Yale study shows medicare for all will save billions of dollars, and many lives

Robin Mauro said:

I copied a link from Newsweek, but for some reason, on this forum, links wind up a paragraph long, so I deleted it, but anyone can look up this study. It has been well covered.

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Here's the link.
Medicare For All would save $450 billion annually while preventing 68,000 deaths, new study shows

Robin Mauro said:

I copied a link from Newsweek, but for some reason, on this forum, links wind up a paragraph long, so I deleted it, but anyone can look up this study. It has been well covered.

Click to expand...

We've had universal health cover in Australia for about 45 years. Before that came in, I was bitten by something and I was talked into going to hospital. I went to a large hospital. There was no one in the waiting room I was given a shot of antihistamine and that was it. Late last year, I went to hospital by ambulance and waited 6 hours in emergency on a stretcher. I had a heart problem. There were many others waiting for help. I left via the waiting room where the non-emergency patients were waiting. It was packed. That was midnight. My visit to the hospital in 1973 cost me $5.00, which was about $50.00 in today's terms. My recent visit cost me nothing except a taxi fare home. You can have affordable healthcare or healthcare with excellent service. They are mutually exclusive. Save billions? A government run institution? I did not know Yale had a fantasy department.

Aussie Pete said:

We've had universal health cover in Australia for about 45 years. Before that came in, I was bitten by something and I was talked into going to hospital. I went to a large hospital. There was no one in the waiting room I was given a shot of antihistamine and that was it. Late last year, I went to hospital by ambulance and waited 6 hours in emergency on a stretcher. I had a heart problem. There were many others waiting for help. I left via the waiting room where the non-emergency patients were waiting. It was packed. That was midnight. My visit to the hospital in 1973 cost me $5.00, which was about $50.00 in today's terms. My recent visit cost me nothing except a taxi fare home. You can have affordable healthcare or healthcare with excellent service. They are mutually exclusive. Save billions? A government run institution? I did not know Yale had a fantasy department.

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Yale is a fantasy department

The problem with medicare is greedy professionals making a killing out of the system boosting health prices through the roof and has long cues of sick people waiting for help. All of which makes good private health insurance near impossible to afford.

Robin Mauro said:

I copied a link from Newsweek, but for some reason, on this forum, links wind up a paragraph long, so I deleted it, but anyone can look up this study. It has been well covered.

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Health insurance will end soon. There is a better system.

There is an emerging "wellness" system that works better at far lower costs.
This system uses technology to adapt lifestyle options to DNA analysis
and create an optimum lifestyle for each persons characteristics.
This along with extensive testing to spot problems early.

SkyWriting said:

Health insurance will end soon. There is a better system.

There is an emerging "wellness" system that works better at far lower costs.
This system uses technology to adapt lifestyle options to DNA analysis
and create an optimum lifestyle for each persons characteristics.
This along with extensive testing to spot problems early.

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They had something like that on the original Star Trek series.

Jeshu said:

The problem with medicare is greedy professionals making a killing out of the system boosting health prices through the roof and has long cues of sick people waiting for help. All of which makes good private health insurance near impossible to afford.

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I'm not sure that it is so clear cut. The biggest costs are
drugs - blame big pharmaceutical companies
waste - it's horrendous in the hospital system
diagnostic machinery
people who refuse to care for themselves and expect the medical profession to bail them out.

Specialists spend years in training, earning a pittance for that time. There few specialists because it hard to become one. Many of them work extremely hard, under great pressure, always facing the risk of something going badly wrong. Just their liability insurance is breathtakingly expensive. No, I don't know any poverty stricken specialists. But compared with business executives, who can send a company broke and walk away with millions, specialists are paid a fair amount.

Aussie Pete said:

Late last year, I went to hospital by ambulance and waited 6 hours in emergency on a stretcher. I had a heart problem. There were many others waiting for help. I left via the waiting room where the non-emergency patients were waiting. It was packed. That was midnight. My visit to the hospital in 1973 cost me $5.00, which was about $50.00 in today's terms. My recent visit cost me nothing except a taxi fare home. You can have affordable healthcare or healthcare with excellent service. They are mutually exclusive.

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You understand that if you paid it out of your own pocket that would probably have cost you around
10000 $ in US ?

Sure, waiting for 6 hours is annoying but nobody is getting bankrupted from it.

I recently got my tonsils removed which requires surgery and anesthesia.

One day operation in hospital, half a price for Medical taxi fare back home, two weeks of paid sick leave and the bill for operation was 125 €.

I have no personal insurance.

edit : to be fair since the surgery was not an urgent one I was on the waiting list for around two months.

Since every other civilized country can get this done, you've got to ask whether the US is different? Maybe it is. Maybe our government is so buried in special interests and ideology that we actually can't improve the medical system. But I don't approve of giving up before we start.

Aussie Pete said:

We've had universal health cover in Australia for about 45 years. Before that came in, I was bitten by something and I was talked into going to hospital. I went to a large hospital. There was no one in the waiting room I was given a shot of antihistamine and that was it. Late last year, I went to hospital by ambulance and waited 6 hours in emergency on a stretcher. I had a heart problem. There were many others waiting for help. I left via the waiting room where the non-emergency patients were waiting. It was packed. That was midnight. My visit to the hospital in 1973 cost me $5.00, which was about $50.00 in today's terms. My recent visit cost me nothing except a taxi fare home. You can have affordable healthcare or healthcare with excellent service. They are mutually exclusive. Save billions? A government run institution? I did not know Yale had a fantasy department.

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Well, I can't speak for Australia but I can speak for my experience as an American (I'm an American) and I can't speak for 1973 (was 5 years old) but I can speak for the 2000's/2010's, and I have a different anecdote that proves Medicare is better.

When my mother needed dialysis, along with the other problems she was experiencing, we were supposed to take her to a dialysis center - a third party, free-standing/independent dialysis provider. However, due to other health concerns, the hospital started her off right in the hospital's dialysis center. After a few months, the hospital was saying she could go to a private dialysis center. I had concerns so I spoke with my mother's doctors. They agreed it would be better for my mother to continue in the hospital but said the hospital needs to approve it. The hospital did, and on the side the admin who told me so said that since she's on Medicare they don't have to worry about it but if she were on private then the claim would have been denied and we would have had to fight and still probably not get it approved. Huge win for Medicare right there.

The other huge win is that every month I would get the bill from the hospital - it showed the regular price which would be paid by those with private health insurance to be $100K a month. Then, next to that it showed the Medicare price - $30K a month. THEN, it showed the credit from Medicare which zeroed it all out. Thank God for this great coverage. A couple times during dialysis my mom's BP dropped drastically and she was immediately assisted by doctors and admitted for observation. Had we been at an offsite, independent dialysis center it would have required an ambulance being called and in the time it would take she may have not made it.

So if we're going to go by anecdotal evidence to prove whether Medicare is good or not, I think I'll go with my own story that I experienced myself in recent times in America with Medicare as opposed to someone in Australia's story about a snake bite (!!!) back 50 years ago.

I also have lots of other very good, positive experiences with Medicare to draw upon as well as many, many great anecdotes from my large family in Quebec who used their system for things like cancer and surgeries and other things with few to no problems.

I don't think someone living outside the USA can understand what it's like to live knowing that no matter how good your coverage is it has an upper limit and one illness or injury that's severe enough can wipe you out and bankrupt you. Easy for people to talk big when that's not a real life concern for them.

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(18)30509-6/fulltext

Study: Almost half of new cancer patients lose their entire life savings

Jonathan Walkerin said:

You understand that if you paid it out of your own pocket that would probably have cost you around
10000 $ in US ?

Sure, waiting for 6 hours is annoying but nobody is getting bankrupted from it.

I recently got my tonsils removed which requires surgery and anesthesia.

One day operation in hospital, half a price for Medical taxi fare back home, two weeks of paid sick leave and the bill for operation was 125 €.

I have no personal insurance.

edit : to be fair since the surgery was not an urgent one I was on the waiting list for around two months.

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There is no such thing as free. The last few years I've had some minor medical issues. I don't know the costs exactly, but I did not pay a cent. What I have paid is a surcharge on my tax since 1975. It's not huge, but it adds up. The medical system is a bottomless money pit. I doubt that it will change if the US goes for universal health care.

Aussie Pete said:

There is no such thing as free.

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Who said anything about free???

Aussie Pete said:

The last few years I've had some minor medical issues. I don't know the costs exactly, but I did not pay a cent. What I have paid is a surcharge on my tax since 1975. It's not huge, but it adds up. The medical system is a bottomless money pit. I doubt that it will change if the US goes for universal health care.

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Medicare is working well so far in the US without being a bottomless money pit, and that's with covering the segment of the population who most needs and uses it - 65+ year old seniors. When expanded to the younger population who will pay into it but not use it as much it will be even more sustainable. It certainly will cost much less than private insurers (i.e. unnecessary middlemen).

Sanders has already addressed how it would be paid for through taxes. Other countries do it successfully, no reason the US can't. Nobody said it would be "free", though, so I still don't know where you get that idea.

ArmenianJohn said:

Who said anything about free??? I think you're mixing up my post with someone else's.


Working so far in the US without being a bottomless money pit, and that's or covering the segment of the population who most needs it - 65+ year old seniors.

Sanders has already addressed how it would be paid for through taxes. Other countries do it successfully, no reason the US can't. Nobody said it would be "free", though, so I still don't know where you get that idea.

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I suppose it depends on what you mean by successful. If you listened to the constant complaining in Australia, you'd think it was the worst in the world. It's one of the best, but it's far from perfect.

It's free in the sense that it costs nothing up front. It is the same mentality that incites people to use credit cards to excess. There is even an incentive to overuse the system because "I'm paying for it anyway". Australia has a private healthcare system as well, paid for by health insurance or people just paying out of their pocket. The government fears the private system shutting down. It would have a massive impact on the budget which we can ill afford. (Ill - sorry about the pun). I made the point before. Health care can be affordable or meet everyone's desires and expectations. You can't have both.

Aussie Pete said:

It's free in the sense that it costs nothing up front.

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You have that backwards. It costs up front, just like private insurance. It costs through taxes paid, just as insurance costs through premiums paid. AFTER paying the tax or premium, THEN you receive the benefit. It costs up front, not afterwards. I don't see what's "free" about that...

Aussie Pete said:

It is the same mentality that incites people to use credit cards to excess.

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No, it's quite the opposite. With credit cards you do NOT pay up front, you use them to get the benefit (i.e. purchase things you want) and THEN you pay for it AFTERWARDS. Perhaps you're confusing credit cards for pre-paid gift cards?

Aussie Pete said:

There is even an incentive to overuse the system because "I'm paying for it anyway".

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So you have people getting sick on purpose just to use what they're paying for? That's odd. Can you give me an example? Did someone go out and get cancer on purpose "since they're paying for it anyway"? Or do people break their bones "since they're paying for it anyway"? Do people try to catch coronavirus "since they're paying for it anyway"?

In the US nobody does this, not even with other kinds of insurance. I don't know anyone who has killed himself so the life insurance can pay out "since they're paying for it anyway". I don't know anyone who crashes their vehicle "since they're paying for it anyway". People do that in Australia? Really? Wow.

Aussie Pete said:

Australia has a private healthcare system as well, paid for by health insurance or people just paying out of their pocket. The government fears the private system shutting down. It would have a massive impact on the budget which we can ill afford. (Ill - sorry about the pun). I made the point before. Health care can be affordable or meet everyone's desires and expectations. You can't have both.

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You probably can have both. I believe in most of Europe there is universal health care but people buy private health insurance supplements. Medicare in the US also works that way where you can buy a private supplement. The problem is that in order for us to get to that point we have to push for universal, single-payer only health care and then perhaps we can incorporate some small degree of private insurance supplements. But we are far, far from that.

It's easy for you to talk since you don't live with the reality of possibly having your entire life savings and wealth wiped out from being sick. You don't live in the US so you really can't relate, even if you understand it on paper.

Upfront, visible pricing would make a huge difference. People say the free market isn't working, but we don't really have a market. We have a racket.

I took my cat to an emergency clinic/animal hospital last December. They had to keep him overnight. Right away they gave me an estimate with high and low. Why don't we have this for people?

Ask for upfront pricing, itemized and listed, when you go for pro medical care.

Hank77 said:

Here's the link.
Medicare For All would save $450 billion annually while preventing 68,000 deaths, new study shows

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Why do you people put your faith in politicians? They are pandering for votes. They are not God. This is an area I have some occupational expertise in. Medicare is on the verge of insolvency so why would adding more people make it better. It will not prevent 68,000 more deaths because the factors that provide the avenues are still there: old age dementia, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, accidents & injuries, infections-how does medicare make those go away? What is at stake is that we have a few people running for office who want to own & manage 3-5 major systems of our society: the energy grid, the communications grid, the transportation grid, the banking grid, & healthcare grid. These people are so convinced that they are so good that they can cure everything for $0, that everyone will be happy, & next they will raise them from the dead. We are too large a population to cover everyone's medical claims or everyone's potential group plan equivalent premium. We are 20 trillion in the red. Healthcare costs for labor, supplies, surgeries, therapies, malpractice, electricity, medical instruments, computers, infrastructure runs into the trillions if not quadrillions.
We are not a healthy nation. We currently have a sickcare system but I would still say it's better than any in the world. Govt. systems seek to ration out expensive or complex procedures & they do this by delay & forming queus so that most people will perish.