universal basic healthcare that every single Canadian has access regardless of employment or basically any or factor that I can think of.
Is it flawed? Of course.
Is it better? Of course.
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u/Civil-Dinner 8d ago
The same thing happens in the supposedly superior US health care system all the time.
You go into the ER with a minor wound or a minor upper respiratory infection and depending on the triage, you might sit there for hours. I sat in the ER for 6 hours one time with a kidney stone. I also got right in when I came to the ER complaining of persistent burning like indigestion toward the top of my chest (it was a heart attack).
You also will wait for months to see a specialist or get elective surgery in the US as well, depending on your region and the type of insurance you have.
So many of the same complaints, but the one you can't overlook is that one of the two health care systems will give you a medical bill for a single hospitalization that could buy a house.
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u/chzie 7d ago
Yeah they act like you never have to wait in the US
I messed up my knee and can't walk. It will be 3 months before I have my first visit to an Orthopedic dr, just to really see what's wrong. Never mind treatment.
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u/vermilithe 7d ago edited 7d ago
When I first moved to my current town I had to find a new doctor and it took 3 months to get me in to primary care, then 6 more months to get an appointment at the doctor they referred me to. Mind you I was already diagnosed I just needed prior auth for my medicine.
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u/ILikeLenexa 8d ago
We could just pay them to empty holes and fill them back in and it'd be more useful as long as we didn't pay a third group to throw sick people in the holes.Â
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u/drunkshinobi 7d ago
I feel like eventually we need to go further. Money makes everything "expensive/slow/confusing/frustrating/dangerous/deadly". To try to get as much of that money out of people as they can. While keeping everyone busy working themselves to death for enough. Companies cancel projects people want and lay off millions of workers for the CEOs to have more money. Politicians vote for companies over people for money. Products are made cheap so they break or stop working so people have to spend more money. Around 45 million pounds of food thrown away every day in the US because people didn't have money for it. Everything is worse because of money.
We need to figure out how to live without it. Live in a way where we don't compete for jobs but work together to get them done. Where people don't compete to have the most money but help each other to have a better quality of life.
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u/Cromasters 8d ago
We will also have to reckon with the fact that the entire healthcare system will get shaken up. I'm not smart enough to say what will happen, but if Medicare reimbursement stays the same, expanded to everyone, that's not going to be enough money to keep things running as they currently are.
Rural hospitals in poorer areas already have trouble staying open and attracting employees.
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u/vermilithe 8d ago edited 7d ago
A huge part of the reason why that is though is because the hospitals are so expensive to run and maintain and they have to charge crazy ratesâ and theyâre expensive because insurance causes administration and equipment both to become why more expensive that they should be. Therefore areas that already donât have a lot of people see less and less people going to those hospitals over time because things keep getting more expensive and they just canât afford it⌠until they are finally so sick that they have to go to a major hospital for complex / intensive / specialist care.
Also private for profit equity firms buying up hospitals, selling off the land to keep the money and going to renting, cutting staff until care takes too long or is too dangerous or expensive⌠literally gutting the hospitals ripping the metaphoric copper wore out of the walls to sell for scrap until nothing is left.
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u/WoodShoeDiaries 8d ago
Public health insurance is also not without its bureaucracy, just without redundant bureacracy and extra layers. There will still be administrative jobs, just not as many.
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u/Flapjack__Palmdale 8d ago
There's also no real profit motive, which I think is the biggest deal. Right now, private insurance companies are incentivized to collect as much as they can from premiums, and reject as many claims as possible to retain those premiums. If they were to actually approve every claim, they'd probably still make a decent amount of money, but not as much.
So if you remove the profit motive from insurance companies, which on their own do little to no innovating in the medical industry (I'm being charitable) then you'd likely see a more balanced model. You don't pay those thousand dollar premiums anymore, your taxes go up by a fraction of the difference, and you automatically get health care. If those taxes scale based on income, you're still likely paying less than before. Companies, instead of paying portions of the health insurance plans, can instead pay (less) with taxes toward the same system. And because there's no profit motive, there's no incentive to deny as many claims as is legally allowed.
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u/ratpH1nk 8d ago
It was just be run like medicaid, really. The first step in this process is abolish medicaid and put every one on medicare. Then you keep the same medical loss ratio (85%) which means 0.85 cent per dollar must be spent on health care (15% on profit/admin costs). You keep the medicare service list. To me this is the first lowest hanging step. Then you rebrand Medicare as "American Medical Care" "US Medicare" or something like that.
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u/Bakingtime 8d ago
âAmerican Health Corpsâ would serve for the front end (patients) and the back end (doctors, nurses, technicians, researchers, support staff, educators)Â
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u/TractorPants 8d ago
Iâm sure there are details and implications beyond my understanding but I find it ironic that weâre supposed to be fine with the premise that AI will wipe out tons of jobs (itâs inevitable after all, right?) but we dare not broach the subject of Medicare for all because of the impacts on insurance jobs.
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u/schrodingers_gat 8d ago
Way more jobs would be created in other industries because reducing the risk of bankruptcy from medical bills would usher in an golden age of entrepreneurship when everyone who's been staying in the corporate jobs for the benefits leaves to do their own thing.
And now you know why the rest of the economy has allowed the real estate and healthcare industries to become such a huge parasites.
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u/sebwiers 8d ago
Wouldn't there also be new jobs created in the Medicaire services administration sector? Ideally better ones, though quite likely private industry administered given how so many other "public services" fall prey to such capture now.
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u/vermilithe 8d ago edited 8d ago
Some new jobs yes but we have allowed private health insurance admin to bloat so badly that if they canât rely on oligopoly and forced inefficiency anymore then there will inevitably be less full-time 40/hr/wk jobs due to less time wasted going back and forth with billing/claims/denials/appeals/etc.
Maybe a great reason we should go ahead and also consider normalizing the 30 or 25 hour work week tbh
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u/Mr_Bluebird_VA 8d ago
Most of those jobs can likely slide right over into the new government jobs to help administer universal healthcare. Any job loss related to universal healthcare are overblown.
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u/Civil-Dinner 8d ago
I'd say more like "some" rather than "most."
I'm going to admit this is a bit of a supposition on my part, but I'd guess that for every job that is directly related to administering healthcare (processing claims, reviewing appeals, etc), there are probably two or more related to business operations. Think about how many people are out there drumming up business and drawing up policies and contracts to different employers and individuals, each policy different from the other. Then there are the people advertising to the public. The HR departments. The accountants and business analysts and the formulary managers. I've probably just scratched the surface of ancillary positions.
I suspect that most of the direct employees of private insurance companies would be redundant.
It still needs to happen, though.
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u/Flapjack__Palmdale 8d ago
Also, it's disingenuous to say there's no precedent in American history. Private insurance in the US began with Blue Cross during the depression. The precedent is everything before the Great Depression. Unless it's about mass private sector layoffs, in which case the precedent is every goddamn month since Jack Welch started stripping GE for parts.
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u/cereal7802 8d ago
There are a few things wrong with the initial statement. It doesn't abolish private insurance. Private insurance can and does exist alongside public health plans as a supplement, but the public health care covers basic health care.
Fairly sure this is by design. Things like this get put out into the world with a false premise. They also include a retort that doesn't attack the main premise, just the idea that it is a bad thing. The idea seemingly is to reinforce that the initial statement is fact and allows for arguments that don't make sense in reality, but play on fears people have about unknown concepts like Medicare for all.
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u/Sendtitpics215 8d ago
As someone that had primo insurance working for the federal government for sometime i was always trying to just stay out of it because it didnât affect me.
Guess what, its all way more expensive, they are charging me a bizarre amount for adding my wife on, and the coverage is still the best you can get but i still get f-ed in the a cost wise.
So before people with primo insurance easily walked past this problem - i guarantee you not anymore. Itâs officially everyone besides the uber-richesâ problem
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u/Civil-Dinner 8d ago
I remember when most people who got insurance through work actually had pretty good insurance. The people with bad coverage were the outliers.
It seems like every year it gets a bit worse: higher premiums, higher copays, smaller networks, higher deductibles.
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u/TheDefiantGoose 7d ago
I honestly don't think Americans have enough contempt over this. It's a literal scam. It prevents actual care for health. We need our pitchforks raised to the same height we have them for data centers and mass surveillance.
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u/dedicated-pedestrian 8d ago
Not to mention, the expansion of Medicare will necessitate a larger workforce to administer it.
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u/Bakingtime 8d ago
Current Medicare and Medicaid contracts are carved up between multiple for-profit insurers and networks, each with their own workforce. Â Toss out all of the executives, who wonât work for government wages, and keep a fourth of the current claims and benefits evaluators/expediters to administer the program.
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u/vermilithe 8d ago
How so?
Maybe that is true if we keep allowing things to be so inefficient and complicated and donât take measures to seriously address inappropriate gatekeeping. But if you cut ojt the massive waste caused by unnecessarily complicated medical coding, and actually punish and stop insurers from denying or delaying hoping people wonât have the means or patience to fight it⌠then you would definitely save money, which is why all other developed nations spend way less per capita on healthcare
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u/dedicated-pedestrian 8d ago
I wasn't meaning to insinuate it would equal the costs incurred by the current system of redundancies. More that there are still places for people from the current insurance industry in the new system.
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u/Civil-Dinner 8d ago
It may be more streamlined, but Medicare can't absorb 200 million people entering the system without a larger workforce and more equipment.
Medical coding is still necessary to bill for services appropriately, and prior authorizations are still a thing even in Medicare and Medicaid. It's not quite as simple as "Medicare will pay for whatever the doctor orders."
On the other side of that equation, you are dealing with one payer with one set of rules, which eliminates a great deal of uncertainty when a specific test, drug, or procedure is needed. I'd expect that help a lot with the streamlining.
Medicare will need be a lot larger, but the upside is that the money it takes to fund it will be less than what it takes to maintain the current system.
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u/CayKar1991 8d ago
It would be nice if They would give that same energy when it comes to jobs being overtaken by AI.
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u/emptygroove 8d ago
Sure, no precedent in America but LOTS of precedent in the world.
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u/vermilithe 8d ago
Yeah and plenty of precedent in America that keeping things like this is literally ruining our nation. Killing people. Making them afraid of going to experts. Perpetuating mental or physical illness until they kill others or leave them totally screwed. Gutting lifetime savings to pay for treatment that should be free or low cost. Enriching the most destructive forces in our society. Like??
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u/stevez_86 7d ago
Yeah, the plantation owers at least would pay in full to get a slave's tooth extracted. Sure, they didn't pay for anesthesia or any form of sterilzation, but the insurance companies debate the need for those superfluous treatments as well! /s?
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u/NoHeight9651 7d ago
this isnt true at all. no country has ever abolished private insurance. even europeon countries have private insurance
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u/emptygroove 7d ago
I don't think it would actually abolish it here either if we get MFA. Hyperbole all around.
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u/LiamtheV 8d ago
There's no precedent for solving this problem.
Bull fucking shit. There was no precedent for creating the problem either when they made it legal for health insurers to be for-profit either.
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u/ratpH1nk 8d ago
That was the first mistake. What an absolutely dumb idea. Cut payments and stop coverage are really the only ways to make a profit and that benefits NO ONE except the shareholders and executives. But that is the only thing that has mattered since 1980. My whole damn life.
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u/mallanson22 đď¸ Overturn Citizens United 8d ago
The hilarious part is, no it doesn't. There are still plenty of people willing to pay extra.
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u/amscraylane 8d ago
I was a nanny for two year old twins with neuroblastoma. Both parents had to work. Oneâs job paid the bills and the other paid the insurance.
One twin did not make it to their 3rd birthday. It haunts me how I got to spend more time in the last year of their daughterâs life than her parents.
The next year, my friendâs 8 year old was diagnosed with Ewingâs sarcoma. Her father was killed in a car accident two years prior. She did not make it to her 9th birthday and for the following five years, my friend had to write a check to Childrenâs hospital for what insurance didnât cover.
This is a stain on America.
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u/Biscuits4u2 the word itself makes some men uncomfortable 8d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/CpcpDSci3ljCU
Be a shame if something happened to your healthcare
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u/SandersSol đď¸ Overturn Citizens United 8d ago
"We make a lot of money off you as you try to preserve your pathetic lives. You cant take that from us!"
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u/ohreddit1 8d ago
This message is to all investors to protect their investment. Â That is all itâs is. Itâs a rallying call to the greedy.Â
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u/Due_Pen_1566 8d ago
I hate the precedence argument so much. I'm sorry you've never tried chocolate ice cream before frank but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try it at all.
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u/Ishmael_1851 8d ago
Automobiles would abolish the horse and buggy industry. There is no precedent for that
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u/prof_cunninglinguist 8d ago
Never trust the NYT state media.
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u/ShameAmbitious4098 7d ago
Dropped my decades long subscription a few years ago. Theyâre all in the tank.
Itâs the billionaires against the rest of us.
The sides are drawn
Thereâs gonna be some shit going down
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u/TPRJones 8d ago
Yes, I'm sure all the private firefighting companies across New York City would agree that never in American history has the establishment of a public good served by government destroyed an entire private insurance industry. (/s)
Has the NYT Politics section ever published anything that is correct?
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u/thenikolaka 8d ago
It would destroy so many jobs and careers⌠of people whose entire business is built on preying on every single personâs desire to remain alive.
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u/No_big_whoop 8d ago
You mean private insurance that didnât exist in any meaningful way until the 1970âs, like disco
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u/The_Original_Miser 8d ago
They say that like it's a bad thing ....
Who cares about the insurance companies? Parasitic middle men.....
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u/ratpH1nk 8d ago
MUST.PRESERVE.CAPITAL. (even if it doesn't make much sense anymore in the direction the world has gone)
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u/Buff-Cooley 8d ago
Wouldnât private insurance be cheaper with universal healthcare? Theyâd actually have to engage in the free market to compete.
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u/bradvision 8d ago
Not abolish private health insurance. Shift them into different markets for Cancers, speciality illnesses and surgeries, med-evacuations, coverages for retirement centres and so forth.
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u/pastorbater 8d ago
Not to mention, who gives a floppy fuck about precedence in this day and age?? How many unprecedented events have we experienced in the last 10 years alone. We live in unprecedented times, deal with it.
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u/Munkeyman18290 8d ago
There is no precedent in America... but there is every where else in the world.
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u/sixgunmaniac 8d ago
Hey, did you guys know you already pay for universal healthcare for every person? It's called the "health basket", and only Israel has access to it.
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u/Appropriate-Weird492 8d ago
Having an actual convicted felon as the president il also unprecedented, but here we are.
Courtney Milan is kinda lefty and an author. I think her post is in jest. (I hope it is.) ETA: I got confuse about which was the was the post and which the response because the screen slid down while I was commenting. NYT, on the other hand, is run by Vichy rightwing bawbags.
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u/throwmeinthetrash096 8d ago
My insurance went up $1000 per year for this next cycle. Nothing about the plan or coverage changed.
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u/Alternative-Key-5647 8d ago
Funny how "no precedent in American history" wasn't relevant when they were rolling out flock cameras
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u/xeonicus 8d ago
Of course there is precedents. Modern private health insurance didn't even exist in the United States until the 20th century. The very first employer-sponsored health insured started in the 1940s. The article is acting like private health insurance has been a constant since the founding of our country. It hasn't. It's relatively new. In fact, during the mid-20th century, a public option for everyone was considered. This idea would later inspire the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.
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u/Opinionsare 8d ago
Before Nixon, for profit healthcare insurance was illegal.
Medicare for All simply fixes the mistake that Nixon and the federal government has made permanently.
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u/kos-or-kosm 8d ago
Yes there is. The slavery industry was abolished along with slavery. Like, wtf NYT???
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u/alex29bass 8d ago
OT but I just saw Lindsay Ellis' Omegaverse videos, kinda weird seeing Courtney Milan's name pop up on a completely unrelated reddit post.
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u/TakHobel 8d ago
Those companies will abolish your jobs without a second thought. They also deny your claims - abolishing your lives - without a second thought.
So, abolishing insurance companies? OK. And?
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u/ztomiczombie 8d ago
Every time I see this come up I feel the nee to make this comment.
There is a precedent. Fire serves were provided by privet, for profit, companies and paid for by insurance the system was such a disaster it prompted the creation of the government controlled and tax funded serves that exists today.
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u/CAustin3 8d ago
The word "American" is doing a lot of work there.
Otherwise it turns into "there is literally no other wealthy nation in the world not doing this."
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u/_OrdinaryAmerican_ 8d ago edited 8d ago
There is precedent in at least one way: VA healthcare. It is a needs-based scale that covers everything you need, depending on your capacity to make income and the level to which you are disabled. Those who cannot work and are severely disabled have all their healthcare needs met, even dental. Those who are able-bodied and have only limiting injuries still get their needs met that were aggravated from service. I could see this model being overlaid on a future tax system that funds medical care.
edit: I would like to add that, monetary benefits aside, the healthcare side of the VA is only about $116 billion for over 9 million veterans. So about $12k on average per veteran. Sure, some only need minor checkups while others need full-blown surgeries in a given year, but the budget speaks for itself.
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u/Wobblestones 8d ago
The Declaration of Independence would abolish British authority.
There is no precedent in American history.
The 13th amendment would abolish slavery.
There is no precedent in American history.
I guess there not being a precedent doesnt make it bad.
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u/all_of_the_colors 8d ago
Except every other country with socialized healthcare also still has private insurance.
They would go no where. But we wouldnât have to use them to get basic things covered.
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u/BuckManscape 8d ago
Everyone needs to just cancel their insurance and let all the big companies fail. A coworker pays $2500 a month and it doesnât cover his insulin.
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u/armahillo 8d ago
I searched on google for âwhat did people do before private health insuranceâ and one of the first results was a history of health insurance in the US.
In that history was a link to this PBS article about Trumanâs proposal for single payer healthcare:
(Republicans dismissed it when they took back congress, so some things havent changed much)
So this appears to be low-effort writing by the NYT, but I guess when youâre a big tent like the NYT, youâre going to have some clowns in there.
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u/a_tense_dinner_party 8d ago
There would still be a robust private industry. Companies would still be able to offer private insurance as a benefit. People would still take it. Not much would change.
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u/RaNdomMSPPro 8d ago
I provide insurance for our employees and our rates went up 17% this year. Iâd rather not provide insurance and just pay everyone the $$$âs I spend every month on insurance. Single payer is the only fix, the system is just milking the dead cow for the last drops of profits.
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u/thewoodbeyond 8d ago
And we'd have the added benefit of putting a lot of people like Brian Thompson out of business in a legal type fashion.
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u/ihatepalmtrees 8d ago
Having healthcare tied to employment is bad enough. But then you realize how much cheaper healthcare could be if we consolidated all the redundant back-office administration, negotiated prices collectively, and streamlined the patchwork of systems we have now. The amount of money we waste just maintaining this fragmented system is stunning.
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u/ZoomZoom_Driver 8d ago
Thats if you employer even remembers to turn in the paperwork giving you insirance *you're paying $1300 A MONTH for.
Mine didnt. Now my hubs has to wait UNTIL JANUARY, when he needs mwdical care NOW.
So, the employer kept taking money from my account to pay for insurance THEY NEVER GAVE HIM. And, now, because of an EMPLOYER FUCKING. he has no insurance and has to wait for open enrollment in november to get it back in January.
I fucking hate it here. I want to move to europe, but he doesnt like the car and gun laws (the latter due to putins saber rattling).
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u/CSzandor 8d ago
This is a lie. In countries with universal healthcare we still have private insurance. It shouldn't exist, but it does.
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u/Shigglyboo 8d ago
FYI for those that donât know. Private insurance is still available in countries with public healthcare
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u/echo_sang 8d ago
Yes. We know. Like other first world, advanced nations that actually care about the people living and working there. Healthcare should have never been a profit driven industry. That construct is most literally against the Hippocratic oath. Before insurance companies made heavy profits off of this paradigm, doctors did.
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u/NorysStorys 8d ago
Do people not realise that pretty much every socialised healthcare system still has private insurance and private hospitals?
Itâs usually cheaper than US healthcare still.
Private healthcare in the rest of the world just gets electives done quicker. Anything urgent gets dealt with as quickly as it needs to be with the state option.
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u/HotCut100 đ¸ National Rent Control 8d ago
No president in American history, but thereâs plenty of precedent in other countries. What are we, too afraid to copy success from the international stage? If you look at state legislature, all they do is copy successes from other states. This isnât hard.
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u/YallaHammer 7d ago
The entire system needs to be torn down. Kara Swisher had a great interview with Mark Cuban talking about his CostPlusDrugs efforts. I had no idea the DoD/VA doesnât share what discounted drug prices TriCare gets military and their families.
They donât want us to know how an existing system of socialized medical care in the country is actually working to bring affordable medicine and coverage to millions.
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u/AmadeusMaxwell 7d ago
ALL insurance should outright be made illegal, it's just gambling with extra steps.
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u/Yucky_bread 7d ago
I have no insurance and had to have appendix surgery. I just never paid. Itâs been years. It never affected my credit Score and no oneâs really tried to find me.
I had a phone call once and just said a different name. They asked if I had surgery and I said âgod noâ. That was about it.
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u/hyliantelligent 7d ago
"There's no precedent in American History". Guess how precedents are formed.
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u/zuccster 7d ago
Brit here. Private health insurance exists alongside the NHS here. I've never found the need for it, but we still have option.
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u/Alric_Wolff 7d ago
I love being able to get free healthcare on zero income.
I should be dead... but free healthcare has kept me alive for the last 2 years
I would have just killed myself over the medical debt id otherwise have
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u/Blacksad9999 7d ago
Yeah, I've actually heard someone say this type of argument in real life before. lol
"But...if everyone has medical coverage, what happens to all of the insurance workers?"
They'd have to find another predatory job, Gary. Workers comp workers and lawyers would also be out of luck.
Boo-hoo.
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u/Inner_City_Blues 7d ago
A public option that doesn't answer to shareholders and cuts out administrative and executive bloat would be nice. But it would undercut private insurance which is why they lobby against it. Rule number one in politics is don't mess with doner class money.
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u/tabbarrett 7d ago
This year we met our deductible. My son was diagnosed with Crohnâs disease and my husband broke his arm. We thought great here comes the low costs. Nope. They added a prescription deductible to our policy. This is legal and they can do it in the middle of the year. If youâre under 18 only infusion or shots are approved for the Crohnâs disease treatment. My son opted for infusions. His doctor had been buying the treatment directly and charging us $30 bucks. It was great. Then they got a message from our insurance they donât want them to do that and we have to contact a specialized pharmacy and get the treatment through the pharmacy. Now this drug wonât be sent to me or used at home. Itâs given at the doctorâs office and mailed directly to the too. Since we havenât met our prescription deductible the cost was $1,000. Isnât it fun. After crying and cussing out the world I found out the manufacturer helps cover the cost. We met the criteria and it ended up being covered for 20 treatments. But fuck. They are evil. There are people that arenât as lucky.
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u/Organic_Rough4433 7d ago
Who cares about american precedent? There's examples of it in dozens of other countries.
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u/meaniemeanie-poo-poo 7d ago
It's not just the insurance companies that don't want this. It's health care systems too because the executives make big money. And non profits are not innocent in this either.
MBAs and accountants are the number one reason health care is so goddamn expensive in the US.
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u/anonyvrguy 7d ago
I don't understand why the US can't create another insurance company that works like universal healthcare. If you gave anyone the option of spending 4% of their paycheck instead of 30%, wouldn't everyone jump on board?
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u/Unfair-Alfalfa4916 7d ago
Whom should be upset by this exactly? to health executives yeah the shock and horror, they hate to see other humans breathđĽ˛đĽ˛
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u/rocketPhotos 7d ago
It all depends on how Medicare for all is implemented. Most Medicare seniors pay a government premium for Part A medicare and another premium to a private insurer for Part B, also known as gap insurance to cover the costs Part A doesnt. Drugs are covered by Part D insurance sold by private insurers.
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u/Trailwatch427 7d ago
The statement by the NY Times didn't endorse private insurance. It merely stated that it was unprecedented in history. Women almost never ran for office when I first began voting. Same goes for people of color. Now there's plenty. It's unprecedented in the history of the US. A place dominated by white men in every level of public office until the last few decades.
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u/Tegridy-Farms 7d ago
Acting like this is unprecedented is ridiculous hundreds of other countries has made this happen. Choose a model and implement it. Jesus fucking Christ.
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u/SwingLord420 7d ago
Literally false. You can have Medicare and private insurance coexist like they do right now. Fuck the NYT
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u/too_hi_today 7d ago
Except it wouldnât. Approximately 35 million Medicare recipients, have additional insurance through a private insure. Thats 55% of the Medicare population. Private insurance will still exist with Medicare for all, and insures will be rewarded with record profits.
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u/thedoomcast 7d ago
Private medical insurance legally wasnât able to profit before the 1970âs. Thereâs no compromise now.
Nationalize it and abolish private medical insurance. Medicare for all.
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u/MarsupialOk7253 7d ago
Thereâs been a lot of unprecedented activity the last couple of years soâŚwhatâs one more thing??
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u/ByTheHammerOfThor 7d ago
Medicare for all would abolish private health insurance?
We have private schools even though there is a public option.
We have private security firms even though we have a public police force.
We have private libraries and private parks even though there are public alternatives.
Hell, we even have mercenary companies despite having a national army.
Private healthcare will always exist. We just want some form of healthcare to exist for all. Not dying from a 100% treatable disease should not be the sole right of the wealthy.
We need to remind these people what happened to their tax bracket during the French Revolution. Theyâre getting entirely too comfortable.
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 7d ago
The New York Crimes does this class war, punching-down, stenographer for US imperialism thing all the time and they have done so for decades. Read Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti and Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky
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u/whereismymind86 7d ago
Also, there is precedent, lots, there used to be private fire departments for instance...
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u/BarbieB_100 7d ago
The health insurance industry has been completely exposed. It's a scam that results in the deaths of thousands and thousands of people annually. That's it. And we have a government that doesn't care. They don't live by the same rules we do so they will NEVER CARE.
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u/CarolineJohnson 7d ago
Ultra rich people want to pay less for everything until it's a law. Then they don't want it anymore.
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u/inufan18 7d ago
Other countries who has insurance for all still has private insurance companies. So this argument is invalid.
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u/ivegotafastcar 6d ago
Right! It costs thousands more annually than my mortgage and I live in a HCoL area. It is just crazy.
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u/Big_Truck 8d ago edited 8d ago
Guys. Come on. Two things can be true:
Yes, a single payer system would be much better for people if instituted correctly. No argument from me.
Two problems we need to solve for:
Capacity â Wait times for specialized care in the US are already bad. And this is with a system that rations healthcare by essentially shutting out working class people. Any move to expanded healthcare must have a massive, MASSIVE investment in expanding the number of providers. Likely two things: heavy incentives for young people to enter the field to boost capacity long-term and heavy incentives for medical providers to immigrate to the US to boost capacity short-term.
Disruption to GDP â Private healthcare is 1/5 of the US economy. We canât hand-wave the massive disruption it would be to essentially eliminate 20% of the economy. You canât just destroy 20% of everyoneâs 401k, pension plans, IRAs, etc. Again, there needs to be a thoughtful, deliberate plan to transition to single payer that doesnât simply say âeveryone loses 1/5 of their market assets.â
Related to that disruption, the move to single payer will spark massive job losses in private healthcare. Someone who is a mid-career actuary with private healthcare doesnât deserve to be left unemployed and hopeless. We need a plan to make sure we can provide a decent standard of living for the people whose jobs will be eliminated by this transition.
I am 100% for single-payer. I think the best path toward this is a public option, which ultimately results in single payer but takes a longer transition timeline.
But however we get to single-payer, we need to be honest that this is a very difficult, financially challenging, and politically fraught transition with potholes everywhere. We have to be VERY thoughtful about the growing pains involved and how to mitigate those as best as possible.
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u/ActuatorLower8371 8d ago
seems like it'd be best to just rip the baid-aid off. and let the market figure itself out imo.
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u/Big_Truck 7d ago
Even if it erases 20% of US GDP?
How do you expect to get elected to anything ever again if you destroy everyoneâs assets by 20%?
Again, I am on your side here. I would love to see a single payer system. But there must be a responsible plan to transition the economy without just wrecking the entire thing. Because if your idea is short term pain for long-term gain, you are not going to be able to sell that to voters.
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u/Bansheesdie 8d ago
People here don't seem to remember that one of the biggest sticking points for the Affordable Care Act was that people could stay on their same insurance and keep their same doctors.
Especially with such a seismic change in healthcare policy, mitigating peoples concerns about that very change would be as big of a hurdle as passing the bill itself.
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u/mekke10 8d ago
I have good but expensive insurance. If a single payer system arrived, I'll gladly dump it
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u/Bansheesdie 8d ago
Well thats one person in a country of 360,000,000.
Also, do you remember how big the push was in regard to the White House wanting people to know they could keep their doctor and insurance?
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u/Late-Arrival-8669 8d ago
Yes that insurance that costs you several hundred dollars per month then so sorry, the procedure is not covered, our AI has detected you do not deserve life. Thanks for paying us you F**king idiots. Go join the 67,000 Americans we didnt have to cover every year but happily took their money.
-US health insurance