Many in the Progressive sphere have been discussing Single Payer Medicare for All ad nauseam. It is a mathematical certainty that having one payer for medical care is less expensive than having multiple payers. In other words, all things being equal, having several insurance companies pay your health care bill is extremely wasteful. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.
Senator McCain’s last act of valor was to prevent the total capitulation by Republicans to the capitalists by virtually overturning the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare is not all that great for many, but it slowed down the rate of increased bleeding. I wrote the piece titled “Politicians screw us on health care because our gullibility makes us forget math” right after the McCain vote.
We may have dodged another bullet. John McCain’s decision not to vote for the Graham-Cassidy Trumpcare bill will temporarily maintain the status quo. Our healthcare system is severely defective, and it is our fault.
We allow politicians to obfuscate the math we all know by using smoke and mirrors to distract us from the reality we should be able to see.
If every major industrialized country in the world have health care that covers the entire population, why can’t the United States? If they cover their citizens at a fraction of what it costs to cover Americans then how can, adopting a similar system cost more in the United States? If life expectancy and medical outcomes are the same or better than our country, how can we claim to have the best healthcare?
Politicians, Republicans and Establishment Democrats alike, want us to believe that there is something fundamentally different between Americans and the rest of the world. Why? Because if we understand that a French, Canadian, British, Swedish, or Danish person’s health wants and needs are the same as Americans, then the debate will become a math-based discussion. That math-based conversation would show that the only logical conclusion is that America must migrate to a single-payer Medicare for All health care system.
Read the entire article. We have turned the corner. A vast majority of Americans now support Single-Payer Medicare for All. 70% of Americans now support it. CNBC reported the following.
The vast majority of Americans, 70 percent, now support Medicare-for-all, otherwise known as single-payer health care, according to a new Reuters survey. That includes 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans. Only 20 percent of Americans say they outright oppose the idea.
“Medicare is a very popular program, so the idea of expanding it to everyone is popular as well,” Larry Levitt, senior vice president for health reform at the Kaiser Family Foundation, tells CNBC Make It. “The advantage of Medicare-for-all, which is much closer to how the rest of the world provides health care to their residents, is that you can achieve universal coverage at a lower cost.”
For at least a decade, most Americans have been dissatisfied with the country’s largely for-profit health-care system, according to Gallup. In a poll last year, 71 percent of respondents said the system is “in a state of crisis” or “has major problems.” Health care in the U.S. is criticized primarily for its inefficiency, inaccessibility and ever-rising costs. …
A single-payer system simplifies who is responsible for covering costs. That gets rid of some of the issues that stem from the complexity of the current American system, like balance billing. In a recent incident reported by NPR that’s since gone viral on social media, Drew Calver, a 44-year-old teacher and triathlete in Austin, Texas, had a heart attack. He was rushed to an out-of-network hospital and had stents implanted.
A network is a list of hospitals, doctors and other medical providers who are covered by a person’s health plan. Out-of-network providers are either not covered at all, or are covered at a much lower rate, leaving the patient responsible for much or all of the resultant bill. Almost 18 percent of hospital admissions end up with some out-of-network claim, often because someone goes to an in-network hospital but ends up getting care from an out-of-network physician. Among those who can’t afford the ensuing costs, most say they didn’t realize they were receiving care outside their insurance network.
Calver went home after four days. Though he asked from his hospital bed and was assured that his insurance would be accepted, his portion of the bill came to almost $110,000. That’s “nearly twice his annual pay,” NPR notes. “Under a pure Medicare-for-all plan, those issues would go away,” Levitt says.
Americans are waking up. Politicians no longer need to fear that their constituents will view them as some sort of communists. Now if the politicians follow the lead of the Progressive grassroots, they will be brought home. If they follow the lead of the Plutocracy we will ensure their eventual demise. Make no mistake about it.
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The reason Republicans are fighting against the ACA or Medicare for all is because it eliminates the profit motive for businesses they or their cohorts may own. It would also eliminate the need of many of the insurance companies we now have and the multimillion dollar pay that many of the CEOs get. Many of them would still be needed to process the Medicare and Medicaid medical bills.
Single Payer Medicare for all should be a no brainer.
• It takes away the profit motive for health care
• It covers everyone and does not discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions or conditions which are costly and would quickly go past the current lifetime caps
• The administration costs are greatly reduced
• It would cover many more providers and you would no longer have to worry if your provider is PPO or non-PPO
• It would eliminate the need to verify that all providers, when you go to a PPO hospital or provider are part of your network and not wind up with bills from non-PPO providers which also provided service but are not part of YOUR PPO NETWORK
• Since it covers everyone, hospitals will not be forced to write off the bills which a patient is unable to pay
• If the hospitals are able to get more of their patients insured, they will not be forced to write off unpaid bills and risk going bankrupt and having to close
• Since the ACA has taken effect hospitals in the states which expanded Medicaid have not been forced to file bankruptcy and close
• Since the ACA has taken effect the number of personal medical bankruptcies has diminished tremendously
Since patients would now have insurance, they could get routine care to help them keep healthy and avoid conditions which if left untreated would develop into a more costly treatment. If they are more healthy, they would need less care which would result in fewer medical bills.
Since the ACA was first enacted, it required providers to bill according to outcome instead of per service rendered. Hospitals have gotten better at taking care of their patients so they do not return for treatment of the same condition. Providers have slowly acclimated to the rules of the ACA and are more profitable.
The one thing I see would be people losing their jobs because they are no longer needed to process the claims. I would think it would also reduce the number of highly paid CEOs which are in the current Insurance Companies.
All in all, it would take time to transition people to Medicare for all and to transition the way providers currently provide service to their patients and how they bill for their services.