Forget Universal Healthcare. It's more cost effective to let people suffer and die.

[Armstead]

That seems to be the gist of ll of the criticisms of public healthcare and universal coverage in general....And this week Bernie's plan in particular.

Break out the green eye-shades and the bean counters. They are much more important than the goal.

Let's make sure there will remain big profits and lavish lifestyles as the primary "incentive" to provide health insurance and medical care.

Let's not "tax the middle class" to pay for healthcare. No, it is more American to make the middle class pay through the nose for shitty, and unfair insurance provided by an industry whose very business model is based on DENYING CARE as much as possible.

Yeah, let';s demonize that socialist, and rip apart his plan, instead of reaffirming a commitment to roll up our sleeves and actually work on moving toward the goal of universal coverage that is based on taking care of people instead of generating huge profits.

[Katashi_itto]

1. I agree. I say lets get behind repealing Obamacare too. Fuck helping people. VOTE HILLARY!

Everything is to hard to do. Why do it?

VOTE HILLARY!

[NCjack]

2. I feel sorry for the top 1%. I'm looking to donate to charity to help them. /nt

[uponit7771]

3. Or there could be a plan that doesn't include unicorns?

[Armstead]

8. You made my point perfectly, thank you

Preventing needless suffering and death is a unicorn. Yep.

[uponit7771]

11. or proffer something that will work and lower cost? Which Sanders hasn't done yet...

... but we'll keep dreaming

[Armstead]

16. You assume it won't work because it is coming from Sanders

Sure there is plenty of room for changes and adjustments, and alternatives to that specific plan.

But the objection is more political. Bernie did it so it must be wrong.

[uponit7771]

17. This is false on its face, I'm rationally calculating it wont work cause it doesn't lower

... prices at all just shifts them from private to government spending for the median income.

Sanders calculations takes AVG income for savings which is at best disingenuous...

Employers don't spend 7.7% of income on HCI with people who make 50,000 a year ...

[Recursion]

4. Thank you. Yes, that is cheaper

Now, since we

1. Don't want people to suffer and die needlessly and
2. Don't want to cut doctors' salaries down to European levels

let's talk about ways we can actually raise the money for universal care, rather than villifying people who ask that.

[HerbChestnut]

7. Winner for most ironic post of the day.

[uponit7771]

12. Hmmm, I was thinking it was cost of medicine... so is most of the higher cost related to

... doctor pay?

If so that makes sense seeing at beginning of medicare doctors were allowed to charge anything

[kenfrequed]

13. If you believe it is doctor salaries...

Then you don't know anything about the cost of healthcare in this country.

Most of the costs are created by the neverending struggle between clinics and insurance companies just to get them to pay what they owe. It all comes down to massive corporate profits.

[Recursion]

18. Well, that and hospital fees

Yes, those are the real cost centers.

[whatthehey]

21. True dat

There are 970,000 doctors in the US with an average salary of 189k. Let's add on 30% for their benefits and you get a payroll cost of about 238 billion per year. And that includes those who don't provide care

We apend 3 trillion on healthcare annually. What doctors cost is less than 8% of it even if we count all of them not just caregivers.

We should concentrate instead on why we need multimillion dollar diagnostic equipment in multiple locations within a short travel radius, why we are paying tens if not hundreds of thousands of people just to navigate multiple byzantine coverage/insurance/reimbursement protocols, why we legally hamstring the government from negotiating with drugmakers, why hospitals have conference rooms and admin staff to rival the UN, why we need to treat sick people in places that look like 5 star hotels in the first place, why we allow consumers to get medical advice from TV ads which are surely not paid for by drug companies out of charitable intent, and yes why we spend a huge part of our HC dollars trying to keep dying incurable patients alive a few more days. 50% of medicare spending is on people who die within two months.

And doctors in Europe are doing fine financially. The UK's recent strike is about hours not pay. Rolling medical education costs into a holistic healthcare system would eliminate any argument that we could not do likewise.

Doctors are not the problem, and there would be no shortage of people willing to do the job for less than $189k. The wastes, competing bureaucracies, needless duplication, multiple layers of overheads and profit margins for non-providers and skewed priorities of the system are the problem.

[kenfrequed]

23. Yup

Clinic networks hire large pools of people whose job it is to negotiate and wrangle the money out of insurance companies that are continually looking for an excuse not to cover a procedure or medication. That part has not changed one iota after the ACA.

Even with the ACA we have people that are completely overcharged by their insurance and undercovered.

There are times where it takes 45-50 minutes for a secretary just to get a form and a list of covered alternative medications from a medication benefit carrier. Insurance companies benefit from slowing, stalling, foot dragging, and hoping that care providers and patients just give up.

Really we need to move to medicare for all. We need universal single payer. Insurance companies do not have a positive right to provide a product that is useless or defective.

[Armstead]

14. There have been endless discussions but no real commitment to public health coverage

That part of it always seems to be set aside, in favor of complex formulates to determine why ANY alternative to the present system won't work. "We can never have that becaue of this....&quot And such objections always boil down to money and lack of political will.

There is plenty of room for honest discussion and many variations possible. But it has to start with a commitment by at least one political party to actually offer a public plan that is universally available and affordable. That can be incremental, all at once it can be single-payer, a mixed system, .....many different structures.

But step one is commitment. That is sorely lacking, as the current primary campaign and the demonization of "socialized health care" as a "unicorn" proves.

P.S. I know you are interested in specifics and actual discussion of such things. And you deserve credit for that.... But the problem in the larger sense is carts and horses. The commitment -- real commitment -- has to come first.

[KansDem]

5. If we find ourselves suffering and dying, then we just need to WORK HARDER!!!

And pull ourselves up by our bootstraps!


[p align="right"][font size="1"]Do I need to use the sarcasm thingy?[p align="left"][font size="2"]

[liberal_at_heart]

6. We as a country have decided we can spend endless amounts of money killing people in war, but

there is a limit to how much we will spend saving people with healthcare. It would be nice if at least the Democrats were different on this issue but they are not.

[Skwmom]

9. It is MORE cost effective to switch to a national health care system.

It is not the bean counter that our pushing lies.

Let's not "tax the middle class" to pay for healthcare.

You do realize that not paying health care premiums but a small payroll tax means more take home pay don't you? Your argument sounds more like the one the 1% would like us to make.

[Armstead]

15. I think you need this to comprehend my post

[Skwmom]

26. Part might be but it still promotes the lie that it costs more and infers accountants agree.

The only ones who would are those unethical as hell.

[PowerToThePeople]

10. I hate the human race

I wish an alien world would just nuke the planet from orbit because it is the only way to be sure.

[Sunlei]

19. thats why Obama raised the cost of a human life way back his first month or so in office.

We're still way undervalued, each human life should be equal- priceless.

Anyway, why not lower the age for Medicare access to 50? with a premium to be paid-in depending on personal income.

[Armstead]

20. That would be a step to lower Medicare age...or make it available to everyone optionaly

[Sunlei]

22. to lower the medicare age to 50 was mentioned in pre-ACA first months.

But then that idea wasn't mentioned again as an option. I assume because there are more profits for insurance corps to gain from their state/federal money subsidies. Most 'free gov. money profits'- off their newest, 50+ aged 'required to be insured' customers.

Medicare program is in place, I don't understand why the gov can't just start to lower the age requirement and let people/& their current subsidies move in to a real non-profit insurance.

[Armstead]

24. I think that could also strengthen Medicare

Insurance is based on premiums paid by younger healthier people subsidizing care of older, sicker patients.

If Medicare had more young healthy people paying in as premiums, it seems that would expand the pool of income.

[Sunlei]

25. agree. Only problem is, parts of health care Corps enjoy fabulous profits off 'free gov money'

The middlemen won't let go of those profits easy.

[tularetom]

27. For many people, the ACA will become the CA in just a few years

As far as I'm concerned, Obamacare was nothing more than a big sloppy kiss to the insurance companies and if premium cost increases are not contained, we're going to see the whole thing collapse within the next few years, tax penalties or no tax penalties.

So somebody had better start thinking about the next step, because what we have now is simply not sustainable. Appears to me that Clinton is satisfied with the status quo so she isn't going to be much help.