Medicare-for-all' means long waits for poor care, and Americans won't go for it once they learn thes

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/med...ns-wont-go-for-it-once-they-learn-these-facts

This is just common sense. The left's wishlist for healthcare has been called "pie in the sky" and that is exactly what it is. There is a reason obamacare was misrepresented to the people: It won't work.

Now we know we were lied to about it. Of course the used car salesmen will tell you that more people have health insurance because of it but what kind of insurance is it? It is crappy.

The enormous cost of healthcare for all reveals it is not possible. This fact alone should clue people in on what a huge lie it is.

 

The Israelis, European and some Arab countries have universal healthcare. re Americans too stupid? Australians love their healthcare.. so do Canadians

 

What is being run on is not obamacare - so please don't trot that out as their platform.

2020 will be a referendum on what Americans truly want regarding healthcare. If the majority want to keep the system as it is, they will vote R. If they want the change, they will vote D. I think it's important to find out everything one can about what is being proposed rather than fall back to talking points. Being upset by universal healthcare platforms is a little silly...would you prefer that both parties ran on the same platforms?

 

Canadians "love" coming to the US for healthcare. Australians will be Chinese soon so they need to get used to authoritarianism.

 

LOL! Typical of dems to try and distance themselves from their failures. Next they will be saying obama was a republican.

 

Very few come to the us. You must dearly love dumb propaganda.

 

"Medicare for all" has ignored the doctors. When the docs learn they are working for the government the competent ones will move away from seeing patients. We'll get to see what the VA has been dishing out to the vets.

 

I aked my oncologist about the latest in prostate cancer developments recently. I had read online that Israel is on the verge of a cure for cancer. He responded immediately, (and he is of European heritage) in his heavy accent, "If you are looking for the latest advancements in a cure for cancer, look no further than the United States, it is happening right here!" I don't buy into your self denigrating anti- US propoganda one bit!

 

Exactly!!

 

I'm not distancing myself from anything. I'm stating a fact. Obamacare was not universal, singer payer healthcare. Am I wrong on that?

 

They don't have any choice, not do they know any better. The Americans do. Not really important what uninformed people think.

 

Just so I understand...Israelis, Europeans, Australians, Canadians and a whole host of people from other countries who ENJOY single payer are uninformed?

 

US doctors serve the 55 million Americans covered by a single-payer, universal 65+ system with great distinction. Such a proven approach could only reduce cost by incorporating lower risk demographics.

Are doctors concerned about the excision of all those superfluous middle men - the repeatedly-duplicated astronomical executive salaries, profit margins, payrolls, bureaucratic demands imposed upon providers, agency commissions, marketing and advertising budgets. etc.., etc., etc. Not the physicians I know. None applauds such a sizable chunk of every health care dollar being diverted.

Standardization, economy of scale, and maximizing the size of the risk pool are all principles that contradict the self-interested arguments of the profiteers and ideologue.

Paying nearly twice as much for a system that leaves tens of millions uninsured and dependent on the taxpayer while advanced nations cover everyone, often with superior results is difficult to justify.

Of course, freeing every private enterprise from the bureaucratic burden of having to administer every employer-based, subsidized plan is an added, indisputable capitalistic desideratum.

 

On what it's like to buy their own health care? Yeah.

Take anything else, if government bought you a car and that's the only kind of car you ever knew how would you know if cars people bought on their own were better or worse? Even if it is a total piece of crap you wouldn't care you didn't buy it.

 

How did it become the accepted wisdom that the US can not benefit in terms of cost of healthcare from a nationalized system as most every other country in the developed world has?

"The United States spends more on health care than any other country in the world, and a large share of that spending comes from the federal government. In 2017, the United States spent about $3.5 trillion, or 18 percent of GDP, on health expenditures – more than twice the average among developed countries."

 

Whenever 30 MILLION or more people are added to the healthcare systems, COSTS will rise (along with the "wait" times).

Removing "profit" doesn't change the fact DEMAND for healthcare is greater and therefore COSTS continue to rise.

If there were McHospitals near every traditional hospital in the country, costs and prices would stop rising.

Steve

 

And we get more of it and we get it faster.

 

Actually Americans tend to wait longer for healthcare but in a way that isn't usually measured. Because of the high cost of healthcare, Americans tend to wait a long time, even years before seeking treatment. As a result Americans are far more likely to have preventative illnesses, and see their doctors far less than in other countries, and often have to get expensive treatment that goes into our insurance premium.

When you actually measure wait times after an appointment has been made, wait times for specialist care in all countries tend to be a few weeks, and the US is on the lower end of these wait times. But there is still many nations with universal healthcare with mostly equalent wait times. However, when you look at non-specialist care which tends to have a wait time of a few days, the US actually has a wait time longer than most other developed countries. Other nations tend to be really good at quick preventative care that saves a lot of money, while the US is really good at incredibly overpriced expensive specialist care for advanced conditions.

We can avoid long wait times by doing what most developed nations do, and offer tax-payer funded public health insurance that is highly cost effective and prefers affordable treatments to slightly better expensive ones. We can allow private insurance if someone waits anything more than public insurance. We can also have public and private hospitals that you can use your public insurance at. The public hospitals would also cost effective and try to follow a similar model to Kaiser.

 

Bullcrap. I have very little wait time. Those who do wait are just afraid of doctors.

 

Thats just you. Going to a doctor and getting a condition figured out can cost thousands of dollars, and its even worse for people who are uninsured. Simply taking a ride in an Ambulance is a $1,000 bill, and $3,000 if you don't have insurance or insurance doesn't cover it.

 

Actually, it is the opposite. Medical professionals are more willing and flexible to work with people that are uninsured. I have renegotiated such bills myself, but I am also covered under the Veteran's Administration as well as Medicare. And the VA is swamped with patients these days - and long wait times.

Steve

 

Even if they do negotiate, you are still going to end up paying a lot to ride in a hospital. Being uninsured is generally a very bad idea and is not the way to set up a healthcare system. Another example is that we signed up for some pregnancy tests a few months back and when we showed up for the first one, it was this 1 hour powerpoint presentation by a nurse with five other couples with just obvious facts that could have just been emailed to us or found online. This presentation ended up costing us $600 with $200 more paid by our insurance. This is why Americans spend far fewer days in the hospital and see their doctors far less than in other developed nations. That fear of going to a doctor is bad enough, but also knowing that they are going to squeeze hundreds of even thousands of dollars out of you for outrageously overpriced healthcare is even worse. Emergency rooms are also overpriced and people can end up paying thousands of dollars for care that only takes a few minutes. There is urgent care, but that only is for minor treatments and itself can cost hundreds of dollars for very minor care.

 

It's economics. Supply and demand. Adding 30 million people to the healthcare system adds MORE DEMAND for the services.

If there were a McHospital near every traditional hospital in the country, then COSTS and prices would stop rising.

Steve

 

The healthcare market isn't an open market. Healthcare providers don't usually post their prices and its extremely difficult to do price comparisons in different places. Also, healthcare is very local and people don't always have a lot of options of which hospitals and clinics they can go to. Healthcare is also very specialized so people usually take the recommendations of their doctors rather than looking for a cheaper option. People don't always make cost-effective healthcare choices when they get sick and will just look for the safest or closest option.

In addition, we have this layer of insurance which means people can incur more costs on the system than they actually pay, which results in rising healthcare premiums from extra expensive treatments and drugs. Every layer of healthcare has layers of bureaucracy and paperwork for hospitals to figure out charges and insurance companies to figure out what they will cover, and we spend 25% of healthcare costs on administration alone. In addition much of our healthcare is covered under patents or there are few providers selling certain healthcare products or drugs which results in monopolistic pricing.

All this is why economists have calculated the the healthcare market has low price elasticity, which means that demand doesn't go down much when prices go up. The healthcare market is a bad market but there are other bad markets as well. Electricity and water providers have natural monopolies because its impractical to have 10 sets of pipes for different companies. Because of this, the government strictly regulates how much these companies can charge. Other developed nations do something like this for healthcare and as a result they pay 2 1/2 times less for healthcare than we do and pay less to cover 100% of the population than we do for medicare and medicaid alone.

 

It is state and federal government rules and regulations that have barriers to medical industry entry. Politicians need to think outside the box instead of looking for ways to grow government, and get out of the way of real competition.

Putting a McHospital with lower prices near every traditional hospital in the country will stop rising costs and prices, while increasing the supply of services.

Steve