Why are U.S. citizens ignoring the 6% gain on GDP, by not nationalizing health care?
Statistics show that the average U.S. citizen pays considerably more for their, — bankruptcy creating inhumane medical system, — than other countries who have nationalized health care. The gain in GDP is around 3%.
It follows economies of scale gains are likely to be about 3%. If a penny saved is a penny earned, I am justified in saying that there would be a 6% saving to the average U.S. citizen.
Why are Americans wasting such a huge amount of gains, when going single payer could bring such a huge gain to each American?
I ask all my Yankee friends; what the hell? Recognize that single payer, pays great dividends.
The American healthcare system is now based on insurance, which is a scam. It drives up costs tremendously, sucking out capital from both health systems and from consumers, and rations care. It artificially divorced producers from consumers, leading to spikes in prices and costs. The individual mandate was originally a GOP idea as a payout to huge insurance companies, who still got their win under Obozo. Why do you think private insurance giants were eager to support the ACA?
Having an insurance-heavy model of healthcare is just madness. That whole model needs to be scrapped, now.
Insurance is gambling on health, like any other Casino. Are you going to be stricken by a deadly or another devastating disease, or won’t you? Your kids? What are the odds, 50-50, 25-75, do you have a clue?
Place your bets.
That’s called your “premium”. Oh yeah, the game is rigged, in case you missed it.
And how do you propose to be “fair” regarding who gets health coverage and who does not?
Who ought to live and who ought to die? Be clear with this. Should poor people, who can’t afford hospital bills, be the ones who die? Rich people deserve to live, poor people not?
Health care is a service and as such must be paid for by those who use it. But we should also have social safety nets to help people who cannot afford it. It’s not impossible to have both. The problem is framing the issue in extremes, either as “healthcare is a right” (it isn’t) or as “healthcare should be pure free market” (which is also stupid).
A society that is set up to further the health of its people is more rational than not, but a society that is set up to have free enterprise is more rational than not, so it’s just a question of balancing those two values as best as possible.
A single-payer system is a good idea, but I don’t think the US would be likely to save money in the short term by nationalizing its health care. We have a huge unwieldy system that is deeply entrenched, I expect that it would be very costly to unwind, and very costly to build something to replace it. Down the road we may save on GDP, but not upfront.
There’s also reason to believe that the US system generates a lot of valuable treatments that the rest of the world piggybacks on, and that overall the cost of the US switching would need to include the opportunity cost of lost innovation that results. Likely there are other ways to create incentives for that innovation, but it isn’t clear that the alternatives would be comparable in cost or effectiveness to what we have.
So, short answer: it’s not easy or cheap, and there are likely to be hidden costs that eat into the expected savings, and that may hurt other countries that benefit from the byproducts of the US system.
The United States grew economically in GDP the last several years by a poultry 1% yearly. Let that sink in for a moment. In terminology we call this economic contraction.
What comes next will be very interesting and social along with political chaos is guaranteed.
This also will translate with the global economy as a whole which is very unstable and add in a world where we are one Syrian military convoy attacked from world war. Exciting times lie ahead.
Events over the weekend that nobody is talking about.
Syrian fighter jet shot down by U.S.
Syrian drone shot down by U.S.
American spy plan intercepted by Russians in the Baltics.
Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of planning a terrorist attack.
No argument that it will have hiccups, but you ignore the vast amount of profit we are talking about shifting around. You see debt while I just see the eating of a huge amount of profit for the average taxpayer.
I suspect your technical sales program was on a much smaller scale than the US healthcare system, and yet any real transition cost from one program to another will have associated costs. Even converting current costs to cash handouts, likely the simplest alternative, would mean setting up a system that collects the funds and distributes them to the designated recipients.
Arguing that the cost is zero is not grappling with the real issue. Even if the long term savings are 6%, there is no way that the full savings start on day 1, they will change over time as upfront costs are spent.
I’m sure Canada has a lovely system, but much drug development happens in the US. Canada free-rides because US companies create drugs for the US market, and those drugs are either sold at much reduced cost to Canada, or Canadian companies are allowed to create generic version of the same drugs at lower cost. Canada benefits because most of the cost of drug development is in the discovery, and that happens in the US because companies that develop drugs here get significant market privileges (e.g. look at recent Epipen pricing).
I don’t disagree. I think it’s important, though, to differentiate long-term and short-term savings. In the long term, I fully agree that the US would be better off with some kind of single-payer or public option healthcare system. In the short term, a rapid transition from here to there means shifting millions of people from one plan to another, arranging for doctors to get paid, refunding insurance payments is if necessary, developing an endowment, changing the tax base, etc. etc. etc. It’s a big, costly undertaking. Even if long term savings are significant, short term costs will mean it will be more costly for a period of years at least.
I agree but you now have the government you collectively chose and they are not about to give you what you need as they might have to return some of the bribes they have received from the various medically related lobby groups.
You politicians are not about to let their cash cow get away. Corruption must be allowed to continue.
Those small pains sure beat the hell out of all the bankruptcies that will be prevented or the loss of lives due to people not getting the care they need.
You are focused on the little problem while I am focused on the huge financial gains for each taxpayer.