We just can’t do it, it costs too much. Most everyone wants the best medical care available, and that’s expensive. It gets more expensive everyday too, we can treat diseases that used to leave people dead, and it costs a lot of money. The vast majority of people alive today will one day need a CT scan or other advanced radiology, and that’s expensive. More and more technology will be available to treat illnesses and the best available at any time won’t get less expensive. People don’t want the inexpensive medication if something recently developed works better, and the newer it is the more it will cost. Everybody will want transplants and replacement body parts if they are available, and people living longer will increase the demand. We can’t afford to pay the best medical care available over everyone’s lifetime through public funding, at least not with just minor co-pays for services or the insurance premiums.
Sure, we can reduce the costs of medical care in some ways, excessive use of medications and unnecessary procedures can be eliminated, we can cut the waste, especially the percentage that insurance companies siphon off the top of most medical care payments in this country, and we can try to get people to live healthier lives and not need as much healthcare, but at the same time healthier people will live longer and want more expensive care at an advanced age, and on top of that readily available subsidized medical care is a counter-incentive to people living healthier lives.
I have been saying for at least 30 years that we need a public health plan that covers emergency care so you don’t have to worry about where you are or what the nearest hospital is that will accept your insurance, catastrophic care coverage so people and their families don’t go broke trying to survive the most costly treatments, and preventive care to reduce the amount of medical care people need. But even that can’t just cover everyone with no limits on the costs. People who want the very best, the latest, the most expensive care will need private insurance to cover those kinds of benefits. They should also be able to save healthcare money tax free just like some retirement funds, and those savings plans should be inheritable so the burden on our children will be reduced, but people need to pay if they want the top shelf treatment.
But as we keep pointing out over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, that’s just a strawman.
Basically everybody on Earth covers more than we do, for much less money, and with better outcomes.
Yes, we can’t afford to pay for every possible treatment for every person regardless of their medical need for it. But that shouldn’t even be part of the discussion – we can make vast improvements across the board: everybody can have better care than they do now; pay far, far less for it; and have a healthier population if we just pick ANY of these models at random and copy it. It’s literally win/win/win, but we’re still against it for some stupid non-fact-based reason or other.
It isn’t 29 of the 30 most developed countries aren’t wrong. It is just presented as “too expensive” - too expensive is the new ‘unamerican’, the new ‘socialised medicine’:
You’ll have to prove that is true. Many of these comparisons are not apple-for-apple. I already said we could do it for less than we do now, but the costs keep going up, and everybody around the world isn’t getting the level of care available in this country right now for less. What works in smaller countries won’t work here, and they aren’t as comprehensive as some claim, and their costs are rising as well. It’s not impossible for us to pay for everything, but it’s politically impossible for the people of this country to give up what is needed to do that. If you think people will tolerate increasing taxes to the point necessary to pay for this you’ll have to make a pretty damn good argument.
We can certainly cut the waste and reduce the problem short term, but the non-waste costs will continue to rise. I can’t prove they will continue to rise, some technology may reduce them greatly in the future, but counting on that is not a great way to plan.
That is good support for my argument. I’m not claiming we would get our money’s worth from healthcare available, or that we would live longer. I’m saying people want all the healthcare they can afford, whether or not it makes sense. In other countries the healthcare people could afford was very limited until public healthcare plans were put in place, they are quite happy with they have now in comparison, but over time their costs will rise also if they want to use the latest and greatest treatments available. I think your graph only shows that we could be doing better now, but it doesn’t prove that healthcare costs for the very best treatments (as perceived by those who want it) won’t continue to rise here or elsewhere.
I am not arguing that we can’t spend less on healthcare, or that we can’t get better results for our money, but those things will require more than just cutting the waste if we continue to desire the Triple-Gold level coverage for anything and everything that people in this country want to have. If we are going to provide public healthcare it has to have limitations on coverage that we don’t have now, not even in all the best private healthcare plans.
Absolutely no argument, they conspire to keep costs high, and to make sure at least 20-25% of costs are pure risk free profits for insurance companies and healthcare providers. But they are not creating all of the demand, and people don’t want to see the development of better treatments stop.
The rest of the world has the luxury of waiting for us to develop most of the improvements, and they are willing to stay behind the curve and use the lower cost treatment older treatment available. I have no problem with setting the standard for public care at that same level, but people who have the top level insurance plans now will want to keep them, and those that can’t afford it will be left out. We already have two-tiered healthcare in this country, it has to stay that way for us to afford it.
I think there should be cradle to grave healthcare coverage for everyone in this country, but it has to have reasonable limits to the coverage paid for by the public.
So it is possible for the United States to have more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined, but not possible to pay for knee surgery to get an injured construction worker back on the job so he can provide for himself and his family.
They’re getting better care for less. They’re getting care where they don’t have to worry about going bankrupt, for less.
I see two things that jack up our costs outrageously that only exist here. Enormous overhead costs due to the fact that we have nearly endlessly variable levels of coverage and service costs. Pharmaceutical and equipment prices that are not set or negotiated by the government.
We can’t afford comprehensive medical care for everyone under our current system of unnecessary overhead and overpriced drugs and equipment. Those are things that a functional system of health care will fix.
First off, they’re not getting the improvements after we do.
Second off, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to subsidize the French health care system. I don’t want to pay more so Germans can pay less. I don’t want Americans paying $300 for an Epipen so Brits can get them for $50.
OK, my cite is…everybody. All developed countries. The whole shebang. No statistical sampling – use the entire population. And for outcomes, you’ll accept the World Health Organization, the CDC, and the UN Panel on Health? Or just statistical outcomes? Life expectancies? General health data? Because all those are out there, too, just a Google away. They’re all telling the same story.
Now, convince us that your position is correct, because so far as I can see, you’ve got zero actual data to back it up.
Please provide the figures if you can. The less is arguable unless you look at all the data. One factor that allows countries to provide care for less than we are because of a lower standard of living. Everything costs less in those countries, people get paid less, the cost of property and maintaining it is less. And unfortunately for us they benefit from the medical technology we pay for, and outrageous profits for pharmaceutical companies that we pay for so they can charge them less. We can improve the cost of pharmaceuticals but we can’t miraculously slash all the other costs of healthcare. It is just going to cost you more to wash a bedsheet for a US hospital than it will anywhere else in the world.
Better care is also questionable. You can’t compare the entire country’s averages if they have comprehensive care for everyone already. A large part of our population isn’t getting good healthcare driving our results as nation down in comparison. I am not arguing that we can’t get better care for more people through a single-payer public health system.
We agree.
(bolding mine)
How do you support the bolded statement. It is not just the waste that makes it too expensive, it is the real costs of providing healthcare in this country, it is the demand, and it is the real costs.
You can’t cut that much out of the real costs. Real costs involve the salaries of people, the costs of rent and maintenance of building, very high regulation standards for everything medical. If we pay the low prices for drugs that other countries do they still aren’t free. It will still cost the government money to operate a public health system, the insurance companies are making an obscene profit but it still costs them money to manage the reimbursement of providers, and I doubt the government can do it for less than their real costs.
The demand isn’t just going to disappear either. US citizens do not readily take less than what they have, even if it’s wasting money and unfairly affecting those who can’t afford a gold plan.
I don’t know what you are saying here. Can show me that we can provide everyone in the US the level of medical care that is currently provided by the top level private insurance plans that cover the majority of Americans at or below the cost of other countries?
Do you think this can be done at all without a large tax increase or dramatic cuts in other spending?
Yes, I have thought of something more than a ‘copper’ plan. I not proposing that anybody pay for the minimal coverage, and that it is available to everybody through a single payer, payed for through the general fund. More is needed than that, but the endless bickering over just how much and what isn’t getting anybody any closer to an ideal. What I propose is better than a ‘copper’ plan already, and we still need to negotiate with drug companies to our advantage not their profits, we have to cut out waste and stop regulating guaranteed high profits for the medical industry, and then we have to figure out the in-between. It will need limits on coverage, and we have to settle on how to pay for it and how much. But right now we’re not doing much for the people who have to get public health care at increasing prices that doesn’t cover their needs as well as it should. I think we first need to get the minimal system in place that is fair, affordable, and doesn’t keep supporting outrageous profit taking. I believe that was what ObamaCare was originally intended to do, but it fell short, not just in the costs to the people who need it, but it still regulates in outrageous profits for providers.
er than construction workers who probably vote against their own interests anyway. 